on the principle of rendering the employer liable to a demand for compensation on account of accidents occurring to his workmen. The object of the Employers Liability Act1 was to decrease the risks of injury to the workman by rendering his employer liable for compensation even in certain cases where he was able to urge the defence that the accident was due to the negligence of a fellow-workman, not of the employer. This line of argument had been admitted as constituting a good defence in 1837, and subsequent decisions had so developed the plea of "common employment" that it was almost impossible for a workman to secure damages for injuries occurring while at work, for he could not recover compensation unless he proved the personal complicity of the employer in negligence, as in using machinery he knew to be defective, and even then it was incumbent on the workman to prove that he had not tacitly consented to working on these conditions. The English Law had not overridden the Scotch practice on this subject till 1867, so that this Bill only proposed to secure for workmen rights which they had possessed till comparatively recent times. Mr. A. J. Balfour contended that the risks of any workman's employment were already taken into account in the rates of wages he received, and that the result of the Bill would be to compensate him twice over for the same risk: he would therefore apparently have been quite willing that an injured man should proceed against a negligent fellow-workman if he thought it worth his while, but objected to the existing right of the public and proposed right of the workman to make an employer "pay for the infliction of damages in which he neither directly nor indirectly had any hand.” 2 23 Hansard, ccliii. 1406. 1 43 and 44 Vict. c. 42. On the other hand Mr. MacDonald would have abolished the plea of common employment, and rendered the employer responsible for compensation on account of any accident due to the negligence of his workmen. The Government Bill was an attempt to steer a middle course : it distinguished workmen who possessed a delegated authority from others, and made the employer responsible for damages in the case of accidents occurring from the negligence of superintendents: in works where 4000 men were employed, employers would be responsible for compensation for accidents occurring from the negligence of about 50 of these men and no more.1 The chief objections urged against the Bill were that it would press very heavily on certain trades, especially on the mining interest: but that interest had survived the Mines Regulation Act of 1873 and Parliament was disposed to believe in its continued vitality. Nor so long as representatives of the mining interest asserted the willingness of the employers to contribute largely to funds which should insure against all sorts of accident, was it forcible to plead their inability to make compensation for a few.2 Others argued that it was a dangerous measure, as it would raise expectations it did not satisfy that the workman would expect it to apply to all kinds of accident and not to a limited number only, and that it would embitter existing relations with employers and destroy the mutual contributions for insurance against accident. These arguments rested on expectations as to the probable bearing of the Bill on the feelings of different persons, (p. 132) and were hardly weighty reasons. The artisans were willing to take the risk of reaping less from bene 1 Mr. Chamberlain, 3 Hansard, ccliii. 1768. 2 Ibid. ccliii. 1780. volence but they wished to have something else than benevolence to rely on. The men "desired that their position should be strictly defined, and that they should have by law and right, that for which they were obliged to appeal to private benevolence and public sympathy.” 1 Others objected to the Bill because they would have preferred a compulsory system of insurance, but Mr. Broadhurst clearly showed that this was impracticable, so long as workmen changed their employment from time to time, while the principle of the Truck Acts held against such stoppages out of wages.2 Sir Henry James concurred in the impossibility of rendering insurance compulsory before a serious scheme of governmental insistence on saving was brought forward, it would have been absurd to rely on such a project as a solution of a pressing difficulty. None of the objections taken against the Bill was of sufficient weight to form a serious obstacle to its passing, while the impossibility of remaining in statu quo was generally recognised. The Government measure offered a fair solution of the difficulty: it did not secure any immunity from terrible loss by accident, but it gave a workman a legal right to compensation when the responsible servants of an employer had been guilty of negligence through which a workman was injured. The risk of heavy payments was so far limited at first as not to present to employers any very great danger of heavy expenditure: and by the institution of Employers Liability Insurance Companies that risk is much lightened. The principle of insurance has come into play, but indirectly the workman has a claim against the employer for negligent management, and the employer 1 Mr. Inderwick, 3 Hansard, ccliii. 1402. 23 Hansard, cclii. 1118. can save himself from sudden and serious calls by means of insurance. This seems to be a very satisfactory solution; the law enters in to insist on compensation in cases of negligent management: other cases of accident may be as injurious to the workmen, but so long as they are not brought about by negligence, it is hardly the business of the State to attempt to grant immunity from them. Individuals may do so if they can afford the luxury of living free from the fear of disabling accident. But it is the part of the State to put pressure on men to exercise care, not to remedy physical evils (p. 140), and this is on the whole the line which has been taken in the Act of 1880. 74. Among measures which were intended to secure the workman's property, we might perhaps include all measures, like the Truck Acts which were meant to insure him the payment of his wages in full; and two instances of measures of this sort fall within our period. The Act to provide for the payment of wages without stoppages in the Hosiery manufacture1 was an attempt to redress an evil of very long standing: some of the earliest oppressions of the artisan class that are recorded during the eighteenth century took place in connexion with these trades. By this measure it was enacted that all wages should be paid in full, as the employer could sue for any debt due to him on account of frame rent. All contracts to stop wages for frame-rents were rendered illegal and the terms "employer" and "artificer" were specially defined so as to prevent manufacturers from making the forbidden contracts through their foremen or other servants. No debate took place on the Bill in any of its stages: it was backed by Messrs. Pell, Heygate, Clowes, and MacDonald; 1 37 and 38 Vict. c. 48. and is chiefly of interest to us as a case where interference to prevent oppressive contracts between the employers and employed was allowed to take place without a single voice being raised on behalf of freedom of contract: it may perhaps serve as a precedent whenever a serious effort shall be made to draft a measure which may check the misdeeds of the sweaters who are to blame for so much of the misery of which we hear from the East End of London. 75. The Merchant Seamen (Payment of Wages) Act1 of 1880 was a somewhat similar measure, as it prohibited a contract which seamen had been in the habit of making with "crimps" by giving a note for which they received an advance in money-nominally for clothes and outfit— but which was too often mis-spent. One Commission after another had reported against advance notes, both because of the debauchery they engendered and because they stimulated the seamen to desert as a means of revenging themselves on the "crimps." But when the proposal to abolish the system came forward, Mr. Norwood 2 appeared to deny that it was a bad one, while Mr. Bentinck3 contended it was a necessary evil. It was also urged that the only alternative to allowing these advances was to sanction some system of truck by which the captain would supply his men with their outfits, as the sailors would not have and could not procure the means to buy them. The existence of grave practical evils arising out of contracts of this sort may however be held to have been established beyond a doubt, and Parliament felt that it was wisest to render them illegal; but the result of the enactment has been disappointing. 1 43 and 44 Vict. c. 16. 3 Ibid. cclii. 735. |