The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE REMOVAL OF PERSONAL DISABILITIES 757 Francis Place, a London tailor* who had been deeply impressed AD Dw by the injustice and impolicy of the Acts? marshalled the evidence against them, and the sturdiness with which Joseph Hume fought for repeal. He insisted on including the Combination Laws in the reference to the Select Committee, he drafted the resolutions® which were based on the evidence presented, and be succeeded in carrying the measures with a minimum of discussion in both Houses¢, And then the trouble began. The immediate effect of Despite an the repeal was the outbreak of a number of strikes, which nog %? could not now be suppressed in the old fashion; the fore- bodings of the opponents of repeal were confirmed, and the expectations of Place and his friends were completely falsified®. A Hh t This remarkable man, with the assistance of the Gorgon, organised the whole campaign which was eventually successful; he convinced both Hume and McCulloch, the public champions of the cause, of the mischief wrought by the Acts. Webb, History of Trade Unionism, 88. 2 He was specially impressed by the injustice committed in the prosecution of the Times printers in 1810, when curiously enough this case proceeded under the common law of conspiracy and not under the Combination Act of 1800 at all. Place Papers, Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 27801, p. 282. The men were imprisoned for two years, whereas three months was the greatest penalty that could be inflicted under the Act of 1800. The Times wrote in a leader on the subject (June 4, 1824), Place Papers, 27801, p. 164. * The aggrieved party did not choose to prosecute upon the Combination Laws, and for an obvious reason, because he knew that by those laws the offenders could only be sentenced to two or three months’ imprisonment, and that they had funds subseribed to maintain all of them in idleness for a much tonger period. He therefore went upon the Common Law of the land for con. spiracy, and obtaining sentences of two years’, of eighteen months’ and of nine months’ duration (though he himself sued for a remission to the penitent as soon as they were penitent) yet he by that method rained their funds whilst he was anxious that their persons should suffer as little as possible,” Under these circumstances it is very singular that Place should have taken this case as typical of the injustice wrought by the Acts. He writes “It was this prosecution and its fatal consequences that made me resolve to endeavour to procure the repeal of the laws against combination of workmen.” (Place, in Brit. Mus. Additional MSS. 27, 798, p. 7 back). It is still more singular that he should have been so satisfied with the repeal of the Acts when the Common Law remained. The statement of the Times does not seem to have been taken into account by a recent commentator on the law of combination. Wright (Law of Criminal Conspiracies and Agreements, p. 56) holds that there was no rule of common law that combinations for con- trolling masters were criminal in the 18th century, and that cases decided since 1825 afford a “modern instance of the growth of a crime at common law by reflection from statutes and of its survival after the repeal of those statutes.” ¥ Sixth Report of Committee on Artisans and Machinery (1824), v. 589. ' Wallas, Life of Francis Place, 216. 5 Geo. IV. ce. 95, 97. Place persisted in his opinion that the repeal of the laws would bring about a disuse of combination eventually, though it was obvious that it had not done so at once. “Temporary associations, or combinations. as well of masters as of men,

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