The Trades Union Congress met this year on Monday, at
Dublin, no less than 130 delegates from various parts of the kingdom being present. The discussions were of the most tem- perate kind, and the speeches of the delegates would have seemed to Continental workmen tame to submissiveness. The delegates utterly repudiated violence on behalf of the Trades Unions, and declared that they did not attack capital, but only asked for a larger share of its profits than the mite with which some capitalists expected them to be content. They expressed
pleasure at the election of workmen as Members ; demanded re- form in the method of administering summary justice, desiring, apparently, to supersede unpaid magistrates by the Small-Cause Courts, and also a codification of the law administered ; were severe upon the exclusion of workmen from juries, and listened patiently to an argument that women should sit on them. They discussed the Employers' Liability Bill in the temperate spirit described elsewhere, and, in fact, showed a sanity, not to say a judgment, which must astound those who look on all Trades Unions as conspiracies. If Irishmen could discuss their views in that tone, how rapid Irish reform would be ; but then, also, what little need of reform there would be. What with fair wages and perfect freedom and education, the English work- man world, like the trading world, is getting drab-coloured.
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