Knowledge Is Power. Charles Knight
impossible that any profitable industry could go forward in the face of such unjust and ridiculous laws. In 1376 the Commons complained that masters were obliged to give their servants higher wages to prevent their running away; and that the country was covered with staf-strikers and sturdy rogues, who robbed in every direction. The villages were deserted by the labourers resorting to the towns, where commerce knew how to evade the destroying regulations of the statutes; and to prevent the total decay of agriculture, labourers were not allowed to move from place to place without letters patent:—any labourer, not producing such a letter, was to be imprisoned and put in the stocks. If a lad had been brought up to the plough till he was twelve years of age, he was compelled to continue in husbandry all his life; and in 1406 it was enacted that all children of parents not possessed of land should be brought up in the occupation of their parents. While the legislature, however, was passing these abominable laws, it was most effectually preparing the means for their extermination. Children were allowed to be sent to school in any part of the kingdom. When the light of education dawned upon the people, they could not long remain in the "darkness visible" that succeeded the night of slavery.
When the industry of the country was nearly annihilated by the laws regulating wages, it was found out that something like a balance should be preserved between wages and prices; and the magistrates were therefore empowered twice a year to make proclamation, according to the price of provisions, how much every workman should receive. The system, however, would not work well. In 1496 a new statute of wages was passed, the preamble of which recited that the former statutes had not been executed, because "the remedy by the said statutes is not very perfect." Then came a new remedy: that is, a new scale of wages for all trades; regulations for the hours of work and of rest; and penalties to prevent labour being transported from one district to another. As a necessary consequence of a fixed scale for wages, came another fixed scale for regulating the prices of provisions; till at last, in the reign of Henry VIII., lawgivers began to open their eyes to the folly of their proceedings, and the preamble of a statute says "that dearth, scarcity, good cheap, and plenty of cheese, butter, capons, hens, chickens, and other victuals necessary for man's sustenance, happeneth, riseth, and chanceth, of so many and divers occasions, that it is very hard and difficile to put any certain prices to any such things." Yet they went on with new scales, in spite of the hardness of the task; till at last some of the worst of these absurd laws were swept from the statute-book. The justices, whose principal occupation was to balance the scale of wages and labour, complained incessantly of the difficulty of the attempt; and the statute of the 5th Elizabeth acknowledged that these old laws "could not be carried into execution without the great grief and burden of the poor labourer and hired man." Still new laws were enacted to prevent the freedom of industry working out plenty for capitalists as well as labourers; and at length, in 1601, a general assessment was directed for the support of the impotent poor, and for setting the unemployed poor to work. The capitalists at length paid a grievous penalty for their two centuries of oppression; and had to maintain a host of paupers, that had gradually filled the land during these unnatural contests. It would be perhaps incorrect to say, that these contests alone produced the paupers that required this legislative protection in the reign of Elizabeth; but certainly the number of those paupers would have been far less, if the laws of industry had taken their healthy and natural course—if capital and labour had gone hand in hand to produce abundance for all, and fairly to distribute that abundance in the form of profits and wages, justly balanced by the steady operation of demand and supply in a free and extensive market.
The whole of these absurd and iniquitous laws, which had succeeded the more wicked laws of absolute slavery, proceeded from a struggle on the part of the capitalists in land against the growing power and energy of free labour. If the capitalists had rightly understood their interests, they would have seen that the increased production of a thriving and happy peasantry would have amply compensated them for all the increase of wages to which they were compelled to submit; and that at every step by which the condition of their labourers was improved their own condition was also improved. If then capital had worked naturally and honestly for the encouragement of labour, there would have been no lack of labourers; and it would not have been necessary to pass laws to compel artificers, under the penalty of the stocks, to assist in getting in the harvest (5 Eliz.). If the labourers in agriculture had been adequately paid, they would not have fled to the towns; and if they had not been liable to cruel punishments for the exercise of this their natural right, the country would not have been covered with "valiant rogues and sturdy beggars."
The Law of Settlement, which, however modified, yet remains upon our statute-book, has been the curse of industry for nearly two centuries. All the best men of past times have cried out against its oppression. Roger North, soon after its enactment, in the time of Charles II., clearly enough showed its general operation:—"Where most work is, there are fewest people, and è contra. In Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, a labourer hath 12d. a day; in Oxfordshire, 8d.; in the North, 6d., or less; and I have been credibly informed that in Cornwall a poor man will be thankful for 2d. a day and poor diet: and the value of provisions in all these places is much the same. Whence should the difference proceed? Even from plenty and scarcity of work and men, which happens crossgrainedly, so that one cannot come to the other." When men honestly went from home to seek work, they were called vagrants, and were confounded with the common beggars, for whom every severity was provided by the law—the stocks, the whip, the pillory, the brand. It was all in vain. Happy would it have been for the land if the law had left honest industry free, and in the case of dishonesty had applied itself to more effectual work than punishments and terror. One of our great judges, Sir Matthew Hale, said, long ago, what we even now too often forget—"The prevention of poverty, idleness, and a loose and disorderly education, even of poor children, would do more good to this kingdom than all the gibbets, and cauterizations, and whipping-posts, and jails in this kingdom." The whole scheme of legislation for the poor was to set the poor to work by forced contributions from capital. If the energy of the people had not found out how to set themselves to work in spite of bad laws, we might have remained a nation of slaves and paupers.
CHAPTER VIII.
Possessions of the different classes in England—Condition of Colchester in 1301—Tools, stock-in-trade, furniture, &c.—Supply of food—Comparative duration of human life—Want of facilities for commerce—Plenty and civilization not productive of effeminacy—Colchester in the present day.
It will be desirable to exhibit something like an average view of the extent of the possessions of all classes of society, and especially of the middling and labouring classes, in this country, at a period when the mutual rights of capitalists and labourers were so little understood as in the fourteenth century. We have shown how, at that time, there was a general round of oppression, resulting from ignorance of the proper interests of the productive classes; and it would be well also to show that during this period of disunion and contest between capital and labour, each plundering the other, and both plundered by arbitrary power, whether of the nobles or the crown, production went on very slowly and imperfectly, and that there was little to plunder and less to exchange. It is difficult to find the materials for such an inquiry. There is no very accurate record of the condition of the various classes of society before the invention of printing; and even after that invention we must be content to form our conclusions from a few scattered facts not recorded for any such purpose as we have in view, but to be gathered incidentally from slight observations which have come down to us. Yet enough remains to enable us to form a picture of tolerable accuracy; and in some points to establish conclusions which cannot be disputed. It is in the same way that our knowledge of the former state of the physical world must be derived from relics of that former state, to which the inquiries and comparisons of the present times have given an historical value. We know, for instance, that the animals of the southern countries once abounded in these islands, because we occasionally find their bones in quantities which could not have been accumulated unless such animals had been once native to these parts; and the remains of sea-shells upon the tops of hills now under the plough show us that even these heights have been heaved up from the bosom of the ocean. In the same way, although we