The Express.
London, England, 1867-02-08 00:00:00

STRAND.

T/IN ►rviiYO,\ElG HISITCRS —Attar which will be produced
a 1:110141 Burlesque, GUY VAWILE3.—en4 A SUIT UY
TWEED'S.

HOLBORN.

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Emig Foote. ilddes, Lennox, Raymond, do.

BRITANNIA.

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niGh WATISIL AT LONDON MUDGE

THIS DAr:iterht;ti,4ll.lint.,.::Aft:rsoi•o, 4b.
10-11ohoow—Slorulug, ♦b. Sem Afternoon, A. 14m.

LONDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8.

THE organization and working of Trades Unions
is to bo inquired into by a Royal Commission.
This announcement in the Qt-t:►a's Speech has
been received with very opposite feelings : by some
it is resented as a concession to the open enemies
of the working classes, a move to destroy Trades
Unions ; by others it is welcomed as if about to
give some satisfaction to the injured capitalist, by
restricting the rights of combination. We dare-
say both parties will find themselves mistaken in
the end, but in the meantime it is unfor;mnate for
the Government that opinions substantially in
agreement and equally unfavourable to its impar-
tiality should be professed by those who approach
the subject front opposite points of view. When
Mr. WALPOLE lately informed a deputation of
Trades Unionists that they would soon have
an opportunity of assuring themselves that the
Government was not indifferent to their interests,
he undoubtedly believed that the inquiry to be
conducted by the Royal Commission was a pro-
ceeding of which they would have no reason to
complain ; and he may prove to be right. It
should be remembered that the Sheffield Trades
Unionists applied a few months ago for an official
inquiry into circumstances alleged against them in
consequence of an outrage offered to a non-
unionist. The act of the Government is preju-
diced by its origin : it proceeds from a body of
public men who have felt themselves compelled
steadily to oppose the political claims of the class
that maintain trades unions, and who have suc-
ceeded from time to time in defeating those claims
by means which have not always commended
themselves to public opinion as fair and straight-
forward. The two first speeches made this ses-
sion in support of the Government in
the Mouse of Lords were marred by im-
putations against the working classes which
not even the noble ignorance of the speakers
can excuse. The personal composition of the
Royal Commission is, however, more important
than its origin, as an element of its probable uti-
lity. The working classes ought not to wish,
much less to ask, that it should be constituted in
their favour. The subject is one of national im-
portance, and the institution of the inquiry is a
tribute to the power which the artisans of the
country now exercise over its interests. What the
Trades Unionists have a right to expect in the
selection of the members of the Commission is a
strict impartiality. This is not an inquiry about
the rate of wages, or the prosperity of this or
that trade, but an investigation which, if pushed
home, must lead down to the roots of some
of the most serious social questions of
our time. It will be better not to I
touch the question at all than appoint
as Commissioners a set of nobodies, capped by
some eminent calumniator of the working classes'
on one aide, and the popular member for Lam-
beth, as a makeweight, on the other.
Tho constitutional defect of such an inquiry is,
that while it relates to the conduct of one class of
society it will be conducted by another. A con-
ference was held the other day, to ascertain why
working men did not go to places of worship in
larger numbers, and, that being the object, it was
made a conference of working men. But it would
have been very foolish to summon the same men
if the question had been why the fashionable
classes at the West-end make so little of their re-
ligious opportunities. Something like this, how-
ever, will take place when a number of persons of
the propertied classes are set to inquire into and
report upon Trades Unions. Mr. WALPOLE would
be astonished if a deputation were to wait upon him
and ask him to promise the appointment of a
Royal Commission, to be composed exclusively of
artisans, to inquire into the manner in which
capital is employed by its owners in this country.
Yet there would be no more impropriety in the
one case than in the other. At such a proposal a
shock would run through our middle classes, not
because it is in itself unreasonable, but because,
middle-class opinion has not been able to free
itself from the feelings inherited from a past state
of society, nor entered intelligently into all that
is involved in the acceptance of the system of free
labour. It understands the legitimacy of power
acquired by adding pound to pound day
after (lay for many years, but not the
equal legitimacy of the power of living pro-
ducers to fix in concert the terms on which they
will co-operate with capital. This is a misfor
tune for the country, but especially for the
middle classes, who, unable to understand that
what is going on is in its essential features a
natural social development, terrify themselves
with imaginary dangers, cling to delusions as if