the raising of wages as
illegal; to attempt such combinations was ruled to be conspiracy. And
conspiracy all unions of working men have remained down to the present
day, as the founders of the first Trades Unions in this country
discovered to their cost. So the men were gagged; they were silenced;
they were enslaved by the very institution that they had founded for
the insurance of their own freedom. The thing was inevitable because
they were ignorant, and because, if you put into any man's hands the
power of robbing his neighbour with impunity, that man will inevitably
sooner or later rob his neighbour. I fear that we must acknowledge the
sorrowful fact that not a single man in the whole world, whatever his
position, can be trusted with irresponsible and absolute power--with
the power of robbery coupled with the certainty of immunity.

Well, in this way came about the first enslavement of the working man.
It lasted for three hundred years. Then followed a time of comparative
freedom, when, the wealth and population of the city increasing, the
craftsmen found themselves pushed out beyond the walls, and taking up
their quarters beyond the power of the Companies. But it was a freedom
without knowledge, without order, without forethought. It was the
freedom of the savage who lives only for himself. For they were now
unable to combine. In the long course of centuries they had lost the
very idea of combination; they had forgotten that in an age we call
rude and rough they possessed the power and perceived the importance
of combination. The great-grandchildren of the men who had formed this
union of the trade had entirely forgotten the meaning, the reason, the
possibility, of the old combination. In this way, then, the Companies
gradually lost their craftsmen, but retained their property.

One very remarkable result may be noticed. Formerly, the Lord Mayor of
London was elected by the whole of the commonalty. All the citizens
assembled at Paul's Cross, and there, sometimes with tumult and
sometimes with fighting, they elected their mayor for the next year.
But since every man in the City was compelled to belong to his own
Company, to speak of the commonalty meant to speak of the Companies.
Every man who voted for the election of Lord Mayor was therefore bound
to be a liveryman--_i.e_., a member of a Company. This restriction is
still in force; that is to say, the City of London, the richest and
the greatest city in the world