Mr. Sidney Webb pointed out that a strike for a
shorter working day in the mines could logically he called an 'attempt at coercing the Government now that miners' hours arc fixed by law. Yet no sane person could pretend that the miners would be committing any illegal act if they thought fit, however foolishly, to strike for a restore seven hours' day. The Attorney-General said that them was no danger of injustice. Mr. 1Vebb's point, however, has a very wide application. Nowadays in every large strike the Government sooner or later intervene ; but directly they have intervened they create a situation in which it might be said that resistance by the strikers to anything which the Government wished was illegal. The great point is to insist that the Bill shall contain nothing which is a useless or dangerous excrescence upon the four main principles. As to the abstract justice of those main principles there cannot be any dispute.
