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,