736 LAISSEZ FAIRE 
enforcement of the Acts. The general impression created by 
the careful investigations of Mr and Mrs Webb! is that the 
Act, though enforced spasmodically and occasionally with 
great severity, remained to a considerable extent a dead 
letter. The workman had on the whole been endeavouring 
to insist that existing laws should be carried out: and the 
mere fact of combination for this purpose could hardly be 
regarded as illegal. The Glasgow Cotton Weavers were 
allowed to combine to obtain a decision on the rates of 
wages; but their leaders were arrested as criminals, when 
they tried to enforce the rate themselves and organised 
a strike?. In various trades the practice of arranging a list 
at a conference between masters and men was in vogue?, and 
though this might have easily led to breaches of the Combi- 
pation Laws, it was apparently held that, where the masters 
were ready to meet the men in conferences publicly called, 
the idea of conspiracy hardly came in. There certainly were 
cases when the masters had a very strong case under the 
Acts, and did not invoke their assistance; so that it is 
probably true to say that, on the whole, the law was not often 
set in motion, and that things went on in an ordinary way, 
as if no such statute was in existence’. In case of any 
dispute between masters and men, or of a strike, the em- 
ployers were able to have recourse to this Act at any moment, 
and summarily to crush all opposition; and the severe 
sentences which were inflicted under the Act on Bolton 
Calico Printers in 1817, and on the Sheffield Scissors Grinders 
in 1816, must have rankled deeply in the minds of the 
victims. It is impossible to say to what extent the existence 
an intense Of the Acts, even when spasmodically enforced, affected 
roe rates of pay or increased the privations of the working classes, 
was roused- hut, there can be no doubt that they added immensely to 
their sense of wretchedness and helplessness. The impotence 
A.D. 1776 
—1850. 
though this 
was not 
systemati- 
cally 
enforced, 
1 Hist. of Trade Untonism, 58, 65. 2 See above, p. 638. 
8 Lists of Prices were agreed on by the London Printers in 1805, and by the 
London Coopers in 1813, 1816, and 1819; by the Brushmakers in 1805, and there 
were strong societies among the Cabinet Makers in Edinburgh, London and 
Dublin. Webb, op. cit. 66—68. 
4 See above, p. 642 n. 
5 See the quotation from George White in Webb, op. cit. 68.