[172]When Place in 1824 urged the “Committee of Engine Silk-weavers” of Spitalfields to petition for a repeal of the Combination Laws, the meeting “Resolved, that protected as we have been for years under the salutary laws and wisdom of the Legislature, and being completely unapprehensive of any sort of combination on our part, we cannot therefore take any sort of notice of the invitation held out by Mr. Place.” When this resolution was put by the chairman, “an unanimous burst of applause followed, with a multitude of voices exclaiming, ‘The law, cling to the law, it will protect us!’” Place MSS. 27800—52; Morning Chronicle, February 9, 1824.
[173]The volumes for 1818-19 are in the British Museum.
[174]The story has now been well told in The Life of Francis Place, by Prof. Graham Wallas, revised edition, 1918, ch. viii.; and in The Town Labourer, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1917, ch. vii. A few other details will be found in Digest of Evidence before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery, by George White, 1824, and in Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 43-57.
[175]In 1823 George White, a “clerk of committees” of the House of Commons, had formed an alliance with Gravener Henson, the bobbin-net maker of Nottingham, who had long been a leader of the framework-knitters’ combinations, to whom reference has been made in preceding pages. Together they prepared an elaborate Bill repealing all the Combination Acts, and substituting a complicated machinery for regulating piecework and settling industrial disputes. Some of these proposals were meritorious anticipations of subsequent factory legislation; but the time was not ripe for such measures. This Bill, promptly introduced by Peter Moore, the member for Coventry, had the effect of scaring some timid legislators, and especially alarming the Front Bench. Hume was at a loss to know how to act; but Place, in a letter displaying great political sagacity, advised him to baulk the rival Bill by putting its author on the Committee of Inquiry, explaining that “Moore is not a man to be put aside. The only way to put him down is to let him talk his nonsense in the Committee, where, being outvoted, he will be less of an annoyance in the House.” See Place MSS. 27798—12.
[176]Place MSS. 27798—30.
[177]This attracted the attention of the Home Secretary (Home Office Papers, 40—18).
[178]Place offered to act as Hume’s “assistant”; but the members of the Committee, whose suspicions had been aroused, refused to permit him to remain in the room, on the double ground that he was not a member of the House, nor even a gentleman!
[179]Place MSS. 27798—22.
[180]Ibid. 27798—23.
[181]Place MS. 27798—22.