rage, say 36s., $8 64 per month, or less than $104 per annum. Out of this sum he has to provide himself with food, clothes, and lodging. The slaves in the States of Maryland and Virginia are hired out for similar agricultural labour, at from $60 to $80 per annum, and are boarded and sometimes clothed by their employers. Their board is estimated to cost $25 per annum.*. To work upon public improvethough labour be abundant and wretchedly paid, and prevents his emigration to districts where labour is in request and comparatively well paid. The Poor Laws thus prevent the equalization of wages, leaving them to be determined in the different counties by mere local causes, notwithstanding the great facilities of communication, and the very limited distance which separates any part of England from any other part.

The most effective cause of the diversity in the wages of different districts, appears to be the presence of great manufacturing establishments in some and their absence in others. Thus, Mr. Caird shows that the average rate of agricultural wages in the twelve northern counties of England, which include the coal region, and are the seat of manufacturing and mining enterprise, is 11s. 6d. a week, while in the southern counties it is but 8s. 5d. "The influence," he observes, "of manufacturing enterprise, is thus seen to add 37 per cent. to the wages of the agricultural labourers of the northern counties as compared with those of the south. The line is distinctly drawn at the point where coal ceases to be found." Comparing the present rates with those stated by Arthur Young, in 1770, it appears that the increase in the northern counties is about 66 per cent., while in the eighteen southern counties mentioned by Young, the increase is but 14 per cent. The greatest increase is in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, the seats of the cotton and woollen manufacture, where it is full 100 per cent.

See Caird's English Agriculture in 1850 and 1851, p. 514, et seq.

* Patent Office Report - Agricultural - for 1849-50, page 141.

B. P. Johnson, Esq., the Secretary of the N. Y. State Agricultural Society, writes to the Albany Evening Journal, from Maryland, November 13, 1852, as follows:

"The labour in this section of the State is mostly performed by slaves. In very many cases the slaves are hired. The practice is, as we learn, to give the slave a choice whether he will work for the applicant or not, and if he refuses to do so he is not compelled to go. This has probably led to a practice which now prevails, and may perhaps be considered so far a custom as to be nearly universal. The usual price per year for the hire of a slave suited to farm-work is about $60-the hirer taking care of him in all cases, except when the slave is sick for more than thirteen days at a time, when he is cared for at the expense of the master. In order to se

ments, they hire by the year at from $100 to $120. Their pay is about up to the English standard. The free labourer, for the lowest description of unskilled labour, is paid from 75 cents to $1 per day; or, when he hires by the year for farm work, receives from $10 to $12 a month, besides his board and lodging, which is at least twice as costly as that of the slave.

If, instead of comparing the rate of wages in countries at different stages of wealth and social progress, we trace the history of the labouring classes in any of the States of Europe, we find that they have emerged, or are emerging from a state of slavery; that this condition is uniformly accompanied by barbarism and poverty on the part of the employer; and that, from generation to generation, the advance in the rate of wages, to which there is a constant and steady tendency, has been marked by a more than corresponding increase of capital. All classes have approximated more and more to a common level, and that level has been itself constantly rising. The actual labourers of Scandinavia were thralls; the freemen employed themselves in war and piracy. When the Saxons overran Britain, they parcelled out the land among the free retainers of their chiefs, who held their farms upon the tenure of military service, and who came eventually to receive the name of "vassals," and the original British cultivators of the soil became "ceorls" or churls, and were afterwards called "villains." During the Saxon period, nearly the whole people were engaged in producing food. "The English," says Stowe, "might be said to be graziers rather than ploughmen,

cure the services of the slave, it was the practice at an early day, for the person wishing to hire him to offer to the slave, for his own benefit, from $10 to $15: this usually secured his assent. This is now usually given in cases of hiring; and the slave has thus an interest in so conducting himself as to be profitable to his employer as well as useful to himself. The slaves have many perquisites here, by which they frequently accumulate considerable property. They have a week's holiday at Christmas, at Easter also, and, usually, every Saturday afternoon, when their time is at their own disposal. They keep poultry, own a pig, gather oysters, which they often sell to their own masters, as well as to others, and frequently spend their evenings in manufacturing the husk collars for mules, straw hats, raw-hide traces, &c., and are thus enabled to secure many little comforts for themselves and families."

for almost three parts of the kingdom were set apart for cattle.” Swine, who picked up their own food in the woods, and whose parings, the feet, tail, &c., were pretty much all that Gurth got for tending them, constituted a large portion of the live stock. The practice of selling their own children for slaves was common. When the Council of Armagh, in 1171, prohibited the traffic which the Norman conquerors practised, in selling English slaves to Ireland, it reminded the Saxons that they had merited such chastisements, by the former habit of their nation of selling their own kin at the first pinch of want. The author who relates this* declares, that such numbers of slaves were exported to Ireland that the market was absolutely glutted. Another states that, from the reign of William to that of King John, there was scarcely a cottager in Scotland who did not possess an English slave.

A distinction soon grew up between villains in gross, who were at the absolute disposal of their master, and villains regardant, who were annexed to the land, passing with it when the property changed hands by inheritance or purchase, and who could neither remove from it at their own will, nor were removeable at the will of their lord. Though some of them were allowed to cultivate an allotment for their own profit, just as the slaves in our Southern States are indulged with a patch of ground, on which they raise garden vegetables and poultry, yet as matter of law, they were incapable of acquiring property, and whatever money or goods they possessed belonged to the master. Such is now the position of the Russian serfs. Many of them, in point of fact, accumulate great wealth,

* Geraldus Cambrensis, who lived in the reign of Henry II.

66

† The proprietor shows his vassals the portion of land they must cultivate for him, and allots the remainder among them at his own will and caprice. Where estates, in proportion as their population increases, get almost entirely allotted out among the serfs, the owner exacts from the latter, instead of the soccage, or compulsory unpaid labour, a yearly tribute called obrok, whose average amount is ten or twelve rubles banco. If the lord of the soil fixes neither obrok nor amount of labour, the law fixes three days' work a week for every male who has attained his fifteenth year, and, for women and children, labour in proportion to their strength. * * * Many, especially young people, repair to the towns, and easily obtain permission from their master, as they are then expected to pay higher obrok." -Jermann's Pictures from St. Petersburgh, page 154.

and are suffered to enjoy it upon payment of an acknowledgment to their owner, by which they hire the privilege of working for themselves.

There is a natural process through which the slave works out his freedom. His toil is unproductive, because there is no heart nor hope in it. He produces little, and he gets little. The master soon sees that he can increase his profits by tempting the slave to increased task-work, giving him all the surplus he can earn after finishing his task. With this partial liberty of working for himself comes the stimulus of hope; he works harder for himself than when working for his master, and of course obtains higher wages. His intelligence and his power increase, and it is finally seen that more work can be got from him, and at a cheaper rate, by paying him fair

wages, than in any other way. In England, as on the Continent,

this change was brought about by assigning lands to the bondmen, the fruits of which they were permitted to enjoy, upon condition of performing agricultural labour upon the domain of their lord. The services thus rendered were at first arbitrary and uncertain, being such as the lord chose to demand, and at such time as he chose to demand them.

This state of things lasted, in many of the States of the Continent, until a very recent period. In Denmark the estates of the nobles, down to 1784, were cultivated by serfs, who were bound to work every day without wages, on the main farm of the feudal lord, and had cottages and land on the outskirts of the estate, to work upon for their own living. Their lord could imprison them, flog them, reclaim them if they had deserted from his land, and had complete jurisdiction over them in his baronial court. Since that period services have been rendered certain, and the slaves converted into proprietors of their holdings, rendering a fixed rent to their landlord.* In several of the provinces of Austria-Hungary, Bo

* "About the year 1784, the spirit of the age began to make the feudal relation unprofitable as well as odious. The serfs would enlist in the army, or desert to the free towns, Hamburg and Lubeck, or emigrate and set themselves free, leaving none but the aged and infirm to labour without wages on the estate. Some nobles, among the first Count Bernstoff, emancipated their serfs, and paid day's wages for the labour they required on

*

hemia, Gallicia, and Moravia, a similar change was effected about 1776. Previous to that, the number of robots or days of forced labour, to be done on the lord's land, depended on the mere will of himself or his agent. The other dues and services were equally unlimited in fact if not in appearance; for, when defined by compact or usage, the peasant's complaint for infringement could only be heard in the court of the Herrshaft or Manor, where the lord himself, or his paid fiscal, was the sole expounder of the law. A rebellion of the peasants in 1773 led to the promulgation of a Rural Code, which defines the robots according to the extent of the peasant's holding. The maximum in Bohemia and Moravia was fixed their estates. Some valued the serf's labour, and the land with his cottage, which he had for his subsistence, and converted the amount into a debt upon the little farm, which the serf had to pay interest for and redeem, but in the meantime was full proprietor of the land. In some cases labour continued to be paid as a rent, or feudal duty, for the land; but government interfered to fix an equitable amount, to determine the number of days per week, and of hours per day which could be exacted, and to make the holding perpetual, provided the conditions were fulfilled, or a stipulated price paid for non-fulfilment. On the whole the feudal vassals and serfs became proprietors of their several holdings; some remaining subject to a few servitudes, such as certain cartages of peats, wood, or corn, certain days' work in hay-time and harvest, at certain rates, but all fixed, registered in the books of the local court, and placed beyond arbitrary exaction or oppression on the one hand, or evasion on the other."Laing's Denmark and the Duchies, page 54.

Mr. Laing says at a subsequent page, (155): “Though the emancipation of the peasantry on the baronial estates was only accomplished in the beginning of this century, yet they have made greater progress in the tastes and requirements of civilized life, and in the habits of industry and accumulation of property to gratify those tastes and requirements, than the Celtic peasantry of Ireland or of Scotland have made since the earliest notice of them in history."

Mr. Turnbull says:

* See Turnbull's Austria, vol. 2, chap. 3. "A large Bohemian proprietor, who with his brothers counted on their estates 18,000 subjects, has frequently observed to me, that he found it usually more advantageous to accept even a very small part of the legal commutation money, and to hire labour from others, than to take it in kind from those who were bound to yield it."

How much more so would it have been, when the obligations were all on one side and the benefits on the other!