experiment of confiscation_,”--confiscation, that is, of the “funds subscribed for purposes of combination and deposited in Savings Banks or otherwise.”[251] The Whig Government dared not submit either the report or the proposals to a House of Commons pledged to the doctrines of Philosophic Radicalism. “We considered much ourselves,” writes Lord Melbourne,[252] “and we consulted much with others as to whether the arrangements of these unions, their meetings, their communications, or their pecuniary funds could be reached or in any way prevented by any new legal provisions; but it appeared upon the whole impossible to do anything effectual unless we proposed such measures as would have been a serious infringement upon the constitutional liberties of the country, and to which it would have been impossible to have obtained the consent of Parliament.” The King, however, had been greatly alarmed at the meeting of the “Builders’ Parliament,” and pressed the Cabinet to take strong measures.[253] Rotch, the member for Knaresborough, gave notice in April 1834 of his intention to bring in a Bill designed to make combinations of trades impossible--a measure which would have obtained a large amount of support from the manufacturers.[254] The coal-owners and ship-owners, the ironmasters, had all been pressing the Home Secretary for legislation of this kind. But although Lord Melbourne’s prudent caution saved the Unions from drastic prohibitory laws, the Government lost no opportunity of showing its hostility to the workmen’s combinations. When in August 1833 the Yorkshire manufacturers presented a memorial on the subject of “the Trades Union,” Lord Melbourne directed the answer to be returned that “he considers it unnecessary to repeat the strong opinion entertained by His Majesty’s Ministers of the criminal character and the evil effects of the unions described in the Memorial,” adding that “no doubt can be entertained that combinations for the purposes enumerated are illegal conspiracies, and liable to be prosecuted as such at common law.”[255] The employers scarcely needed this hint. Although combination for the sole purpose of fixing hours or wages had ceased to be illegal, it was possible to prosecute the workmen upon various other pretexts. Sometimes, as in the case of some Lancashire miners in 1832, the Trade Unionists were indicted for illegal combination for merely writing to their employers that a strike would take place.[256] Sometimes the “molestation or obstruction” prohibited in the Act of 1825 was made to include the mere intimation of the men’s intention to strike against the employment of non-unionists. In a remarkable case at Wolverhampton in August 1835, four potters were imprisoned for intimidation, solely upon evidence by the employers that they had “advanced their prices in consequence of the interference of the defendants, who acted as plenipotentiaries for the men,” without, as