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Table of Contents

Rights of labour—Effects of slavery on production—Condition of the Anglo-Saxons—Progress of freedom in England—Laws regulating labour—Wages and prices—Poor-law—Law of settlement.

Adam Smith, in his great work, 'The Wealth of Nations,' says, "The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property." The right of property, in general, has been defined by another writer, M. Say, to be "the exclusive faculty guaranteed to a man, or body of men, to dispose, at their own pleasure, of that which belongs to them." There can be no doubt that labour is entitled to the same protection as a property that capital is entitled to. There can be no doubt that the labourer has rights over his labour which no government and no individual should presume to interfere with. There can be no doubt that, as an exchanger of labour for capital, the labourer ought to be assured that the exchange shall in all respects be as free as the exchanges of any other description of property. His rights as an exchanger are, that he shall not be compelled to part with his property, by any arbitrary enactments, without having as ample an equivalent as the general laws of exchange will afford him; that he shall be free to use every just means, either by himself or by union with others, to obtain such an equivalent; that he shall be at full liberty to offer that property in the best market that he can find, without being limited to any particular market; that he may give to that property every modification which it is capable of receiving from his own natural or acquired skill, without being narrowed to any one form of producing it. In other words, natural justice demands that the working-man shall work when he please, and be idle when he please, always providing that, if he make a contract to work, he shall not violate that engagement by remaining idle; that no labour shall be forced from him, and no rate of payment for that labour prescribed by statutes or ordinances; that he shall be free to obtain as high wages as he can possibly get, and unite with others to obtain them, always providing that in his union he does not violate that freedom of industry in others which is the foundation of his own attempts to improve his condition; that he may go from place to place to exchange his labour without being interfered with by corporate rights or monopolies of any sort, whether of masters or workmen; and that he may turn from one employment to the other, if he so think fit, without being confined to the trade he originally learnt, or may strike into any line of employment without having regularly learnt it at all. When the working-man has these rights secured to him by the sanction of the laws, and the concurrence of the institutions and customs of the country in which he lives, he is in the condition of a free exchanger. He has the full, uninterrupted, absolute possession of his property. He is upon a perfect legal equality with the capitalist. He may labour cheerfully with the well-founded assurance that his labour will be profitably exchanged for the goods which he desires for the satisfaction of his wants, as far as laws and institutions can so provide. In a word, he may assure himself that, if he possesses anything valuable to offer in exchange for capital, the capital will not be fenced round with any artificial barriers, or invested with any unnatural preponderance, to prevent the exchange being one of perfect equality, and therefore a real benefit to both exchangers.

We are approaching this desirable state in England. Indeed, there is scarcely any legal restriction acted upon which prevents the exchange of labour with capital being completely unembarrassed. Yet it is only within a few centuries that the working-men of this country have emerged from the condition of actual slaves into that of free labourers; it is only a few hundred years ago since the cultivator of the ground, the domestic servant, 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. It was perfectly 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.