COMBINATION means the act of uniting or combining certain active elements; and it has come lately, in the legal and political phraseology of England, to mean the unit ing together of persons having a common interest, with a view to promoting that inter est. Thus, it may refer to employers uniting together to keep up prices or keep down wages; or it may apply to workmen uniting together to keep up wages. The word is now almost exclusively used in relation to the proceedings of the working-classes for retaining a monopoly of certain occupations, or for keeping up wages above their natu ral amount. C. is one of the most obvious, and, in certain circumstances, one of the most justifiable and beneficial arrangements. Like all other human institutions, it has its good and baftshape--the former, when it is psed for protection ; the latter, when it is used for oppression. It is a praCtical exemplification of the preeept taught by the old man in the fable, when he recommended union to his sons by showing that the bun dle of sticks could not be broken, but that each stick could be easily snapped when separated. The municipal corporations were combinations to protect the citizens against the power of the aristocracy, and a group of these municipal corporations formed them selves into a larger C., well known as the Hause towns, whose united influence not only braved the aristocracy, but exceeded that of many of the European monarchies. The guilds and other societies, whether of merchants or artisans, were combinations estab lished for protection in violent times; though they were employed to further monopoly and interfere with freedom of trade, when more equal laws, and a higher social civiliza tion, rendered them unnecessary for mere protection from external oppression. The free-masons are a relic of a great guild, or secret society, pervading all Europe. The similarity to each other of contemporary Gothic buildings, however far apart, is explained by the circumstance that they were built by a.large 0. of workmen, who all learned in the same school the same rules of art, and who had secret arrangements which enabled them to work together, and preserve the monopoly of the building-trade.
The oppressive laws to which the working-classes, even in this country, were sub jected, fully justified them in combining for their own protection. The nature of those laws is explained, though not justified, by the fact that they were less oppressive than the institutions of other countries where the working-classes were in actual serfdom; and that they mark, in reality, the steps of progress onwards from the state of slavery or serfdom in which all the working-classes were of old involved, even in this country. The boasted freedom of our Saxon ancestors was, indeed, very similar to that of the southern states of North America before the late civil war, since it was all enjoyed by the upper class, to whom the inferior persons were slaves; and the term freeman, still used in certain municipalities, of old distinguished those who were not slaves The statutes of labor still retained a portion of this servitude, laying heavy penalties on workers in the various trades who refuse to work at a regular fixed remuneration— often, of course, below the market value, otherwise it would not require to be pro tected by penalties. By the poor law act, too, those who would not work might be veritably enslaved by being compelled to labor in the service of any householder. It may be said, indeed, to be the last stage of the emancipation of the working-classes from slavery when the C. act was repealed in 1825. This act, which, after all, was a mild relic of the old laws for coercing workmen, subjected those who, whether verbally or in writing, entered into combinations for keeping up the wages of their labor, or lim iting the hours of work, to be punished by imprisonment as criminals. There is no doubt that, in defiance of this act, secret combinations were held of a more dangerous and cruel character than any which have occurred since the repealing act of 1S25, which rendered C. itself lawful, but punished any attempts to enforce the views of the com bining workmen by violence or intimidation.