As to the debate itself, the effort made by Mr.
Asquith and his supporters to show that the railway men were not really favourable to the amendment, and had voted for it under a sort of coercion, completely failed, nor did Mr. Burns succeed in persuading any even of the most earnestly Gladstonian supporters of the clause that the secret feeling of the railway servants was adverse to it. On the contrary, some of them who held most strongly to Mr. MeLaren's amendment, openly avowed that they did so from no sort of abstract respect for freedom of contract, but solely on account of the very strong desire of the railway employ6s to keep the advantages they had gained by their directors' liberal contribution to the benefit fund,—this strongly expressed desire having con- vinced them that the railway servants would lose seriously by being forbidden to contract themselves out of the Bill. Mr. Neville, for instance (M.P. for the Exchange Division of Liver- pool), derided the idea that he was fighting for the abstract right of free contract. On the contrary, he was fighting for an arrangement by which the railway servants had gained very largely in security and compensation for accidents. The extreme partisans of the Labour party, however, spoke and voted steadily against the clause. They tried to show that the railway employs were not at heart favourable to it ; but in reality they did not approve the rising up of a class of employos strong enough to 15e independent of the great Unions themselves.
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