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Leader (1850-1860), 16th June 1860, Edition 2 of 2, Page 6, 562 The Leader mid Saturday Analyst. L J...

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      Law And Labour^ . A Case Recently Decide...

      simply because they do not forget that ' they are human beings of like passions with themselves , and quite as much entitled to gentlemanly treatment as the highest persons in the land . The capitalists most ready to quarrel are the most ignorant and the most neglectful of social duties . They look upon human labour like bricks or timber , as a commodity to be purchased , and when the man refuses to be a chattel , they ' think themselves aggrieved . The conduct of the angry workman may not be reasonable , and his ostensible ground of quarrel often unjust , but no employment of force will generate that good understanding that can only laws

      come from obeying Christian principles as well as trade ; and if union men decline to work with non-unionists , the masters should appeal to reason , and make provisional arrangements , by selecting servants from the class willing to submit to their terms . If their statement be true that the societies are tyrannical , there must-be plenty of workmen who will be glad to join them . If , on the other hand , the workmen as a rule do not consider the Society ' s regulations hostile to the general interests of their order , ' then the masters have been deceiving the public . by thenstatements , and must seek to influence opinion by more legitimate ? methods than violence and abuse .

      562 The Leader Mid Saturday Analyst. L J...

      562 The Leader mid Saturday Analyst . L JuNE 16 > 1 SCO -

      History And Phtxciples Of Packet Contrac...

      HISTORY AND PHTXCIPLES OF PACKET CONTRACTS . FTUiE subject of mail contracts , and the delinquencies of public JL officers , to which we adverted last week , requires further elucidation . Some of us remember , and most of its are aware , that the Ocean packet-service , was formerly carried on from Harwich , ¦ CalaiSj and Falmonth by cutters and brigs , which formed a part of our naval establishment . At Falmouth there was a Commodore of the packet-service , and he had under his orders some dozen of

      small brigs , denominated coffins , from their bad habit of sinking with mails and passengers ^ instead of carrying them to their destination / . and there were about four still : smaller vessels at-each , of the other ports ' . There were , if we recollect right , no-Royal mail-packets to the United States . The many passenger-ships that passed to . anil- fro conveyed the mails . " Miserable was the accommodation the Royal packets afforded , and dire were the complaints " of-passengers tossed , about for an uncertain period on the ocean . - '

      The first considerable improvement was made by the London Steam Navigation Company . It began to carry passengers regularly to and fro between London and Hamburg and liotterdam , and soon took away from the Harwich mail-packets all the passengers . The mails for the North were then sent by this company's vessels , which continued till the extension of railways from Calais and Ostend to the North made , it more expeditious to send all letters by the shortest sea-voyage , to meet the system of continental railroads . Why the same plan was not extended from ¦ communicating with the continent of Europe to communicating with America , and the transmission , by rail and otherwise ,

      from the point of arrival there , by the shortest sea-voyage through a greater part of that continent , and to all the contiguous islands , we are not aware . The Treasury preferred a costly system of steam-packets , even where it had none before , to convey mails by three or four routes across the ocean to the United States , the West Indies , and South America . The most important fact in this brief history is the establishment of steampackets carrying passengers to the Continent , and the complete supercession by them of the Government mnil-packets that

      formerly ran from Harwich . It is almost unnecessary to add , that that acceleration of communication between distant countries was entirely brought about by private interest , and likely to be very successful , wherever there are many passengers ' , as between Europe and America . We arc only now beginning to learn , _ aa we never can . learn till after wo have ascertained how our officials have perverted a system which begun in private interest , iuul which private interest continually tends to improve , into a contrivance for fleecing the tax-paying people .

      In 1888 , the Great Western , a steamer of 1 , 200 tons , designed for the purpose , completed her passage from Bristol to New York in fifteen and a half days , and returned from Now York to Bristol in thirteen and a quarter days . Tlie company which despatched her has the merit of first demonstrating tlio practicability of performing steam ¦¦ - . voyages across tlm ocean quickly , regularly , and punctually . Private enterprise actually

      did . the work , and continued to do it , without ( loiu'tum / cuf aid . In 1889 , the Government , which had declined in 1838 to contract with the Great Western Company to carry the mails to America , contracted with on individual ( Mr . Cun . \ iu >) to convoy moils to Halifax once a fortnight for £ 50 , 000 u-ycar . This contract was soon enlarged , and extended , till it gradually attained the gigantio dimensions of a subsidy of £ 176 , 11 A 0 a year for carrying letters between England and North America . Tho

      company to which the Great Western belonged necessarily failed in competition with a company so largely subsidised by the Government , though experience has proved that the immense passenger traffic between Liverpool and the United States can employ and remunerate several companies . In 1839 , also , Avlicn the success of the Great Western had stimulated both enterprise and cupidity , " a number of gentlemen interested in the West Indies , " — amongst them , probably , some staunch Whigs— " offered to provide steamers for keeping up a communication with that part of the world for £ 240 , 000 a year , " and this offer was agreed to by Government without inviting tenders by advertisement . The contract was entered into for teu year * . ' From that time to this the company

      then formed has continued to receive a quarter of a million of the public mouev yearly . It now receives , having extended its services , £ 2 GS , 50 () for carrying mails which might be much more advantageously sent through the United States ; and from their southern post on the . Gulf of Mexico distributed with ease and economy over all the West India islands . The possibility of effecting ' an improvement of this kind and of many other kinds was shut out from the day that the offer of these gentlemen to accept £ 240 , 000 of the public money per annum was agreed to by the servants of the public . Following this precedent exactly , Mr . L eve it made his offer , and Lord Derb y accepted it . In entering into their agreement in 1 S 5 S , they followed very closely the Whig precedent established by Sir C . Wood in 1839 .

      To officials it is nothing that this scheme of " blind contracts , " to last for a series of years , has been denounced in Parliament ; nothing that it was demonstrated that improvements in steam navigation made such contracts unnecessarily onerous for the country and very advantageous to contractors ; nothing that coinmittees ' have reported , that where there is effective competition , as there is to America , it is not necessary to subsidise contractors ; nothing that two-of the original pretexts for paying

      such subsidies- ^ -vi / ., that these packets should " be , made available , as armed vessels in case of war , "" and that British-liners must be maintained in competition with the United States—have been . given up , for the United States' subsidised line has ceased , and the construction of various iron-plated steamers-, & c . with all the organised , preparations for maritime warfare lias rendered paddle-wheel packets nearly useless in such a contest : and nothiuir that rails now extend from Portland to Georgia , anil

      make it as unnecessary to send great mail packets to the West Indies and South America with letters , as to send them to Hamburg and Bordeaux . In spite of all the altered circumstances , the precedent of giving gentlemen interested in the West Indies £ -240 , 000 a-year to carry letters thither , sot by Sir Charles Wood in 1839 , was closely followed in IS 5 7 , in the attempt to establish an Australian mail , aninn 1858 , when" tIIe ^ lCiiouric ^ l ' r ~ Li : Viiit-GTrlway contract was completed . To follow precedents is the rule of official life , the justification of official acts ; and so Sir Charles Wood's precedent , properly followed by his successors , no \ y lands the country in an annual expense of £ 1 , 000 , 000 a-year , at the option of the Secretary of the Treasury . Tlie whole contrivance seems to us . a financial juggle for the benefit of officials

      anil contractors . Experience had , before 1839 , proved beyond all contradiction that bounties of ail kinds for the encouragement of enterprise were mischievous . Parliament , though very slow in recognising new truths , had accepted this ; and bounties generally , even on baking sugar and curing herrings , had been given up . 'Bounties on the cultivation of tlie soil were indeed continued , but were reprobated as a scandalous inj ustice . After all this expense a nil

      this practice , the present Sir Ouakles Wood , then an Admiralty official , with the sanction of the Treasury , with which the Admiralty must then have acted in concert , begun , in 1839 , to give euormous bounties for the encouragement of steam navigation . It needed none . That was tho professed object of the subsidies . They might as we'll have been bestowed on railways , but for thorn there was no foreign competition , The subsidies wen ; to stifle competition on tho old anti-social policy , by keeping the Americans oil' the line .

      At that time the town interest—generally the reforming interest—predominated in Parliament , nnd so the false principle whichput money -into tho pookas of all connected with steam vessels wuti nut reprobated , The landowners and agriculturists knew nothing about the matter , and a ' system of bounties for the encouragement of stnun navigation was ' established , to the scandal of the commercial conscience , as the rule of modern policy . Tlie money is expended without any control . Parliament cannot possibly audit the Treasury accounts . The Audit Board which exists for the purpose , docs its duty when it ascertains that the money voted for these bounties goes , at least nominally , into

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1860, page 6, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_16061860/page/6/