Another dilemma was supplied by the case of domestic servants. Mr. Balfour and Lord Randolph together protested against their exclusion from the benefits of the Act--‘merely because they had no votes.’ ‘What is the special characteristic of footmen or chambermaids,’ asked the latter, ‘which disentitles them to compensation?’ No answer could be discovered except that the risks of such persons were not great. Lord Randolph suggested the case of the man who worked both in the house and in the stable: injured in the house, he received no compensation, injured in the stable, it was his right. How could it be contended that domestic servants ran no risks? ‘Suppose,’ inquired the member for Woodstock, in a speech which caused keen irritation to the Ministers and almost equal amusement to the House, ‘an explosion of gas. An employer comes home late at night. He does not, perhaps, altogether know what he is doing. He blows out the gas. An explosion results, and the servant is seriously injured; ought he not to receive compensation?’ ‘And what of lifts?’ chimed in Mr. Gorst. There were lifts in hotels as well as in factories. Suppose through some defect in the machinery of the lift a servant at a hotel was injured, why was his claim to compensation less good than that of the workman injured through a similar defect in a similar lift in a factory? To the reproach that zeal for the working classes was a new-found virtue in the Tory party and had not been apparent in the conduct of the late Government, Mr. Balfour replied tartly that the late Government had not been formed from members below the gangway, and that if it had the claims of the working classes would no doubt have been met. So through all the sultry days of August the discussion went forward tirelessly. But it should not be supposed that these objections of detail were advanced frivolously with no general purpose behind them. Lord Randolph had, early in the debates, denounced the doctrine of ‘common employment’; and on the third reading Mr. Gorst moved the re-committal of the Bill in the name of the Fourth Party, on account of its multifold inequities and anomalies, and urged the recognition of some simple general principle which would equally govern the rights of all classes of outsiders, or workmen or servants, whether in factories, private or Government employ, whether in or out of doors. This conclusion is one which modern legislation has already largely secured and which its progress must ultimately achieve.