Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461, page 39 by Various Authors
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t in France; and yet, at the same time, it is difficult in the nineteenth century to believe in the extent of tyranny exercised, down to a comparatively recent period, over the working-classes in Britain. We may judge of the tyrannical interference of the government with the freedom of labour by the Statute of Labourers, passed in 1349. One of the frightful famines of the middle ages had occurred, and labourers were scarce in comparison with the means of employment. It is said that the same phenomenon has now in some measure recurred in Ireland; but there is little chance of our statesmen treating it as those of the fourteenth century did. Justice says, that the labourer is entitled to obtain the value of his labour, be it much or little. Parliament, however, fixed the amount which it thought the reasonable price of labour--the rate at which the members of the legislature desired to have it; and endeavoured, by penalties and persecution, to obtain it at that rate. The statute commences by abusing the labourers for taking advantage of the scarcity of hands to demand high wages--as if there ever were human beings, employed in the ordinary affairs of life, who would not take what wages or profits they could obtain; and as if labourers were like missionaries, and other devotees, who are not led by any mercenary motive. The statute then enacts, that every person able in body, and under the age of sixty, not having means of maintaining himself, is bound to serve whoever shall be willing to employ him, at the wages which were usually paid during the six years preceding the plague; and if he refuses, and it is proved by two witnesses before the sheriff, bailiff, lord, or constable of the village where the refusal is given, he is to be committed to jail, and continue there till he finds surety to enter into service in terms of the act.
It is always observable, that laws interfering with freedom of trade go on increasing in strictness, because the confusion which the first attempt creates is always attributed to the