[256] This was a year fruitful in Cabinet meetings. On the 22nd of January Lord Malmesbury writes, “Cabinets every day to the end of the month; some at Lord Derby’s, who was ill with the gout.”—Memoirs of an ex-Minister, ibid.
[257] Mr. Dudley Baxter, who prepared Mr. Disraeli’s figures for him.
[258] See on this subject a curious letter from Mr. Hayward to Mr. Gladstone written on the 15th of August, 1866. Mr. Hayward says:—“I entirely agree in what you say of the House of Commons and the Liberal party, which is neutralised by the individual crotchets of its members.”—Correspondence of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 147.
[259] Mr. Alexander Paul’s History of Reform, pp. 201-203.
[260] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 371.
[261] The National Budget, by A. J. Wilson, p. 95. Macmillan and Co.
[262] The Parnellite Movement, by T. P. O’Connor, M.P., chap. vii.
[263] Ibid., p. 137. Popular Edition, Ward and Downey, 1887.
[264] Some of the witnesses under cross-examination broke down and fainted when confessions of guilt were extorted from them.
[265] It is instructive to look back on the speeches delivered at this meeting. They give one a vivid idea of the humiliating status of the British workman at that time. The complaints of the speakers may be summed up thus: (1), whereas the masters’ associations were free to send circulars to each other urging the dismissal of “marked” unionists, workmen were, by a recent legal decision, guilty of an indictable offence if they “picketed” or endeavoured to dissuade each other from serving a master whose men had struck work; (2), the law of conspiracy had been so strained as to make an act which when done by an individual was legal, illegal when done by two or more individuals in combination; (3), masters who broke contracts were only fined, whereas breach of contract by workmen was punished by imprisonment.