The Bee-Hive. — 1873-02-22 (London, England)

OOO. And to all this, the only answer is, that being a workman, it is no use to sue him. Yet contracts are broken a hundred times a day by men whom it is no use to sue. And a Bill to make all breaches of contract alike punishable with imprisonment would be received with a storm of ridicule. What would it be? It would be as much as to abolish civil courts altogether, to hold no civil justice, to administer no law but criminal law. Civil courts sit for the most part to determine breaches of contract or civil injury. If every defendant against whom civil injury was alleged was turned into the prisoner in the dock, and the loss of every action meant three months' imprisonment, England would indeed become a land of equal laws for all classes, but it would become a very unpleasant land for any class. Yet one class now in respect of agreements about their own labour are in this position, a position which other classes would regard as monstrous injustice.  Let us assume simply an Act which made breach of civil contract punishable as crime, where the party was unable to pay damages. What would be the result? Every debtor is under contract to pay his debts. An insolvent debtor is, therefore, in the position assumed. Re has broken a civil contract and cannot pay even damages. The consequence would, be that every insolvent would be assumed to be a criminal; -Would be tried summarily with thieves and murderers; and would be sentenced to longer or shorter terms of imprisonment. That is to say, the whole of the law of bankruptcy would become merged in the general criminal law. Merchants and shopkeepers would appear in crowds at the Old Bailey. And without any fraud, without any criminal conduct, other than neglecting a civil contract to pay money, bankrupts and insolvents would repent at leisure under three months of gaol.  The argument that no workman can pay money, and therefore must go to prison, is not only outrageously unjust, but utterly anomalous. The baker and grocer who supplies the workman with goods on his pontraot to pay has no such remedy. A baker who is .£2 out of pocket cannot carry a workman before a magistrate, and give the man three months of gaol. Why should the employer who loses .£2 by the man's absence from work be able to do so? If a workman agrees with me to let me his lodging, or his cottage, and then transfers it to another, I must go for my remedy to a civil court. I cannot take him summarily before a magistrate and punish him with imprisonment. On what grounds, then, are we to retain the antiquated injustice under which the agreement of a workman to labour is protected by criminal powers? The plea that the employer has no protection otherwise is all nonsense. The baker and the grocer are not protected— why is the employer? If he is afraid of his men leaving work in the middle of the week he can protect himself—as is often done in large works—by retaining a portion of the wages in hand as a material guarantee. This plan is adopted in many oases, and is a more than adequate protection. The power, over and above this, of using the police force of the nation —of enforcing a trivial contract by prison—is a miserable remnant of class oppression. It is a right which employers of labour retain, but which no other relation of life requires or demands; it is a power which, as against themselves, the middle classes would stubbornly resist to a man. It has now culminated in the vindictive tyranuy with which the gas stokers' " revolt " was suppressed, and it has reached a pitch of injustice at which it behoves the self-respect of the whole working community to determine that it must end.