THE COLLIERS.

Southland Times, Issue 1734, 29 April 1873, Page 3

THE COLLIERS.

(From the Edinburgh Daily Review.) Liberty is among the best of things ; but, according to the old and true saying, the best of things, when abused, become the worst, and to this, liberty is no exception. Songs have been sung in praise of it ; and the muse of this goddess has often made even faint hearts brave, and stirred not heroes only, but the average man to risk life and all that was dearest in order to break the oppressor's chain. Burns well understood this when be wrote " Scots wha hae ;" and there hay« been many trumpet-blasts of warcries on the key-note of " a day, an hour, of glorious liberty, is worth a whole eternity of bondage." All right and well ; indeed, much if not most of what is beroic and noble in history centres upon or radiates from the struggles of nations and individuals to be free. • This is the bright and noble side, and I it wins and attracts the best sympathies I of th« best of men. But, unfortunately, j it is sot all gold that glitters ; and " the freeman whom the truth makes free" has sometimes mournfully to admit that there are two kinds of liberty — a sterling and a counterfeit. " The liberty of not being oppressed by your fellow man," says a well known writer, "is an indispensable, yet one of the most insignificant fractional parts of human liberty. No man oppresses tbee, can bid thee fetch or carry, come or go, without reason shown. True, from all men tfaou art emancipated ; but from thyself and from the devil ? No man oppresses thee, O free and independent franchiser; but does not this stupid porter-pot oppress thee ? Thou art the thrall, not of Cedric the Saxon, but of thy own brutal appetites and this scoured dish of liquor. And thou pratest of thy liberty? Thou entire blockhead !" Just so ! There are self-imposed restrictions upon liberty when a man makes himself the slave of the " scoured dish of liquor ;" when he submits to a tyrant whom he at once loves and hates, whom he clings to and despises. No man can bid him " fetch or carry" without reason shown ; not so, at least, in ordinary circumstances. But still, even in this free country, there are exceptional circumstances in which the "free and independent franchiser" must " fetch and Cany" Whether he lifeea or no ; and, in view of the vagaries of certain " entire blockheads" in these days, there are genuine lovers of liberty — rightly so called — who sincerely wish that this infringement of liberty were somewhat extended. The free-born Briton is bound by law to " fetch and carry" as a special constable when the public safety requires it. He may sympathise with rioters, but be is bound to turn out and help to suppress them. We have not yet a military conscription, but in case of invasion most probably we should have. These limitations of the liberty of the subject are devised in the interests of society, and are justified by it. The ruling principle is, the greatest good or happiness of the greatest number. It is a pity that we, and countless numbers in these days, should have to think of these things, not in a speculative way only, but on the compulsion of circumstances with scarcely a precedent in the history of the world. By liberty run mad and become unbearable tyranny, the servants of the London gas companies the other day threw the metropolis into partial darkness, just at the season when light was most needed both for comfort and safety ; and if the darkness was not complete it was from no good wish of theirs. Something in the same line was attempted in Greenock last week, and was prevented only by the authorities capitulating to the mutineers ! These are extreme cases in their own way, but they are not the worst or greatest with which we have to deal in these days For now nearly twelve months, a class of workmen with whom the public, from the Queen downwards, has long sympathised, have turned round upon their friends and taxed them fully one hundred per cent, on an indispensable article of daily life. According to tradition, the Druids ordered all fires to be put out at Hallowe'en. to be relighted by them on payment of a tax for the new or sacred fire. The time was well chosen. At the beginning of winter the tax would be paid more promptly than at midsummer. We have this bit of Druidism repeated in those passing days, under the desecrated name of liberty, because no man can compel the colliers to "fetch or carry." We would say "poor fellows" rather than "Jentire blockheads." But they are foolish as well as tyrannical, and do not know what a fund of wrath they are laying up for themselves, even in the breasts of their own class. We do not blame the working colliers wholly. Indeed, there is some reason to think that we owe the coal dearth, if not the coal famine, more to their masters. 'The coal dearth is one thing, the coal famine is another, although they are twin and kindred diseases. There is dearth because — by an abuse of free trade— the coalmasters are too like all monopolists in what we call the bad old times ; and there is scarcity because the colliers — by an abuse of liberty — refuse to perform the usual amount of work. The result is that the public, and ever so many public industries, are between the prongs of a tremendous nut-cracker, and for the present, with no natural scarcity of coal, do not well know how to help themselves. Public works stopptd ; ever so many others all but reduced to their last ton of coal j the railway companies approaching the same cold, dismal terminus ; hundreds, thousands, prospective tens or hundreds of thousands of workpeople thrown or about to be thrown out of employment — to be sent to homes without fire, and by-and-bye without bread, This is what is coming or may come as the result of the disputes between masters and men in one branch of our national industry. We have said nothing of the general public on the outside of public works, of, the cold, dismal condition of hundreds of thousands of homes

in the three kingdoms in these dull, inclement days and nights. Much might be said of this, but we name it and pass on. There is the evil or disease. Where shall we look for the remedy, or to what doctor ? A most difficult problem solicits the attention of our wisest statesmen. Nearly thirty years ago Carlyle wrote as follows : — " This largest of questions, this question of work and wages, which ought, had we heeded heaven's Toice, to hare begun two generations ago or more, cannot be delayed longer without hearing earth's voice." So it would appear. So we see and feel it in these days. But what shall we do ? What can we do ? " Labor," says the sage we have named, " will verily need to be somewhat organised, as they say ; God knows with what difficulty !" Yes, and we all know with what difficulty, and we know and feel the high price we have to pay because this " largest of question," instead of being " organised," has been left wholly to the law of supply and demand. This law, which includes free trade and other economic things, is good enough for fair weather and smooth seas. Politically, it includes the liberty with which we started ; and no ordinary thing, or condition of society, or prospective circuHQßtances, would induce us lightly to interfere with it. But, then, we have reached a stage which is exceptional, and compared with which the monopoly of the corn laws, which stirred the heart of the nation to passion, almost to mutiny, thirty years ago, was but a trifle. Our landlords and farmers hardly ever had a monopoly of the home markets ; but, practically, our coalovrnera have. They and their colliers might do well to come to terms as soon as possible. With plenty of coals under our feet, it is not Hkely that the much-revered rights of property will be allowed for long to stand between the public and this indispensable thing. This coal famine and coal scarcity is the most monstrous and unreasonable thiag ever heard of or endured in this country, and if the evil be not much modified before the 6th of February, both parties may expect to hear of it in the House of Commons.