VIII. Lecture The general trend of legislation is often as clearly traceable in Bills laid before Parliament, which have not passed into law, as in statutes. From this point of view the Bills of 1904 are full of instruction. They discover the wishes of the electors. They reveal, for instance, the widespread desire for laws which make for the equalisation of advantages. The methods proposed for the attainment of this end are various. One is the provision, at the expense of the tax-payers, of old age pensions, either for every applicant who has attained the age of sixty-five, or for any person of sixty-five who belongs to the indefinable class of the deserving poor. The creation of a system of old age pensions has been recommended, though not fully thought out, both by zealous philanthropists who pity the sufferings, and by politicians of undoubted humanity who possibly desire the votes, of the wageEnthusiasts, again, who have been impressed with the indisputable fact that poverty may exist in connection with merit, have propounded a scheme under which the Guardians of the Poor are to be authorised, and, no doubt, if the plan should receive the approbation of Parliament, will soon be enjoined, to provide the "necessitous deserving aged poor" with cottage homes where the inhabitants "will be treated "with regard to food and other comforts with suitable earners. consideration," or, in other words, will enjoy at least as much comfort as and perhaps more comfort than usually falls to the lot of the energetic working-man who, towards the close of his life, has out of his earn Bannerman, as leader of the Opposition, has announced that he is "in favour of exemption from disenfranchisement of the recipients of temporary poor law relief" (Morning Post, 1st December 1904, p. 9). 1 See p. 274, ante. VIII. ings and savings provided himself with a modest Lecture independence. All these plans, whatever their advantages, have some features in common. They all try to divest the receipt of relief from the rates of the discredit and the disabilities which have hitherto attached to pauperism;1 they negative the idea that it is, as a rule, the duty of every citizen to provide for his own needs, not only in youth, but in old age; and that if age, as depriving a man of capacity to work, may be termed a disease, yet it is a malady so likely to occur as to create a special obligation to ensure against its occurrence. Would not the stern but successful reformers of 1834 have held that old age pensions and comfortable cottage homes, provided at the cost of the tax-payers, were little better than a decent but insidious form of out-door relief for the aged ?? Among Bills which aim at the equalisation of advantages may be numbered a proposal significant, rather than important, for the removal of every limit 1 "No person admitted to a [cottage] home shall be considered a "pauper, or be subject to any such disabilities as persons in receipt of "parochial relief" (Cottage Homes Bill, 1904, sec. 7). "A person whose name is on the pensioners' list shall not be de"prived of any right to be registered as a parliamentary or county "voter by reason only of the fact that he or she has been in receipt of "poor law relief" (Old Age Pensions Bill, sec. 8). 2 Might they not have smiled grimly at the notion of a parliamentary enactment that a man supported by parish relief and provided at the expense of the parish with a comfortable cottage should not be "considered a pauper" (Cottage Homes Bill, sec. 7), and have suggested that citizens should be trained to dread the reality rather than to shun the name of pauperism? What would they have thought of the sentiment or the sentimentality which has induced the Local Government Board to sanction the suggestion that in registers of births a workhouse should be referred to by some name (e.g. Little Peddlington Hall), which might conceal the fact that a child there born was born in a workhouse and not in a private residence? Lecture on the amount which may be raised from the rates VIII. for the support of free libraries, and also many Bills, as important as they are significant, which are intended to facilitate in various ways the acquisition of land, or of an interest in land, generally through the direct or indirect intervention of the State, by persons unable to acquire either land or a lease of land through freely made contracts with willing vendors. The Bills of 1904 also bring into light another characteristic of collectivism, namely, the favour with which persons who have in any degree adopted socialistic ideals look upon combined as contrasted with individual action.1 Trade unionists, it is clear, urgently demand a revolution in the combination law. They claim, as regards trade disputes, the practical abolition of the law of conspiracy, the legalisation of so-called peaceful, which may nevertheless be oppressive, picketing, and the anomalous exemption of a trade union and its members from civil liability for damage sustained by any one through the action of any member of such trade union.2 All these changes suggest the conclusion that 1 See p. 265, ante. 2 "An action shall not be brought against a trade union . . . for "the recovery of damage sustained by any person or persons by reason "of the action of a member or members of such trade union" (Trade Dispute Bill 1904, sec. 3). "An action shall not be brought against a trade union, or against any person or persons representing the members of a trade union, in "his or their respective capacity" (Trade Dispute Bill, No. 2, sec. 3). The latter proposal seems intended to exempt trade unions from all civil liabilities whatever. If in the Trade Dispute Bills the term "trade union" is to bear the meaning given to it in the Trade Union, etc., Act, 1876 (39 & 40 Vict. c. 22), sec. 16, a combination of employers would apparently be, if the Bill should pass into law, as exempt from all civil liability as a combination of workmen. 1 VIII. English artisans are keenly alive to the necessity for Lecture using the severest "moral pressure," or indeed pressure which can hardly by any possible expansion of language be fairly termed "moral," as a restraint upon the selfishness of any workman or employer who acts in opposition to the apparent interest of a body of wage-earners. But these proposed changes also suggest the conclusion that English artisans are blind to the dangers involved in such an extension of the right of association as may seriously diminish the area of individual freedom. This disposition to rate low the value of personal liberty, and to rate high the interest of a class, is to a certain extent illustrated by the Aliens Immigration Bill, 1904. This measure is on the face of it intended to restrain the settlement in England of foreign paupers, and other undesirable immigrants, whose presence may add to the mass of English poverty. It has been brought before Parliament by the Government, and is supposed, possibly with truth, to be supported by a large body of working-men. No one can deny that arguments worth attention may be produced in favour of the Aliens Bill; but it is impossible for any candid observer to conceal from himself that the Bill harmonises with the wish to restrain any form of competition which may come into conflict with the immediate interest of a body of English wage-earners. However this may be, the Bill assuredly betrays a marked reaction against England's traditional policy of favouring or inviting the immigration of foreigners, and in some of its provisions shows an indifference to that respect for the personal freedom, even of an alien, which may 1 See pp. 152-157, ante. Lecture be called the natural individualism of the common law.1 VIII. For our present purpose the Bills brought before the Imperial Parliament are hardly more instructive than the recent legislation of some self-governing English Colonies.2 Compulsory arbitration in all disputes between employers and employed-that is, the authoritative regulation by the State of the relation between these two classes; a vast extension of the factory laws, involving, inter alia, the regulalation by law of the hours of labour for every kind of wage-earner, including domestic servants, the employment by the State of the unemployed, the fixing by law of fair wages; the rigid enforcement of a liquor law, which may render sobriety compulsory; the exclusion from the country of all immigrants, even though they be British subjects, whose presence working-men do not desire; and other measures of the same kind,-would appear to approve themselves to the citizens of Australia and New Zealand. The 1 The Bills which aim at increased restrictions on the sale of liquor hardly need separate notice, for they represent only the conviction, which for years has been known to exist, that the traffic in drink involves so many evils that it ought to be kept within narrow limits, even at the cost of what teachers, such as John Mill, considered a grave inroad on individual liberty. The only feature worth special remark is the proposal, based on precedents drawn from the laws of Canada and the United States, to place an anomalous and most extensive liability on any seller of drink for injuries done by the purchaser to a third person during a state of intoxication wholly or partially arising from the drink he has bought (see Liquor Seller's Liability Bill, 1904, s. 2). Under this Bill, if X, a licensed person, sells drink to Y for consumption on such person's premises, which wholly or in part causes Y's intoxication, X would be liable to A for any injury done to A by Y whilst thus intoxicated. 2 See W. P. Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. |