Knowledge Is Power. Charles Knight
and sometimes even the artisan, was the absolute property of another man—bought, sold, let, without any will of his own, like an ox or a horse—producing nothing for himself—and transmitting the miseries of his lot to his children. The progress of civilization destroyed this monstrous system, in the same way that at the present day it is destroying it in Russia and other countries where slavery still exists. But it was by a very slow process that the English slave went forward to the complete enjoyment of the legal rights of a free exchanger. The transition exhibits very many years of gross injustice, of bitter suffering, of absurd and ineffectual violations of the natural rights of man; and of struggles between the capitalist and the labourer, for exclusive advantages, perpetuated by ignorant lawgivers, who could not see that the interest of all classes of producers is one and the same. We may not improperly devote a little space to the description of this dark and evil period. We shall see that while such a struggle goes forward—that is, while security of property and freedom of industry are not held as the interchangeable rights of the capitalist and the labourer—there can be little production and less accumulation. Wherever positive slavery exists—wherever the labourers are utterly deprived of their property in their labour, and are compelled to dispose of it without retaining any part of the character of voluntary exchangers—there are found idleness, ignorance, and unskilfulness; industry is enfeebled—the oppressor and the oppressed are both poor—there is no national accumulation. The existence of slavery amongst the nations of antiquity was a great impediment to their progress in the arts of life. The community, in such nations, was divided into a caste of nobles called citizens, and a caste of labourers called slaves. The Romans were rich, in the common sense of the word, because they plundered other nations; but they could not produce largely when the individual spirit to industry was wanting. The industry of the freemen was rapine: the slaves were the producers. No man will work willingly when he is to be utterly deprived of the power of disposing at his own will of the fruits of his labour; no man will work skilfully when the same scanty pittance is doled out to each and all, whatever be the difference in their talents and knowledge. Wherever the freedom of industry is thus violated, property cannot be secure. If Rome had encouraged free labourers, instead of breeding menial slaves, it could not have happened that the thieves, who were constantly hovering round the suburbs of the city, like vultures looking out for carrion, should have been so numerous that, during the insurrection of Catiline, they formed a large accession to his army. But Rome had to encounter a worse evil than that of the swarms of highwaymen who were ready to plunder whatever had been produced. Production itself was so feeble when carried on by the labour of slaves, that Columella, a writer on rural affairs, says the crops continued so gradually to fall off that there was a general opinion that the earth was growing old and losing its power of productiveness. Wherever slavery exists at the present day, there we find feeble production and national weakness. Poland, the most prolific corn-country in Europe, is unquestionably the poorest country. Poland has been partitioned, over and over again, by governments that knew her weakness; and she has been said to have fallen "without a crime." That is not correct. Her "crime" was, and is, the slavery of her labourers. There is no powerful class between the noble and the serf or slave; and whilst this state of things endures, Poland can never be independent, because she can never be industrious, and therefore never wealthy.
England, as we have said, once groaned under the evils of positive slavery. The Anglo-Saxons had what they called "live money," such as sheep and slaves. To this cause may be doubtless attributed the easy conquest of the country by the Norman invaders, and the oppression that succeeded that conquest. If the people had been free, no king could have swept away the entire population of a hundred thousand souls that dwelt in the country between the Humber and the Tees, and converted a district of sixty miles in length into a dreary desert, which remained for years without houses and without inhabitants. This the Conqueror did. In the reign of Henry II. the slaves of England were exported in large numbers to Ireland. These slaves, or villeins, as is the case in Russia and Poland at the present day, differed in the degree of the oppression which was exercised towards them. Some, called "villeins in gross," were at the absolute disposal of the lord—transferable from one owner to another, like a horse or a cow. Others, called "villeins regardant," were annexed to particular estates, and were called upon to perform whatever agricultural offices the lord should demand from them, not having the power of acquiring any property, and their only privilege being that they were irremoveable except with their own consent. These distinctions are not of much consequence, for, by a happy combination of circumstances, the bondmen of every kind, in the course of a century or two after the Conquest, were rapidly passing into the condition of free labourers. But still capital was accumulated so slowly, and labour was so unproductive, that the land did not produce the tenth part of a modern crop; and the country was constantly exposed to the severest inflictions of famine, whenever a worse than usual harvest occurred.
In the reign of Edward III. the woollen manufacture was introduced into England. It was at first carried on exclusively by foreigners; but as the trade extended, new hands were wanting, and the bondmen of the villages began to run away from their masters, and take refuge in the towns. If the slave could conceal himself successfully from the pursuit of his lord for a year and a day, he was held free for ever. The constant attraction of the bondmen to the towns, where they could work for hire, gradually emboldened those who remained as cultivators to assert their own natural rights. The nobility complained that the villeins refused to perform their accustomed services; and that corn remained uncut upon the ground. At length, in 1351, the 25th year of Edward III., the class of free labourers was first recognised by the legislature; and a statute was passed, oppressive indeed, and impolitic, but distinctly acknowledging the right of the labourer to assume the character of a free exchanger. Slavery, in England, was not wholly abolished by statute till the time of Charles II.: it was attempted in vain to be abolished in 1526. As late as the year 1775, the colliers of Scotland were accounted ascripti glebæ—that is, as belonging to the estate or colliery where they were born and continued to work. It is not necessary for us further to notice the existence of villeinage or slavery in these kingdoms. Our business is with the slow progress of the establishment of the rights of free labourers—and this principally to show that, during the long period when a contest was going forward between the capitalists and the labourers, industry was comparatively unproductive. It was not so unproductive, indeed, as during the period of absolute slavery; but as long as any man was compelled to work, or to continue at work, or to receive a fixed price, or to remain in one place, or to follow one employment, labour could not be held to be free—property could not be held to be secure—capital and labour could not have cordially united for production—accumulation could not have been certain and rapid.
In the year 1349 there was a dreadful pestilence in England, which swept off large numbers of the people. Those of the labourers that remained, following the natural course of the great principle of demand and supply, refused to serve, unless they were paid double the wages which they had received five years before. Then came the 'Statute of Labourers,' of 1351, to regulate wages; and this statute enacted what should be paid to haymakers, and reapers, and thrashers; to carpenters, and masons, and tilers, and plasterers. No person was to quit his own village, if he could get work at these wages; and labourers and artificers flying from one district to another in consequence of these regulations, were to be imprisoned.
Good laws, it has been said, execute themselves. When legislators make bad laws, there requires a constant increase of vigilance and severity, and constant attempts at reconciling impossibilities, to allow such laws to work at all. In 1360 the Statute of Labourers was confirmed with new penalties, such as burning in the forehead with the letter F those workmen who left their usual abodes. Having controlled the wages of industry, the next step was for these blind lawgivers to determine how the workmen should spend their scanty pittance; and accordingly, in 1363, a statute was passed to compel workmen and all persons not worth forty shillings to wear the coarsest cloth called russet, and to be served once a day with meat, or fish, and the offal of other victuals. We were not without imitations of such absurdities in other nations. An ordinance of the King of France, in 1461, determined that good and fat meat should be sold to the rich, while the poor should be allowed only to buy the lean and stinking.
While the wages of labour were fixed by statute, the price of wheat was constantly undergoing the most extraordinary fluctuations, ranging from 2s. a quarter to 1l. 6s. 8d.