Pagina 170 de 2651

The masters, upon these occasions, are just as clamorous upon the

other side, and never cease to call aloud for the assistance of

the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws

which have been enacted with so much severity against the

combination of servants, labourers, and journeymen. The workmen,

accordingly, very seldom derive any advantage from the violence

of those tumultuous combinations, which, partly from the

interposition of the civil magistrate, partly from the superior

steadiness of the masters, partly from the necessity which the

greater part of the workmen are under of submitting for the sake

of present subsistence, generally end in nothing but the

punishment or ruin of the ringleaders.

But though, in disputes with their workmen, masters must

generally have the advantage, there is, however, a certain rate,

below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable

time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour.