THE SCOTCH WORKMEN'S PROGRAMME.

SCOTCHMEN are usually practical, know what they want and why they want it, and the new electors are certainly nut, deficient in the national, characteristic. The workmen of

Edinburgh and Leith have been enfranchised in thousands by the Reform Bill, the election is practically in their hands, and they have determined to use their power in a grave, sober, but very decisive way. The Trades " of those two cities, and wo believe of some other towns, have elected representatives or, as they call them, Delegates, to consider what they really want ; the delegates have met in Committee, and the result of their deliberations is a programme which older politicians will do well to study, if only for the light it throws upon the course which the politics of the future may take. Avoiding carefully all declamation or argument or complaint, the Delegates reduce their wishes to questions, fifteen in number, which they ask all workmen in Scotland to propose to any candidate who may seek their suffrages. These questions are, we presume, to be in addition to the regular questions asked of every Liberal candidate in Scotland ; and at all events they embody in an admirably condensed and concrete form the points on which. the workman differs, or thinks he differs, from the rest of his fellow-citizens :—

"1. Are you in favour of extending the full protection of the law to the funds of Trades' Unions, so long as their organization is not in opposi- tion to the common law of the country ?

"2. Will you support the introduction of a bill inflicting penalties upon the employers of labour for negligence in trades—other than those already provided for by the Factories' Acts—when preventable danger may lead to accident?

"3. Will you support a still further extension of the Factory Act making it compulsory on inspectors to visit at least twice in the year factories and workshops mentioned in the Factory Act Extension Bill of 1867 ?

"4. Will you support the introduction of a bill for the purpose of amending and incorporating the provisions of the Bakehouse Regulation Act into the Workshop and Factory Acts, applicable to the United Kingdom ?

" 5. Will you vote in favour of the total abolition of the Act Gth George IV., cap. 129, commonly known as the combination laws?

" G. Would you support a bill, such as the temporary one by Lord Elcho, for the equitable regulation of the law of service between masters and workpeoplo, so as to place both on an equality before the law ?

"7. Are you in favour of the establishment of courts of arbitration for the settlement of disputes between employer and employed, and for legislative enactments to make their decision binding whenever appealed unto ?

"8. Will you support any bill which may be introduced for additional precautions and legislative inspections in mines ?

"9. Will you support any measure having for its object the Govern- ment acquisition of the whole Railway system of the country ?

" 10. Are you in favour of the establishment of a National Library upon the basis of the Advocates' Library collection ; if so, state condi- tions?

" 11. Would you be favourable to the introduction of a bill having for its object the presentation of free copies of Parliamentary papers to Free Public Libraries; and also for grants assisting authors in the•pro- secution of valuable art and other works of great public utility ? "12. Are you in favour of an amendment of the Patent laws for the purpose of enabling inventors to benefit by their inventions, at tho smallest first cost, as in America, for the benefit of the country ?

"13. Are you in f sour of a national compulsory unsectarian system of Education? If o, state generally what you consider most necessary for the well-being of the country.

" 14. Are you in favour of a system of legislation which shall make it compulsory to provide full house accommodation for those of the working classes who may be evicted from their dwellings in consequence of civic improvements, railway acquisition, or similar causes, previous to such eviction taking place ?

"15. Would yon bo in favour of the introduction of a bill for the prevention of deck-loading, and for the purpose of inspecting vessels previous to being allowed to proceed to sea ?"

There is an entire creed in those fifteen sentences, and Liberals will perhaps be as much surprised as relieved to find that it is one which the majority of their candidates can con- scientiously accept. The first seven contain a plan for the regulation of Trades' Unions upon the basis of the compro- mise which we are happy to perceive, after some very wild talk and much useless vituperation, has been accepted by the majority of the Liberal party. The Unions are to be treated as legal corporations, with power to enforce their own rules on their own members, so long as any member is free to retire and outsiders are exempted from coercion. If a Union threatens a member with expulsion or fine for not talking through his nose, such threat is to be legal, provided that if he prefers his own mode of speech he is at liberty to quit the society, and that other persons have full right to discontinue nasal into- nations. In a country where every profession makes rules for itself which its members dare not break under penalty of loss of caste, or even expulsion, this demand ought long ago to have been considered moderate; but human prejudice is strong, and it is not thirty years since it was a criminal offence for English workmen to insist on higher wages or discontinue work. Once legalized, the Unions and employers will meet on equal terms, and as the Delegates suggest, differences can readily be settled, —as in the stocking trade they are already settled, by Com- mittees of Arbitration. Whether those Committees should have compulsory powers, as the Delegates seem to wish, or not, is to a great extent a question of words. If the workmen intend by that phrase that the decision of the Committee when accepted by both parties, or even when not formally challenged by either party, shall have the force of a written contract, shall, for example, be in itself legal proof of the wages agreed on, they are quite within their right, and we see no reason why politicians should object, any more than they object to enforce any other kind of contract. If they mean more than this, if they intend, for instance, to propose that the wages fixed by arbitration shall be levied by legal process from a recalcitrant firm, they are simply proposing to decree that a field shall yield more hay than there is grass in it, an absurdity they themselves will be the first to perceive. Subject to that one qualification,—which we only state for the purpose of exhausting the argument,—the workmen's questions amount to a fair and thoughtful statement of the only compromise on which the grand dispute can ultimately be arranged. Under it capital and labour will be equally free, free to agree, to contend, or to combine, while a third force, representing both, will arbitrate between them in peace.

The 10th, 11th, and 13th Articles, which will strike some of our readers as almost whimsical in their minuteness, con- tain a very complete scheme of national education. The work- men, and be it remembered they are Scotch Presbyterians, are clearly in favour of the American system,—free and secular edu- cation for all—with the addition of fines on all who reject its benefits, and of such an education for adults as access to free libraries can afford. The meaning of the word " unsectarian" has still, we admit, to be fought out. We cannot ourselves see why a good school of any sort should be refused assistance because of its distinctive creed ; but we are quite aware that when that creed is Catholic, or Deist, or Mormon, or includes any unusual tenet either as to faith or morals, the difficulty of securing State aid will be very great. Still, whether the aided schools are to teach all creeds or be prohibited from teaching any is a question quite subordinate to that of universal com- pulsory education, and on this the workmen are at once dis- tinct and emphatic. The creation of free State Libraries is a mere corollary, and the principle has already been conceded by Mr. Ewart's Act. If it is wise to help children to education, it is wise to help men ; and we hope yet not only to see such libraries in every county town, but to see them connected with county universities, or at least with colleges in strict connec- tion with the older establishments.

The remaining demands of the Edinburgh workmen, though differing widely in importance, are all, it will be perceived, of one kind. They perceive that the people and the State have at last become identical, the old distrust of the State is dying, and they ask in no less than six cases for more and closer government. It may seem at first a little absurd to insert " deck-loading " among their political grievances ; but sailors of Leith were among the Delegates, and deck-loading is almost the greatest danger to which emigrants are exposed. The minuteness of the complaint, moreover, shows how far the complainants are prepared to go. They want the State to " acquire the whole Railway system of the country," to in- spect mines, to punish carelessness in the management of machinery, to compel good ventilation and short hours in workrooms, to regulate evictions for railway purposes, to protect patents,—in short, to intervene at every point where private avarice and public well-being come, or are even likely to come, into collision. In all such cases, the State is to be the ultimate arbiter, in many the direct agent for the execution of the work. This is, to our minds, the most dis- tinctive feature in the workmen's programme, the one which shows most clearly that the new electorate has ideas other than those which swayed the old. Mr. Gladstone, with all his financial courage and all his popularity, was almost afraid to suggest to ten-pounders the Railway reform which the workmen are inclined to make a condition of their support. Many of our friends will regret this tendency to call on the State for help, or even denounce it as showing want of self- reliance ; but we believe they are mistaken. It is the new- born reliance on himself which induces the workman to trust the State of which he is at last a part ; it is the new belief in co-operation which enables him to see that trust in private enterprise is often a waste of the power which belongs to the greatest, strongest, and best managed of co-operative societies, the State. That Liberals should be distrustful of such a ten- dency we can understand, for English Liberals have never yet de- fined the limit they would set to individualism; but that Tories should join them is, we confess, to us almost unintelligible. Can they not see that the confidence of the multitude in the justice and wisdom and mercifulness of the State is a supreme guarantee for order, and for that content with existing in- stitutions which is the very foundation of their system of politics. The truly " conservative " races are the races which hold that the order of society is divine, and it is towards that temper that workmen are swaying when they elevate the State into the position of supreme arbiter between the individual and the nation,—when they declare, as these Scotch Delegates do, that the nation can be better trusted not to grind the poor than any individual or combination. The Edinburgh programme carefully read is Conservative in the highest sense, that is, it tends to regard the collective State, or the "Government," as most of us call it, as the people's most active, most intelligent, and most sympathetic friend.