The Express.
London, England, 1866-12-20 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

Ms. Jecoa WLLEY, in the able paper on
Strikes, which he read before the Statistical So-
ciety on Tuesday evening, put forward a view
which is not indeed absolutely novel, but deserves
more attention than it has hitherto received from
the public. After making some sound distinc-
tions between the different objects for which
strikes are instituted, he observes that " the fre-
e quency of strikes argues some unsoundness in
" the relations between masters and workmen, in
" which the blame is not
ace on one side." Mr.
STANLEY JEVONS had pviously expressed a
similar opinion. The masters, he thinks, encounter
difficulties because they are always thought to be
making secret but vast profits, and " the sooner
" publicity is substituted for secresy the better it
" will be for all." This will be deemed very here-
tical doctrine by the so-called practical economists
of the old school. " What on earth," they ex-
claim, " have the workmen to do with the masters'
" profits I Let them be thankful for the
" existence of masters, and remember that the
" only thing which can affect the rate of wages
" is the relation between the demand for labour
" and the supply." We do not presume to argue
with these practical economists. We only say
that they and their doctrine are in a very high
degree accountable for the feeling among
to
the
workmen which gives strength and tenacity
strikes. If there is selfishness in the conduct of a
class of artisans who, for the sake of a small
rise in wages, stop the industry of a district and
endanger its existence, heedless of the conse-
quences to others, it has been taught them bythese
men and their heartless theories. Teach the
workman that his labour is not subject to the
ordinary laws which govern the price of commo-
dities, and you delude him to his hurt ;
teach him that his strength, intellect, and
conscience are no more than commodities, and
you make him a despairing egotist, and should
not be surprised if he turns your doctrine
against you whenever he has an opportunity. This
supply and demand doctrine has been learned only
too well in the north, where the iron-workers have
been diminishing the supply of labour with a ven-
geance. Now that the mischief is done we fird
speakers and waiters turning round with a magis-
terial air to ask the men if they know what they
are doing, and that the trade of the country
leaving it for foreign parts. Why the workmen
should be summoned to consider that fact more
than the masters we are not told, since the
latter class does not profess to carry on its
operations for the good of the country, but for
commercial profit. But then, it is said, these
strikes inflict considerable injury on the workman
himself, and be should therefore be warned against
combinations. And is it really supposed that
men who have been half, and more than half
starved for six months, need to learn this truth
of orators and public writers? Rather let the
flippant dogmatist learn from the endurance of 11
sufferings which far surpass his conjectures, how
strong and profound must be the feeling which
causes them to be borne. He might then atta,nl
to juster views of the nature of the remedy to be
applied. Of all the vain occupations a man can take
up, the idlest and moat barren is that of address-
ing pretended moral lectures to one of the parties
to a class dispute, expecting thus to promote
the interest of the other. These scolds need to be
either more patient or more earnest ; the workmen
could lecture in turn just as glibly as they are
lectured to. The advantage of suggestions like
those of Mr. WALEY and Mr. JEVONS is that they
lift the whole question out of the close and
heated atmosphere in which it has too long been
imprisoned, and move it to a purer air and
to the higher ground on which only it can
be settled. No words can depict too strongly
the mischiefs of strikes. They are a form of
civil war. They destroy the sustenance of the
families of a district as surely as the march of a
hostile army, and, like military wars, they very
rarely effect a change worth the loss and suffering
which attend them. The English representatives
who went to the working men's congress at Geneva
a few months ago were told by their continental
brethren that strikes were a mistaken form of as-
sociation, and that men should combine for in-
dustry, not for idleness. But the mischief which
strikes do the country by driving trade away
is as much a consideration for the masters as it is
for the men, and if they want to see industry
restored to a sound basis they must do
something more effectual than harp on
the misery these strikes involve. When we
see a man who can earn 401. or 601. in a half-year
foregoing the advantage of that sum on account of
a difference of W. or 6/. between his terms and
those of his employer, we see one who has given
up all claim to sympathy, because by the very
act of joining a strike he declares himself able to
sustain all the inconvenience of a state of war ;
but at the same time common sense should tell us
that the dispute is one in which more than pounds,
shillings, and pence are involved, since the work-
man, even when he succeeds, is a heavy loser.
Rightly or wrongly, the men in several important
departments of our national industry have got to
believe that they are not fairly dealt with.
Our practical economists declare that there can
be neither fairness nor unfairness about the
price of labour in a free market. They
may be right ; but we see what their
doctrines have brought us to—stagnation,
disorganization, and mutual distrust. Who will
pick up the scattered pieces of the machine, put
them together, and set it to work f We fear that
our moral lecturers will not perform this needful

(THD3 DAY.)

NEL LOWE, LP., AND THE JUDGES ON HEYDAY.
Mr. Lowe's apology for uttering & violent poli.
tical harangue on a neutral eccaaion—that it was the first
opportunity be had had for many months of speaking in
public on the subject—seems to the Daily News to rest
upon humility which is strained beyond the warrant of
facts—the hon. gentleman forgetting the great meetings
to which he has been expressly invited—the borough of
Caine, which,of course, was open to him, and the oonierva-
tive social gatherings throughout the agricultural counties.
The gravest offence against decency, however, at the ban-
quet on Tuesday was the strong political manifesto made
by the two judges,ChiefJustioe Borill and Vice-Chancellor
Malins, in speaking to an onentially non-political toast.
Such eager partisanship of a political leader am here evinced
is equally rare and unseemly in occupants of the judicial
bench, whose very office excludes them from the House of
Commons. Mr. Beales has latelybeen removed because his
advocacy of reform was presumed inconsistent with impar-
tiality as a revising barrister. But the Court of Common
Pleas is the Court of Appeal from all the revising barristers
in the kingdom, and the expression of anti-reform opinions
by its chief judge ought on the same reasoning to require
his removal. At all events, the utterances of the tory
Chief Justice CAR only be characterised as grossly unbe-
coming, and indicative of • coarsely unjudicial
spirit. The arguments of Mr. Lowe are curiously
sophistical. He speaks as though the institution
of the Howse of COIIIIIIIMS were objected to instead of its
imperfections, and because men think the hundred elec-
tors of Caine should not have a six-hundredth part of the
government of the British empire to themselves, he
chooses to assert that the British constitution is in
danger. Such intemperate confusion of thought can
neither help Mr. Lowe's cause, nor retard that of
his opponents. It only makes more prominent the
fact that there is • need for reform, in order that
the House of Commons may no longer consist
in so large a degree as at present of persons
who are elected by wealthy patrons, or who represent only
one small class in the community, and to whose interested
ISM words so empty of argument can be addressed with a
certainty of plaudit. As to the danger to the peers on
which he enlarges, Mr. Lowe, no doubt, has great oppor-
tunities for knowing in what way the House of Commons
at present " works on in harmony with the House of
Peers," and he ought to know that the peril can only come

from themselves.
The Standard warmly endorses the sentiments of Mr.
Lowe, and congratulates the liberal party on having •
member from whom, such theories can proceed.
The star regards Ur. Lowe 168 a rival in the fancy sketch
line of Mr. Leioester ; one caricaturing the working men,
and the other the class to which Mr. Lowe belongs. The
speeches of the two judges are described by the Star am
downright partisan harangues, and it adds that this is the
first time probably since a period to which all Englishmen
look beck with shame that English judges have been
guilty of such an indecent display. Did these gentle.nen
reflect for • moment upon the meaning of the principle
which excludes a judge from the liouse of Commons!
Chief Justice Bovill and Vice-Chancellor Matins might
just as well be allowed to remain in the house and declaim
against reform there, if they are to be at liberty to join
in an agitation against it at public meetings and public
dinners. How is the country to feel any confidence in the
judicial impartiality of men whose indiscreet and vehement
partisanship cannot be kept under control even for an
hour cr two at • public dinner?

MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS.
The Times describes the agreement the preliminaries of
which Signor Tonello and Pius IX. are at this moment
discussing, as in substance a recognition of the inalienable
rights of the Romans as a free people with the claims of
the Pope to a nominal sovereignty. Rome may re-con-
stitute her senate or municipal government, acknowledging
the Pope, but the Pope alone, as her first magistrate. In
every other respect the Romans should be admitted to
the equal enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of
Italian citizens, and the freedom of conscience on which
the "State religion" is henceforth to be established
throughout the Peninsula should be equally enjoyed
under the very cannon of Castle St. Angelo. The Times is
equally convinced that M. de Sartiges' mission has no other
',object than to urge upon the Pope the expediency of
I acceding to some such proposal.
The Daily News directs attention to a paper treating of
the cholera, lately read before the Epidemiological
1 society by Dr. E. Goodeve, who was one of the British
II commissioners at the International Sanitary Conference
II held during the past autumn at Constantinople.
The Standard promises that at the next election Guildford
I shall return two conservatives, and that Mr. Onslow shall
be sent to find a seat somewhere else, " say for some sink
of radicalism in the north."
The Times describes two schemes of university extension
which have been referred with others to a committee of
the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford. The one contem-
plates the revival of an °tiler of poor, or " privileged,"
students within the university, and provides for its intro-
duction under such regulations as may best disguise its
eleemosynary character. The other scheme is that of
extension by *foliation, which has already been
described in our columns. The first plan the Times views
with disapprobation, at all events unless the experiment is
tried by private benevolence. Of the second, it says,
while unprepared to maintain that it is desirable for the
University to risk its dignity or prestige by embarking in
any Quixotic enterprise for the enlightenment of the
nation, yet it is easy to ascertain beforehand what degree
of support a measure of this nature would meet among
the classes most interested in it, and the success of a like
movement for the improvement of middle-class schools is,
at least, a favourable omen.
The TelerespA supports the candidateship of Mr. Ruskin
for the professorship of poetry at Oxford in such terms as
thee, :—" Why should not those English lads oho are
exposed for sale in the market of the times be bought by
Virtue in as wholesale a fashion as by Vice! Why should
Oxford send out year by year only a few who have early
in life decreed to live lovingly towards others, proudly
and purely towards themselves, and faithfully and con-
stantly towards Heaven! If the choice between a proud
and white life—full of trust in Heaven,full of love to men,
rewarded by delights that evil knows nothing of—and an
ill and useless life, selfish in its affections, narrow in its
hopes, mean in its ideal, fearful of its end—if the choice
between such lives were placed plainly and boldly before
English lads by preachers full of faith in the splendid
truth and beauty of their doctrine, would so many prefer
the lesser joys, or embrace the greater only when the
prompter is remorse or self-reproach?"