inferior description. With regard to the timber-trade, he was surprised that the honourable gent. (Mr. Hume), who had the other night presented a strong petition to the house in favour of the reduction of the duty on Cape wines, on the ground of their being the production of one of our own colonies, should now argue, in fact, against the protection afforded to the timber trade of Canada. Why, he must recollect that Canadian timber, considering that it grew in one of our own colonies, and was transported in our own ships, was a most valuable trade to Great Britain and as a further argument why the existing duties on other timber should not be further reduced, he (Mr. Huskisson) would just observe, that there was no trade which, by reason of increased demand, had lately attained a more improved and prosperous condition than the trade in Baltic timber. His right hon. friend the president of the board of trade would shortly be able to consider the proper steps to be taken for equalizing the duties on timber, which, he believed, would be the same as those that were now pursued in Ireland, where the mode of estimating such duties was by tale, instead of by estimation, of the quantity of timber contained in any given number of planks. In conclusion, the right hon. gentlemen begged to repeat, that he could not accede to the suggestion of the hon. member for Montrose, inasmuch as no trade was more flourishing at present than the rival trade (as, with respect to Canada, it might be called) of Baltic timber.

The house then resumed; and the chairman having reported pro

gress, the report was ordered to be received on Monday next.

The dissenters' marriage bill was then read a second time, and ordered to be committed on Tuesday next.-Adjourned.

House of Lords, March 29.Lord Holland presented a petition in favour of the equitable loan bill, from 45 poor persons who had suffered loss, in consequence of pawnbrokers' shops being burned, and particularly by a fire which destroyed the premises of a pawnbroker in Saffron-hill. Only two of the persons from whom the petition came, his lordship observed, had been capable of writing their names; the rest had signed by their mark. These poor people had suffered considerable loss of property, and complained of the high rate of interest which they had to pay to pawnbrokers. The noble lord read a letter from the person from whom he had received the petition, in which it was stated that the rate of interest paid to pawnbrokers was 200 per cent. He was himself far from wishing to encroach upon those general principles which favoured competition, and the right of every one to speculate with his own money ; but he thought it his duty, considering the situation of the petitioners, to call the attention of their lordships to the statements in the petition.

The Earl of Lauderdale said, that the pawnbrokers had reduced the rate of interest they used to charge.

After some conversation between Lord Holland and Lord Lauderdale, the petition was laid on the table.

House of Commons, Mar. 29.— Mr. Canning moved that the

house,

house, at its rising to-morrow, should adjourn to Thursday, the 14th of April.-Ordered.

Mr. Huskisson rose, with great regret, to call the attention of the house to a subject that was of the highest importance to the commercial interests of this empire, but which, in consequence, he apprehended, of some misconstruction that prevailed among certain classes in this country, in respect of a legislative proceeding of the last session, repealing the combination laws, seemed likely to be attended with most inconvenient and dangerous consequences. He certainly considered that the parties immediately interested in that proceeding had been subsequently acting under a misconstruction of the intentions of the legislature: and in the motion with which he meant to conclude this evening, he did not propose to suggest that the old laws against the combinations of workmen and labourers against their employers should be again put in force. Those laws were, many of them, oppressive and cruel in their operation on workmen; and he had always advocated the principle of allowing every man to dispose of his labour to the best advantage, which principle they in very many instances directly violated. The right honourable gentleman then proceeded to advert to the bringing in of the 5th of George IV. c. 95, and to the avowed objects of that bill. He felt himself bound to admit, that in principle those objects seemed to be perfectly fair and proper to be established as between workmen and their employers; but he was satisfied that they were not SO in practice. Moreover, he doubted whether

A

the act in question, as long as it should continue to exist, would not have a strong tendency to keep up between workmen and their employers a spirit, on one side of alarm, on the other of distrust. But he wished to review the course and effect of that proceeding. It commenced by a motion introduced by an hon. gentleman on the opposite side of the house, who pointed out the hardships to which, under the then subsisting laws, journeymen and others were liable; and there could be no doubt, that in too many cases, those laws were in a great degree unjust and prejudicial in their operation. committee was certainly granted to the motion of the honourable gentleman, in which it was proposed to go largely into evidence and inquiries on these topics. It was a very full committee, consisting of about fifty members; and it undoubtedly examined a vast variety of evidence upon all questions connected with the main intention of its labours. The result of those labours was- not that a report was made to that house, (which, as he thought, would have been the most desirable course,) stating the grounds upon which the committee had come to the conclusion of recommending the introduction of their bill, and thereby affording to the public, and in a more especial manner to parliament, the necessary information as to the motives which induced them to recommend such a change of the existing law; but the result was, that the committee adopted finally a string of resolutions which involved no such statement whatever. He should inform the house that he (Mr. Huskisson) was himself a member of that committee; and

perhaps

perhaps he ought to mention that circumstance with considerable regret, owing to the fact of numerous other engagements and avocations of an official nature, in which he was all that time extremely busied, having prevented him from paying that degree of attention to the business of the committee which he could have wished to do, and which the importance of its inquiries most undoubtedly demanded. To the same causes he must refer the indulgence of the house, while he stated that they had equally precluded him, when the bill in question was brought into the house, from considering it with all the attention and care in its various stages that it deserved to be considered with. And he might go further, and express his regret that those of its enactments which were of a legal nature had not, possibly, been discussed with all the technical knowledge which might have been beneficially applied to them by those hon. and learned friends of his, of whose professional learning in ordinary cases government had the benefit. The consequence of all this had been, that some of the provisions of the bill, which afterwards passed into an act, were of a very extraordinary nature. Not only did the bill repeal "all" former statutes relative to combinations and conspiracies of workmen, but it even provided that no proceedings should be had at common law on account of any such combination, meeting, conspiracy, or uniting together of journeymen, &c., for, in fact, almost any purpose: and thus, by one clause, it went to preclude the possibility of applying any legal remedy to a state of things which might become, and which had since become, a great

public evil. Now this fact was the more curious, inasmuch as the hon. member who introduced the bill into parliament, had himself taken occasion to state, both in that house and in the committee, on what he considered to be legal authority, and he (Mr. Huskisson) in common, he was sure, with every honourable gentleman who heard him, would readily allow that the honourable member for Peterborough (Mr. Scarlett) was indeed high legal authority-that if all the statutes relative to combinations were to be repealed, he thought the operation of the common law alone would be quite sufficient to repress, among workmen, any dangerous and injurious tendency improperly or violently to combine against their masters. The bill itself, however, repealing forty or fifty acts of parliament, and in this singular manner putting aside the common law altogether, was brought into the house at a late period of the session; passed through its first stage, subsequent to the first reading, on Wednesday, the 2d of June; and on Saturday, the 5th of June, only four days after the second reading, and in the same week, was read a third time and passed, without any discussion. The measure was therefore hurried on with as much expedition as was usually applied to the most pressing bills. To the honourable gentleman himself he imputed no blame for thus speeding his bill through the house of commons. Looking to the advanced period of the session, and the discussion which it had received in the committee, it was natural enough that he should desire it to go through the house with all this expedition. But since

the

the passing of the act in question, it had happened to him in his official capacity to receive information of the conduct adopted by bodies of workmen in various parts of the country. They were, many of them, very painful accounts; and to a right hon. friend of his (Mr. Peel), numerous reports had been forwarded, detailing acts of outrage and violence, on the part of workmen combined against employers, of the most disgraceful character. His right honourable friend had permitted him to inspect those reports; and he could state that they manifested, in all those classes of workmen who had misconceived the real object of the legislature in the late act, a disposition to combine against the masters, and a tendency to proceedings destructive of the property and business of the latter, which, if left to itself, and permitted to remain unchecked, must terminate in producing the greatest mischiefs to the country. Indeed, those mischiefs were rapidly growing in some districts to so alarming a pitch, that if their progress were not speedily repressed and interrupted, they would very soon become rather a subject for his right honourable friend to deal with in the exercise of his official functions, than for him (Mr. Huskisson) to call the attention of the house to, in this manner. These things could not remain much longer in their present condition, unless parliament should interfere to place them on a different footing; for otherwise, his right hon. friend (Mr. Peel)-armed as he was by the state, with the authority of calling into aid the civil power (where that proceeding was rendered necessary by the urgency of

the case), for the protection of the property and liberty of the king's subjects-must so interpose against what he (Mr. Huskisson) could not but consider a very formidable conspiracy in certain bodies of men, calculated to place that liberty and property, and perhaps life itself, in great jeopardy, as regarded certain individuals who employed large numbers of labourers and journeymen. But by a timely inquiry into, and consideration of, this subject, parliament might be enabled to deal with it as with a question merely of commercial polity. He wished to treat it as a question, on the one hand, of the freedom of labour, looking to the right which every man naturally claimed to exercise over his own labour; and on the other, as a question upon the effect of those principles that had formerly prevailed in this country with regard to the right in those claiming this freedom of labour of interfering with, and exercising a control over, parties largely employing such labour. But he must beg to repeat his conviction, that if parliament did not very soon interfere to reconsider the whole of this question, in all these branches, they would find that the evil which was already existing would quickly attain an extremely mischievous height. They would then be obliged to apply to it other means and another remedy. If such should unfortunately ever be the case, he did hope that his right hon. friend would not only not be backward to employ those means and that power with which he was vested for the removal of the evil he spoke of, but that the right hon. gent. would, if necessary, apply to parliament to be furnished with

further

further powers to prevent the baneful operation of a tyranny (as he, Mr. Huskisson, must call it), that was now exercised over a great proportion of the property, and the liberty of some of his Majesty's subjects, in many parts of the country. While he thus designated the character of those combinations which had been so extensively formed by men who were obviously proceeding altogether in error, he did trust, that on account of what he had been saying, he should not be considered as a person who was at all hostile-nay, who was not friendly to the right of labour-to the right which every man, generally speaking, had to dispose of his labour and skill to the best advantage, or as he might think proper. As a general principle, he undoubtedly thought that every man had a fair inherent right to carry his own labour to whatever market he liked; and so to make the best of it. And accordingly, he had always maintained that labour was the poor man's capital. But then, on the other hand, he must as strenuously contend for the perfect freedom of those who were to give employment to that labour. Their's was the property which rendered that labour necessary; their's was the machinery on which that labour has to be employed; their's was the capital by which its employment was to be paid for. At least, therefore, they were entitled to an equal free dom of action. And that property, that machinery, and that capital ought to be as sacred and unfettered as the labour which was the admitted property of the workman. If their right and title and freedom in all these matters

could not be sustained; so neither could there be kept and retained in the country the means of employing labour; and the workmen themselves would be the victims of a delusive system of attempted influence and intimidation over the employers. He would not unnecessarily detain the house by entering at any length into details to show that such a system was, in several quarters, being now acted upon. Meetings had been held and associations formed in different parts of the country, which, if persevered in and prosecuted successfully, must terminate in the ruin and destruction of the very men who were parties to them. Now as to the individuals who had adopted measures of this kind, it might not be immaterial to advert to one or two papers that he held in his hand, which pretty clearly developed what were their own views, and what their own proposals, in respect of this right which they had assumed of interference with the property and the concerns of their employers. The first which he had with him was entitled "The articles of regulation of the operative colliers of Lanark and Dumbarton." The second was a similar production of "The Ayrshire association:" and he could produce a great number of such rules and articles and regulations, each body of them absolutely forming as regular a constitution as any of those which we were now almost daily reading of as arising from the new governments that were springing up in every part of the world. These associations had their delegates, their presidents, their committees of management, and every other sort of func

tionary