into an unlawful act so as to render the doer thereof liable to an action by a person who suffers damage from such act. But note that the motive influencing the doer of an act is in itself a totally different thing, though often confounded with the purpose or object for the attainment of which he does the act. 2. Acts which are not in themselves un lawful when done by persons acting in com bination, solely with the lawful object of pro tecting their trade and increasing their prof its are not actionable. 3. A combination of X, Y and Z to do an act which, if done by X alone, would not be either criminal or wrongful, may be a conspiracy. 4. A combination of X, Y and Z to break or to cause others to break a contract with A, or (semble) to induce others not to enter into contracts with A, is, in the absence of distinct legal justification, a conspiracy, and gives A, if damaged thereby, a cause of action. 5. The Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, s. 3, has nothing to do with civil remedies; a trade combination, that is to say, of X, Y, and Z, which is not indictable as a conspiracy, may yet, if it damages A, give A a right of action. 6. A registered, and probably an unregis tered, trade union is liable to be used for torts committed by its agents; and also, it would seem, is competent to sue as a plaintiff. The interpretation put by the courts on the compromise of 1875 is, it is submitted, from a legal point of view, thoroughly sound, and will commend itself to men of whatever party who still hold that personal liberty is the basis of national welfare. But this inter pretation does undoubtedly deprive trade un ionists of advantages which, in common with many lawyers, they believed that they had obtained under the Act of 1875. It is now, at any rate, abundantly clear that neither tiade unions nor any other associations can under English law possess property without incurring that liability to pay damages for
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wrongs done by themselves or by their agents which attaches to all property holders. In a sense, therefore, the interpretation put by the courts upon the Act of 1875, and other enactments connected with it, does mark a reaction not against the provisions of that Act, but against the tendency so to construe them as to confer upon trade unions a posi tion of privilege. The causes of this reaction are to be found in the' current of opinion, and indeed might be all summed up in the existence of the one word "boycott." The term, which has ob tained a world-wide acceptance, came into being during the autumn of 1880. It spread far and wide because it supplied a new name for an old social disease which had reap peared in a new and most dangerous form. It bore witness to the pressing peril that freedom of combination might, if unre strained, give a death-blow to individual liberty. The results, then, of our survey can be thus summed up: The combination law has from the end of the eighteenth century precisely corres ponded with the course of opinion. The Combination Act, 1800, represents the panic-stricken but paternal Toryism of that date. The Combination Acts, 1824, 1825, even in their singular fluctuation, precisely corres pond with the Benthamite ideal of free trade in labor. The compromise of 1875 represents in the main the combined influence of democracy and collectivism. The interpretation of that compromise by the courts represents the belief, still strong in England, in the sacredness of individual liberty and the sense of the peril to which personal liberty is exposed by an unrestrict ed right of combination. The very confusion of the present state of the law corresponds with and illustrates a confused state of opinion. We all of us in England still fancy at least that we believe in the blessings of freedom, yet, to quote an expression which has become proverbial,
