The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-21 00:00:00

LONDON, FRID.IY, JUNE 21, 1867.

The committee on the Reform Bill resumed its
labours yesterday, but with no satisfactory result,
for the voting-paper clause was lost, after a long
debate. This result is much to be regretted, for
many reasons, and it is a disgrace to the Liberal
side of the House that the opposition should have
come from that quarter. Mr. BRIGHT was very
much against the proposal, which seems most in-
consistent, taking all things into consideration.
The hon. member expatiated upon his view of
the question, and seemed to think that it
would work great evil if carried out. It can-
not be said that he showed any tangible
reasons for coming to this conclusion, for he only
reiterated the worn-out and threadbare arguments,
of which all are so weary by this time, and which
come strangely from one who professes to be a dis-
ciple of progress in so eminent a degree. After lie
had exhausted his stock of objections, he full back
upon abuse, and declared that he had never seen
anything more un-English than the proposition
before the House. his case must have been bad
iedoed when he was compelled to trust to a sub-
terfuge like this. Another extraordinary announce-
ment that he made was that he would rather bear
the ills we have than fly to others that we know
not of. Of all public men we should have thought
Mr. BRIGHT to be about the last who would have
made such au assertion. He seemed rather more
disposed to insist upon change for the sake of
change than to advocate doing the same with
to-day that we did with yesterday. The speech of
the hon. member, however, bristled with extra-
vagances and astounding assertions. Take, for
instance, the notion that there " are many persons

[yes.

in every constituency who will honestly change,,
their minds between the time the election is pro-.
claimed and the time when it actually took place."
The Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech was a
very moderate one, and he put the question very'
fairly before the House. Ile showed that in the
present bill, as in that of 1859, the proposition was
not a leading one, but it was introduced
in deference to the opinion of competent
judges ; it was a tentative proposition by

" which it was believed that a purer and more
effective representation could be gained." Since
1857 the principle has been recommended by dis-
tinguished members of the Liberal side. It appears
on calm reflection that a great many advantages
arc offered by this proposal, as Mr. LABOUCHEIZE
said it would do away with the conveyance of
voters, and that of itself is a great desideratum.
Besides this, it would tend grently to do away with
the occurrence of riots at elections, which have
been so vexatious and injurious in their effect
in many instances. Mr. LABOUCHERE said some
sharp things, which were true notwithstanding.
He declared that he was a Liberal, but he thought
that a man who could not write the name of the
candidate he wished to poll for was not a fit per-
son to be entrusted with the franchise. He in-
ferred that many opposed the proposition on the
ground that the quiet day-at-home folks who
would avail themselves of it were Conserra-

Finally, be expressed surprise at the argu-
ments that had been advanced against the use of
voting papers by Liberals, who might have been
supposed to be Conservatives from the tone they had
adopted.

Lord CRANBORNE'S remarks were much to the
point. Ile argued that it was a strange thing that
the objections to anything new came from gentle-
men of extreme opinions, and people did not send
their votes through the post 500 years ago because
there was no post at all, and therefore they went to
the poll. It is to be regretted that the committee
should have divided as they did, for the introduction
of voting papers would have been productive of
many favourable results. We hope, however, that
the public will bear in mind the significant fact
that loud cheers from the Opposition benches
greeted the announcement of the numbers of the
division, and hence a proposition that was eminently
a step in advance has been lost by the prejudice
and perversity of the Liberal party. It
is much easier to find fault with the Con-
servatives for being slow than to follow
their lead when going in the direction of pro-
gress. So much for profession without performance.
It has taken the public in a score of times, but the
day is approaching, if it has not already arrived,
when the people of England will see through such
shallow dealing and repudiate such counterfeit
patriotism. If a thing is good, it is good whoever
proposes it, and no amount of argument can show
it to be otherwise.

The revelations before the Sheffield Commission
become more and more extraordinary, as the ex-
amination goes on, and the facts elicited during the
last two or three days have excited the deepest in-
terest throughout the country. After all that has
been said about the rights of labour, the great ob-
jects of trades' unions and their beneficial effects,
the plain English of the matter is that they are
associations of men who do not scruple to
rob and murder those who offend against their
arbitrary rules. Usually speaking, the infraction
of laws which lie at the foundation of all civilised
society renders a man, if he escapes justice, an
outcast from his fellows of whatever rank, and we
should not expect to see a well-known thief or
murderer welcomed in any respectable man's house,
be he either rich or poor, peer or peasant. But
Trades' Unionists are not to be judged by ordinary
laws, human or divine. They set up for them-
selves a standard of right and wrong, of justice and
injustice, to which every other sense and feeling is
sacrificed. Like the idols of the East, its demands
are unsparing and unscrupulous, and no Hindoo
devotee can more unhesitatingly surrender every
better feeling at the shrine of Moloch or Jugger-
naut than a plain English mechanic, supposed to be
gifted with the ordinary amount of common sense
and right feeling, to the demands of his Union and
the fancied requirements of his trade. There is
nothing more dangerous and more subversive of the
natural sense of right and wrong than the deification
of a system or an order, and of this we have a most
striking instance at Sheffield. No cruelty or in-
justice, no absolute wickedness seems to be thought
much of, provided the so-called interests of the
trade are kept up. Here we have men coolly dis-
cussing " what is to be done" with a man who
breaks through some trade regulation, whether
£2O would be too much for "doing it ;" and what
is more, keeping up this atrocious plot for five or
six weeks, and dogging their victim about until a
convenient opportunity for murder arrives. We are
told, indeed, that CROOKES and HA sLAm did not
intend to kill LINLEY, but only to " make him so
as he could not work any more ;" but when men
are in the habit of using life-preservers, air-guns,
and explosions of gunpowder against their
associates, we cannot give them much credit for
consideration for human life. IVe talk a great deal
about the lawlessness of Mexico, but life and
property do not seem to be much more secure in
one of the first manufacturing towns in England.
The manner in which ordinary humanity is
deadened by these trade laws is not a
little singular. There seems to be no thought for
the widow and orphans of the murdered man ; no
hesitation on account of the little children sleeping
in the house when a charge of gunpowder is put in
the cellar ; no pity for a fellow-workman tossing
for eleven weeks on a sick bed in the infirmary, and
never able to straighten his right arm after. This
is all in the ordinary way of business; and indeed the
death or disabling of workmen is all the better for
" the trade," as keeping up the price of labour. All
the lesser evils of the system sink into the shade in
presence of the atrocious crimes to which we have
seen it tends, but it is impossible not to be struck
with the viciousness of the whole system. Men are
' actually kept idle on the books for years, their
fellow-workmen thinking it worth while to pay
them for doing nothing to keep them out of the
trade. "On an average," says the secretary, "we
have had from 40 to 50 men on the box.
We have perhaps half a dozen men on the
box who bore not worked for years, the
other members considering it worth while to
keep their labour cut of the market. No man Li
allowed to apply for work, the object being to
k2ep the labour out of the market."
We are not surprised to find the Defence Com-
mittee are anxious to separate themselves front
the now notorious BROADHEAD and the saw-
grinders, but though it would be most unfair to
assume that all unions and their secretaries
would countenance such acts, the whole sys-
tem is unmistakeably bad, and we see plainly
what it leads to when carried to the extreme. We
must not forget that BROADHEAD has been secretary
to the saw-grinders for more than 20 years ; that
the attack on PARKER was committed more than
10 years ago, the " waylaying" of the old man six
years ago, and so on. It is no new thing sprung
luP in A day, but an organised system, and