The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-18 00:00:00

VEMENT.

THE NIH.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

you kindly insert the enclosed in your
next paper ?
Yours respectfully, on behalf of the United
Trades, GEORGE POTTER, Sec.
Paviours' Arms, Johnson-street,
Westminster, Aug,. 17.

TO THE BUILDING TRADES OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM.

"Fellow Workmen,—The public press and our
communications with your different societies have
made you acquainted with the nature of our de-
mand for a reduction of the working day to nine
hours, agitated. by us in a calm, peaceful, and legal
manner during 20 months. By the same means
you have also been informed that having failed to
induce our employers to grant us an interview or
give the slightest consideration to our appeal, and
having exhausted every moral probability of gain-
ing our desires, we had no other alternative left
than tho workman's last resource. Accordingly,
the men in the Messrs. Trollope's employ deter;
mined to cease-working until the nine hours should '
be conceded them as a day's work. You are aware
that the employers of London immediately deter-
mined on closing the whole of their estaUlkhnients
and casting their men in idleness on the streets, '
with a determination of keeping them there in
idleness and misery unless they consent to give up
the benefits of their benevolent societies, and de-
dare themselves slaves by agreeing to the follow-
ing declaration
'No. .

9.. Trollopo.and—Sois. • •
" I declare. lam not now, nor will I during the conti-
nuance of my engagement with you become, a member of or
support any society which, directly or indirectly, interferes
with the arrangements of this or any other establishment,
or the hours or terms of labour, and that I recognise the
right of employees and employed individually to make any
trade engagements on which they may choose to agree.
" Dated of 18 .
"' Londcn, August, 1859.'
" The stump counter of this is left in the book,
with the name of the applicant attached. To make
such an agreement would be to give up our free-
dom, and to rob us of those benefits which our thrift
has provided for sickness and old ago. This we are
determined not to do, and we call upon you to as-
sist us in opposing the infliction of this slavery
which the employers arc seeking to impose on us.
" The employers are sending their agents among
you for the purpose of inducing you to come to Lon-
don to supply our places. Recollect that it is they
who have forced us out of work, who have endea-
voured, by robbing us of the means of living, to
rob us through our necessities of our liberty as men.
Will you play the parts of Coins and Esaus ? Can
you not see that if you enable them by the assist-
ance of your labour to crush us you will be rivet-
ting their fetters more closely on 'ourselves ?
" Our cause is your cause; our cause is the cause
of truth—our request is founded on justice.
" Rally round us, then, and by resisting the temp-
tatiors of our employers' agents enable us to gain
this boon both for ourselves and you.
" Signed on behalf of the United Building Trades.
" It. W. GRAY, Mason.
" HY. NOBLE, Bricklayer.
"W. M'NAMARA, Plasterer.
" THOS. G. FACEY, Painter.
" PETER CRESHAM, Labourer.
" GEORGE POTTER, Secretary."

(From the Daily News.)
The Reply put forth by the United Building
Trades Conference to the Address of the Master
Builders must have been read with deep and melan-
choly interest by a large number of persons. It is
a document which supplies ample material for com-
ment; but one poin t of this strange manifesto stands
out so conspicuously as to throw all the rest into
the shade. We cannot tell whether the authors
are aware of this. We know not whether they
are sensible that they have committed their cause
to two or three sentences of this declaration, so that
by the accuracy of these few lines of their reply it
must stand or fall. If they can be made to see
what a mistake they have fallen into they must do
one of two things—admit their error and go to
work again, or make themselves subject to the re-
proach of continuing the Strike in defiance of rea-
son and justice, and therefore under the imputation
of bad feelings. We own ourselves fairly puzzled
as to whether the leaders of such a multittideits
are now out on strike can bo so utterly ignorant of
what it is most important for them to know, as
would appear by the concluding paragraph of the
Reply to the Masters, or whether they are trying
to practise on the ignorance of their followers. It
is not necessary for us to determine this point. But
it is necessary for us, as for all sincere friends of
the working classes, to expose the ignorance, real
or pretended, which brings such fearful conse-
quences after it.
The masters believed they were saying something
" trite" when they said, " As for the Nine Hours
Movement, it is a mere device for compelling other
trades to toil more that the builders may labour
less—for raising the rent of the poor man's cottage
and reducing his wages, by enabling the bricklayer
to abstract from the common labour-fund more than
his share." The authors of the Reply have disin-
genuously stopped at the word " wages," omitting
the rest of the sentence, and going on to answer the
first part in a different sense from that which we
here see that it bears. The meaning is plain enough.
If the men who build the cottage were to work
only nine hours in ten, of course a tenth man, or a
tenth day, must be added to every nine to do the
former amount of work. This is the express pur-
pose of the strike—or one of the several express
purposes avowed by Mr. G. Potter. The tenth
man's or day's wages are a new cost added to the
expense of building a house ; the occupant must
pay a higher rent in consequence ; and he must
toil the harder to earn the means of paying
ess
would the part-idle builders be the oppr.orshus
of
it. T
other labourers, if they could carry their point ;
and thus do they make it the duty of every just
person in society to oppose their encroachment for
the sake of other classes of working men.
And how do the spokesmen of the strike answer
this plain statement of the masters ? They say
(stopping short at the words quoted) : " Wherever
industry
have hours of labour in one great branch of
have been reduced, a corresponding reduction has
followed in others ; and a rise in the wages ,of the
building trade will as surely be followed by in-
creased value and increased wages in other trades
as a rise in the price of bread leads to a correspond-
ing increase in the price of t Le other necessaries of
life. Thus, the common value of all things would
become increased, and the wealth of the nation
greater." Such is the paragraph which professes
to deal with " fallacy" on the part of the masters,
but which is itself so charged with confusion and
mistake as to require to be set up as a warning to
all who are committing their fortunes to this des-
perate strike.
In the first place, the reduction of the hours of
labour, in factories and elsewhere, is rendered prac-
ticable only by the same amount of work being done
in the shorter time, or by the wages being reduced
in proportion to the shortening of the time. In fac-
tories, where the people used to work far too long,
they became languid and exhausted ; and when
offered an earlier dismissal they found they could
do as much work in eleven hours as in twelve ;
and they did it. The other argument in favour of
the shorter hours was, that smaller wages went
further, from the strength, and spirit, and time of
the worker being greater at the close of the day.
It was on these grounds that shorter hours were
found to be practicable and good, and that the good
spread from one employment to another. But it
never was, and never can be, possible for one trade
after another to employ workmen for a shorter
time at the same wages, and without increased
briskness to make up for the time remitted. If we
could for a moment suppose such an arrangement
made, we should see how the plan would lead to
the ruin of the country, and of every trade in it.
We have seen how the rent of the workman's
cottage would be raised—and the cost of the noble-
man's mansion would be increased in proportion--
by the reduction of the hours of labour, or (what
the Reply very properly treats as the same thing)
the raising of the builders wages. If the process
spread through other employments, as the Reply
suggests, everything produced by them would be-
come dearer. There Mr. Potter and his comrades
of the world. But, unlike
of this added costliness as
noagtghroeereoXwet°ihtPliline:th,lelaesya restsp
gain,eak as wealth ! Let any poor
the agricultural labourer rather have 12s. a
man say what he thinks on this question. week
when wheat is 80s. a quarter, and other provisions
are dear in proportion, or 10s. with wheat at 40s: ?
In the one case, his entire earnings must go in
food for his family, who are otherwise destitute ;
whereas in the other case he can feed his children
better, and yet have money over for clothes, rent,
and fuel. Ask the bricklayer whether he had
rather work ten hours a-day for 30s. a-week, and
pay as usual for everything he buys and uses, or
have one-tenth more pay or less work, and pay
higher to the same amount all round for his rent,
his clothes, his fuel, his food, his furniture, and

whatevever he needs. In the former case he may
live comfortably ; in the latter, he must go to ruin.
Yet Mr. Potter and his comrades actually speak of
this increased dearness as a good thing—an an in-
crease of what they call "value"—as an increase of
wealth in the country ! It is when the wealth of
the country is small that people have to pay high ;
not when it is great. When labour is dear, so
that the farmers of a country cannot produce all
the corn and beef that they, would if labour were
cheap, there is less wealth of bread and beef in the
country ; the price is higher' and mare people must
go without. People have been in the habit of
thinking that the wealth lay in the other direc-
tion ; that the moderate cost of labour, and the
plentiful production of food— the existence of a
great wealth of food in the country—was a good
thing for everybody, and especially for the
labourer.

We suspect Mr. Potter and his comrades have
been misled by the word " value "—strange as it
seems that they. should be in so plain a case.
" Value" is one thing when it means convenience,
and another when it means the money price of a
thing. Air and water are valuable to everybody;
but they bear no price, and do not, as the Reply
says, make "the wealth of the nation greater." By
value, then, they mean the money-price of things ;
but how can the wealth of the nation be increased
by dearness of price, any more than the welfare of
individuals? The high prices are an effect of
scarcity, not of wealth—a consequence of poverty;
and we need not explain that they are also a cause
of Poverty to purchasers. If other trades followed
the course of the builders' in making their labour
dearer, builders and all would presently be sinking
into poverty, and " the nation" with them. So
much for the increase of "value." We trust the
men on strike will not be misled by such' gross
error.

It appears, however, that there is yet a further
delusion in the minds, or snare in the statement of

the authors of the Reply. They seem to suppose
that there is some unlimited source of wages in the
country from which any quantity can be got, as
men could get water from the sea. Let their fol-
lowers consider for a moment, and they will see
that this is not true, and never can be true. The
masters have a certain amount of capital. A large
proportion of it is invested in shops, machinery,
and the material of their works • and the rest is em-
ployed in paying for labour. If the employer can
buy with it sufficient labour to build what will
yield him a profit, besides replacing all expenses,
he can live on that profit, and go o-i to new con-
tracts ; but if the labour is dear, so as to yield him
no profit to live upon,he cannot go on _ building
more. So far is the masters capital from being a
fund that will answer any calls upon it ! The
Reply says that the • capitalist who can employ
1,000 men is as powerful as those 1,000 men, who
must therefore combine against him. Here is the
same misuse of the word " power." ;The capi-
talist has the power of paying 1,000 men if
they chooso to work for him ; that is all. If they
do not choose it he will probably obtain others,
with reluctance and at great inconvenience, from
some other neighbourhood. The end of such
" power," " wealth," and " value" is, that capital is
wanted, employment lessened, commodities are
made dearer, and wages permanently reduced by
the introduction of new competitors into the labour
market. Such is the dreary prospect of the build-
ing trades, while the leaders of the strike are talk-
in

:4. about the dearness of houses, clothes, and food,
being a way to wealth instead of poverty. Their
followers had better:see whether this is what they
mean their spokesmen to say on their behalf.

ASSIZE INTELLIGENCE.

WESTERN CIRCUIT.—BRISTOL, August 17.
(Before Mr. Baron Bramwell.)
ARREST OF A WITNESS.
Mr. Collier made au application on behalf of W.
Neck Pecking, who was a witness in one of the
special jury eases, but who had been arrested on a
warrant whilst waiting upon his subpwna to give
evidence under a warrant.
His lordship inquired what the arrest was for,
and it appeared from the statement of the officer
and its production that the warrant was for non-
payment of certain Queen's taxes, and directed the
Tarty to be detained in custody till paid.
His lordship said he felt some difficulty in order-
ing the release, the Crown having no power to ap-
pear, and he proposed that the matter should Ero
before a judge at chambers, where the Crown might
appear.
Mr. Collier submitted that that course would be
very inconvenient, as the witness would probably
be required to-morrow; and ultimately the learned
judge ordered the discharge.
GALLOIS V. CORNIER: SINGULAR CASE.
Mr. Cole appeared for the plaintiff, who said she
was a young Frenchwoman, named Adele Gallois.
The declaration alleged that the defendant had
seduced and debauched the plaintiff, and induced
her to cohabit with him, and that afterwards it was
agreed that they should separate, that she should
live a chaste life, and that in consideration thereof
he should allow her £5 per week. The breach was
that he had not paid the money promised. The
defendant pleaded, first, that he did not promise as
declared ; and secondly, that after the promise and
before the payment had become due the plaintiff
violated her promise of chastity. Mdlle. Gallois,
the plaintiff, had lived in London, and up to the
end of last year she earned her bread in an honest
and creditable manner. About that time she be-
same acquainted with Mr. Cornier, the defendant,
who was the secretary to a company for making
gas out of water, or some scheme of that kind.
Whether the defendant would ever illuminate the
world with his gas he (Mr. Cole) could not say, but
he hoped that he would be made to keep his promise
with the young lady. He debauched Mdlle. Gallois
as alleged, and induced her to live with him
as his mistress; but he was an old man and she
was a young woman, and there was an old saying,
" May and December can never agree." That say-
ing proved true as regarded the plaintiff and de-
fendant, and after they had been living together
some time Mr. Cornier wrote Mdlle. Gallois a letter
in French, of which the following is a translation :
" My dear Adele,—Our ideas on life in common
are not at all the same ; the difference in our age is
the cause of it; you are young, and I am old; you
have done everything in your power, and I acknow-
ledge it, to conform your ideas to mine ; you have
now, I may say, perfectly succeeded, but this was
not without great sacrifice on your side, which often
made you wretched, and when, in consequence of
old recollections, you tell ma your regrets of the
past, I in my turn become miserable—miserable
indeed. What follows from all this ?—that we
neither of us are happy. Well, my dear friend, in
this position of affairs I make an appeal to your
common sense—to your reason especially. If you
don't feel yourself strong enough to continue the
calm and quiet life, which would be happiness for
me, which is besides necessary to your health, so
much shaken already, tell it me openly, and very
openly, because I should then see nothing better
for us both than to live each of us on our side, ac-
cording our tastes. Not that it is my intention by
this proposal to give you np to yourself ; I wish to
remain your friend, and a good friend. It is my
intention, so far as you need it, to yive you all
that is reasonably necessary. It is my wish, as
soon as possible after my affairs are wound up, and
when I shall have been able to realise, to place you
in an independent position—the position you long
for above all. Thus you see, my dear Adele, my
wish is to make you happy; as for myself, I willingly
sacrifice myself, as I have now no happiness to hope
for but in my family, and there I shall go as soon
as possible. I kiss you with all my heart.—Your
sincere friend, ' CORNIER."
In his letter the old gentleman talked about re-
turning to the bosom of his family, but so far as
the young lady could ascertain, he had taken to
his bosom another young woman. He had never
paid Miss Gallois any of the promised money, and
she having pledged her property to support herself
on credit, was at length driven to bring the present
action. •
Mdlle. Adele Gallois was examined through an
interpreter. She deposed that she first became ac-
quainted with the defendant at the end of Dec.,
1858. He persuaded her to go and live with him,
which she did, and remained with him till May,
when they separated after " a scene," in which ho
struck her. He came to the house afterwards, but
not to visit her, and kept keys of the rooms. She
asked him for money to go to Paris, and hg said lie
would allow her £5 a week and the house she was
in, whether in London or Paris. There was no
agreement come to about their living. All sho
wanted was not to see him again and get her money.
Mr. Baron Bramwell—l believe you are speak-
ing very truthfully.
The witness, in reply
.to other questions, said she
had had no improper intimacy with Mr. Cornier
since.
Mr. Cole—That is the case.
Mr.:Baron Bramwell said then he must direct
the jury to give a verdict for the defendant. The

statement in the declaration was. that the parties
agreed to live apart, which was, in point of law,
no consideration at all. It was merely an agree-
ment that they should not do an immoral act. An
agreement not to cohabit was merely an agreement
not to do an immoral act. According to the plain-
tiff's case, if a man promised another that if he did
not do an illegal act he would give him £5 a week,
he would be bound by the promise. Nonsense !
But the case had not been proved in point of fact.
The thing was absurd. £5 a week was £260 a year,
and the unhappy Frenchman was to be liable for
that for life. Sluff!

_ .
Mr. Cole asked whether his lordship would give
him leave to move, and called attention to a dictum
of Mr. Justice Pattison ; but his lordship said he
certainly should not do so. His ruling was on the
ground that the case had not been proved.

THE TRAGICAL OCCURRENCE AT
BALL'S POND.

Yesterday afternoon the adjourned investigation
as to the death of Miss Elizabeth •Freshfield, said
to be the daughter of the Mayor of Harwich, was
resumed before Mr. Wakley, at the Mildmay
Tavern, Ball's-pond-road.
It will be remembered that the deceased lady
occupied apartments with Mr. Clement John Car-
nell, whose wife she passed for, at Mr. Webster's,
at No. 65, Mildmay-terrace, and that, on the morn-
ing of Sunday week last, she died, in the presence
of two medical gentlemen who had been called in,
as was afterwards discovered, from the effects pf
frightful lacerations, produced, it was believed, b
instruments used by Mr. Carnell, in an attempt to
procure abortion. On the fact of her death being
communicated to her supposed husband, the un-
fortunate man rushed out into the garden, and after
groaning and running about in a frantic manner,
cut his throat with a razor, and fell dead in the
presence of the landlord, who endeavoured to pre-,
vent him from Committing the dreadful act. The
inquest was opened upon the bodies of both the de-
ceased persons, and in the case of the male con-
cluded in a verdict being returned, to the effect
that he had committed self-destruction in a moment
of frenzy, caused by the death of the other de-
ceased, in whose ease the inquiry was adjourned,
for the purpose, if possible, of discovering the in-
struments which had been the cause of her death.
On the re-assembling of the jury,
Sergeant Crisp, 3 N, said he had searched every
part of the premises, and, assisted by a bricklayer,
had also thoroughly searched the drains leading
thereto, but no surgical instruments had been

found. He had nothing further to communicate.
Mr. Freshfield, brother to the deceased lady, in
reply to the Coroner, said he had no additional tes-
timony to offer.
Mr. Walley said it would be remembered that
small box containing letters had been placed in his
hands at their last sitting. There were only three
in any way herring upon the present case, from
which he proposed to read extracts. They were
each addressed to Miss Freshfield, and Mr. Fresh-
field having identified the handwriting as that of
the deceased, Mr. Clement John Carnell, the
Coroner read them. They were as follows :
" June 2,1859.-1 was much pleased to hear that
you were happy within yourself, and I hope Ton
will continue to be so, as your continual worrying
yourself tends to prevent your object and your re-
covery. If you find it necessary take some more
of the same medicine."

" June 6, 1859.—Darling,—If you find the medi-
cine makes you sick take less of it, and not on an
empty stomach, as it is then more likely to make
you sick."

On the third letter there was no date, but it
contained the following :
" I hope, dearest, the note arrived all safely en-
closing the medicine. Tell me in the next how
your last medicine agreed."
The Coroner observed that these letters showed
that the deceased lady had been taking medicine
under the guidance of the male deceased. The ques-
tion, however, to be decided was, whether the in-
juries that caused the death of the unfortunate lady
were inflicted by herself or by the male deceased.
If by the latter he had been guilty of the crime of
wilful murder. lie could not in this instance pcint
to a single part of the evidence that did not show
Mr. Camel' to be perfectly rational up to the time
of Miss Freshfield's death. There was no possible
doubt but that shedied of hemorrhage produced by
an attempt to procure abortion, and that a wound
was thus made two inches in length and of a most
frightful character. He feared the jury could come

to but one conclusion, and that was that Mr. Carnell
had committed this shocking act. That being the
case, although the deceased lady was a consenting
party, it did not alter the fact in law, that the man
alone was liable for the offence, and if Clement
John Carnell in this attempted to procure abortion
he was guilty of the crime of wilful murder.
The jury deliberated for about three-quarters of
an hour, and ultimately returned a verdict, " That
Elizabeth Freshfield was wilfully murdered by
Clement John Carnell."