=Source.=--_The Times_, July 3.
The fact is that considerations of risk are not uniformly present
to servants when they are hired, and that the miner or railway
guard generally contracts on the assumption in his own mind
that he will be lucky, and will not be injured. The impulse to
such Bills as Mr. Brassey's, Earl De La Warr's, and the measure
introduced by the Government, is the inability of many people to
see any good reason why, if a master is liable for the acts of
his servant towards a stranger, he should be irresponsible when
someone, fully clothed with his authority, and acting with all his
power to enforce obedience, injures a so-called fellow-servant,
who, perhaps, did not know of the existence of this vice-principal,
and who never, in fact, consented to endure without complaint
what might befall him by reason of the negligence of the latter.
Perhaps in theory it is entirely wrong to make a master in any case
liable for the acts of his servants. It is hard to give any good
reason for this portion of our common law. Perhaps this species
of responsibility, when historically examined, will be proved to
be a shoot from the Roman law of master and slave, which has been
unintelligently grafted on a law governing the relations of men
who are free. It matters not, however, how employers came to incur
their present liability to strangers for the acts of their workmen.
The question is whether it is right or worth while retaining an
exception to the general law of master and servant. The question
has become one, not of principle, but of details.... The Government
Bill starts from the principle that workmen may claim redress when
they are injured in consequence of defective works or machinery,
or of the negligence of any person in the service of the employer,
who has superintendence entrusted to him.... It will be highly
expedient to endeavour to express more clearly a law which must
annually be set in motion in hundreds of cases.