The Express.
London, England, 1860-05-31 00:00:00

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TO COUISPONDYNTS.
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o'clock on the Joy of publication.

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LONDON, THITItEDAY, MAT $l.

Ora anticipates buys been but too accurately
verified, and we an one as in the presence of
a General Strike for shorter tune by those em-
ployed in the Building Trade. How deeply we
regret it should be so we need hardly say. What-
ever be the issue of the present struggle as be-
tween capital and labour, the loss to individuals
and the inconvenience to the community are un-
deniable. No record, in truth, will ever tell in
this world half the suffering and evil which three
months' collision on an extended wale between
masters and operatives must inevitably cause.
Heaven knows we have no desire in any sense to
understate the case in this respect. We have
long and earnestly striven to impress upon the
minds of those who, from their greater energy
of character and quicker intellect, become
the leaders of their fellow-workmen on
such occasions, the grave responsibility they
incur when they recommend the first turn-out :
nor shall we ever cease to urge in all frankness
and faithfulness these considerations, " whether
" they will hear or whether they will forbear ;"
not for the sake of capitalists or consumers merely,
or principally, but especially for the sake of the
employed, and of those who more immediately
depend upon them. We put aside altogether, as
untimely and out of place, the considerations

which some would fain force on our attention re-
garding the additional pressure entailed upon pri-
vate benevolence, and the additional burden cast
upon local rates. We do not think the self-interest
of the neutral classes in the quarrel can be fairly
appealed to in this way. When capitalists think
fit to close their establishments, or proprietors
of land think fit to clear away numerous
humble habitations and cast a mass of help-
less and unotfending beings on the charity
of the public or upon the pariah for relief,
enlightened respectability and genteel affluence
seldom venture to murmur a remonstrance between
their teeth, and never rush into print to denounce
or to complain. They are ever ready to acknow-
ledge the right of the rich to do what they will
with their own, as far as law and the public judg-
ment of society is concerned. And so they must
learn to bear, if not contentedly, at least com-
posedly, with the right of the comparatively poor
to refuse when they please to sell their labour at a
lower price than they think they can obtain for it.
If they will not be restrained by the risk and
suffering they incur, and by the sight of what
their families endure during the conflict for
shortened time or increased wages, they will cer-
tainly not be moved by the shabby and selfish
grumbling of those who are afraid that the conflict
may entail indirectly upon them the lees of an
extra halfpenny or penny in the pound in the shape
of poor rates. If the body of the working men Many
particular trade were unjustly deprived of so many
Dour, or so many shillings in the week ; and if by
peaceful and open combination they could exact the
redress of such a wrong, we should be very merry
to bid them hesitate in doing so. The law dis-
tinctly recognises their right to try the issue with
their employers by abstaining from labour. The
remedy is costly and clumsy enough, and the
penalties of failure are the more deplorably severe,
inasmuch as they are self-exacted. But if the
apprehension of having to pay those penalties will
nut make men pause before they strike work,
assuredly no other motives will ; we must there-
fore say plainly that we think the less said about
these other motives the better.

But there is soother tone of comment indulged
in, we regret to say, by some of our contempo-
raries, which fills us, we confess, with oven more
regret. We allude to the ill-disguised threats of
legislative interference with regard to trade com-
bination. The fell spirit of reaction shows itself
in no more dangerous or demented form than
when it sets up a cry of regret over the just and
humanising changes in legislation on this subject
made some years ago. Never was improvement
more fruitful in benefits and blessings than that
which relieved the counsels of labour from the
necessity of being secret. Publicity has not, in-
deed, eradicated trade combination, but it has
divested it of its most pernicious characteristics—
mystery, deception, suspicion, and temptation to
violence. rie mere fact that thousands of able-
bodied and intelligent men are now to be seen
for weeks together enduring the most acute pri-
vations, and assembling night after night to
hear exciting statements of what are called
their wrongs, without the perpetration of any
breach of the peace, is in itself the best and
noblest seal that experience has ever set upon the
wisdom of a righteous law. So far from count*.
nancing any reactionary design to abridge this
salutary freedom of the working classes, we shall
ever contend that the policy in which it was con-
ceived ought to be carried still further. The
Legislature more than twenty years ago resolved
to tolerate discussions about time and wages : it
would do still better if it took means to beer and
to inolerA.and the controversies between capital
and Labour. The vital interests of this country