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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

51.: Trades Unions 10 APRIL, 1867 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868 [1850]

Edition used:

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXVIII - Public and Parliamentary Speeches Part I November 1850 - November 1868, ed. John M. Robson and Bruce L. Kinzer (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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51.

Trades Unions

10 APRIL, 1867

PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 186, cols. 1452–3. Reported in The Times, 11 April, p. 6. The variant reading is taken from the St. Stephen’s Chronicle, Vol. III, p. 112. Moving the second reading of “A Bill to Exempt Associations of Workmen from Certain Disabilities for a Limited Time,” 30 Victoria (14 Feb., 1867), PP, 1867, I, 129–30, Charles Neate, M.P. for Oxford, said its main aim was to restore to trade societies the right of summary process against defaulting treasurers that they had enjoyed prior to a recent judgment in the Court of Queen’s Bench. The Government’s contention was that the second reading should not be proceeded with, because the Bill proposed to give sanction to what had just been declared illegal; the societies should change their constitutions to avoid the illegality, and then they would enjoy the protection of the Friendly Societies Act. Mill spoke after two further interventions.

mr. j. stuart mill said, that if he were a party man he should be enchanted at the course taken by the Government on this subject; since what they were now doing took away all the grace from the concession they had made in granting an inquiry into the subject of trades unions.1 As far as mere words went, nothing could sound fairer than to say to the unions—Set yourselves right before the law, and we will then see what can be done for you. But, what was the fact? The law which they were said to have violated was a mine sprung under them.2 No one dreamt of it until the recent decision of the Court of Queen’s Bench.3 Under the power which our law allowed the Judges to assume, of declaring that whatever was in restraint of trade was illegal, anything might be made law; but when a law was made in this way, it was to all intents and purposes a new law. As the law which these societies were said to have violated was a law of which they and everybody else had been entirely ignorant, the only rational course was to preserve the status quo until the whole subject had been reconsidered, which would only be done by legalizing provisionally the course which the societies had pursued, and allowing them to continue in that course until a final settlement was come to. It was a highly demoralizing practice to attempt to prevent people from doing what it was desired they, should not do, not by punishing them, but by enabling any scoundrel to plunder them—by granting him complete immunity for acts which in any other case would be severely punished. The Legislature should not employ the vices of mankind, but their virtues, to carry out its intentions. It would have been infinitely better athat these societies, or their officers, should have been punished long ago for violating the law, than that they should now be put in the position they were placed in by the recent decisionsa .

[Following an argument that the Bill should be withdrawn, the debate adjourned, and the Bill was not proceeded with.]

[1 ]Resulting in “Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Organization and Rules of Trades Unions and Other Associations,” PP, 1867, XXXII, 1–396.

[2 ]18 & 19 Victoria, c. 63 (1855).

[3 ]Hornby v. Close, 2 Queen’s B 153–60 (1867), ruling that Trades’ Unions did not fall under the provisions of Sect. 24 of 18 & 19 Victoria, c. 63, which gave protection to Friendly Societies, because such associations acted in restraint of trade.

[a-a]SSC] PD for these societies to have punished their officers criminally, than to put the societies themselves out of the protection of the law