No More Learning

31 Interesting details on this fish trade will be found in Mr. David Urquhart's Portfolio, new series. -- Nassau W. Senior, in his posthumous work, already quoted, terms --the proceedings in Sutherlandshire one of the most beneficent clearings since the memory of man. ? (l. c. )
32 The deer-forests of Scotland contain not a single tree. The sheep are driven from, and then the deer driven to, the naked hills, and then it is called a deer-forest. Not even timber-planting and real forest culture.
33 Robert Somers: --Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847. ? London, 1848, pp. 12-28 passim. These letters originally appeared in The Times. The English economists of course explained the famine of the Gaels in 1847, by their over-population. At all events, they --were pressing on their food-supply. ? The --clearing of estates,? or as it is called in Germany, --Bauernlegen,? occurred in Germany especially after the 30 years' war, and led to peasant-revolts as late as 1790 in Kursachsen. It obtained especially in East Germany. In most of the Prussian provinces, Frederick II. for the first time secured right of property for the peasants. After the conquest of Silesia he forced the landlords to rebuild the huts, barns, etc. , and to provide the peasants with cattle and implements. He wanted soldiers for his army and tax-payers for his treasury. For the rest, the pleasant life that the peasant led under Frederick's system of finance and hodge-podge rule of despotism, bureaucracy and feudalism, may be seen from the following quotation from his admirer, Mirabeau: --Le lin fait donc une des grandes richesses du cultivateur dans le Nord de l'Allemagne. Malheureusement pour l'espe`ce humaine, ce n'est qu'une ressource contre la mise`re et non un moyen de bien-e^tre. Les impo^ts directs, les corve? es, les servitudes de tout genre, e? crasent le cultivateur allemand, qui paie encore des impo^ts indirects dans tout ce qu'il ache`te. . . . et pour comble de ruine, il n'ose pas vendre ses productions ou` et comme il le veut; il n'ose pas acheter ce dont il a besoin aux marchands qui pourraient le lui livrer au meilleur prix. Toutes ces causes le ruinent insensiblement, et il se trouverait hors d'e? tat de payer les impo^ts directs a` l'e? che? ance sans la filerie; elle lui offre une ressource, en occupant utilement sa femme, ses enfants, ses servants, ses valets, et lui-me^me; mais quelle pe? nible vie, me^me aide? e de ce secours. En e? te? , il travaille comme un forc? at au labourage et a` la re? colte; il se couche a` 9 heures et se le`ve a` deux, pour suffire aux travaux; en hiver il devrait re? parer ses forces par un plus grand repos; mais il manquera de grains pour le pain et les semailles, s'il se de? fait des denre? es qu'il faudrait vendre pour payer les impo^ts. Il faut donc filer pour supple? er a` ce vide. . . . il faut y apporter la plus grande assiduite? . Aussi le paysan se couche-t-il en hiver a` minuit, une heure, et se le`ve a` cinq ou six; ou bien il se couche a` neuf, et se le`ve a` deux, et cela tous les jours de la vie si ce n'est le dimanche. Ces exce`s de veille et de travail usent la nature humaine, et de la` vient qu'hommes et femmes vieillissent beaucoup pluto^t dans les campagnes que dans les villes. ? [Flax represents one of the greatest sources of wealth for the peasant of North Germany. Unfortunately for the human race, this is only a resource against misery and not a means towards well-being. Direct taxes, forced labour service, obligations of all kinds crush the German peasant, especially as he still has to pay indirect taxes on everything he buys, . . . and to complete his ruin he dare not sell his produce where and as he wishes; he dare not buy what he needs from the merhcants who could sell it to him at a cheaper price. He is slowly ruined by all those factors, and when the dirct taxes fall due, he would find himself incapable of paying them
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without his spinning-wheel; it offers him a last resort, while providing useful occupation for his wife, his children, his maids, his farm-hands, and himself; but what a painful life he leads, even with this extra resource! In summer, he works like a convict with the plough and at harvest; he goes to bed at nine o'clock and rises at two to get through all his work; in winter he ought to be recovering his strength by sleeping longer; but he would run short of corn for his bread and next year's sowing if he got rid of the products that he needs to sell in order to pay the taxes. He therefore has to spin to fill up this gap . . . and indeed he must do so most assiduously. Thus the peasant goes to bed at midnight or one o'clock in winter, and gets up at five or six; or he gies to bed at nine and gets up at two, and this he does every day of his life except Sundays. These excessively short hours of sleep and long hours of work consume a person's strength and hence it happens that men and women age much more in the country than in the towns] (Mirabeau, l. c. , t. III. pp. 212 sqq. )
Note to the second edition. In April 1866, 18 years after the publication of the work of Robert Somers quoted above, Professor Leone Levi gave a lecture before the Society of Arts on the transformation of sheep-walks into deer-forest, in which he depicts the advance in the devastation of the Scottish Highlands. He says, with other things: --Depopulation and transformation into sheep-walks were the most convenient means for getting an income without expenditure. . . A deer-forest in place of a sheep- walk was a common change in the Highlands. The landowners turned out the sheep as they once turned out the men from their estates, and welcomed the new tenants -- the wild beasts and the feathered birds. . . . One can walk from the Earl of Dalhousie's estates in Forfarshire to John O'Groats, without ever leaving forest land. . . . In many of these woods the fox, the wild cat, the marten, the polecat, the weasel and the Alpine hare are common; whilst the rabbit, the squirrel and the rat have lately made their way into the country. Immense tracts of land, much of which is described in the statistical account of Scotland as having a pasturage in richness and extent of very superior description, are thus shut out from all cultivation and improvement, and are solely devoted to the sport of a few persons for a very brief period of the year. ? The London Economist of June 2, 1866, says, --Amongst the items of news in a Scotch paper of last week, we read. . . 'One of the finest sheep farms in Sutherlandshire, for which a rent of ? 1,200 a year was recently offered, on the expiry of the existing lease this year, is to be converted into a deer-forest. ' Here we see the modern instincts of feudalism . . . operating pretty much as they did when the Norman Conqueror. . . destroyed 36 villages to create the New Forest. . . . Two millions of acres. . . totally laid waste, embracing within their area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass of Glen Tilt was among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The deer-forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best grazing ground in the wide district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest was the best pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground laid waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed from the fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss sustained from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000 sheep, and as it was not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest ground in Scotland . . . it might, &c. , . . . All that forest land is as totally unproductive. . . . It might thus as well have been submerged under the waters of the German Ocean. . . . Such extemporised wildernesses or deserts ought to be put down by the decided interference of the Legislature. ?
? ? Chapter 28: Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th
Century. Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament
The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this --free? proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against vagabondage. The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as --voluntary? criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed.
In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to where they have lived the last three years and to --put themselves to labour. ? What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII. the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal.
Edward VI. : A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a red-hot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &c. , if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the neck,
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arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him. 1 The last part of this statute provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of --roundsmen. ?
Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597. 2
James 1: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit. . . Incorrigible and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were only repealed by 12 Anne, c. 23.
Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI. 's reign (Ordinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the --Plakaat? of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c.
Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital.
The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the --natural laws of production,? i. e. , to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves. It is otherwise during the historic genesis of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise, wants and uses the power of the state to --regulate? wages, i. e. , to force them within the limits suitable for surplus value making, to lengthen the working day and to keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation.
The class of wage labourers, which arose in the latter half of the 14th century, formed then and in the following century only a very small part of the population, well protected in its position by the independent peasant proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the town. In country and town master and workmen stood close together socially. The subordination of labour to capital was only formal - i. e. , the mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
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character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over constant. The demand for wage labour grew, therefore, rapidly with every accumulation of capital, whilst the supply of wage labour followed but slowly. A large part of the national product, changed later into a fund of capitalist accumulation, then still entered into the consumption-fund of the labourer.
Legislation on wage labour (from the first, aimed at the exploitation of the labourer and, as it advanced, always equally hostile to him),3 is started in England by the Statute of Labourers, of Edward III. , 1349. The ordinance of 1350 in France, issued in the name of King John, corresponds with it. English and French legislation run parallel and are identical in purport. So far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory extension of the working day, I do not return to them, as this point was treated earlier (Chap. X. , Section 5).
The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent instance of the House of Commons. A Tory says naively:
--Formerly the poor demanded such high wages as to threaten industry and wealth. Next, their wages are so low as to threaten industry and wealth equally and perhaps more, but in another way. ? 4 A tariff of wages was fixed by law for town and country, for piece work and day work. The agricultural labourers were to hire themselves out by the year, the town ones --in open market. ? It was forbidden, under pain of imprisonment, to pay higher wages than those fixed by the statute, but the taking of higher wages was more severely punished than the giving them. [So also in Sections 18 and 19 of the Statute of Apprentices of Elizabeth, ten days' imprisonment is decreed for him that pays the higher wages, but twenty-one days for him that receives them. ] A statute of 1360 increased the penalties and authorised the masters to extort labour at the legal rate of wages by corporal punishment. All combinations, contracts, oaths, &c. , by which masons and carpenters reciprocally bound themselves, were declared null and void. Coalition of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime from the 14th century to 1825, the year of the repeal of the laws against Trades' Unions. The spirit of the Statute of Labourers of 1349 and of its offshoots comes out clearly in the fact, that indeed a maximum of wages is dictated by the State, but on no account a minimum.
In the 16th century, the condition of the labourers had, as we know, become much worse. The money wage rose, but not in proportion to the depreciation of money and the corresponding rise in the prices of commodities. Wages, therefore, in reality fell. Nevertheless, the laws for keeping them down remained in force, together with the ear-clipping and branding of those --whom no one was willing to take into service. ? By the Statute of Apprentices 5 Elizabeth, c. 3, the justices of the peace were empowered to fix certain wages and to modify them according to the time of the year and the price of commodities. James I. extended these regulations of labour also to weavers, spinners, and all possible categories of workers. 5 George II. extended the laws against coalitions of labourers to manufactures. In the manufacturing period par excellence, the capitalist mode of production had become sufficiently strong to render legal regulation of wages as impracticable as it was unnecessary; but the ruling classes were unwilling in case of necessity to be without the weapons of the old arsenal. Still, 8 George II. forbade a higher day's wage than 2s. 71/2d. for journeymen tailors in and around London, except in cases of general mourning; still, 13 George III. , c. 68, gave the regulation of the wages of silk-weavers to the justices of the peace; still, in 1706, it required two judgments of the higher courts to decide, whether the mandates of justices of the peace as to wages held good also for non-agricultural labourers; still, in 1799, an act of Parliament ordered that the wages of the Scotch miners should continue to be regulated by a statute of Elizabeth and two Scotch acts of 1661 and 1671. How completely in the meantime
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circumstances had changed, is proved by an occurrence unheard-of before in the English Lower House. In that place, where for more than 400 years laws had been made for the maximum, beyond which wages absolutely must not rise, Whitbread in 1796 proposed a legal minimum wage for agricultural labourers. Pitt opposed this, but confessed that the --condition of the poor was cruel. ? Finally, in 1813, the laws for the regulation of wages were repealed. They were an absurd anomaly, since the capitalist regulated his factory by his private legislation, and could by the poor-rates make up the wage of the agricultural labourer to the indispensable minimum. The provisions of the labour statutes as to contracts between master and workman, as to giving notice and the like, which only allow of a civil action against the contract-breaking master, but on the contrary permit a criminal action against the contract-breaking workman, are to this hour (1873) in full force. The barbarous laws against Trades' Unions fell in 1825 before the threatening bearing of the proletariat. Despite this, they fell only in part. Certain beautiful fragments of the old statute vanished only in 1859. Finally, the act of Parliament of June 29, 1871, made a pretence of removing the last traces of this class of legislation by legal recognition of Trades' Unions. But an act of Parliament of the same date (an act to amend the criminal law relating to violence, threats, and molestation), re-established, in point of fact, the former state of things in a new shape. By this Parliamentary escamotage the means which the labourers could use in a strike or lock-out were withdrawn from the laws common to all citizens, and placed under exceptional penal legislation, the interpretation of which fell to the masters themselves in their capacity as justices of the peace. Two years earlier, the same House of Commons and the same Mr. Gladstone in the well-known straightforward fashion brought in a bill for the abolition of all exceptional penal legislation against the working class. But this was never allowed to go beyond the second reading, and the matter was thus protracted until at last the --great Liberal party,? by an alliance with the Tories, found courage to turn against the very proletariat that had carried it into power. Not content with this treachery, the --great Liberal party? allowed the English judges, ever complaisant in the service of the ruling classes, to dig up again the earlier laws against --conspiracy,? and to apply them to coalitions of labourers. We see that only against its will and under the pressure of the masses did the English Parliament give up the laws against Strikes and Trades' Unions, after it had itself, for 500 years, held, with shameless egoism, the position of a permanent Trades' Union of the capitalists against the labourers.
During the very first storms of the revolution, the French bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the right of association but just acquired. By a decree of June 14, 1791, they declared all coalition of the workers as --an attempt against liberty and the declaration of the rights of man,? punishable by a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the rights of an active citizen for one year. 6 This law which, by means of State compulsion, confined the struggle between capital and labour within limits comfortable for capital, has outlived revolutions and changes of dynasties. Even the Reign of Terror left it untouched. It was but quite recently struck out of the Penal Code. Nothing is more characteristic than the pretext for this bourgeois coup d'e? tat. --Granting,? says Chapelier, the reporter of the Select Committee on this law, --that wages ought to be a little higher than they are, . . . that they ought to be high enough for him that receives them, to be free from that state of absolute dependence due to the want of the necessaries of life, and which is almost that of slavery,? yet the workers must not be allowed to come to any understanding about their own interests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their --absolute dependence, which is almost that of slavery;? because, forsooth, in doing this they injure --the freedom of their cidevant masters, the present entrepreneurs,? and because a coalition against the despotism of the quondam masters of the corporations is - guess what! - is a restoration of the corporations abolished by the French constitution. 7
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1 The author of the --Essay on Trade, etc. ,? 1770, says, --In the reign of Edward VI. indeed the English seem to have set, in good earnest, about encouraging manufactures and employing the poor. This we learn from a remarkable statute which runs thus: ? That all vagrants shall be branded, &c. '? l. c. , p. 5.
2 Thomas More says in his --Utopia": --Therfore that on covetous and unsatiable cormaraunte and very plage of his native contrey maye compasse aboute and inclose many thousand akers of grounde together within one pale or hedge, the husbandman be thrust owte of their owne, or els either by coneyne and fraude, or by violent oppression they be put besydes it, or by wrongs and iniuries thei be so weried that they be compelled to sell all: by one meanes, therfore, or by other, either by hooke or crooke they muste needes departe awaye, poore, selye, wretched soules, men, women, husbands, wiues, fatherlesse children, widowes, wofull mothers with their yonge babes, and their whole household smal in substance, and muche in numbre, as husbandrye requireth many handes. Awaye thei trudge, I say, owte of their knowen accustomed houses, fyndynge no place to reste in. All their housholde stuffe, which is very little woorthe, thoughe it might well abide the sale: yet beeynge sodainely thruste owte, they be constrayned to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they haue wandered abrode tyll that be spent, what cant they then els doe but steale, and then iustly pardy be hanged, or els go about beggyng. And yet then also they be caste in prison as vagaboundes, because they go aboute and worke not: whom no man wyl set a worke though thei neuer so willyngly profre themselues therto. ? Of these poor fugitives of whom Thomas More says that they were forced to thieve, --7,200 great and petty thieves were put to death,? in the reign of Henry VIII. (Holinshed, --Description of England,? Vol. 1, p. 186. ) In Elizabeth's time, --rogues were trussed up apace, and that there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes. ? (Strype's --Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion and other Various Occurrences in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign. ? Second ed. , 1725, Vol. 2. ) According to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 discharged as --incorrigible vagabonds. ? Nevertheless, he is of opinion that this large number of prisoners does not comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence of the justices and the foolish compassion of the people; and the other counties of England were not better off in this respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse.
3 --Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters,? says A. Smith. --L'esprit des lois, c'est la proprie? te? ,? says Linguet.
4 --Sophisms of Free Trade. ? By a Barrister. Lond. , 1850, p. 206. He adds maliciously: --We were ready enough to interfere for the employer, can nothing now be done for the employed? ?
5 From a clause of Statute 2 James I. , c. 6, we see that certain clothmakers took upon themselves to dictate, in their capacity of justices of the peace, the official tariff of wages in their own shops. In Germany, especially after the Thirty Years' War, statutes for keeping down wages were general. --The want of servants and labourers was very troublesome to the landed proprietors in the depopulated districts. All villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men and women; all the latter were to be reported to the authorities and cast into prison if they were unwilling to become servants, even if they were employed at any other work, such as sowing seeds for the peasants at a daily wage, or even buying and selling corn. (Imperial privileges and sanctions for Silesia, I. , 25. ) For a whole century in the decrees of the small German potentates a bitter cry goes up attain and again about the wicked and impertinent rabble that will not reconcile itself to its hard lot, will not be content with the legal wage; the individual landed proprietors are forbidden to pay more than the State had fixed by a tariff. And yet the conditions of service were at times better after war than 100 years later; the farm servants of Silesia had, in 1652, meat twice a week, whilst even in our century, districts are known where they
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have it only three times a year. Further, wages after the war were higher than in the following century. ? (G. Freytag. )
6 Article I. of this law runs: --L'ane? antissement de toute espe`ce de corporations du me^me e? tat et profession e? tant l'une des bases fondamentales de la constitution franc? aise, il est de? fendu de les re? tablir de fait sous quelque pre? texte et sous quelque forme que ce soit. ? Article IV. declares, that if --des citoyens attache? s aux me^mes professions, arts et me? tiers prenaient des de? libe? rations, faisaient entre eux des conventions tendantes a` refuser de concert ou a` n'accorder qu'a` un prix de? termine? le secours de leur industrie ou de leurs travaux, les dites de? libe? rations et conventions. . . seront de? clare? es inconstitutionnelles, attentatoires a` la liberte? et a` la declaration des droits de l'homme, &c. ;? felony, therefore, as in the old labour-statutes. [As the abolition of any form of association between citizens of the same estate and profession is one of the foundations of the French constitution, it is forbidden to re-establish them under any pretext or in any form, whatever they might be. . . . citizens belonging to the same profession, craft or trade have joint discussions and make joint decisions with the intention of refusing together to perform their trade or insisting together on providing the services of their trade or their labours only at a particular price, then the said deliberations and agreements . . . shall be declared unconstitutional, derogatory to liberty and the declaration of the rights of man, etc. ] (--Re?