Gentlemen,

After duly reflecting on the measures we previously adopted for the purpose of effecting an amicable adjustment of our disputes with our employers, you will not, we hope, accuse us of either rashness or precipitancy in again obtruding ourselves on your notice, in an affair which, to us, at least, we deem of the highest importance. No further apology, we presume, is therefore necessary for endeavouring to point out, and at the same time pressing on your notice, the iniquity and injustice of the instrument by which we have hitherto been bound; an instrument which clearly is not conducive to mutual advantage — a quality which all legal instruments of this nature ought undoubtedly to possess.

With a view to obtain a legal settlement of our differences, you will of course recollect we sent you a letter, expressive of our wishes, addressed to John Buddle, Esq. and the other viewers of collieries in the Newcastle upon Tyne district. As some of you may not perhaps have seen the letter referred to, we submit a copy of it. —

Cock Inn, Head of the Side, Newcastle
Jan. 14, 1826.

Gentlemen,

We, the Colliers of the United Association, having agreed on the propriety thereof, do hereby most humbly and respectfully solicit you to convene a Meeting, as soon as convenient ; to consist of an equal number of Viewers and Colliers, and not fewer than seven of each party to be present ; and each party to select a justice of the quorum and a solicitor, in order the better to adjust the exceptionable parts of the Bond ; that it having been thus made and proved to be legal, by and in the presence of his Majesty's officers, may be binding upon both parties and so effectually terminate the mutual differences and disputes which so unhappily exist between us.

If, Gentlemen, you shall deem it proper to accede to the above position, by fixing a time and place for meeting, and forwarding to us your intention as early as possible, you will, by so doing, greatly oblige,

Gentlemen,
Your obedient, humble Servants,
The Colliers of the United Association.

Gentlemen, we have to regret that you deigned not, in any shape to notice our Address, or to make any reply thereto. You have not hitherto listened to the voice of our supplications, neither regarded our most earnest solicitations and respectful remonstrances. And, instead of the language of conciliation, or any thing expressive of a desire to terminate disputes amicably, by an equitable adjustment of all existing differences, we are met with only cold disdain and silent contempt. How far you can justify your conduct to us on this occasion we presume not to say. — Sure it was not generous — it was not humane ; in fine, it was not what we were led to expect from those who bear the character of gentlemen.

About two weeks after the date of this letter, a Viewer and a Collier having accidently met on the road, their conversation naturally turned upon the subject of the letter. The Viewer took occasion very frankly to confess to the Collier, that your Committee did not think the United Association of Colliers — an Association consisting of upwards of four thousand men — worthy of notice! but that, at the same time, the Committee had it in contemplation, and did design to make some alteration in the Bond, with a view to make it more binding upon the men, and fully to enforce the spirit of it.

It has long been a favourite object with the rich and opulent to devise and promote plans for making the poor maintain the poor, and the funds of Benefit Societies have generally been made to aid the poor rates, and thereby relieve at the same time both the poor and the rich. Hence the poor member of a Benefit Society in the hour of sickness and of bodily and mental anguish, frequently feels no advantage from the fund to which his prudence had prompted him to contribute, as he is consequently deprived of parochial assistance, to which he would otherwise be entitiled. The circumstances under which we or many of us are placed, with large families or dependent relations to provide for, added to the low price of our labour, puts it out of the power of most of us to contribute towards funds for future exigencies, however urgent, and any plan of this kind, addressed to our wants and peculiar curcumstances, must be adapted thereto, and the advantages made to appear plain and obvious to men like ourselves of common understandings. We view, therefore, with some jealousy and suspicion, a recommendation lately submitted to us from the Colliery Viewers, or some of them, to institute a general fund for the relief of colliers, their widows and families, &c. We can hardly hope that those who have refused to attend to our complaints, or make any reply to our just remonstrances, will be prepared to lay aside all partiality and sinister views, and interest themselves sincerely in the management and direction of a fund solely for our benefit. Besides, any plan proposed for our benefit, to which we should be called on to contribute, must be under our own special management and direction.

On the 28th. of January, waving all reference to the proposed plan for instituting a general fund, as noticed above, we again addressed you; and, in the conclusion, again respectfully requested an answer to our letter in the following terms:

"We wish much rather you would disclose to us your mind in reference to ours of the 14th. ult. because it is of essential importance to us to have the way paved, in order to obtain an equitable and peaceable Binding, the period for which is fast approaching."

Two of our body having been delegated to wait on an official member of the Coal Owners' Union Commitee, to solicit an answer to our repeated requests, they were informed that ours had been laid before the Committee, who had refused to take any notice of it, on the ground that we were not a corporate body, and that the Coal Owners' Union Committee knew nothing of, and therefore would not recognise or treat with such a body of men as the Colliers' Union Association !

Such an objection on your part is certainly most preposterous. If not a corporate we are undoubtedley a legal body of men, associated together for legal and just purposes, recognised by the law of the land : and though neither your Association nor ours are bodies corporate, we are not therefore prevented from entering into such contracts and agreements, relative to our labour and the value of it, as the parties contracting may deem mutually advantageous.

In this dilema, we feel ourselves under the necessity of adopting this mode of addressing you, with a view to make known more plainly and explicitly, if possible, the nature of our complaints, relying on your candour and sense of justice to provide the redress which equity demands. For this purpose we shall, in the first place, give a Copy of the Pitman's Bond, which, with little verbal alterations is in common use in most of the collieries on the Tyne. This we deem the more necessary as many of our own body, and those most interested in it, are very imperfectly acquainted with the nature of its provisoes, or "the spirit of the bond," which we have been threatened shall be put in force against us. We shall afterwards state our objections to various clauses in that instrument of cruelty and injustice, which we wish to have removed previous to our being rebound, and respectfully propose such amendments as, in our judgment, the equity of the clause demands.