The Government must remember that the more high-handed and arbitrary
the action they have taken in regard to the owners, the more essential it is that they should preserve public order, and insist that, though the right of the men to strike is absolute and indefeasible, freedom of action must at all costs be preserved for the rest of the community, and that any attempt to prevent men from working who want to work must be put down by the sternest means. It would be a fatal blunder, and one which we cannot believe the Government will commit, to allow acts of tyranny on the part of the strikers for fear of irritating them by strong measures. There is far more likelihood of serious disorder if the Government inspire the miners with the notion that they have an unlimited power over the State. The sense of unlimited power always intoxicates. We are no enemies of the miners, and fully grant that normally they are good citizens and well-meaning men, but neither they nor anybody else can safely be entrusted with the prerogatives of autocracy.
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