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 glebae_--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
2_s._ a quarter to 1_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ 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 _e contra_. In Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, a
labourer hath 12_d._ a day; in Oxfordshire, 8_d._; in the North, 6_d._,
or less; and I have been credibly informed that in Cornwall a poor man
will be thankful for 2_d._ 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.