Early in 1863 Alexander Campbell[386] brought the Master and Servant Law under the notice of the Glasgow Trades Council. A Parliamentary Return was obtained showing that the enormous number of 10,339 cases of breach of contract of service came before the courts in a single year. A committee was formed to agitate for the amendment of the law, and communication was opened up, not only with the London leaders, but also with sympathisers in other provincial towns. The Trades Councils of London, Bristol, Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Edinburgh were formally invited to unite in a combined movement. In Leeds and elsewhere local Trades Councils were established for the express purpose of forwarding the agitation; and 15,000 copies of a “Memorial of Information intended for the use of such workmen as fall under the provisions of the Statute 4 Geo. IV. c. 34”[387] were circulated to all the leading workmen throughout the country. At the instance of Campbell and Macdonald, the Glasgow Trades Council convened a conference of Trade Union representatives to consider how the object of the agitation could best be secured. This Conference, which was held in London during four days of May 1864, marks an epoch in Trade Union history. For the first time a national meeting of Trade Union delegates was spontaneously convened by a Trade Union organisation to discuss a purely workman’s question, in the presence of working men alone. The number of delegates did not exceed twenty, but these included the leading officials of all the great national and amalgamated Unions.[388] The transactions of the Conference were thoroughly businesslike. Three members of the Government were asked to receive deputations; a large number of members of Parliament were “lobbied” on the subject of an immediate amending Bill; and finally a successful meeting of legislators was held in the “tea-room” of the House of Commons itself, at which the delegates impressed their desires upon all the friendly members. The terms of the draft Bill were settled; Cobbett agreed to introduce it in the House of Commons, and the Glasgow Trades’ Committee was authorised to support it by an agitation on behalf of all the Trade Unions of the kingdom. The Bill introduced by Cobbett never became law; but a vigorous agitation kept the matter under the notice of Parliament, and in 1866 a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the subject. Upon its report Lord Elcho[389] succeeded, in 1867, in carrying through Parliament a Bill which remedied the grossest injustice of the law. The Master and Servant Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vic. c. 141), the first positive success of the Trade Unions in the legislative field, did much to increase their confidence in Parliamentary agitation.