Trade unions are not of such recent origin as many people suppose. “I am credibly informed,” wrote Mandeville, the philosophic author of the Fables of the Bees, one hundred and fifty years ago, in his Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, “that a parcel of footmen are arrived to that height of insolence as to have entered into a society together, and made laws by which they oblige themselves not to serve for less than such a sum, nor carry burdens, or any bundle or parcel above a certain weight not exceeding two or three pounds, with other regulations directly opposite to the interest of those they serve, and altogether destructive to the use they were designed for. If any of them be turned away for strictly adhering to the orders of this honorable corporation, he is taken care of till another service is provided for him; but there is no money wanting at any time to commence and maintain a lawsuit against any that shall pretend to strike or offer any other injury to his gentleman footman, contrary to the statutes of their society. If this be true, as I believe it is, and they are suffered to go on in consulting and providing for their own ease and conveniency any further, we may expect quickly to see the French comedy ‘Le Maitre le Valet’ acted in good earnest in most families; while, if not redressed in a little time, and these footmen increase their company to the number it is possible they may, as well as assemble when they please with impunity, it will be in their power to make a tragedy of it whenever they have a mind to.”
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.
On page 454 of Senator Wilson’s Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, he says (of a speech of the late Mr. Giddings): “He referred to the Treaty of Indian Springs, by which, after paying the slaveholders of Georgia the sum of $109,000 for slaves who had escaped to Florida, it added the sum of $141,000 as compensation demanded for the offspring which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage; and Congress actually paid that sum for children who were never born, but who might have been if their parents had remained faithful slaves.”
There is no clearer case of the payment of “consequential damages” in English or American history than this.
THE ORIGINAL SHYLOCK.
Gregory Leti, in his biography of Sextus V., tells us that Paul Secchi, a Venetian merchant, having learned by private advices that Admiral Francis Blake had conquered St. Domingo, communicated the news to a Jewish merchant named Sampson Ceneda. The latter was so confident that the information was false, that, after repeated protestations, he said, “I bet a pound of my flesh that the report is untrue.” “And I lay a thousand scudi against it,” rejoined the Christian, who caused a bond to be drawn to the effect that in case the report should prove untrue, then the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is bound to pay the Jewish merchant the sum of 1000 scudi, and on the other hand, if the truth of the news be confirmed, the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is justified and empowered to cut with his own hand, with a well-sharpened knife, a pound of the Jew’s fair flesh, of that part of the body it might please him. When the news proved true, the Christian insisted on his bond, but the governor, having got wind of the affair, reported it to the Pope, who condemned both Jew and Christian to the galleys, from which they could only be ransomed by paying a fine of double the amount of the wager.
Shakspeare reverses the order, and makes the Jew usurer demand the pound of flesh from the Christian merchant.
EXCOMMUNICATION.
The excommunication of the Roman Catholic Church, exactly described by anticipation in Cæsar’s account of their predecessors, the Heathen Druids, will be found in Cæsar, de Bello Gallico, Book VI. Chap, iii., the passage beginning “Si quis aut privatus aut publicus,” and ending “Neque honos ullus communicatur.”
They decree rewards and punishments, and if any one refuses to submit to their sentence, whether magistrate or private man, they interdict him the sacrifices. This is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted among the Gauls; because such as are under this prohibition are considered as impious and wicked; all men shun them, and decline their conversation and fellowship, lest they should suffer from the contagion of their misfortunes. They can neither have recourse to the law for justice, nor are capable of any public office.