TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD SALISBURY ON LEGISLATIVE INTER- FERENCE IN TRADE. I- 40RD SALISBURY, as a Prime Minister, certainly improves from year to year. His fault has been the too great sarcasm of his political oratory,—the sar- casm which offends without convincing. He had not altogether shaken off the literary critic when he became Prime Minister. But he is, we think, gradually shaking off that very unfortunate talent for dangerous epigram which has caused almost his only serious shortcoming as a Prime Minister. In action he has always been cautious and sober, without being wanting in decision. He has kept out of scrapes better probably than any Prime Minister of this generation. And yet he seldom touches a difficult subject, such as that with which he dealt on Wednesday night at the dinner of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, without saying something that impresses the imagination of the people, even when it is most cautious and most astute. His comment on the extreme ineptitude of going to a foreign Govern- ment to complain of the amount of British commerce which its proposed Protective tariff would exclude, when the testimony so given is precisely what the foreign Government wants to confirm it in its action, was most timely. This " pathetic " belief, as Lord Salisbury calls it, in the power of remonstrance, is a very singular phenomenon in a people who are themselves as little open to the influence of remonstrance as any race on the face of the earth. It is like the superstition which exists, that it is a sure remedy for any grievance to write about it to the Times. The apotheosis of public opinion has led to a sort of abstract assumption that publicity is in itself a cure for error. And no doubt it often might be, if you could per- suade those who go wrong that they are going wrong only because they are injuring you. But when the precise converse of that assumption is the one which they are most apt to make, when they imagine that anything which injures a rival must benefit themselves, the only conse- quence of superfluous dirges over their misdoings, is, as Lord Salisbury says, to make them plume themselves still more on the keenness and accuracy of their anticipa- tions. The best way to bring home their error to them is to preserve complete tranquillity, and let them try the effect of their error. The tranquillity itself tends to disturb their self-possession, and render them more disposed to hesitate as to their own wisdom. If they see that you are not dis- turbed, that you are much more confident that they will hurt themselves than that they will hurt you, they will be all the readier to distrust themselves, and to open their eyes to the magnitude of their own mistake. It was an easy transition to pass from the best mode of treating the Protectionist tariffs of foreign nations to the best mode of treating the Protectionist, ideas and pre- possessions of our own labouring classes. Unions, as Lord Salisbury very fairly admitted, whether they be Unions of capitalists or Unions of labourers, are natural products of the great principle of division of labour in an age of great inventions and very complex and delicate machinery. The artisans in every separate manufacture have a common interest to guard ; and the employers have a common interest to guard ; and those who have such a common interest will be sure to unite in guarding it. There is nothing but common prudence in that. But when voluntary combination to guard a common interest passes into voluntary combination to persecute those who will not join in guarding it, there is at once an invasion of personal freedom which threatens to transform the Unions into a tyranny and terror ; and this must be steadily resisted, otherwise the Union which came into existence to guard legitimate rights will grow into a conspiracy to defeat the equally legitimate rights of others. Lord Salisbury evidently congratulated himself on the ap- pointment of a Commission to investigate and expound the various means by which labourers and capitalists might be brought to understand each other ; but he was quite sure that amongst these means, the interference of the Legislature, except on behalf of children and women, who are not strong enough to protect themselves, would not prove to be included. Everything that will subserve the useful purpose of letting new light upon the rela, teem a capitanot4 and labourers, everything, at least, which is of the nature of a voluntary agency, an agency to which neither party need submit without being con- vinced that submission is wisdom, will do good. But once let the Legislature intervene with compulsory arrange- ments that may be suitable at one time and unsuitable at another, and the consequence will be that the necessary elasticity of the commercial system will be injured, and the very agency which was invoked to protect the. interests of one party to the struggle will be found to have injured both. As Lord Salisbury hints, the limitation in the hours of labour, for instance, which would be beneficial and useful in a time of prosperity, would be fatal in a time of adversity, when both capital and labour must economise all their resources in order to make both ends meet at all. If the Commission determined upon by the Government can do anything to help all classes to see where a strike or a lock-out has been mischievous, and why it has been mischievous, where a strike or a lock-out has been successful, and why it has been successful, it will greatly add to the evidence at the disposal of both parties for guiding their conduct in the future, and probably even lead the way to the growth of voluntary organisations intended to mediate between the parties. But all such evidence is almost certain to discourage the proposal to admit legislative interference between employers and grown- up labourers, the effect of which must be to generalise what cannot be generalised, and to enforce on free con- tracting parties terms which, if they are right and prudent in one trade crisis, are sure to be wrong and tyrannical in another. Let liberty to combine, and liberty to refuse to combine, be the great principle in all trade relations, and then the more educated and the more inde- pendent the working classes become, the fewer serious mistakes they will make. But in order that mistakes may not be repeated, there must be perfect freedom pot to repeat them, which is just what cannot be ensured if a policy which ought to be adjusted to the needs of the moment is to be adjusted to the cut-and-dried regula- tions of a statutory measure. It will be impossible, Lord Salisbury holds, to lay down rules for the maximum hours of labour at one crisis which would be equally sound for another crisis. And the attempt to do so would be as fatal as the attempt to lay down a rate of wages at one crisis which should be equally valid for another crisis. The whole system of trade and commerce rests on an infinite elasticity of mutual adjustment, in which peremptory legislative interference would be a ruinous element. You.
might as well lay down laws for the supply of the food of London, instead of leaving it to the perpetually changing modification of supply and demand, as regulate the hours of adult labour by absolute rules which could take no account of the competition of the Continent, of the price of food, of the disturbances caused by war, of a thousand circumstances which must necessarily and greatly alter the conditions and exigencies under which even miners must conduct their severe labour. What the Government are endeavouring to do, is to supply all the light possible on the causes of dispute between capitalists and labourers, and the way in which these causes of dispute have been most successfully removed. But the more light of that kind is procured, the less desire there will be, in Lord Salisbury's belief, that any attempt should be made to legislate against mistakes, instead of leaving mistakes to produce their natural and wholesome effects on the experience of capitalists and labourers alike.
Previous page
