Effective Fines Not Imprisonment.

The third point of criticism is that as it at present stands the Act makes no satisfactory provision for the enforcement of fines. It is true that the Court of Appeal has decided that by a process of attachment strikers may be imprisoned for non-payment of fines imposed on them, but this remedy is not provided by the Act, and springs from an old principle of our law. Even this method of enforcing imprisonment is exceedingly clumsy and circuitous, but for reasons already given 1 am opposed to imprisonment for taking part in a strike. In the absence of imprisonment and as the Act stands, it contains no effective method of enforcing tines, as experience has already shown, and some amendment in the direction of an effective method is required.