The Express.
London, England, 1860-11-12 00:00:00

MR. BRIGHT, M.P., ON
_STRIKES AND THEIR

CAUSEI

The following letter from Mr. Bright, M.P., kis
been written in answer to one he hu received from a
spinner and manufacturer in Blackburn, in which a cool.
plaint is made that education, literary and Tulip b ma, ol
failed to teeth the work* law wisdom in relation to
their own antereeta.

"Rochdale, Nov. 3, 1860.

"My dear Sir,—l am glad to hear from you, and to learn
that your health is better. I am, however, very sorry for
the cause of your writing to me, and can understand the
disappointment you feel at the small result of so many
efforts toinatruct the working population around you. It
is not to be expected that the workmen in our population
should be wiser than other classes, and we know well that
other classes have, whenever able to do it, enforced combi-
nation prices, and endeavoured to make a scarcity in the
articles in which they have dealt. The fact is, that among
all classes there is a lamentable ignorance of the laws which
ought to regulate labour and trade, and that the study of
political economy is totally neglected in the education of
the whole people. At this moment the views of a lar,ze
portion of the highest mean highest in position, in
wealth, and in scholiuship,—are wholly unsound on these
subjecte, and, making allowance for difference of circum.
stances, they support pp ly the same principle* as those
conttuded for by trades unions. At first sight, nothing
appears more clear to a workman than that it is a great :al-
vantage to him to be able to tome his employer to give line
higher wages ; and for this end, an end apparently so devil,
able, almost everything will appear to the mind of the
workman proper and justifiable. He considers the whole
matter to bee struggle between capital and labour, mil th.it
anything is fair in his fight with the claims of mpital.
Hence the folly and injustice of many of the proceediuga of
the trades' unions, and the discord which arises between
the clam of workmen and the clam of employers.
" Along with the mischief which springs from ignorance
on these questions, there is another source of evil to which
I think employers ought to turn their attention. The
whole body of workmen, speaking is general terms, are
excluded—purposely excluded—from the francise. They
have no political position, and therefore, practically, they
have no politics. In this respect they are no more free
than the labourers in Austria or in Huss* and conse-
quently they have so inducement to consider political ques-
tions, and to examine or to suspect how far their condition
is affected by the policy and acts of the government of the
toiletry. They are shut out from the political world ; they
are told that they ought to have, and shall have, no opinion
and no voice in the direction of public affair, ; that they
are an ignorant and a dangerous class ; and that what am
called the institution of their country would not be safe if
they wean permitted to take any part in them. The inevi-
table result is that these men, growing every day in in-
formation, and in restlessness and discontent, rather it ma,
be with their social than their political condition, and grow-
ing also in numbers and in the means of organisation,
maintains contest with the oulyauthority they see and feel,
namely, with their employees, who are to them almost all
they know mil comprehend of superior power and of
governmental control.

"The fact is, our system of politic-il exclusion has this
effect ; it makes of the working climes a nation, separated
by agulf passable only by few of them, from that other
nation to which the existing constitution pretends to give,
though it does not honestly give, political power. There is
thus no real amalgamation of classes. The class receiving
wag..., is Ant out from the questions and the interests which
occupy the minds and engage the energies of the employing
dam. Its members are limited to the consideration of
their own individual, and local, and class interest. ; and
their mental activity is devoted to something like aservile
war, because everything that is broader and greater is ex-
cluded from their view. So lung as the empluven of this
county, and of the neighbouring counties, are content to
allow the governing clam to refuse the rights of citizenship
to the inclinatrious men, without whole skill and toil our
national greatness could have no existen si„ so long will these
men, whose general intelligence and whose energies are
acknowledged by all, concentrate that intelligence and that
energy on efforts to amend their coalition within those
limits of action which are open to them. If the capitalists
practically amen that the workman is born only to labour,
and that he is incompetent to take any part in those great
discussions on public affairs which are en deeply interesting
to the more fortunate and privileged of his countrymen, and
so important to all—and if, unhappily, the workman should
practically acquiesce in this view, and should abstain from
efforts to invest himself with the rights of citizenship—
let us be assand that his activity will not cease—that his
energies will not slumber. He may not read and think
politics ;he may not cannss for and conduct election. ; he
may not strive to influence the deliberations of parliament,
and to urge oa or to check the action of the administration;
but he will not be idle, and biz own condition, and that of
his clans, sill not have lost all interest in his eyes. He will
ignore the obstacles to his well-beiug which erne from viola-
tions of economic principles by the government ; he will
take no strong interest in the taxation of the country, or in
the expeuditure of the state ; he will couclude that the only
mode of bettering his condition is in an advance of wages,
forced from capital, it may be, at the risk of its destruction,
and gained end secured only by combinatioos which in the
long run must be as injurious to himself ma to the employer
against whom he is contending.
" I have never denied the legal or the moral right of work-
men or employers to combine ; but I believe there is not one
case iu a hundred where it is wise to exercise this right.
Auil looking at the consequence■ of the strikes we have seen
in this county, and indeed throughout the country, it is
amazing that so many mon of seuse, so many men comps.
tent to works of skill and ingenuity, should take any part
in them. Ido not expect in our time that these depimable
transactions will come to an end, but I am persuaded that
they would occur much more rarely, and be attended with
less of bitterness and of that obstinate folly which now so
often distinguishes them, if the wall of partition between
dames were broken down by the admission of the great
labour interest' into the rights of eitizenship. Then
the same questions would interest us all ; the same
grievances, where grievances exist, would be seen to
affect us all ; the same great public objects would 36-
mulate us all ; and instead of being, as we now are,
two nations in one country, having different ends and ad-
' verse sympathies, we should have objects and purposes
in common, te the incalculable and permanent gain of
the whole people.
" I am notnow propounding a new doctrine. I have held
this opinion ever since I have considered social and political
questions. 1 hsve as much interest in the harmonious
working of our industrial organisation, and in the welfare of
my couu, as any other mon ham and I give it my deli-
berate judgment, that it is the interest and the duty of all
the employers of labour amongst us, to confer upon the
workman, whose labour we purchaae, and whose wages we
provide, those rights of franchise and of citizenship which
we ourselves possess. Some men imagine that the existing
exclusion can be perpetuated, and that it is safer to repress
and exclude than to admit. This is the common delusion
of three who shut their eyes to all that is passing around
them, and who, in their timidity, adhere to • course which,
more than any other, is dangerous and untenable.
"The workmen are great in numbers, growing in intel-
ligence, and their power of combination is without limit.
They will contend for themselves, by themselves, if con-
demned to remain a separate and suspected order in our
social system ; and this contest has in it the seeds of future
and tremendous evil to them, and to the great industrial
interests of the country. I wish to unite all, to have no
separate interests ; to blend all in a common sense of com-
mon rights, and thus to give pesos and strength where now
discord and weakness too much prevail.
"I do not write this to you an though you differed from
me in opinion on this subject, but I take the opportunity
which your letter affords me of expressing to you the views
I honestly bold, earnestly hoping they may one tiny become
those of all the employers of labour in the manufacturing
counties of England.-1 am, very simnel, Yours,
"To Esq.. Blackburn." "Jose BEIM.