“The Press” In 1864

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30634, 28 December 1964, Page 10

“The Press” In 1864

DECEMBER 27. THE MASTERS AND SERVANTS ACT There can be little doubt but that the proposal to pass the Masters and Servants Bill which we published yesterday will make a profound sensation amongst the working men of New Zealand. W’e have no desire to stimulate the feeling of indignation which will naturally and justly arise. Our indignation as expressed yesterday, was not against the Bill itself, but against the contemptible attempt which was made to pawn off such a measure on the people as a Bill for the “protection of servants.” At present we wish to address ourselves not to the working classes, whose opposition it is quite needless to anticipate, but to the other class concerned, the employers of labor, and to show how the proposed Bill is impolitic because it is opposed to the advancing spirit of legislation in an enlightened age. There are upon the English statute book many laws which render the breach of an engagement for service on the part of work men a criminal offence. It is not to be denied that that was the ancient spint of English law, and it may be readily supposed that this view was handed down from those earlier ages of

society, in which the servant was supposed to be bound to his master by social ties very different from those which arise out of a commercial contract only. Probably the condition of slavery in some form or another existed in every race and nation in the earliest stages of its history. In England the right of the master over the labor of the serf lasted till long after the Conquest. In Russia it lasted until the reign of the present Emperor, and, we belive, has not yet been wholly abolished. And we imagine it will not be disputed that the laws on the English statute book, which are still in force on this subject, and which treat bargains for service as exceptional to all others, are the last remains of a state of society in which the labor of the servant was vested as a species of property in the master. Masters and Servants Acts have been repeated in some of the Australian Colonies; but when we remember that the basis of all the relations between employers and employed in Australia arose out of a system of convict—in other words, of slave—labor, it is not to be wondered at that the taint of the old doctrine should have reappeared even in those regions of boasted freedom.