dren 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 labor 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 just

ices, whose principal occupation was to balance the scale of wages and labor, 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 laborer and hired man." Still new laws were enacted to prevent the freedom of industry working out plenty for capitalists as well as laborers; 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 English 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 labor 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 labor. 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 laborers was improved their own condition was also improved. If, then, capital had worked

naturally and honestly for the encouragement of labor, there would have been no lack of laborers; 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 laborers 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."

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. That most eminent man, 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 England than all the gibbets, and cauterizations, and whipping-posts, and jails in the kingdom." The whole scheme of legislation for the poor, during the reigns of the English monarchs referred to, 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, England might to this day have remained a nation of slaves and paupers.

But the oppressions and restrictions imposed by the government upon its subjects during these periods have not been wholly without advantages to succeeding generations; and the lessons then purchased by the sad experience of suffering humanity may be studied with profit at the present day. Under the iron rule and exactions of the Tudors and the Stuarts, that spirit of energy and impatience of restraint which has since characterized the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants was nurtured and developed. The historical

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lessons of this period may teach the capitalist that involuntary labor is the most unprofitable of all labor, and that the dictates of interest no less than of humanity require that the laborer shall be elevated and protected, and not degraded and persecuted. Governments may also learn that those communities are most prosperous that are governed least ; and that by relinquishing the right to interfere with the property and industry of their subjects, they best protect the one, and stimulate and advance the other.

Encouraged by the progress already made, let us hope that the day is not far distant when governments may also, with safety to society, relinquish their rights over the lives as well as the property of their people. When that time. shall come, another great step will be taken in social and moral improvement, until at length the wish so quaintly and so hopefully expressed by the poet may find its full and perfect accomplishment:

"I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good;

O then were desolation of jailers and gallowses."

CHAPTER X.

POSSESSIONS OF THE DIFFERENT CLASSES IN ENGLAND.-CONDITION OF COLCHESTER IN 1301.-TOOLS, STOCK IN TRADE, FURNITURE, ETC.-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 laboring classes, in England, at a period when the mutual rights of capitalists and laborers 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 labor, 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 con