Lecture VII. Such was the language used by men, each of whom was a Christian and a gentleman, each of whom was a staunch friend of the people, and each of whom was incapable of conscious slander or malignity; it was used, be it noted, not in the heat of conflict, but after the fight for the Ten Hours Bill had been won and lost. All this invective was unjust. Bright was not a Legree; Peel was not a Bounderby, nor Gladstone a Gradgrind; Lord Shaftesbury was no political Pecksniff. The leading opponents, no less than the leading supporters of the factory movement, were men of high public spirit and undoubted humanity. What is the explanation of their antagonism? Lord Shaftesbury's list of opponents supplies the answer. They were all of them individualists, whilst the Tory philanthropists were, though they knew it not, the leaders of a reaction; the factory movement was the battle-field of collectivism against individualism, and on that field Benthamite liberalism suffered its earliest and severest defeat. The bitterness of the conflict was probably increased by the consciousness of both of the parties to it that their own case had in it an element of weakness. Experience has proved that neither party was entirely in the right. The Ten Hours Act has not ruined British industry, and has put an end to much suffering. So far the policy of Lord Shaftesbury has been justified, and the resistance of the manufacturers has been condemned experience. But the Ten Hours Act has tended towards socialism, and contains within it the germs of an unlimited revolution, of which no man can as yet weigh with confidence the benefits against the VII. evils; and this revolution was one which Lord Lecture Shaftesbury did not intend to favour, and to the possibility whereof he was absolutely blind. Bright and his associates were far more keen sighted than the Tory philanthropists. The factory movement introduced socialistic enactments into the law of England and gave prestige and authority to the ideas of collectivism. The existing labour code,' which consolidates a whole line of Factory Acts, is the most notable achievement of English socialism. The assertion, therefore, that the factory movement of which these Acts were the outcome, fostered the growth of socialism and gave authority to the ideas of collectivism, appears at first sight to involve the absurdity of putting the cart before the horse, and of treating legislation, which resulted from a particular state of opinion, as the cause of the state of opinion whence it sprung. to a student who has grasped the true relation between law and opinion, this apparent absurdity becomes an obvious truism. To him the history of the factory movement is of itself sufficient proof that laws may be the creators of legislative opinion. 3 But The effect, indeed, of the factory legislation embodied in the Ten Hours Act and the enactments which led up to it, may appear at first sight to be 1 Embodied in the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901. 2 See p. 41, ante. 3 The Act must be taken together with the enactments leading up to it. There appears to be some little confusion in the use of the term the Ten Hours Act. The statute most properly known by that name is 10 & 11 Vict. c. 29, passed in 1847 and coming into full force in 1848. But this statute was liable to evasion, and was rendered effective by an Act (13 & 14 Vict. c. 54) which received the Royal assent on July 26, 1850. This later Act seems to be sometimes Lecture nothing more than the protection from overwork VII. of children, young persons, and women' employed It in a limited number of manufactories. But this legislation had in reality far wider results. recognised the principle that the regulation of public labour is the concern of the State and laid the basis for a whole system of governmental inspection and control. It fixed the hours of labour in the factories to which it applied for every woman, whatever her age, and conferred upon her a protection, as well as imposed upon her a disability which is absolutely unknown to the common law of England, and is directly opposed to the fundamental assumptions of individualism. This factory legislation fixed, though not in so many words nor in all cases immediately, the normal day of work for all persons of whatever age or sex employed in the factories to which it extended. It applied, indeed, in the first instance only to a limited number of factories; but it and women, treated as the Ten Hours Act. The general effect of the law on the 1 The definition of the ages of these protected persons has varied under different Acts. Under the present law "child" means any person under the age of thirteen, or in some cases under fourteen; 66 young person means any person (not being a child) under eighteen; means any woman of the age of eighteen and upwards. See Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, s. 156. "woman 2 The Factory Act, 1844 (7 & 8 Vict. c. 15), sec. 32. VII. contained principles of the widest scope, which were Lecture applicable and which were certain to be ultimately applied in the most general way to every kind of labour of which the public can take cognizance. It assuredly, therefore, has introduced socialistic enactments into the English labour law. But the factory legislation of 1848-50 did at once, or very nearly at once, far more than this. At the time when the repeal of the corn laws gave in the sphere of commerce what seemed to be a crowning victory to individualism, and when the prosperity following on free trade stimulated to the utmost in almost every department of life the faith in and the practice of laissez faire, the success of the Factory Acts gave authority, not only in the world of labour, but in many other spheres of life, to beliefs which, if not exactly socialistic, yet certainly tended towards socialism or collectivism. Changed Attitude of the Working Classes On the 10th April 1848 the Chartists fought their last fight, and suffered a crushing and final defeat.1 The advocates of the Charter (who might, at this period, be identified with the artisans of the towns) abandoned chartism, and either gave up all interest in public affairs, or devoted their efforts to movements of which the object was not political, but social. Of these the chief was trade unionism. This change of attitude told in more ways than one on the course of opinion. 1 For the Chartist demonstration meant to overawe Parliament and ensure the enactment of the People's Charter, see Walpole, History of England, iv. pp. 335-337. Lecture VII. The abandonment of the Charter was a distinct step away from democratic Benthamism; an increased interest in trade unionism was a step in the direction of collectivism. Trade unionism, which means collective bargaining, and involves practical restrictions on individual freedom of contract, could find no favour in the eyes of Liberals who belonged to the school of Bentham. The most liberal judges had, as we have seen, under the influence of Benthamite ideas, interpreted the Combination Act of 1825-in accordance, no doubt, with the real intention of Parliament--so as to put a check, not only upon all physical violence, but upon any so-called moral pressure which curtailed the right of an individual master to purchase, or of an individual workman to sell, labour upon such terms as might suit the contracting parties. To this view of the law trade unionists offered strenuous resistance. If some of them had at one time accepted the doctrine of laissez faire, they interpreted this dogma as allowing the right of combination for any purpose, which was not in the strictest sense unlawful when pursued by an individual acting without concert with others. They maintained that trade unions, even though they aimed at the restraint of trade, should be treated as lawful societies, and that unionists were morally, and ought to be legally, entitled, as long as they made no use of physical violence or the threat thereof, to bring the severest moral pressure to bear upon the action, and thus restrain the freedom of any workman who might be inclined to follow his own interest in defiance of union rules intended to promote the interest of all the workmen engaged in a 1 See pp. 149, 189-204, ante. 2 See pp. 198, 199, ante. |