The Sun.
London, England, 1866-07-25 00:00:00

The Recorder of Liverpool on Strit es.

In h;s charge to the grand jury on Monday, at
the opening of the borough sessions, the Recorder
of Liverpool said :—Tbere was one case to which
he wanted to draw their attention, not so much be-
cause of any difficulty which it might occasion
them, but because of its nature, and because it xv as
desirable that something should be said about it.
He saw there were two or three people who would
be charged before them with having committed
violence on certain other persons in consequence of
differences arising out of one of those strikes which
unfortunately so often arose in all great centres of
pop ul ation and labour. Now, a strike was very of-
ten an unfortunate thing in itself, even though the
persons who engaged in it might have had, in the
first instance, some grounds for the dissatisfaction
which they evinced at the rate of wages which
they were receiving ; but a strike by itself was not
an unlawful thing—that was to say, in itself, pro-
secuted by purely legal means. Labourers and ar-
t;ficers had as much right to combine and consult
for the purpose of regulating the wages which they
would receive, as their employers had to combine or
consult for the purpose of settling what wages they
would pay, or as merchants or tradesmen had a
right if they thought proper—and he supposed cases
sometimes arose when they thought it desirable to
do so—to combine for the purpose of settling the
price at which they would sell or buy any article of
produce.. But in according to the working m'n
that right which undoubtedly he had, there was the
greatest possible necessity, both for his own sake,
or at least for the sake of his own class, and for
the sake of the general public, to guard against any
excess of it being allowed. It was possible to
overrate the danger of such au event, consider-
ing that those strikes were generally the action of
very large bodies of men, Fable to excitement, and
liable to be led away by dangerous or crafty persons to
tumultuous and dangerous conduct. It was there-

fore of the greatest possible importance that they
themselves should b 3 taught what was the line be-
yond which they must not go, and how far they
might go in the prosecution of their desires and their
designs, for such prosecution seemed allowed to
them without reference to its wisdom, because with
that they (the court and jury) had nothing to do.
The courts of justice and the public had nothing to
do with that,:excepang so far as they might take in-
terest in it without interfering with the progress of
a strike, though they should be of opinion that the
men were wrong in the view which they took. The
only thing with which they bad to charge theni,?elves
was to prevent them becoming illegal, but beyond
that they had no right to interfere with their ob-
jects and opinions. No set of working men, however
strong an opinion they might have formed as to the
rate of wages for which they and their fellows ought
to be obliged, or ought to consent to work, had a
right to use the slightest degree of violence or the
slightest threat towards any other working man or
any other set of working men who might differ from
them. Because it was perfectly obvious that the very
liberty which they claimed for themselves, to act
upon their own opinions, made it equally their duty
to allow other people to act upon their opinions,
and made it the grossest of all possible tyranny—a
greater tyranny than could possibly have been in-
flicted upon them by their employers—to interfere
with another set of men who did not entertain their
opinions. Because 20 or 2,000 men might have con-
vinced themselves that a certain rate of wages was
the lowest for which they ought to work in the in-
terests of themselves and their families, and if it
should so happen that another set of men, equally
well able to judge for themselves, were of a different'
opinion, nothing could be more dangerous in the
end to the principles and cause of the working man
himself than to allow one or other set to have a
right of annoyance over one another, or using
threats to prevent them from acting on their own
opinions. Therefore, on the one hand, nobody
must go away with the opinion that a combined
action on the part of the working man was unlaw-
ful for the pursuit of his object, so long as he kept
within the law ; and on the other hand it was most
important that he should be taught that the moment
he stepped out of the law, the moment he attempted
to exercise any undue tyranny over those that dif-
fered from him, that moment he would find that the
hand of the law was too strong for him ; and when
he did anything of that sort, that moment he would
find, not for the sake of his employers, but to pro-
tect those of his own class who differed from him,
that in outraging the law he had consigned himself
to severe and painful punishment.