CURRAN v. TRELEAVEN.

In this case the Secretaries of certain trade unions had been convicted before the Recorder of Plymouth of wrongful intimidation under the section above referred to. The Recorder stated the following case for the consideration of the Court of Queen's Bench before giving effect to the conviction.

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The appellant and two other secretaries of trade unions, in order to prevent the respondent employing non-union men, informed him that if he did not cease to do so, they would call off from their employment by him all the members of their respective unions. After a meeting of the unions, at which it was resolved that this course should be adopted, the appellant and the other secretaries, in the presence of the respondent, whom they asked to attend, made the following statement to the respondent's workmen and others who were assembled:—'Inasmuch as Mr. T. (i.e. the respondent) still insists on employing non-union men, we, your officials, call upon all union men to leave their work. Use no violence, use no immoderate language, but quietly cease to work, and go home.' The union men in consequence ceased to work.

Held, that there was no evidence of intimidation by the appellant within the meaning of the section, and that the conviction must be quashed.

The reasons for this decision may be presumed to be the same as those given in the first case, as no others germane to the subject are given in the report.

Whatever legal criticism may be suggested on the reasons given for these decisions, the law, as laid down in them, has at least the merit of being clear, and I venture to predict the result that no prosecutions will be undertaken under section 7, sub-section (1) of the Statute of 1875 unless proof can be given that physical force has been used or threatened. The other offences aimed at by the second, third, fourth, and fifth sub-sections are defined with great clearness, and require no comment here.

It seems then that if in such cases as the above, the only resort to the criminal law against trade combinations left open to employers and workmen be the Statute of 1875, the conclusion follows that subjects of the Queen, owing allegiance only to the law of the land, can, against their will, be brought under the dominion of a power which they detest, and to which in a free country they owe no obedience, and that too, in matters so vital to them, as on the one hand the employment of their capital, and the hiring of their workmen, Edition: current; Page: [285] and on the other the expenditure of their income, the hours, methods, nay even the disposal of their labour. For it is idle to say that a power is not absolute which, though bound to abstain from physical violence, is yet at liberty to bring upon a fellow-subject industrial ruin. Such a conclusion is startling, for every one knows that the remedies of the civil law, for workmen at any rate, against trade unions are practically beyond their means or opportunities.

(b) The common law crime of conspiracy.

It has been too readily assumed, probably owing to some dicta in the cases above mentioned which were unnecessary for their decision, that outside the provisions of the Statute of 1875; the criminal law is powerless against combinations of capitalists and workmen. I propose to consider two doctrines of the common law relating to conspiracy which appear to be available against such combinations. There is authority that the following agreements are criminal.

1. Agreements between more persons than one to do acts which are injurious to the public, or as Sir James Stephen puts it, 'Agreements between more persons than one to carry out purposes which the judges regarded as injurious to the public.'

2. Agreements where, with malicious design to do an injury, the purpose is to effect a wrong though not such a wrong as when perpetrated by a single individual would amount to an offence under the criminal law.

1. The statement of this rule appears and is extraordinarily vague. Convictions have in the past been obtained against persons conspiring to impoverish the farmers of excise, so as to make them incapable of rendering the king his revenue, against combinations of officers to throw up their commissions in times of danger, and against persons combining to disturb the price of the funds by false rumours. But the principle has never been applied, in England at any rate, against rings of capitalists or unions of workmen, and though it is possible to conceive cases in which the national importance of the industries affected might justify its use, no judge would venture to enforce it in cases such as those we have considered. Edition: current; Page: [286]

2. The second principle has the authority of the Final Report of the Royal Commission on the Labour Laws in 1875 (a Commission which contained, among others, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Sir M. Smith, Mr. Russell Gurney, Mr. Roebuck, and Mr. Thomas Hughes), has been supported by dicta of the Court of Appeal, and its reasoning adopted in cases of high authority in America. If the principle be applied to the facts of the case of Gibson v. Lawson I do not think it can be doubted that in the absence of the exempting section of the Statute of 1875, Lawson and those who acted with him would have been found guilty legally of a criminal conspiracy. Their immediate intention was to induce Gibson's employers to break their contract with him. Such an intention is malicious in law, even though there be no personal ill-will. Their remote object was to force Gibson to leave his trade union and join another, i.e. to infringe his legal right to belong to any union he thought fit. Then does the third section of the Statute of 1875 exempt such a combination from the law of criminal conspiracy? That section, it will be remembered, enacts that 'An agreement or combination by two or more persons to do or procure to be done any act in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute between employers and workmen shall not be indictable as a conspiracy if such act committed by one person would not be indictable as a crime.' This section has been judicially declared to have expressly legalized strikes. But if it is closely scrutinized it will be found to exempt strikes from the operation of the Criminal Law of Conspiracy only when the agreements at their root are 'in furtherance or contemplation of a trade dispute between employers and workmen.' The whole history of this legislation shows that the object of Parliament in granting this exemption was to remove all fetters from Labour which might seem to cramp it unfairly in the struggle with Capital. The capitalist, it was argued, is a combination in himself. The labourer should then be free also to combine. The intention of Parliament was not to give a dominance which might easily become a tyranny either to rings of capitalists or unions of workmen, but to place Edition: current; Page: [287] workmen so far as possible on terms of equality in competition with capitalists. The exemption of section 3 accordingly only operates to make agreements otherwise criminal not criminal when they are made in the course or genuine contemplation of a trade dispute between employers and workmen. The belligerents must not be employers and employers or workmen and workmen, but employers and workmen, and there is no sanction in the statute for the notion, now widely prevalent, that a ring of capitalists can combine to ruin rival capitalists, or that a trade union can combine to ruin nonunionists, by wrongfully injuring them. The mere cover of a strike is not of itself to render not criminal all agreements attendant on its inception. It will be seen, therefore, that had Lawson and his friends, for example, been indicted for a common law conspiracy, and had their action been brought within the terms of the definition under consideration, they would not (it is submitted) have been entitled to an acquittal by virtue of section 3 of the Statute of 1875, unless the jury found as a fact that the agreement to procure the dismissal of Gibson had been in bona fide contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute between the defendants and their employers.

II. As already indicated, it is not intended to discuss the civil remedies of those aggrieved by the actions of trade combinations, beyond adverting in detail to two recent decisions of the Courts in which these remedies have been elaborately discussed, and which illustrate in a very salient manner the bearing of the modern law in this connexion. The first of these cases is called The Mogul S. S. Company v. McGregor, Gow & Co. (1889), and will be hereafter referred to as 'the Mogul case.' In that case the defendants were a number of shipowners who formed themselves into a league or conference for the purpose of ultimately keeping in their own hands the control of the tea-carriage from certain Chinese ports, and for the purpose of driving the plaintiffs and other competitors from the field. In order to succeed in this object, and to discourage the plaintiffs' vessels from resorting to those ports, Edition: current; Page: [288] the defendants during the 'tea harvest' of 1885 combined to offer to the local shippers very low freights, with a view of generally reducing or 'smashing' rates, and thus rendering it unprofitable for the plaintiffs to send their ships thither. They offered, moreover, a rebate of five per cent. to all local shippers and agents who would deal exclusively with vessels belonging to the conference, and any agent who broke the condition was to forfeit the entire rebate on all shipments made on behalf of any and every one of his principals during the whole year—a forfeiture of rebate or allowance which was denominated as 'penal' by the plaintiffs' counsel. It must, however, be taken as established that the rebate was one which the defendants need never have allowed at all to their customers. It must also be taken that the defendants had no personal ill-will to the plaintiffs, nor any desire to harm them except such as was involved in the wish and intention to discourage by such measures the plaintiffs from sending rival vessels to such ports.

In a judgement, which is a monument of legal learning and literary form, Lord Justice Bowen, supported by Lord Justice Fry and afterwards by the House of Lords, Lord Esher dissenting, held that this transaction was only the 'lawful pursuit to the bitter end of a war of competition waged by the defendants in the interest of their own trade,' and that, although a damage to the plaintiffs, intentional in the sense of being necessarily consequential on the defendants' action, had been proved, the defendants had just cause or excuse for inflicting such damage in the instinct of self-advancement and self-protection which is the incentive of all trade. 'To say that a man is to trade freely but that he is to stop short at any act which is calculated to harm other tradesmen and which is designed to attract business to himself, would be a strange and impossible counsel of perfection.' The fundamental ground for this decision is that it is good for the community that competition should be unfettered and that the exercise of a trader's right to trade freely necessarily implies the right intentionally to injure other traders. To ruin a man's trade because you want to ruin him is unlawful, Edition: current; Page: [289] but to do so because you want it for yourself is in obedience to a natural and legitimate instinct.

Since the decision in the Mogul case was given, the action of certain trade unions combining to ruin a person who refused to fall into a scheme for imposing generally, throughout a trade, trade-union regulations, has been discussed in the Court of Appeal. In the case of Temperton v. Russell and others (1893), 'the defendants were members of a joint committee of three trade unions connected with the building trade in Hull. A firm of builders there having refused to obey certain rules laid down by the unions with regard to building operations, the unions sought to compel them to do so, by preventing the supply of building materials to them. In pursuance of this object, they requested the plaintiff, a master mason and builder in Hull, who supplied building materials to the firm, to cease to supply them with such materials, but the plaintiff refused to do so. Thereupon, with the object of injuring the plaintiff in his business, in order to compel him to comply with their request, the defendants induced persons who, to the knowledge of the defendants, had entered into contracts with the plaintiff for the supply of materials, to break their contracts, and not to enter into further contracts with the plaintiff, by threatening that workmen would be withdrawn from their employ. The plaintiff sustained damage in consequence of such breaches of contract and of the refusal of such persons to enter into contracts with him:—Held, That an action was maintainable by the plaintiff against the defendants for maliciously procuring such breaches of contract, and also for maliciously conspiring together to injure him by preventing persons from entering into contracts with him.'

So far as this decision relates to the maliciously procuring persons to break contracts actually entered into, it merely declares well-settled law and is altogether beyond criticism. On the other hand, so far as it relates to a conspiracy to induce persons not to enter into contracts with others in the future, the decision has no precedent, and appears to be at least questionable. For, if it be sound, it would appear that Edition: current; Page: [290] in all cases the most effective weapon, and in most cases the only weapon, of a trade union, one which has been used for many years—viz., the power to refuse the service of their members to employers, except upon stated terms—would be struck from their hands.

In the Mogul case, for the purpose of establishing a monopoly, the conference of shipowners undoubtedly used means which involved the intentional and injurious coercion of a dissentient fellow-trader. In Temperton v. Russell, for the purpose 'of improving the condition of labour' and in furtherance of a labour dispute, the trade unionists undoubtedly took certain active measures highly oppressive to the person against whom they were directed.

It would be presumptuous to suggest that there are not weighty reasons to be given in support of a judgement of the Court of Appeal, but it is obvious that these two decisions do not make the state of the law clear.

On one side, it will be argued that the cases are distinguishable; that in the Mogul case the defendants only did what any trader is entitled to do, viz., offer exceptional terms for continuous and exclusive custom, and use the power of combination, peacefully and without personal ill-will, to drive all competitors from the field. In the second case, the defendants, it might be argued, went beyond the legitimate furtherance of a trade dispute when they brought injurious pressure to bear on the affairs of one who was no party to that dispute.

On the other side it will be maintained that the two cases ought to be governed by the same rule. The trade unionist will naturally insist that the object in both cases, viz., the improvement of their own market, was identical, and that the steps taken to secure this legitimate end were in both cases the same. If coercion by combination is legitimate in one case it ought to be legitimate in the other. A combination to prevent persons entering into future contracts was held legal in one case and it ought to be held legal in the other. Why is the capitalist's combination merely an incident in a war of competition, waged in the interest of their own Edition: current; Page: [291] trade, and the trade-union combination a malicious and illegal conspiracy?

It is impossible to deny the force of this reasoning, but it would require another paper to discuss the possible developments of legal decisions or statute law whereby the uncertainty of the situation can be removed.

If these two cases are distinguishable, the exact ground of distinction will, no doubt, be made clearer in future decisions of the Courts; if, on the other hand (and to this opinion I am disposed to incline) they are not distinguishable, there can be no doubt that the balance will be righted by the strict and unquestioned impartiality of the judicial bench.

The object of this paper has been to consider the law affecting trade combinations as determined by recent decisions, and we are now in a position to sum up the result of our inquiry.

So far as the law of crimes is concerned, we have seen that Parliament, assisted by the judges, has laboured in the main since 1875 to secure absolute equality of conditions to combatants in the war between labour and capital. The opinion has been hazarded that, so long as every form of physical force is avoided, trade disputants in combination have no interference to fear and trade dissentients no protection to expect from the law of conspiracy; but that if, on the other hand, coercion is used, which, without the excuse of a war between labour and capital, would be otherwise unlawful, the power of the law may successfully be called in.

So far as the civil law is concerned it has been submitted that the principle of acknowledging every man's right to trade freely has been applied by the Courts in a sense which has accorded to combined capitalists a privilege not granted to the trade union.

Further, it has been suggested that, while more use might have been made of the criminal law for the protection of dissentients against trade unions which may act oppressively, on the other hand the power of the civil law has been unduly strained against labour combinations.

Whatever may be the justice of these conclusions, the Edition: current; Page: [292] discussion has revealed the great complexity of the subject. The law is being called on to deal with a new and very difficult set of circumstances. The power of combinations, such as we have been considering, is always very great and sometimes very oppressive. It is not too much to say that individuals are at times made subject not only to the law of the Queen, but also to the law of the Combination. The possibility of oppression and the difficulty of dealing with it are equally obvious, and it seems a dismal view of the future to say that the law can do no more than keep the ring on equal terms for the combatants in these disastrous and often ferocious contests. But we are here considering only the legal aspects of the question; whether in the future it may be thought desirable to legislate for the protection of private citizens against the tyranny of combinations, the future only can decide.

In conclusion, some hope may be gleaned from the advance of conciliatory principles. In the controversies of nations, for instance, although the law of force is still predominant, the greatest and most civilized races are beginning, timidly and fitfully, it is true, to look to arbitration. In industrial disputes, such as those which have been considered, the element of race animosity is absent, and the interests of the opponents are often not really conflicting. Is it Utopian to hope that the great waste and suffering of war between Labour and Capital may gradually give place to more civilized and more rational methods?

ALFRED LYTTELTON.

1.

In 1870 Stanley Jevons, after having read my works then published, as he has very handsomely acknowledged in his preface, spoke of Political Economy as the 'shattered science'—an expression which has acquired a certain popular vogue. Long previous to this, in 1856, when I had occasion to study the works on Economics then current in their relation to credit and banking, I had pointed out their defects, and said, in the Introduction to Vol. II of my Theory and Practice of Banking: 'We have no hesitation in saying that the whole system of Political Economy, as laid down by Ricardo and developed by Mr. John Stuart Mill, is utterly and radically bad'—which gave prodigious offence at the time. I also said: 'The time has come when all Political Economy must be rewritten.' After thirty-eight years people are beginning to find out that this is true.

2.

Mr. Cleveland here refers to the great trusts and monopolies which have ruled the markets for some years past; but his words are equally applicable to combinations in this country which have attempted and, to some extent, succeeded in forcing the Government to conform to their demands.

3.

The net loss on this exhibition exceeded £200,000.

4.

I am aware that two of the Australian provinces have recently succeeded in floating loans in London, and that it is now assumed that their principal difficulties are over. None the less I see no occasion to alter a word that I have written; for without going into detail I may say that I do not share the general confidence in such sudden resurrection from collapse; and am strengthened in my opinion by two recent enactments of the Parliament of New Zealand, which could only have been passed in the fear of a serious financial crisis, and are not justified even by that. If New Zealand's recovery be so slow and uncertain, how much slower and more uncertain must Australia's be!

5.

National Railways, by James Hole. London: Cassell & Co., 1893.

6.

London and South-Western 3 per cent. debentures have, I believe, been dealt in at 107.

7.

Government Railways in a Democratic State. Economic Journal, December, 1892.

8.

Lending money to Australia. Nineteenth Century, August, 1892.

9.

The summary of the text I borrow verbatim from Professor Hadley's invaluable Railroad Transportation.

10.

Macaulay, History of England, Chapter III.

11.

The following summary of Post Office history from the time when the idea of using the Post Office monopoly as an engine of taxation first took root, down to the time when an outraged public opinion thrust Rowland Hill into the office to prevent State officials doing after their kind, is not mine. It is extracted from Mr. Joyce's excellent History of the Post Office (London, Bentley, 1893). As Mr. Joyce is a trusted and high-placed officer of the Department, we may fairly assume that his indictment is at least not overdrawn. 'Let us compare for a moment the beginning of the nineteenth with the end of the seventeenth century. In 1695 the postage from London to Liverpool, or to York, or to Plymouth, was, for a single letter, 3d.; in 1813 it was 11d. In 1695, wherever letters were being carried clandestinely, the policy was to supplant; in 1813 the policy was to repress. In 1695 the King would not consent to a single prosecution, even for the sake of example; in 1813, when the Post Office revenue had passed from the King to the people, prosecutions were being conducted wholesale. In 1695 a circuitous post would be converted into a direct one, even though the shorter distance carried less postage; in 1813 a direct post, in place of a circuitous one, was being constantly refused on the plea that a loss of postage would result. In 1695 London enjoyed the advantage of a penny post, and this post carried up to one pound in weight; in 1813 the penny post had been replaced by a two-penny and three-penny one, and, except in the case of a packet passing through the general post, the weight was limited to four ounces. In 1813, moreover, the complications were bewildering. In some places there were fifth-clause posts, and in others penny posts; and the charge by these posts was in addition to the charge by the general post. Some towns, over and above all other charges, paid an additional 1d. on each letter for the privilege of the mail-coach passing through them. Of two adjoining houses one might receive its letters free of any charge for delivery and not the other. This difference was to be found in towns where building was going on—as, for instance, at Brighton—old houses being considered within, and new houses without, what was called the usage of delivery. In London itself, the complications, if possible, were more bewildering still. The three-penny post began where the two-penny post ended. Thus far the practice was simple enough. But the general post limits did not coincide with the limits of the two-penny post; and the limits of both the two-penny post and the general post differed from those of the foreign post. Indeed, it is probably not too much to say that in 1813 there was not a single town in the kingdom at the Post Office of which absolutely certain information could have been obtained as to the charge to which a letter addressed to any other town would be subject. More than ten years later, Post Office experts, examined before a Committee of the House of Commons, were unable to state what, even on letters delivered in London, would in certain cases be the proper postage.'

12.

I have written x shillings because, after exhausting perambulations through the mazes of the Post Office Guide, I am quite unable to understand what the additional charge actually is.

13.

I believe I am correct in saying that since the beginning of this year more passengers have been killed and seriously injured in stage coach than in train accidents. This would make the percentage of risk run in these two means of conveyance roughly something like 10,000 to 1. The impotence of statistics to touch the imagination can hardly be better illustrated than by the fact that, while we constantly hear of the dangers of railway travelling, the man who dares to climb the box seat of a coach is seldom acclaimed as a hero.

14.

The fascination of the theory of an ideal uniformity has indeed induced the Prussian Government to subject the ordinary retail traffic of the country to equal mileage rates, the same for a ton of gray shirtings as for a ton of silk velvet. But when it comes to serious matters, to enabling German agriculturists and millers to hold their own against the competition of Russia and Hungary and the United States, or to diverting the traffic of Westphalia from Antwerp and Amsterdam to the German ports of Hamburg and Bremen, theory and ideals go to the winds, and the German Government frankly puts out special tariffs based wholly on what the traffic will bear; in other words, on the very unideal consideration of commercial competition.

15.

The hackney carriage license duties in London are historically a survival from the days when locomotion, like everything else, was taxed. And it is mainly owing to the fact that the Chief Commissioner of Police is a subordinate of the Home Office and not a London local official at all that they have not been swept away, or at least largely modified, ere this. But, of course, these duties might quite well be justified on the ground of the excessive user by hackney carriages of the London streets, and in that case would be only another form of the very equitable principle involved in the Highways (Locomotives) Amendment Act, 1878.

16.

In this case the explanation is, of course, obvious on the face of the map. The North-Western is not the direct line to either town. To Cambridge the rate is fixed by the Great Eastern, with a route only 55½ miles in length; to Oxford by the Great Western, with a distance of 63 miles. For its 78 miles to Oxford the North-Western can charge, therefore, as for 63 miles; while for its 92 miles to Cambridge it can only charge as for 55½.

17.

It is five years since we had any conspicuous improvement in English railway service. Even in passenger service, in which we led the world, without equal or second, a few years back, the Americans are going ahead of us in all directions. This is no accident. The Board of Trade and Parliament and the public have been regulating railway rates, railway methods of working (signals, brakes, block system, mixed trains, &c.), railway servants' hours of labour, employers' liability, &c., &c. The railway chiefs have been occupied, mistakenly perhaps, in endeavouring to minimise that regulation. They have had neither time nor heart to think of improvements.

18.

There is no one work with which I am acquainted adequately dealing with this chapter of railway history. Its general tenour may be learnt from Hadley's Railroad Transportation, C. T. Adams' Railway Problem, and Clark's State Railroad Commissions. I have myself attempted, in evidence before the House of Commons Committee of last session on Railway Rates, to make the outlines of the story accessible—if anything in a Blue Book ever is accessible—to English readers.

19.

The United States Interstate Commerce Commission, in its sixth and latest annual report, declares that 'the practice of the Commission is so to administer the law as to protect each locality in the enjoyment of its natural advantages....Each community is entitled to the benefits arising from its location and natural conditions.' With all possible respect for the Commission I venture to assert that its practice is nothing of the kind. The only practice that even approaches conformity to this theory would be the enjoinment on the companies of equal mileage rates for like commodities in like quantities. And from such a course the strong common sense of the Commissioners may be trusted to preserve them. Further, had the theory that a locality has a right to be protected in the enjoyment of its natural advantages been suffered to control the railway policy of the past, the problem which the Commission now has to solve of an equitable adjustment of competitive rates over the continent of North America would never have come into existence, for the buffalo must have still shared with the Red Indian the undisturbed occupation of the larger part of the area of the United States.

20.

I have, by the courtesy of the manager of the company, been allowed to satisfy myself by personal inspection that a very large proportion of these Ordinary insurances are taken out by members of the working class.

21.

A Tariff for Revenue: What it really Means. Forum, September, 1892.

22.

The Labour Movement, p. 78. L. T. Hobhouse, 1893.

23.

It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the following application of Jevon's final utility theory to the doctrine of progression has no pretension to novelty, but it was noticed by the present writer before he had the advantage of knowing that he had been anticipated in his conclusion by the very elaborate investigations of certain Dutch economists. Professor Seligman, in his learned and exhaustive article in the Political Science Quarterly for June, 1893, summarizes their results and covers the whole ground of the discussion.

24.

Jevons' Theory of Political Economy, 2nd edition, p. 49.

25.

Ibid. p. 43.

26.

Ibid. p. 49.

27.

Ibid. p. 55.

28.

Jevons' Theory of Political Economy, 2nd edition, p. 57.

29.

Ibid. p. 148.

30.

Jevons' Theory of Political Economy, 2nd edition, p. 152.

31.

Ibid. p. 5.

32.

Mr. Charles Devas (Political Economy, p. 197) has some very pertinent criticisms on this law, directed, however, rather against the possibility of its application than against its abstract truth.

33.

Banfield; quoted by Jevons, p. 45.

34.

As Bastiat, a writer who is not answered when he is taunted with economic optimism, expresses it (Harmonies Économiques, p. 291):—

'Toute propriété est une valeur, toute valeur est une propriété;

Ce qui n'a pas de valeur est gratuit, ce qui est gratuit est commun;

Baisse de valeur, c'est approximation vers la gratuité;

Approximation vers la gratuité, c'est réalisation partielle de communauté.'

But although the domain of things common or gratuitous to all, the aggregate of utilities, is constantly increasing, that of things having exchange value, of property, does not decrease, for the horizon of human desires and possible satisfactions is always expanding and with it the field of human labour and service, production and exchanges, without which those desires cannot be satisfied. 'La propriété' is a pioneer which accomplishes its work in one sphere and then passes to another.

35.

Distribution of Products, p. 38.

36.

Distribution of Products, p. 41.

37.

It has been calculated that there is no country where the entire accumulated property would sell for enough to maintain its population on the most economical terms for more than three years, and that the world, as a whole, is always within a single year of starvation.

38.

It has been impossible in this paper to touch on a question, which yet lies at the root of all speculation on the subject of taxation, viz. its incidence on individuals and classes. The following words show the importance of the question in connexion with our present subject: 'Without going so far as some economists in thinking that wherever taxes are first imposed they are so diffused and distributed in the process of exchange as to render all elaborate attempts at a nice adjustment of them a matter of comparative unimportance, it is undeniable that under no system of taxation can any class escape a share of the burden, and, least of all, the most helpless and improvident class. It is conceivable that if a direct tax were imposed on the working classes, they might be unable to recover the whole of it by a rise in the rate of wages. It is not easily conceivable that a tax on capital would not be gradually diffused throughout the community, and ultimately affect wages, and be borne in a large proportion by the working classes.' Again, 'There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that an immense and increasing burden of taxation can be raised by any "adjustments" on what is called the property of about five million persons without a disastrous recoil on the interests of the working classes.'—Sir Louis Mallet, Free Exchange, p. 194.

39.

A fairly full account of these taxes, whether on income or capital, real or personal estate, is given in a report by Mr. Buchanan (Foreign Office, 1892; Miscellaneous Series, No. 267).

40.

Foreign Office, 1892; Misc. Series, No. 268.

41.

These figures are taken from Hayter's Victorian Year Book; and a year has been chosen before the recent check to the Colony's prosperity; since which panegyrics of Victorian State Socialism have notably diminished.

42.

Sir C. Dilke, Problems of Greater Britain, vol. i. p. 192.

43.

A learned writer has recently given good reason for asserting that Christianity was persecuted not as a religion but as an association, and that the Roman Empire was opposed to all associations whatever with the sole exception of Benefit Clubs. The Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 354-360. Ramsay.