As it has become fashionable in some quarters to hold that the
working-classes are ever sinking in position, and that they have lost
the comforts, the pleasures, and the freedom of the 'good old times,'
it may serve a useful purpose to put together, from authentic sources,
some notices of their actual condition among our ancestors. To
associate our present working-classes with slavery would seem an
insult; and it would be said, that it is a condition to which they
could not, under any circumstances, be induced to submit. But although
this is true of their present condition, it is equally true, that not
only in the rest of Europe, but even in England and Scotland, those
who of old held the position of the working-classes, were slaves in
the strictest sense of the term. Among our Saxon ancestors, to whose
free institutions our historians so often proudly refer, two-thirds of
the people--that is, in short, the whole of the working-classes--are
computed to have been slaves. Sir Walter Scott, whose descriptions of
life and manners are as faithful as they are picturesque, gives an
admirable sketch of the slave or thrall of the Saxons in the faithful
Gurth, the follower of Ivanhoe. First, we have the account of his
close-fitting tunic, made of skin; after which follows that of a part
of his dress which, Sir Walter said, was too remarkable to be
overlooked. 'It was a brass ring resembling a dog's collar, but
without any opening, and soldered fast round his neck, so loose as to
form no impediment to his breathing, yet so tight as to be incapable
of being removed except by the use of the file. On this singular
gorget was engraved in Saxon characters--"Gurth, the son of Beowald,
the born thrall of Cedric the Saxon."'
For two or three centuries after the Conquest, there is no doubt that
the peasantry were liable to be bought and sold as slaves. Even in
Magna Charta, there is a prohibition that a guardian shall not 'waste
the men or cattle' in the estate of the ward: there is here no
consideration for the men who might be 'wasted;' it is all for the
property of the ward, which is not to be injured through the cupidity
or carelessness of his guardian. Sir Frederic Eden, the historian of
the poor-law, adduces many instances in which slaves had been
sold--thus in 1283, a slave and his family were sold by the Abbey of
Dunstable for 13s. 4d.
The distinguishing feature of Britain at the present day is, that she
is in advance of all the other nations of Europe in uniting order with
freedom. Our ancestors may be said to have led us on to this proud
position, by the gradual emancipation of the peasantry from slavery.
We soon find, in the contests with European powers, the great
distinction between the Briton even of the humblest rank and the
Frenchman or German. The great victories gained by the English over
the French--Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt--have been supposed almost
fabulous, from the inequality of the contending forces--the small
number on the victorious side, the vast host conquered by it. But we
cease to wonder when we examine the different qualities of the
combatants. At Agincourt, the English army, which was completely
victorious, amounted to only 9000 men; while that of France, which was
routed, amounted to 50,000: at Poitiers, the disproportion was nearly
as great: and at Crecy, the conquered force more than doubled that of
the conquerors. We have not lately seen, nor are we likely to see,
contests with such results in European warfare. But we see it in
Oriental conflicts; and the late battles of our troops with the
Afghans and Sikhs were somewhat of the same character, from the
immense superiority of European over Asiatic discipline. The reason of
the superiority of the English over the French in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, is plain enough to any one who has studied the
history of the people, though it may be incomprehensible to those who
have only studied the history of courts and armies. It arose from the
growing freedom of the British. Before the introduction of firearms,
the great dependence of an army was generally in the men-at-arms, as
they were called, or the knights and others who were sheathed in plate
armour, mounted on strong horses, and provided with costly weapons.
The knight and his horse were like a movable fortification; the
peasantry or serfs who went along with them to battle, half-naked and
half-fed, with rude and trifling arms, were looked upon as mere dross
in comparison with the men-at-arms. One man-at-arms was considered
equal to ten or even twenty of them; and when knights were not engaged
in encountering each other, it was deemed as a sort of amusement for a
few of them, with their heavy horses and armour, to ride down
multitudes of these abject serfs.
So it was in the rest of Europe, but not in England. The English
bowman, or billman, who carried a large axe or bill, was a strong,
healthy, well-fed man; and though he had not perfect freedom,
according to our modern acceptation of the term, he had an existence
worth struggling for, and not entirely at the command of an imperious
lord. Hence he was sometimes not much inferior, as a combatant, to the
mail-clad man-at-arms. Now, at the battle of Crecy, the French, though
the wretched serfs were so numerous, had only about 8000 men-at-arms;
and though the English had not a third of that number of the higher
kind of warriors, yet they had nearly 30,000 sturdy bowmen and
billmen. A characteristic illustration of the contempt with which the
poor slaves were viewed occurred in that very battle. A party of
cross-bowmen hesitated to advance--they felt tired, the fatigue of the
march being beyond their strength. On this, the Count of Alençon cried
out: 'Kill the lazy scoundrels!' A number of the men-at-arms rushed in
among them, to chastise them, and this produced a confusion which
assisted the English to their victory.
From these battles, and a multitude of other sources, we can see the
great superiority, in freedom and condition of living, of the humbler
class in England over that in France; and yet, at the same time, it is
difficult in the nineteenth century to believe in the extent of
tyranny exercised, down to a comparatively recent period, over the
working-classes in Britain. We may judge of the tyrannical
interference of the government with the freedom of labour by the
Statute of Labourers, passed in 1349. One of the frightful famines of
the middle ages had occurred, and labourers were scarce in comparison
with the means of employment. It is said that the same phenomenon has
now in some measure recurred in Ireland; but there is little chance of
our statesmen treating it as those of the fourteenth century did.
Justice says, that the labourer is entitled to obtain the value of his
labour, be it much or little. Parliament, however, fixed the amount
which it thought the reasonable price of labour--the rate at which the
members of the legislature desired to have it; and endeavoured, by
penalties and persecution, to obtain it at that rate. The statute
commences by abusing the labourers for taking advantage of the
scarcity of hands to demand high wages--as if there ever were human
beings, employed in the ordinary affairs of life, who would not take
what wages or profits they could obtain; and as if labourers were like
missionaries, and other devotees, who are not led by any mercenary
motive. The statute then enacts, that every person able in body, and
under the age of sixty, not having means of maintaining himself, is
bound to serve whoever shall be willing to employ him, at the wages
which were usually paid during the six years preceding the plague; and
if he refuses, and it is proved by two witnesses before the sheriff,
bailiff, lord, or constable of the village where the refusal is given,
he is to be committed to jail, and continue there till he finds surety
to enter into service in terms of the act.
It is always observable, that laws interfering with freedom of trade
go on increasing in strictness, because the confusion which the first
attempt creates is always attributed to the deficiency of the law
instead of its excess. The Statute of Labourers was of course
insufficient to put everything right between employers and employed;
and so, two years afterwards, another and stricter Statute of
Labourers was passed (23 Ed. III., ch. 1-8.) This statute not only
regulated the wages of husbandry, and the times when peasant-labourers
were to work, but fixed the precise amount which each kind of artisan
was bound to work for. The account given of it by Mr Daines
Barrington, in his observations on the statutes, may be quoted as
among the clearest and briefest. The reader will of course remember,
that the coins mentioned by him bore a much higher value than coins of
the same denomination at present. 'The common labourer in the
hay-harvest is only to have 1d. a day, except a mower, who, if he mow
by the acre, is to have 5d. per acre, or otherwise 5d. a day. A reaper
is to have in time of corn-harvest 2d., the first week in August, and
3d. till the end of the month; and they are likewise neither to ask
meat nor any other perquisite or indulgence. The law likewise requires
that they shall repair to the next town or village, carrying their
scythe or sickle openly in their hands, and shall there be hired in
some public place.... The second chapter directs that no man in
harvest--before settled to be in the month of August--shall leave the
village in which he lived during the winter, except the inhabitants of
Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Craven, and the marches of
Wales and Scotland--the occasion of which is, that there are large
tracts of mountain or moorland in all these counties and districts,
where nothing can be raised but oats, which are not usually ripe till
October; and, consequently, if they were not employed in more early
harvest, they would be without employment during the months of August
and September.'
But the English peasantry and artisans had now acquired too much real
independence to submit silently to these arbitrary regulations. The
celebrated insurrection of Wat Tyler, which took place thirty years
afterwards, was a concentrated embodiment of popular discontent.
However turbulent and dangerous might be the form in which the mob
demanded redress, the demands themselves were in many respects very
reasonable. Thus, the brief statement of them by Hume, the historian,
is, that they 'required a general pardon, _the abolition of slavery_,
freedom of commerce in market-towns without toll or impost, and a
fixed rent on lands, instead of the services due by villenage'--that
is to say, they desired that they should be tenants, paying rent in
money or services, and not serfs bound to remain on the soil. The
insurrection was crushed, and the insurgents obtained no immediate
redress. Parliament, however, considered the whole circumstances
before the conclusion of Richard II.'s reign. Wat Tyler's rebellion
was nearly contemporary with several other risings throughout Europe
of the enslaved working-classes against their tyrants. In France, they
formed the dreaded bands of the Jacquerie, who desolated the most
fruitful portions of that fine country. They committed great
cruelties; but in the end they were crushed by the chivalry of the
upper ranks. In the results of the two insurrections, however, there
was a marked difference between England and France. Advance and
improvement have ever, fortunately, characterised the legislation of
this country. In France, and other parts of the continent, the
insurgents were crushed with terrible slaughter, and then they were
subjected to stricter and sterner laws, to prevent them from breaking
out again--laws so strict and stern, that the French peasantry and
working-classes were kept in chain by them till the Revolution of
1788. In England, on the other hand, the parliament which met after
Tyler's insurrection was put down, took into consideration the state
of the country; and the tyrannical and oppressive laws against the
peasantry and working-classes were modified.
Still these classes remained for centuries in a condition so closely
bordering on actual slavery, that a close, practical contemplation of
it would certainly be sufficiently startling to the workmen of the
present day. The celebrated statute of Elizabeth for the relief of the
poor, passed in 1597, shews us, in sufficiently distinct terms, the
position of the workman at that period. Various kinds of vagrants or
impostors are, in the first place, enumerated, much resembling the
same class at the present day--such as persons pretending to be
shipwrecked sailors, fortune-tellers, players, bear-keepers,
musicians, &c. And then we have 'all wandering persons and common
labourers, being persons able in body, using loitering and refusing to
work for such reasonable wages as is taxed or commonly given in such
parts where such persons do or shall happen to dwell or abide, not
having living otherwise to maintain themselves.' Among the punishments
attached to this offence are, that the offender 'be stripped naked
from the middle upward, and shall be openly whipped until his or her
body be bloody.' In fact, the whole poor-law legislation which
followed this enactment, down to the act of 1834, treated the peasant
in a great measure as a slave. Doubtless the workhouse-test, which
requires that the able-bodied man who gets relief shall give labour
for it, involves slavery within the bounds of the workhouse. But this,
fortunately, now only applies to a few. The evil of the old system
was, that while it was less stringent in giving relief, and afforded
much more assistance to the able-bodied class of workmen, it
necessarily established a control over their motions, and this control
made an unpleasantly near approach to slavery. Instead of workmen
going with the eagerness of energy and hope to the employer who gave
them most wages, they too often went to the employer to whom the
parish sent them. The degrading spectacle of labourers set up to
auction in the parish pound was frequently exhibited. Apart from the
poor-law system, the actual feudal serfdom, which gave landowners
great powers over the peasantry on their estates, was not abolished
until the reign of Charles II.
We have a similar history of matters in Scotland. Thus, not to go
further back, an act passed immediately on the restoration of the
Stuarts, empowered justices of peace to fix the rate of wages to be
paid to labourers, workmen, or servants; and if they refused to work
at the legal wages so established, they might be imprisoned and
scourged. It was not an uncommon thing, at the commencement of the
last century, to see advertisements in the newspapers for the
apprehension of runaway servants. The power of the higher over the
working-classes was so great, that at one time, before the idea of a
traffic in negroes was suggested, young people were kidnapped even in
the streets of cities, and sent out as slaves to the plantations.
Instances have been given where their parents have seen them driven in
herds on board ship, yet dared not interfere. The power which the
landholders in Scotland possessed over their vassals, down to the
middle of the eighteenth century, was a condition of things necessary
to the two rebellions. The humble clansmen were not properly rebels;
they were paying obedience to their chiefs, who possessed power over
them almost unlimited. The notorious Lovat had managed to seduce an
English servant to the Highlands, and when once there, the poor fellow
found that he was a slave, and could not possibly escape. It was not
until the present century that two classes of workmen in Scotland were
emancipated from a species of slavery--colliers and saltmakers. It is
startling to read of them in the work which is still the principal law
authority in Scotland--_Erskine's Institute_. He speaks of them as
'necessary servants,' and says: 'In this class of necessary servants
may be reckoned colliers, coal-bearers, salters, and other workmen
necessary for carrying on of collieries and salt-works. These are by
law itself, without any paction, bound, merely by their entering upon
work, in a colliery or salt-manufactory, to the perpetual service
thereof; and if the owner sell or alienate the ground on which the
works stand, the right of the service of these colliers, salters, &c.,
passes over to the purchaser.' What was this but modified
slavery?--and the consideration that it actually existed within Great
Britain until a recent period, and excited no sort of compassion,
should temper any observations we might be inclined to make on the
subject of slavery in distant countries.
We cannot but rejoice that in the present day there exists not the
slightest relict of serfdom in any part of the United Kingdom. Every
man is now his own master, and has his own responsibilities. We say,
we are glad of this, because without such liberty of personal action,
there can be no social progress. At the same time, it appears
undeniable that the legislature, in emancipating the humbler classes,
has strangely neglected to go one step further--that is, to make sure
of their being educated, and so rendered capable of improving their
condition to some purpose. It is in this great shortcoming that a blot
rests on our institutions. When is that blot to be removed?