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Humanly Speaking by Samuel McChord Crothers
page 77 of 158 (48%)
sum are compulsorily insured against sickness and the losses that follow
it, is just going into effect. Its provisions are necessarily
complicated, and its administration must at first be difficult. The
Insurance-Law Resisters are organized to nullify the act. Its enormities
are held up before all eyes, and it is flouted in every possible way.
According to this law, a lady is compelled to pay three-pence a week
toward the insurance fund for each servant in her employ. Will she pay
that three-pence? No! Though twenty acts of Parliament should declare
that it must be done, she will resist. As for keeping accounts, and
putting stamps in a book, she will do nothing of the kind. What is it
about a stamp act that arouses such fierceness of resistance?

High-born ladies declare that they would rather go to jail than obey
such a law. At a meeting at Albert Hall the Resisters were addressed by
a duchess who was "supported by a man-servant." What can a mere Act of
Parliament do when confronted by such a combination as that? Passive
resistance takes on heroic proportions when a duchess and a man-servant
confront the Law with haughty immobility.

In the mean time, Mr. Tom Mann goes to jail, amid the applause of
organized labor, for advising the British soldier not to obey orders
when he is commanded to fire on British working-men.

Mr. Tom Mann is a labor agitator, while Mr. Bonar Law is the leader of
the Conservative party; but when it comes to legislation which he does
not like, Mr. Bonar Law's language is fully as incendiary. He is not
content with opposing the Irish Home Rule Bill: he gives notice that
when it has become a law the opposition will be continued in a more
serious form. The passage of the bill, he declares, will be the signal
for civil war. Ulster will fight. Parliament may pass the Home Rule
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