The English Peasant. Richard Ford Heath
and though the clouds keep gathering, they cannot hide the rising sun. Already the pedestrian, wandering in various parts of rural England, fails to see many of the signs of the long night through which the labourers have toiled and suffered. The cottages are rapidly improving, and the labourer begins to look strong and hopeful. Give him power ungrudgingly, and he will in fifty years redress the evil done in five hundred—but on condition that he delivers himself not only from the tyranny, but also from the teaching of his old masters; that he worships "the Suffering God," and not "the almighty dollar."
1 ↑ Sir G. Nicholls, History of the Poor Laws, chap, i, p. 45, agrees that the object of these laws was to restore the expiring system of slavery, a suggestion which Sir James Stephen in his History of English Criminal Law, vol. 3, p. 204, admits has much plausibility. Anyone who will take the trouble to read the preamble of the second Statute will soon see how wroth the upper classes were at the thought of losing their thralls. "Whereas," it says, "late against the Malice of Servants which were idle and not willing to serve after the Pestilence without taking excessive wages, etc., an ordinance was passed to which the said servants pay no regard, but considering only their ease and singular covetise do withdraw themselves from Great Men and others," etc.
2 ↑ Re-enacted 7 Henry IV., c. xvii., refusal incurred three days in the stocks, which every town or seigniory was to provide under fine of a hundred shillings.
3 ↑ Branding, however, was reintroduced by the 2 Jac. I., c. i, but then on the left shoulder instead of the breast or forehead, and with the letter R instead of an F.
4 ↑ 13 Ric. II., 1. c. xiii.
5 ↑ The highest price reached was 1s. 11d. during the scarcity of 1799.— Tooke's Prices, v. 77.
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