Mr. Carmarthen. Notwithstanding, it shall be suspended and left to the law. The patent for calf-skins and fells shall endure the censure of the law. But I must tell you, there is no reason that all should be revoked, for the Queen means not to be swept of her James I. under similar circumstances. The speech in which Elizabeth's determination was announced to the House of Commons by Cecil affords complete evidence of the nature and extent of these monopolies or "patents"as they were called from the instrument which granted them-the mischief which they had done, and the wide-prerogative. I say it shall be suspended, if the law do spread discontent they had occasioned; and is also curious from its close resemblance-in all but the evidently forced jocularity of the speaker-to some of those speeches in which the late Sir Robert Peel announced his schemes of economical and commercial reform. not warrant it. There is another servant of Her Majesty's, Mr. Onslow, one of her pensioners, an honest gentleman and a faithful servant, he hath the patent for steel, which one Mr. Beale once had; this, too, because of complaints, shall be suspended. There is another that hath the patent for leather, Sir Edward Dyer, a gentleman of good desert, honest, religious, and wise; this was granted unto him thirty years ago. It crept not in by the new misgovernment of the time; yet this shall also be suspended. The patent for cards shall be suspended and triable by the common law. The patent for glasses, which though I do least apprehend to be prejudicial to the public good, yet it is left to the law. There is another patent for saltpetre, that hath been both accused and slandered; it digs into every man's house, it annoys the inhabitant, and generally troubleth the subject; for this, I beseech you, be contented. Yet I know I am to blame to desire it, it being condemned by you. Her Majesty means to take this patent unto herself, and advise with her counsel touching the same. For I must tell you the kingdom is not so well furnished with powder as now it should be. But if it be thought fit upon advice to be cancelled, Her Majesty commanded me to tell you, that though she be willing to help the grave gentleman that hath that patent, yet out of that abundant desire that she hath to give you complete satisfaction, it shall be repealed. This hath come to the ear of the Queen, and I have been most earnest to search for the instrument, and as a counsellor of state, have done my best endeavour to salve the sore. Then I must needs give you this for a future caution. That whatsoever is subject to public expectation cannot be good, while the Parliament matters are ordinary talk in the street. I have heard myself, being in my coach, these words spoken aloud:-'God prosper those that further the overthrow of these monopolies; God send the Prerogative touch not our liberty!'"* "I take it," said Cecil, there is no patent whereof the execution hath not been injurious. Would that they had never been granted. I hope there shall never be more. (All the House said Amen.') In particular, most of these patents have been supported by letters of assistance from Her Majesty's Privy Council; but whosoever looks upon them shall find that they carry no other stile, than with relation to the patent. I dare assure you from henceforth there shall be no more granted. They shall all be revoked. But to whom do they repair with these letters? to some outhouse, to some desolate widow, to some simple cottage, or poor ignorant people, who, rather than they would be troubled and undo themselves by coming up hither, will give anything in reason for these caterpillars' satisfaction. I say, therefore, there shall be a proclamation general throughout the realm, to notify Her Majesty's resolution in this behalf. And because you may eat your meat more savoury than you have done, every man shall have salt as good and cheap as he can buy it or make it, freely without danger of that patent, which shall be presently revoked. The same benefit shall they have which have cold stomachs, both for aqua vitæ and aqua composita, and the like. And they that have weak stomachs, for their satisfaction, shall have vinegar and alegar, and the like, set at liberty. Train-oil shall go the same way; oil of blubber shall march in equal rank; brushes and bottles endure the same judgment. The patent for pouldavy, if it be not called in, it shall be. Oade (woad) which, as I take it, is not restrained either by law or statute, but only by proclamation (I mean from the former sowing), though for the saving The grievances glanced at in this remarkable financial thereof it might receive good disputation; yet for your statement chiefly related, however, to restrictions from satisfaction, the Queen's pleasure is to revoke that pro- exercising certain trades and branches of commerce. clamation, only she prayeth thus much, that when she The public statutes against free trade in labour generally cometh on progress to see you in your countries, she be were far more serious infringements upon liberty, and not driven out of your towns by suffering it to infect the hindrances to the national development. These appear air too near them. Those that desire to go sprucely in -as far as the nominally free labourers were concerned their ruffs, may, at less charge than accustomed, obtain to have had their origin in the famous Statute of their wish; for the starch patent, which hath so much Labourers, passed in 1349; though, indeed, this statute been prosecuted, shall now be repealed. There are other of Edward III. was preceded by ordinances of a similar patents which be considerable, as the patent of new character made by him, which had partially failed in drapery, which shall be suspended and left to the law. their application. The Commons had complained that no Irish yarn is a matter I am sorry there is cause of com-attention was paid to the ordinance for regulating the plaint about; for the savageness of the people and the wages of labourers. This statute was therefore passed, war have frustrated the hope of the patentee, a gentle- in order to enforce obedience by corporal punishments and man of good service and desert, a good subject to Her Majesty, and a good member of the commonwealth "Parl. Hist.," vol. i. A.D. 1841.] THE STATUTE OF LABOURERS. pecuniary fines. It states that, since the pestilence, no person would serve, unless he was paid double the usual wages allowed five years before, to the great detriment of the Lords and Commons. It was therefore enacted that, in future, carters, ploughmen, plough-drivers, shepherds, swineherds, and other servants, should be content with such liveries and wages as they received in the twentieth year of the King's reign, and two or three years before; and that, in districts where they had severally been paid in wheat, they should receive wheat, or money, at the rate of 10d. a bushel, at the option of their employers. They were to be hired for a year, and other accustomed periods, and not by the day. Weeders and haymakers were to be paid at the rate of 1d. a day; mowers, 5d. a day, or 5d. the acre; and reapers, during the first week in August, 2d. a day; and from that time till the end of the month 3d. a day, without diet or any other perquisite. Labourers of the above description were enjoined to carry their implements of husbandry openly in their hands to market towns, and to apply for hire in a public quarter of the town. The wages of threshing were also regulated. A man, for threshing a quarter of wheat or rye, was allowed 24d.; for threshing a quarter of barley, oats, beans, and pease, 1d.; or a certain number of sheaves or bushels in places where it had been customary to pay in kind. No person was to quit his own village, in order to obtain work in summer, if he could get employment at the above wages, except the people of Staffordshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Craven in Yorkshire, and the marches of Scotland and Wales, and other parts, who-for what reason does not appear-were permitted to leave their own county. Labourers were to be sworn twice a year to observe these regulations, and offenders were punishable with three or more days' imprisonment in the stocks. Offenders were liable to imprisonment, till they could find sureties, to serve for the accustomed wages, or to sell their goods in the usual way. The excess above the common wages allowed to labourers might be sued for by the master. Labourers, artificers, and servants, lying from one county to another in consequence of these regulations, were to be imprisoned till the next sessions. There is also a statute of this arbitrary Sovereign issued, with the advice of his prelates, nobles, and learned men, which is noted in the preamble of the Statute of Labourers, by which it was enacted that every able-bodied person under sixty years of age, not having competent means of support, should be bound to serve, if required to do so, in the employment he was most fitted for, at the wages usually given. A subsequent section, in order to compel able men to labour for the necessaries of life, imposed the penalty of imprisonment on all persons who, giving alms through pretence of piety or charity, should encourage the idleness of sturdy labourers. In 1360 the Statute of Labourers was confirmed by Parliament, and the observance of it enforced under penalty of imprisonment for fifteen days, and branding in the forehead with an iron, for offenders who absented themselves from their work, or quitted 497 their place of abode; and magistrates were directed, in case they fled into towns, to deliver them up, under penalty of £10 to the king, and £5 to the masters who should reclaim them. In order to prevent combinations among artificers, it was declared "that all alliances of masons and carpenters, and congregations, chapters, ordinances, and oaths betwixt them made, should be thenceforth void and wholly annulled." The object of this statute was, of course, to benefit the master, by fixing a maximum for wages; and although it pointed out a mode by which its provisions might be avoided, by making it lawful "to every lord, or other, to make bargain and covenant of their work in gross with such labourers and artificers when it please them, so that they perform such works well and lawfully, according to the bargain or covenant with them thereof made," it is believed to have been only optional in the master to adopt this mode of hiring; and it is supposed that the labourer could be compelled to work for the statute wages by the day or the year, unless his employer could persuade him to work by the piece for less. Having ineffectually endeavoured to control the wages of industry, the Legislature attempted, by statutes equally impracticable, to restrict the labourer in the disposition of his slender earnings; and, accordingly, several acts were passed for the regulation of the food and other remuneration of the labourer, directing that the servants, both of lords, and artificers, and tradesmen, should be served once a day with meat or fish, and the offal of other victuals, such as milk and cheese, according to their station; and that they should wear cloth of which the whole piece did not cost more than two marks-that is, scarcely 12d. a yard. Tradesmen, artificers, and yeomen were forbidden to buy cloth for their own wear of more than £2 the piece, which is about 1s. 6d. a yard. Carters, ploughmen, ploughdrivers, ox-herds, neat-herds, shepherds, pig-drivers, and all other attendants on cattle, threshers, and other labourers employed in husbandry, and others not worth 40s. in money or in goods, were to use no other cloth than what was called blanket and russet, of the value of 12d. the yard. Clothiers were directed to make suitable quantities of cloth of the different prices, and mercers and shopkeepers to provide a sufficient assortment of each, in order that the law might be duly observed. To carry these laws into effect, it was enacted that clothiers should make their cloth conformably to the prices appointed by the statute. However, it appears from a subsequent regulation of the Legislature, that, not being allowed to raise their price, they had contrived to indemnify themselves by shortening the length of a piece of cloth. Of course, a limitation of the wages of labour to the ancient rate, whilst the price of all the necessaries of life, but more particularly of corn, the principal article of subsistence in these times, was continually varying, compelled the people to practise every species of evasion. If the wages fixed by statute were adhered to, the pay of a labourer or artificer must have been unchanged throughout a period during which the price of wheat varied from 2s. to £1 6s. 8d. "The rate of running away, and that the encouragement which they wages," as Sir F. Eden remarks, "if it was intended for the benefit of labourers, ought to have varied with every variation of the price of provisions. An attempt of this nature would, I confess, be no less absurd than the other. It, in fact, presumes that the Legislature are the best judges how much individuals can afford to give for the work they want, and that a master with capital is at the mercy of a needy workman without one. However, it would have been at least consistent in the Legislature, whilst they were telling a serving man what he should eat, to specify what he should pay for his food, and to have regulated the price of the essential articles of subsistence, instead of busying themselves in a frivolous statute to secure a cheap supply of hens, pullets, capons, and geese to great men's tables. The regulation of wages was a device confessedly framed by the upper classes for their own advantage, and, if not intended to produce that result, certainly tended to cramp the exertions of industry. Great proprietors, who, in their zeal to participate in the conveniences and elegancies offered them by commerce, had gradually relinquished their arbitrary rights over the persons of their dependents for a pecuniary equivalent, which enabled them to exchange the riotous hospitality of a castle for the splendour of the Court and the capital, soon discovered that a man acquired, if not additional bodily strength, at least an additional spur to industry from emancipation: they saw the strong inducements held out, both by commerce and manufacture, to the idle occupiers of their manors, and felt that the various pretexts for enfranchisement, supported by the subtleties of the courts of justice, would in the end, had they not been resisted, lead to the utter extinction of villeinage. The new system of working for hire, which was gradually making its way, was more profitable to them, and more conducive to national prosperity, than the labour of slaves; but it is doubtful whether the great political truth that the labour of free hands is more productive to the employer than the service of slaves was, in that unenlightened period, understood, or voluntarily practised, by great proprietors. They probably could not comprehend the beneficial effects of this important revolution, and thus they endeavoured to preserve some affinity between the new class of labourers and the old class of villeins, by limiting their earnings, as they had before controlled their persons. All the restrictions of the Legislature on personal industry' adds Sir F. Eden, from whose work on the "State of the Poor" this account of the legislation affecting industry in the fourteenth century is derived" evince a disposition of this kind. The various statutes to regulate wages, dress, and apparel seemed to have been framed with the same view—namely, to curb the aspiring exertions of industry and independency." received in these evil practices often induced them, upon the slightest cause of disgust, to quit their masters; that they wandered thus from country to country, and that many of the runaways turned beggars, and led idle lives in cities and boroughs, although they had sufficient bodily strength to gain a livelihood, if they pleased to work. Many wandered in parties of two, three, and four, from village to village; but the greater number turned out “ sturdy rogues," and infested the kingdom with frequent robberies. To remedy these evils, the Commons proposed that no relief should be given to those who were able to work, within boroughs or in the country; that vagrant beggars should be imprisoned till they consented to return home to work; and that whoever harboured any runaway servant in his service should be liable to a penalty of £10. It does not appear from the Rolls that the King assented to the above bill, but it appears to have been the groundwork of a subsequent statute, and shows us the early opinions of Parliament on the subject of mendicity, which was, of course, greatly increased by these mischievous laws. Soon afterwards the Commons complained that the statutes of labourers were not attended to, but that persons employed in husbandry fled into cities, and became artificers, mariners, or clerks (that is, priests), to the great detriment of agriculture; and, in consequence of these absurd complaints, it was enacted that the statutes passed in the preceding reign should be carried into execution. Justices were accordingly enjoined to take security of vagrants for their good behaviour. In the year 1388, the statutes relative to artificers, labourers, servants, and victuallers were confirmed; and it was further directed that no servant or labourer should depart from one part of the country to another, to serve, or to reside elsewhere, or under pretence of going a pilgrimage, without a letter patent, specifying the cause of his departure, and the time of his return, which might be granted at the discretion of a justice of the peace. Every vagrant who could not produce a letter patent was to be taken up, put into the stocks, and imprisoned until he found surety to return to his former master. Servants travelling on the business of their masters were exempt from the penalties of the act; but apprentices in trades, where they were not much wanted, might be compelled to assist in getting in the harvest. In the same sessions the wages of labourers in husbandry were again regulated. The people were restrained, by pecuniary penalties, from giving or receiving more than the statute allowed. For the first offence, both the giver and taker were to forfeit whatever was given above the regulation; for the second offence, double; and for the third offence, treble; and if the receiver of excessive wages was unable to pay the penalty, he was to be The Statute of Labourers was rigorously enforced, imprisoned for forty days. By the same statute, those and, notwithstanding the many inconveniences arising who had served in any agricultural occupation till they from its provisions, it was confirmed by several subse-were twelve years of age, were restrained from being put quent Acts of Parliament. But the Commons made to any trade, on penalty of the covenant of apprenticegreat complaints that masters were obliged to give their ship being void. In the following year, in consequence servants and labourers great wages to prevent their of an application of the Commons that the Statute of Labourers should be enforced, it was enacted, that "forasmuch as a man cannot put the price of corn, and other victuals, in certain, the justices should, at Easter and Michaelmas, according to the price of provisions, make proclamation how much every mason, carpenter, and other workman, and labourers should receive by the day, as well in harvest as at other times of the year, with or without meat and drink."* This was a slight improvement, and, as an approach towards liberty, may be compared to that sliding-scale for the artificial regulation of the supplies of corn which Sir Robert Peel adopted to prepare the nation for his great free-trade measures. But reform, in this respect, had made little progress even at the beginning of the present century. In the matter of the personal liberty of the workman, so essential to the development of free trade, the laws of the land were, till a late period, scarcely less arbitrary, vexatious, and oppressive. A great variety of statutes for regulating labour were passed even during the reign of George III. Some of them, indeed-though false in spirit, and really mischievous in their operation—were not inhumane in their objects; but the bulk of them were unjustifiable interferences with the natural operations of the labour market. Workmen were, by these comparatively recent laws, forbidden to enter into any agreement among themselves, whether in writing or not, for obtaining an advance of wages, or lessening or even altering their usual hours or time of working. To meet together to consider the condition and prospects of their trade, with a view to these objects, and even to be present at such a meeting, though not one of the trade, was punishable with imprisonment and hard labour. To contribute money towards the maintenance of such refractory workmen was equally illegal. There were statutes in force regulating what kind of workmen masters should employ in particular trades; but by the 39 & 40 Geo. III. such masters were empowered to apply to the magistrates for a licence to infringe these rules, which licence the magistrate was required to grant when any qualified workman usually employed in such trade should "refuse to work therein for reasonable wages,' or to work for any particular person, or to refuse to work for any other cause. By another act of the reign of George III., it was provided that the time of working for journeymen paper-makers at the vat, if the master should so require, should be half an hour about each part of fine-wove and plate papers, twenty of which were to make a day's work. Every day-worker was, by legislative enactment, compelled to work twelve hours per day, allowing one hour thereout for refreshment. The wages of journeymen weavers in London and Middlesex were ordered, by 13 Geo. III., cap. 68, to be settled by the Lord Mayor and justices at the General Quarter Sessions, who were directed to publish the rates, when requested, in the daily newspapers. Any master weaver who should give more or less to any of his journeymen than the prices so settled, should, on the oath of one witness, forfeit £50. * Sir F. Eden's "State of the Poor." 4:0. London: 1797. The legislature of King George III.'s reign likewise took especial note of buttons, including foreign buttons, buttons made of wood, cloth buttons, and metal buttons. No one was to have, even in his possession, any foreign buttons under the most terrible penalties; and shops, warehouses, and dwelling-houses were liable to be searched for any such treasonable articles. Nobody was allowed to make, sell, or sew on, any buttons made of wood only, and turned in imitation of other buttons. An information having been lodged against an unfortunate person for making wooden buttons contrary to the statute, the jury, after a solemn charge from the judge, found a verdict that the button was of wood, but that there was in it a shank of wire. After a long argument, judgment was given for the King, on the ground that this was a button of wood notwithstanding the shank, the judge learnedly observing that the shank was no essential part of the button, for buttons of silk and hair have no shanks. By another act Englishmen were forbidden to make or sew any buttons or button-holes of serge, drugget, frieze, camlet, or any other stuff of which clothes are usually made, the offender being liable to be committed to the common gaol of the county or place where he should be found, and kept to hard labour for three calendar months (4 Geo. I., cap. 7). An exception was made in favour of persons wearing velvet clothes, who might choose what buttons they pleased; but excepting in regard to these garments the wearers were equally liable to penalties. It was also part of the law of this realm that no one should wear printed or dyed calico, with the special proviso that the act did not extend to calico dyed all blue. The statute of 14 Geo. III., cap. 72, gravely recites that doubts had arisen whether stuff wholly made of cotton spun within this kingdom ought not to be considered as calico, and declares that any person may use the same in apparel or otherwise; that in every piece there shall be woven in the warp in both selvedges three blue stripes, each stripe of one thread only, "the first of which stripes shall be the first or outermost thread, the second of the stripes shall be the third thread, and the third of the stripes shall be the fifth thread; and, instead of the word 'calico,' each piece shall be marked with the words 'British manufactory.' Some of these old statutes remained till lately unrepealed, and it has happened in the last fifteen years that a defendant to an action brought by a tailor put in the plea that the articles of clothing supplied were furnished with buttons of silk, in contravention of the statute. It is hardly surprising that our progress population and wealth before the partial relaxation of these unjust and pernicious laws was extremely slow as compared with the subsequent period. It is, indeed, a remarkable evidence of the spirit and energy of the English race that their numbers should have increased at all under such circumstances, or the people escaped from sinking into that listless condition which writers describe as the characteristic of the natives of Iceland, and which Mr. Baring Gould, the latest of our travellers Chitty's "Treatise on the Laws of Commerce," vol. I, p. 302. in |