LABOUR WAGES AND CAPITAL PROFITS IDENTICAL. 21

and social funds which were given by traders and artisans have been appropriated by those who are in no other sense their successors.

The costs of training and the risks of the calling are, as in the case of the employer, objective charges; the remuneration for work actually done is subjective. So that we come to the conclusion, that the wages of the employer and of the workmen are generically identical and only specifically different. The question between the two parties engaged in the joint product is, what is the share which each party shall receive, the cost of materials being deducted in the residual distribution. Here, of course, the problem is insoluble as long as each is the interpreter of his own value. In old days the distribution was determined by an oppressive authority, the resistance to which was naturally unreasoning violence. Gradually both parties began to see that the question was arguable, and they frequently had recourse to arbitration. We are beginning to hope that masters' unions and labour partnerships will ere long settle their differences by some self-acting machinery.

Now I have referred to these elementary economical principles, not only because a right conception of them is essential towards the interpretation of all economical problems, but because, in these lectures on the economical interpretation of English history, I shall have frequent occasion to show how the industrial partnership and the subsequent distribution of the product have been warped from their natural bias by legislative violence.

Five or six centuries ago, the industry of English life was very simple. Three-fourths of the people were husbandmen, cultivating their small farms. There was always, it seems, a certain number of agricultural labourers, who sought work in the villages. It is clear that during the harvest all but the very few men of leisure were engaged in field labour, for the rule against strangers was relaxed in the case of the harvest man. Employers purchased materials, iron, steel, lead, lime, stone, timber, which the craftsmen worked up, as they do in Hindostan now. When it was possible, piecework was the rule. It is highly probable, nay, almost certain, that even the artisans were during parts of the year husbandmen. I have seen frequent evidence of the fact.

Suddenly a great plague, the like of which was not recorded, attacked Europe almost simultaneously. Like most plagues, it was

much more deadly at first than it was subsequently, though it held its own in England for more than three centuries. It probably killed a third of the population. The wages of labour were instantly doubled, and the ruin of the great proprietors seemed imminent. The profits of capitalist agriculture sank from 20 per cent. to near zero. Now, the great proprietor saw no harm in a high price for what he had to sell, but deemed that a high price in what he had to buy was a grievous wrong. So he made use of the constitution-that is, of the Administration and Parliament-in order to secure or recover his fortunes. It is true that the means by which unfair or impossible contracts were enforced was not brought to the perfection which we witness in modern times, and for a long time the employers of labour were baffled.

The fact is, a new criticism of existing institutions had been encouraged. The riches and the immunities of the monastic orders caused much dissatisfaction. Why should not the opulent monks be made to pay a large share of taxation? Why should the Pope be allowed to levy toll and tribute in England? These discontents found frequent expression, and the radical reformer and his emissaries were welcomed and caressed in high places. But in course of time, the same bold theorists began to examine into the moral title of all property, to declare that lordship was founded in grace, that is, on deserts, and to dispute all other claims to ownership. They even declared that useful labour was more valuable than birth, and rhymed on the relative antiquity of honest work and gentle blood. They became the mouthpiece, the agents, the organizers of the peasantry, and they managed their function with secrecy and efficiency. At last, out of a clear sky, in June, 1881, the storm burst, and England was in insurrection simultaneously from Southampton to Scarborough. The insurrection was quelled, the leaders were executed, the teaching which was once so popular was branded as heresy, and the secular arm was constrained to support the clergy, but lately so unpopular, with fire and faggot. But the solid victory remained for nearly three centuries with the peasants, till at last a combination of circumstances reversed the situation, and the employers became the masters of the field. It is to the history of this long battle that I intend on the next occasion to invite your attention.

II

LEGISLATION ON LABOUR AND ITS EFFECTS.

The effects of the Great Plague-Regulation of prices by authority customary when there were labour prices-The first Statute of Labourers-Successive Statutes of Labourers-The appeal of the workmen to Domesday-The events of 1381-Legislation of Henry IV., V., VI.—Guilds of artificers-Henry VII. and Henry VIII.— Habits of the latter-His issue of base money-The position of Elizabeth-The Elizabethan Statute of Labourers-The objects of the statute-Indirect resources of labourers-Wages actually paid-Assessments more generous under the Commonwealth.

Ir is inevitable, in a series of lectures like the present, where farreaching and present effects are traced to distant causes, that one should seem discursive when one strives to be connected. The warfare of capital and labour in England has been more prolonged than any other historical struggle. Dynastic wars, wars of religion, wars on behalf of the balance of power, wars for supremacy in commerce have been, as you well know, waged in Europe for lengthened periods. But none has been so lasting as that between employer and labourer. None has hitherto been so obscure. The history of the contest is to be extracted from the Statute Book, in laws long since repealed or modified, or become obsolete, in laws which no modern edition of the statutes at large reprints. I doubt whether they exist in any other printed form than in the numerous folio volumes in which all, or nearly all, the English laws ever enacted were published, by authority of Parliament, in extenso, but are found, I believe, only in the greatest of our public libraries.

These laws, however, would be only indefinite, incoherent, and more or less effectual explosions of wrath and discontent, were it not for the contemporaneous evidence of wages actually paid, evidence which I have been able to supply, having long been an assiduous and solitary worker in this field of research. The law and the facts illustrate each other. But I must say, with some regret, that the inferences which I am constrained to draw, inferences which are genuine and irrefutable history, have not increased my reverence for the machinery by which the social state of England has been developed. There is, I must confess, a sordid side to the most energetic efforts of collective, I do not say individual, patriotism, and the student of the economical history of England has to prepare himself for painful experiences, even during the most heroic ages of our political history. At the same time, men are not to be blamed for taking advantage of what law accords them. It is to their credit that, in course of time, they became more merciful than the law, as I have found that they constantly were. They never, to be sure, when they made the machinery of their discipline, and what they called law and order, more searching and more severe, declared that they had created no new crime, when their principal and successful effort was to render it impossible, by studiously demoralizing the agents of law, to distinguish between innocence and guilt.

I have referred, in the last lecture, to the magnitude of the calamity known as the Plague, and more recently, it seems, as the Black Death. Before this event, and the consequences which ensued from it, these consequences having been almost immediate, every one, from the king to the serí, cultivated land for his own profit. It is impossible to conceive any social condition which would be so certain to breed a reverence for law and property as one in which every person was possessed of property, which, unless property were respected, was so open to marauders as agricultural produce was. I have no doubt that the singular respect for property in agricultural produce which so distinguished Englishmen in the fourteenth century, and, for the matter of that, onwards, and the honour in which husbandry was held, had a good deal to do with the formation of the early English character among all classes. Even in the severest time-I can give the negative testimony of my

THE EFFECTS OF THE GREAT PLAGUE. 、

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own inquiries—it was rare indeed that farm produce was stolen. I do not mean to say that, outside the jurisdiction of the local courts, the foreign trader, the Lowland exchanger, or even the Pope's emissary, could traverse the king's highway in complete safety. I will not even assert that abbots and priors were always able to convey their cash and valuables without risk of Robin Hoods. But the insurance on the conveyance of money is very low when it is put into the hands, as it often is, of the common carrier, and I have never found the record of a loss from robbers in the many thousand collegiate and monastic accounts which I have read. Englishmen were very prone to defend their rights, real or supposed, by insurrection, and even to depose bad or weak kings, and change the succession, but they rarely broke the king's peace. Even during the civil wars of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries there was little marauding. In 1461, the Northern army of Margaret took to pillaging, and Edward was instantly called to the throne. In the Parliamentary war, 1642-5, the Royalists of the west showed an imperfect appreciation of the rights of property, and they had to meet the resistance of the clubmen.

On the other hand, it was the custom of the age to regulate prices by authority. The assize of bread and beer is so old that it is undated. For centuries afterwards local authorities were empowered to fix prices. The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, in the seventeenth century, put out his list of maximum prices for meat, poultry, and wine, and even of the fares on the new stage coaches. The law did not affect to regulate the prices of wheat and malt. Such a function was beyond the power of the legislator, and, it must be added, against his interests. But the law regulated the price at which wheat could be turned into bread and malt into beer. The Statute Book is full of regulations as to the price of meat and clothing. Nor does it seem that these regulations caused discontent. It was probably considered an advantage that certain services regularly needed should be put under a local police, which should see that statutable prices were not exceeded. Not a little of the criminal business transacted at the manor court is that of presentments and fines in the case of the baker and brewer and the fraudulent miller, who have broken the assize or cheated the tenants. The landowners, then, were not attempting to enforce