THE

HE late revelations as to the practices of trades' unions in Sheffield and Lancashire, elicited by the inquiries under the Trades' Unions Commission, the recent outrages against the public peace in several cities and towns, the bread riots, and the daring acts of the Fenian conspirators, have strongly impressed the public mind with the need of some improved means of providing for the public safety against crimes, which, whether new or not, are increasing, and to which, in the view of continental nations, no civilised community ought to allow any of its members to be exposed.

And first, as to the oldest and widest spread causes of chronic disorder-those of the trades' unions. One of the secretaries of the associated trades' unions (Broadhead) is reported to have exclaimed, on the sensation created by the inquiry at Sheffield throughout the country-What is all this noise and ado about?'-as if there was anything new in what had been done, and in the practices stated! Why! it had always, he averred, been the practice as long as he could

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLVII.

remember to do as had been doneto 'ratten:'-that is to say, to exercise systematic terrorism over workmen to compel obedience to the unionists-saying nothing, however, of actual assassination.

And in the main, as to the practice being old and continuous, elsewhere as well as there, he was right. A writer of a recent article on trades' unions in the Edinburgh Review says:

Had a foreign observer of our manners and customs ventured to assert that in certain parts of England an assassin could be hired for a few pounds, and that the law of the land was so weak or the sympathy with the criminal so strong, as to make the murderer and those who hired him secure of escaping detection, we should have repelled the imputation as a foul libel upon our country.

Nevertheless, the imputation was sustained by a large and conclusive mass of evidence, taken in 1838 under a royal commission of inquiry-of which the late Sir Charles Rowan and Mr. Charles Shaw Lefevre, now Viscount Eversley, were, with myself, the members-appointed to examine the state of crime throughout the country, and of the local constabulary forces appointed for its re

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pression. Mr. Lefevre's occupa tions in Parliament, and his subsequent position as Speaker of the House of Commons, soon prevented him from taking part in the inquiry, which was conducted by Sir Charles Rowan, in most cordial concurrence with myself, and with the very efficient aid of Mr. Samuel Redgrave, of the Home Office, as secretary. I had been specially prepared for the inquiry by an early study of penal jurisprudence, by having written on the functions of a preventive police in 1827, before any police force was established; and as to the manufacturing districts by my acquaintance with them obtained as a commissioner of inquiry into the labour of young persons in factories. We examined, specially and very closely, the practices under the trades' unions: the crimes then habitually committed, and the terrorism exercised, chiefly in Lancashire, in Norwich, and in Glasgow. Every main feature of the practices recently revealed was displayed to us at that time, and will be found set forth in the first report of the Constabulary Force Commissioners in 1839, together with other features not yet disclosed--an exposition of the economical fallacies as to wages on which the unionists proceeded; and a statement of what yet appear to me to be necessary and inevitable measures of repression and prevention. At Norwich, then the seat of the largest silk manufactory in England, we found the trade crippled and almost ruined by practices, which had operated to, 1. the prevention of the introduction of new machinery into the city; 2. the prevention of the introduction of capital; 3. to the loss or destruction of many fabrics.' The chief acts of violence were then directed against the masters, whose lives were threatened, and some of whom were maimed by having vitriol thrown over them. One of the employers who attended

to give evidence presented himself with one eye thus burnt out. The manufacturers were driven by the unionists to conduct their business under all sorts of devices and evasions, as if they were smugglers. A history of the late Mr. Heathcote who literally fought with his life for the introduction of the greatly improved lace machinery into Nottingham (which has nearly doubled the wages of the artisans engaged in that trade), and who was finally driven to settle in Tiverton-would be in itself a tragical history of the results of deplorable ignorance. Since the time of our inquiry, the practices then revealed have been continued, with variations, in different parts of the country; now rising into fatal violence, which becomes the subject of occasional judicial attention; now presenting the common features of fiendish malice under varied forms: vitriol throwing in Glasgow as well as in Norwich; mixing needles with the clay of the brickmakers in Lancashire; placing gunpowder under the wheels of the knifegrinders in Yorkshire; throwing shells into houses; incendiarism; cattle maiming, and the destruction of work; subjecting great bodies of workmen to terrorism; and where murderous violence has not been exercised against them, the exemption being due to the completeness of their subjection. I may cite the following statement, made by the late Sir Archibald Alison three years ago, as displaying the sort of practices more or less prevalent after as well as before our inquiry, and up to the time of the inquiry at Sheffield. Speaking of his services as a judge in Scotland, he said:

The first occasion in which I was brought into contact with trades' unions was in 1827. The trial I then conducted was one in which a party was put to the bar for throwing made her blind for life. The next trial was vitriol in the face of a young woman which for throwing vitriol on a young man who had acted contrary to the injunctions of the