[12] Ruffhead's Pope.

[13] Preface to the Chronicles of Holinshed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Adam Smith.]

CHAPTER VII.

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 ent.i.tled to the same protection as a property that capital is ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sured 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.surance that his labour will be profitably exchanged for the goods which he desires for the satisfaction of his wants, as far as laws and inst.i.tutions can so provide. In a word, he may a.s.sure 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 unembarra.s.sed. 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 cla.s.ses of producers is one and the same. We may not improperly devote a little s.p.a.ce 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 acc.u.mulation. 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 acc.u.mulation. 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 n.o.bles 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 part.i.tioned, 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 cla.s.s between the n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances, the bondmen of every kind, in the course of a century or two after the Conquest, were rapidly pa.s.sing into the condition of free labourers. But still capital was acc.u.mulated 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 a.s.sert their own natural rights. The n.o.bility 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 cla.s.s of free labourers was first recognised by the legislature; and a statute was pa.s.sed, oppressive indeed, and impolitic, but distinctly acknowledging the right of the labourer to a.s.sume 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 princ.i.p.ally 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--acc.u.mulation 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 pa.s.sed to compel workmen and all persons not worth forty shillings to wear the coa.r.s.est 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 _st.u.r.dy 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed, 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, b.u.t.ter, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sessment 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 pa.s.s laws to compel artificers, under the penalty of the stocks, to a.s.sist 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 st.u.r.dy 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 Ess.e.x, 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

Possessions of the different cla.s.ses in England--Condition of Colchester in 1301--Tools, stock-in-trade, furniture, &c.--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 cla.s.ses of society, and especially of the middling and labouring cla.s.ses, in this country, at a period when the mutual rights of capitalists and labourers 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 cla.s.ses; and it would be well also to show that during this period of disunion and contest between capital and labour, each plundering the other, and both plundered by arbitrary power, whether of the n.o.bles 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 cla.s.ses 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 conclusions which cannot be disputed. It is in the same way that our knowledge of the former state of the physical world must be derived from relics of that former state, to which the inquiries and comparisons of the present times have given an historical value. We know, for instance, that the animals of the southern countries once abounded in these islands, because we occasionally find their bones in quant.i.ties which could not have been acc.u.mulated unless such animals had been once native to these parts; and the remains of sea-sh.e.l.ls upon the tops of hills now under the plough show us that even these heights have been heaved up from the bosom of the ocean. In the same way, although we have no complete picture of the state of property at the period to which we allude, we have evidence enough to describe that state from records which may be applied to this end, although preserved for a very different object.

In the reign of Edward III., Colchester, in Ess.e.x, was considered the tenth city in England in point of population. It then paid a poll-tax for 2955 lay persons. In 1301, about half a century before, the number of inhabitant housekeepers was 390; and the whole household furniture, utensils, clothes, money, cattle, corn, and every other property found in the town, was valued at 518_l._ 16_s._ 0-3/4_d._ This valuation took place on occasion of a subsidy or tax to the crown, to carry on a war against France; and the particulars, which are preserved in the Rolls of Parliament, exhibit with great minuteness the cla.s.ses of persons then inhabiting that town, and the sort of property which each respectively possessed. The trades exercised in Colchester were the following:--baker, barber, blacksmith, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carter, cobbler, cook, dyer, fisherman, fuller, furrier, girdler, gla.s.s-seller, glover, linen-draper, mercer and spice-seller, miller, mustard and vinegar seller, old clothes seller, saddler, tailor, tanner, tiler, weaver, wood-cutter, and wool-comber. If we look at a small town of the present day, where such a variety of occupations are carried on, we shall find that each tradesman has a considerable stock of commodities, abundance of furniture and utensils, clothes in plenty, some plate, books, and many articles of convenience and luxury to which the most wealthy dealers and mechanics of Colchester of the fourteenth century were utter strangers. That many places at that time were much poorer than Colchester there can be no doubt: for here we see the division of labour was pretty extensive, and that is always a proof that production is going forward, however imperfectly. We see, too, that the tradesmen were connected with manufactures in the ordinary use of the term; or there would not have been the dyer, the glover, the linen-draper, the tanner, the weaver, and the wool-comber. There must have been a demand for articles of foreign commerce, too, in this town, or we should not have had the spice-seller. Yet, with all these various occupations, indicating considerable profitable industry when compared with earlier stages in the history of this country, the whole stock of the town was valued at little more than 500_l._ Nor let it be supposed that this smallness of capital can be accounted for by the difference in the standard of money; although that difference is considerable. We may indeed satisfy ourselves of the small extent of the capital of individuals at that day, by referring to the inventory of the articles upon which the tax we have mentioned was laid at Colchester.

The whole stock of a carpenter's tools was valued at one shilling. They altogether consisted of two broad axes, an adze, a square, and a navegor or spoke-shave. Rough work must the carpenter have been able to perform with these humble instruments; but then let it be remembered that there was little capital to pay him for finer work, and that very little fine work was consequently required. The three hundred and ninety housekeepers of Colchester then lived in mud huts, with a rough door and no chimney. Harrison, speaking of the manners of a century later than the period we are describing, says, "There were very few chimneys even in capital towns: the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued out at the roof, or door, or window. The houses were wattled, and plastered over with clay; and all the furniture and utensils were of wood. The people slept on straw pallets, with a log of wood for a pillow." When this old historian wrote, he mentions the erection of chimneys as a modern luxury. We had improved little upon our Anglo-Saxon ancestors in the article of chimneys. In their time Alcuin, an abbot who had ten thousand va.s.sals, writes to the emperor at Rome that he preferred living in his smoky house to visiting the palaces of Italy.

This was in the ninth century. Five hundred years had made little difference in the chimneys of Colchester. The n.o.bility had hangings against the walls to keep out the wind, which crept in through the crevices which the builder's bungling art had left: the middle orders had no hangings. Shakspere alludes to this rough building of houses even in his time:--

"Imperial Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."

Even the n.o.bility went without gla.s.s to their windows in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. "Of old time," says Harrison, "our country houses, instead of gla.s.s, did use much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak, in checkerwise." When gla.s.s was introduced, it was for a long time so scarce that at Alnwick Castle, in 1567, the gla.s.s was ordered to be taken out of the windows, and laid up in safety, when the lord was absent.

The mercer's stock-in-trade at Colchester was much upon a level with the carpenter's tools. It was somewhat various, but very limited in quant.i.ty. The whole comprised a piece of woollen cloth, some silk and fine linen, flannel, silk purses, gloves, girdles, leather purses, and needle-work; and it was altogether valued at 3_l._ There appears to have been another dealer in cloth and linen in the town, whose store was equally scanty. We were not much improved in the use of linen a century later. We learn from the Earl of Northumberland's household book, whose family was large enough to consume one hundred and sixty gallons of mustard during the winter with their salt meat, that only seventy ells of linen were allowed for a year's consumption. In the fourteenth century none but the clergy and n.o.bility wore white linen. As industry increased, and the cleanliness of the middle cla.s.ses increased with it, the use of white linen became more general; but even at the end of the next century, when printing was invented, the paper-makers had the greatest difficulty in procuring rags for their manufacture; and so careful were the people of every cla.s.s to preserve their linen, that night-clothes were never worn. Linen was so dear that Shakspere makes Falstaff's shirts eight shillings an ell. The more sumptuous articles of a mercer's stock were treasured in rich families from generation to generation; and even the wives of the n.o.bility did not disdain to mention in their wills a particular article of clothing, which they left to the use of a daughter or a friend. The solitary old coat of a baker came into the Colchester valuation; nor is this to be wondered at, when we find that even the soldiers at the battle of Bannockburn, about this time, were described by an old rhymer as "well near all naked."

The household furniture found in use amongst the families of Colchester consisted, in the more wealthy, of an occasional bed, a bra.s.s pot, a bra.s.s cup, a gridiron, and a rug or two, and perhaps a towel. Of chairs and tables we hear nothing. We learn from the Chronicles of Brantome, a French historian of these days, that even the n.o.bility sat upon chests in which they kept their clothes and linen. Harrison, whose testimony we have already given to the poverty of these times, affirms, that if a man in seven years after marriage could purchase a flock bed, and a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself as well lodged as the lord of the town, "who peradventure lay seldom on a bed entirely of feathers." An old tenure in England, before these times, binds the va.s.sal to find straw even for the king's bed. The beds of flock, the few articles of furniture, the absence of chairs and tables, would have been of less consequence to the comfort and health of the people, if they had been clean; but cleanliness never exists without a certain possession of domestic conveniences. The people of England, in the days of which we are speaking, were not famed for their attention to this particular.

Thomas a Becket was reputed extravagantly nice, because he had his parlour strewed every day with clean straw. As late as the reign of Henry VIII., Erasmus, a celebrated scholar of Holland, who visited England, complains that the nastiness of the people was the cause of the frequent plagues that destroyed them; and he says, "their floors are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lie unmolested a collection of beer, grease, fragments, bones, spittle, excrements of dogs and cats, and of everything that is nauseous." The elder Scaliger, another scholar who came to England, abuses the people for giving him no convenience to wash his hands. Gla.s.s vessels were scarce, and pottery was almost wholly unknown. The Earl of Northumberland, whom we have mentioned, breakfasted on trenchers and dined on pewter. While such universal slovenliness prevailed as Erasmus has described, it is not likely that much attention was generally paid to the cultivation of the mind. Before the invention of printing, at the time of the valuation of Colchester, books in ma.n.u.script, from their extreme costliness, could be purchased only by princes. The royal library of Paris, in 1378, consisted of nine hundred and nine volumes,--an extraordinary number.

The same library now comprises upwards of four hundred thousand volumes.

But it may fairly be a.s.sumed that, where one book could be obtained in the fourteenth century by persons of the working cla.s.ses, four hundred thousand may be as easily obtained now. Here then was a privation which existed five hundred years ago, which debarred our ancestors from more profit and pleasure than the want of beds, and chairs, and linen; and probably, if this privation had continued, and men therefore had not cultivated their understandings, they would not have learnt to give any really profitable direction to their labour, and we should still have been as scantily supplied with furniture and clothes as the good people of Colchester of whom we have been speaking.

Let us see what acc.u.mulated supply, or capital, of food the inhabitants of England had five centuries ago. Possessions in cattle are the earliest riches of most countries. We have seen that cattle was called "live money;" and it is supposed that the word capital, which means stock generally, was derived from the Latin word "capita," or heads of beasts. The law-term "chattels" is also supposed to come from cattle.

These circ.u.mstances show that cattle were the chief property of our ancestors. Vast herds of swine const.i.tuted the great provision for the support of the people; and these were princ.i.p.ally fed, as they are even now in the New Forest, upon acorns and beech-mast. In Domesday Book, a valuation of the time of William the Conqueror, it is always mentioned how many hogs each estate can maintain. Hume the historian, in his Essays, alluding to the great herds of swine described by Polybius as existing in Italy and Greece, concludes that the country was thinly peopled and badly cultivated; and there can be no doubt that the same argument may be applied to England in the fourteenth century, although many swine were maintained in forests preserved for fuel. The hogs wandered about the country in a half-wild state, destroying, probably, more than they profitably consumed; and they were badly fed, if we may judge from a statute of 1402, which alleges the great decrease of fish in the Thames and other rivers, by the practice of feeding hogs with the fry caught at the weirs. The hogs' flesh of England was constantly salted for the winter's food. The people had little fodder for cattle in the winter, and therefore they only tasted fresh meat in the summer season. The mustard and vinegar seller formed a business at Colchester, to furnish a relish for the pork. Stocks of salted meat are mentioned in the inventory of many houses there, and live hogs as commonly. But salted flesh is not food to be eaten constantly, and with little vegetable food, without severe injury to the health. In the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., not a cabbage, carrot, turnip, or other edible root, grew in England. Two or three centuries before, certainly, the monasteries had gardens with a variety of vegetables; but nearly all the gardens of the laity were destroyed in the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. Harrison speaks of wheaten bread as being chiefly used by the gentry for their own tables; and adds that the artificer and labourer are "driven to content themselves with horse-corn, beans, peason, oats, tares, and lentils." There is no doubt that the average duration of human life was at that period not one-half as long as at the present day. The constant use of salted meat, with little or no vegetable addition, doubtless contributed to the shortening of life, to say nothing of the large numbers constantly swept away by pestilence and famine. Till lemon-juice was used as a remedy for scurvy amongst our seamen, who also are compelled to eat salted meat without green vegetables, the destruction of life in the navy was something incredible. Admiral Hosier buried his ships' companies twice during a West India voyage in 1726, partly from the unhealthiness of the Spanish coast, but chiefly from the ravages of scurvy. Bad food and want of cleanliness swept away the people of the middle ages, by ravages upon their health that the limited medical skill of those days could never resist. Matthew Paris, an historian of that period, states that there were in his time twenty thousand hospitals for lepers in Europe.

The slow acc.u.mulation of capital in the early stages of the civilization of a country is in a great measure caused by the indisposition of the people to unite for a common good in public works, and the inability of governments to carry on these works, when their princ.i.p.al concern is war, foreign or domestic. The foundations of the civilization of this country were probably laid by our Roman conquerors, who carried roads through the island, and taught us how to cultivate our soil. Yet improvement went on so slowly that, even a hundred years after the Romans were settled here, the whole country was described as marshy. For centuries after the Romans made the Watling-street and a few other roads, one district was separated from another by the general want of these great means of communication. Bracton, a law-writer of the period we have been so constantly mentioning, holds that, if a man being at Oxford engage to pay money the same day in London, he shall be discharged of his contract, as he undertakes a physical impossibility.

We find, as late as the time of Elizabeth, that her Majesty would not stay to breakfast at Cambridge because she had to travel twelve miles before she could come to the place, Hinchinbrook, where she desired to sleep. Where there were no roads, there could be few or no markets. An act of parliament of 1272 says that the religious houses should not be compelled to _sell_ their provisions--a proof that there were no considerable stores except in the religious houses. The difficulty of navigation was so great, that William Longsword, son of Henry II., returning from France, was during three months tossed upon the sea before he could make a port in Cornwall. Looking, therefore, to the want of commerce proceeding from the want of communication--looking to the small stock of property acc.u.mulated to support labour--and looking, as we have previously done, to the incessant contests between the small capital and the misdirected labour, both feeble, because they worked without skill--we cannot be surprised that the poverty of which we have exhibited a faint picture should have endured for several centuries, and that the industry of our forefathers must have had a long and painful struggle before it could have bequeathed to us such magnificent acc.u.mulations as we now enjoy.

The writers who lived at the periods when Europe was slowly emerging from ignorance and poverty, through the first slight union of capital and labour as voluntary exchangers, complain of the increase of comforts as indications of the growing luxury and effeminacy of the people.

Harrison says, "In times past men were contented to dwell in houses builded of sallow, willow, plum-tree, or elm; so that the use of oak was dedicated to churches, religious houses, princes' palaces, n.o.blemen's lodgings, and navigation. But now, these are rejected, and nothing but oak any whit regarded. And yet see the change; for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but many, through Persian delicacy crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration. In those days, the courage of the owner was a sufficient defence to keep the house in safety; but now, the a.s.surance of the timber, double doors, locks, and bolts, must defend the man from robbing. Now have we many chimneys, and our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then had we none but rere-dosses, and our heads did never ache." These complaints go upon the same principle that made it a merit in Epictetus, the Greek philosopher, to have had no door to his hovel. We think he would have been a wiser man if he had contrived to have had a door. A story is told of a Highland chief, Sir Evan Cameron, that himself and a party of his followers being benighted, and compelled to sleep in the open air, when his son rolled up a ball of snow and laid his head upon it for a pillow, the rough old man kicked it away, exclaiming, "What, sir! are you turning effeminate?" We doubt whether Sir Evan Cameron and his men were braver than the English officers who fought at Waterloo; and yet many of these marched from the ball-room at Brussels in their holiday attire, and won the battle in silk stockings. It is an old notion that plenty of the necessaries and conveniences of life renders a nation feeble. We are told that the Carthaginian soldiers whom Hannibal carried into Italy were suddenly rendered effeminate by the abundance which they found around them at Capua. The commissariat of modern nations goes upon another principle; and believes that unless the soldier has plenty of food and clothing he will not fight with alacrity and steadiness. The half-starved soldiers of Henry V. won the battle of Agincourt; but it was not because they were half-starved, but because they roused their native courage to cut their way out of the peril by which they were surrounded. The Russians of our time had a notion that the English could not fight on land, because for forty years we had been a commercial instead of a military nation. The battle of the Alma corrected their mistake. When we hear of ancient nations being enervated by abundance, we may be sure that the abundance was almost entirely devoured by a few tyrants, and that the bulk of the people were rendered weak by the dest.i.tution which resulted from the unnatural distribution of riches. We read of the luxury of the court of Persia--the pomp of the seraglios, and of the palaces--the lights, the music, the dancing, the perfumes, the silks, the gold, and the diamonds. The people are held to be effeminate. The Russians, from the hardy north, can lay the Persian monarchy any day at their feet. Is this national weakness caused by the excess of production amongst the people, giving them so extravagant a command over the necessaries and luxuries of life that they have nothing to do but drink of the full cup of enjoyment? Mr. Fraser, an English traveller, thus describes the appearance of a part of the country which he visited in 1821:--"The plain of Yezid-Khaust presented a truly lamentable picture of the general decline of prosperity in Persia. Ruins of large villages thickly scattered about with the skeleton-like walls of caravansaries and gardens, all telling of better times, stood like _memento moris_ (remembrances of death) to kingdoms and governments; and the whole plain was dotted over with small mounds, which indicate the course of cannauts (artificial streams for watering the soil), once the source of riches and fertility, now all choked up and dry; for there is neither man nor cultivation to require their aid." Was it the luxury of the people which produced this decay--the increase of their means of production--their advancement in skill and capital; or some external cause which repressed production, and destroyed acc.u.mulation both of outward wealth and knowledge? "Such is the character of their rulers," says Mr. Fraser, "that the only measure of their demands is the power to extort on one hand, and the ability to give or retain on the other." Where such a system prevails, all acc.u.mulated labour is concealed, for it would otherwise be plundered. It does not freely and openly work to encourage new labour. Burckhardt, the traveller of Nubia, saw a farmer who had been plundered of everything by the pacha, because it came to the ears of the savage ruler that the unhappy man was in the habit of eating wheaten bread; and that, he thought, was too great a luxury for a subject. If such oppressions had not long ago been put down in England, we should still have been in the state of Colchester in the fourteenth century. When these iniquities prevailed, and there was neither freedom of industry nor security of property--when capital and labour were not united--when all men consequently worked unprofitably, because they worked without division of labour, acc.u.mulation of knowledge, and union of forces--there was universal poverty, because there was feeble production. Slow and painful were the steps which capital and labour had to make before they could emerge, even in part, from this feeble and degraded state. But that they have made a wonderful advance in five hundred years will not be difficult to show. It may a.s.sist us in this view if we compare the Colchester of the nineteenth century with the Colchester of the fourteenth, in a few particulars.

In the reign of Edward III. Colchester numbered 359 houses of mud, without chimneys, and with latticed windows. In the reign of Queen Victoria, according to the census of 1851, it has 4145 inhabited houses, containing a population of 19,443 males and females. The houses of the better cla.s.s, those rented at ten pounds a year and upwards, are commonly built of brick, and slated or tiled; secured against wind and weather; with glazed windows and with chimneys; and generally well ventilated. The worst of these houses are supplied, as fixtures, with a great number of conveniences, such as grates, and cupboards, and fastenings. To many of such houses gardens are attached, wherein are raised vegetables and fruits that kings could not command two centuries ago. Houses such as these are composed of several rooms--not of one room only, where the people are compelled to eat and sleep and perform every office, perhaps in company with pigs and cattle--but of a kitchen, and often a parlour, and several bedrooms. These rooms are furnished with tables, and chairs, and beds, and cooking-utensils. There is ordinarily, too, something for ornament and something for instruction;--a piece or two of china, silver spoons, books, and not unfrequently a watch or clock. The useful pottery is abundant and of really elegant forms and colours; drinking-vessels of gla.s.s are universal. The inhabitants are not scantily supplied with clothes. The females are decently dressed, having a constant change of linen, and gowns of various patterns and degrees of fineness. Some, even of the humbler cla.s.ses, are not thought to exceed the proper appearance of their station if they wear silk. The men have decent working habits, strong shoes and hats, and a respectable suit for Sundays, of cloth often as good as is worn by the highest in the land. Every one is clean; for no house above the few hovels which still deform the country is without soap and bowls for washing, and it is the business of the females to take care that the linen of the family is constantly washed. The children, very generally, receive instruction in some public establishment; and when the labour of the day is over, the father thinks the time unprofitably spent unless he burns a candle to enable him to read a book or the newspaper. The food which is ordinarily consumed is of the best quality. Wheaten bread is no longer confined to the rich; animal food is not necessarily salted, and salt meat is used princ.i.p.ally as a variety; vegetables of many sorts are plenteous in every market, and these by a succession of care are brought to higher perfection than in the countries of more genial climate from which we have imported them; the productions too of distant regions, such as spices, and coffee, and tea, and sugar, are universally consumed almost by the humblest in the land. Fuel, also, of the best quality, is abundant and comparatively cheap.

If we look at the public conveniences of a modern English town, we shall find the same striking contrast. Water is brought not only into every street, but into every house; the dust and dirt of a family is regularly removed without bustle or unpleasantness; the streets are paved, and lighted at night; roads in the highest state of excellence connect the town with the whole kingdom, and by means of railroads a man can travel several hundred miles in a few hours, and more readily than he could ten miles in the old time; and ca.n.a.l and sea navigation transport the weightiest goods with the greatest facility from each district to the other, and from each town to the other, so that all are enabled to apply their industry to what is most profitable for each and all. Every man, therefore, may satisfy his wants, according to his means, at the least possible expense of the transport of commodities. Every tradesman has a stock ready to meet the demand; and thus the stock of a very moderately wealthy tradesman of the Colchester of the present day is worth more than all the stock of all the different trades that were carried on in the same place in the fourteenth century. The condition of a town like Colchester--a flourishing market-town in an agricultural district--offers a fair point of comparison with a town of the time of Edward III.

CHAPTER IX.

Certainty the stimulus to industry--Effects of insecurity--Instances of unprofitable labour--Former notions of commerce--National and cla.s.s prejudices, and their remedy.

Two of the most terrific famines that are recorded in the history of the world occurred in Egypt--a country where there is greater production, with less labour, than is probably exhibited in any other region. The princ.i.p.al labourer in Egypt is the river Nile, whose periodical overflowings impart fertility to the thirsty soil, and produce in a few weeks that abundance which the labour of the husbandman might not hope to command if employed during the whole year. But the Nile is a workman that cannot be controlled and directed, even by capital, the great controller and director of all work. The influences of heat, and light, and air, are pretty equal in the same places. Where the climate is most genial, the cultivators have least labour to perform in winning the earth; where it is least genial, the cultivators have most labour. The increased labour balances the small natural productiveness. But the inundation of a great river cannot be depended upon like the light and heat of the sun. For two seasons the Nile refused to rise, and labour was not prepared to compensate for this refusal; the ground refused to produce; the people were starved.

We mention these famines of Egypt to show that _certainty_ is the most encouraging stimulus to every operation of human industry. We know that production as invariably follows a right direction of labour, as day succeeds to night. We believe that it will be dark to-night and light again to-morrow, because we know the general laws which govern light and darkness, and because our experience shows us that those laws are constant and uniform. We know that if we plough, and manure, and sow the ground, a crop will come in due time, varying indeed in quant.i.ty according to the season, but still so constant upon an average of years, that we are justified in applying large acc.u.mulations and considerable labour to the production of this crop. It is this certainty that we have such a command of the productive powers of nature as will abundantly compensate us for the incessant labour of directing those forces, which has during a long course of industry heaped up our manifold acc.u.mulations, and which enables production annually to go forward to an extent which even half a century ago would have been thought impossible.

The long succession of labour, which has covered this country with wealth, has been applied to the encouragement of the productive forces of nature, and the restraint of the destroying. No one can doubt that, the instant the labour of man ceases to direct those productive natural forces, the destroying forces immediately come into action. Take the most familiar instance--a cottage whose neat thatch was never broken, whose latticed windows were always entire, whose whitewashed walls were ever clean, round whose porch the honeysuckle was trained in regulated luxuriance, whose garden bore nothing but what the owner planted. Remove that owner. Shut up the cottage for a year, and leave the garden to itself. The thatched roof is torn off by the wind and devoured by mice, the windows are driven in by storms, the walls are soaked through with damp and are crumbling to ruin, the honeysuckle obstructs the entrance which it once adorned, the garden is covered with weeds which years of after-labour will have difficulty to destroy:--

"It was a plot Of garden-ground run wild, its matted weeds Mark'd with the steps of those whom, as they pa.s.s'd, The gooseberry-trees that shot in long lank slips, Or currants, hanging from their leafless stems In scanty strings, had tempted to o'erleap The broken wall."

Apply this principle upon a large scale. Let the productive energy of a country be suspended through some great cause which prevents its labour continuing in a profitable direction. Let it be overrun by a conqueror, or plundered by domestic tyranny of any kind, so that capital ceases to work with security. The fields suddenly become infertile, the towns lose their inhabitants, the roads grow to be impa.s.sable, the ca.n.a.ls are choked up, the rivers break down their banks, the sea itself swallows up the land. Shakspere, a great political reasoner as well as a great poet, has described such effects in that part of 'Henry V.' when the Duke of Burgundy exhorts the rival kings to peace:--