The Employers' Liability Bill was read a second time in
the House of Lords on Thursday without a division, the rather languid debate turning chiefly upon the subject of the clause forbidding all " contracting-out " of the pro- visions of the Bill, and the chief representatives of the Government strove eagerly to prove that the insurance- funds contributed by the Railway Companies would not be in any substantial degree diminished by the removal of that guarantee against litigation which the Companies at present receive in return for their large subscriptions to the insurance- fund. Of course, this optimistic view of the case is not at all trustworthy. The directors of a railway have as grave a duty to their shareholders as they have to their employes. Lord Herschell makes light of the cost of litigation, in case the employes are forbidden to engage that they will not go to law,—in other words, are compelled to retain their right to go to law. But bow does Lord Herschell know that this expense will be slight P That depends altogether on the temper of the litigants, which no one can know beforehand. At all events, the Companies, which ought to know their own business, maintain most emphatically that to avoid litigation is for them a consideration of the highest pecuniary moment, and that they simply could not afford to subscribe what they do to the insurance-fund, if they thenaselves were not insured by it against a cataract of actions.
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