166 LABOUR
and earthworks for military purposes probably exhibit the result of organized military labour combined with the forced labour of the inhabitants of the district. In this aspect the fortresses and defences destined for use consequent on the campaigns of a Cæsar or a Napoleon, of an Alexander or a Clive, do not materially differ. The remains still to be seen of Agricola's works on the line between the Firths of Clyde and Forth, as well as of the Roman walls and roads throughout England, and the later but ruder gigantic earth work of the Mercian king between England and Wales, may be regarded as fruits of slave labour. The stupendous aqueducts of Roman brickwork in various parts of southern Europe are naturally compared with the viaducts of the present age. The comparison may well extend to the accompanying conditions of labour.
Passing over the general effect of serfdom throughout northern Europe, and of the gradual manumission of toilers, as only a minute part of a very large subject, and directing our attention to the conditions of ordinary daily labour in the earliest period of the history of the British islands, we find it necessary to classify labour in relation to its particular application.
At the present day the most obvious natural distinction to be observed in this connexion is that between the labour of the husbandman on the one hand and the labour of the mechanic and artisan on the other, a distinction to some extent parallel with a division into rural and urban labour. In an attempted division of labour in this country recorded in writing, which, although not in its present form earlier than the 15th century, and distorted by a fanciful notion of adapting everything to triads, probably gives us a knowledge of a very primitive people, the following divisions of labour are found: – (1) domestic art, with its three primary branches – husbandry or cultivation of land, pastoral cares, and weaving; and (2) mechanical arts – smith craft, carpentry, and stone-masonry (Ancient Laws, &c., of Wales, 1841).
The social status of these various labourers is a very difficult question. It seems clear that the heads of departments of labour, although working for the lord or chief, were freemen. The authority just cited expressly says that smiths, stone-masons, and carpenters had equal privileges, and every one following those trades was entitled, besides his maintenance and firing, to a fixed measure of land for cultivation, independently of what he might have by birthright. It is clear that there must have been subdivisions, as in the present day, between craftsmen and labourers engaged in the same trade, as between a mason and his labourer, between a ploughman and the driver of the team, and between the shepherd responsible for the flock and the cowherd who merely drove cattle to and from the pasture; a freeman might perform one branch of duty and an absolute slave or serf another on the same land, and for the same chief or head. It cannot be denied that slavery in the strictest sense was an institution among the Saxons in England, and that in the earliest English laws such slaves are found, but the true slave class was a small one, and it has been doubted whether the labour of an ordinary serf was practically more severe, or the remuneration in one form or another much less, than that of an agricultural labourer in some parts of England at this day. On the other hand, a fully qualified freeman might be a simple husbandman.
Of the main conditions of labour at an early period in English towns we have no details, With the gradual development of urban populations around the castle of the lord, it is improbable that in any great number of cases the inhabitants long continued in the condition of personal serfage. The city populations of this island had not the habit and use of slavery. Serfs and oppressed labourers from adjacent estates may have been glad to take refuge from taskmasters more than ordinarily severe, but there is no doubt that freemen gradually united with them under the lord's protection, that strangers engaged in trade sojourned among them, and that a race of artisans gradually grew up in which original class feelings were greatly modified. From these and other causes the distinctions between agricultural labourers and mechanics and artisans grew and became permanent.
Proceeding to notice the legislation of England on the subject of labour, we observe, in passing, that the provisions of Magna Charta were not in the interests of labour. The stipulations against the forced building of new bridges and embankments, and for removing all weirs in rivers, were not by way of protest against involuntary labour, but in relief of a higher class. Direct legislation on labour dates as far back as the twenty-third year of the reign of Edward III., when the first Statute of Labourers was passed. The population had been much reduced by pestilence, and the demand for labour naturally led working classes to insist on higher wages, and there were "some rather willing to beg in idleness than by labour to get their living." The statute reciting these facts, and the "lusts especially of ploughmen and such labourers," enacted that "every man and woman of our realm of England, of what condition he be, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, not having of his own whereof to live, nor land about whose tillage he might employ himself, nor serving any other," should be bound to serve if he is in convenient service, his estate considered, at the wages accustomed to be given in the twentieth year of that reign, or five or six years before. If he refused, he was to be committed to jail till he found surety to enter into the service. No persons were to pay more than the old wages, upon pain of forfeiting double what they paid. If the lords of the towns or manors presumed to infringe the law, they were to be sued for treble the sum paid or promised by them or their servants. Artificers and workmen were put under the same restrictions, upon pain of imprisonment for taking more. This statute is remarkable as the first in which any notice occurs of the free labourer for hire, for the necessity of a statute to force him to work at fixed wages recognizes his otherwise free state.
A statute passed two years later (25 Edward III.), reciting that the earlier ordinance was disobeyed, contained minute regulations as to wages. If labourers or artificers left their work and went into another county, process was to be issued to the sheriff to arrest and bring them back. In 1360 (34 Edward III.) the former Statute of Labourers was confirmed, except that labourers were not to be punished by fine and ransom. Instead thereof, the lords of towns (seigneurs des villes) might take and imprison them for fifteen days if they would not do as required by law, and then send them to the next jail, "there to abide without bail till they will do so according to the statute." The statute enacted that "all alliances and covins of masons and carpenters, and congregations, chapters, ordinances, and oaths betwixt them made, or to be made, shall from henceforth be void and wholly annulled, so that every mason and carpenter, of what condition soever he be, shall be compelled by his master to whom he serveth to do every work that to him pertaineth to do, either of free stone or of rough stone, and also every carpenter in his degree. But it shall be lawful to every lord or other to bargain and covenant for their works in gross with such labourers and artificers when it pleaseth them, so that they perform such works well arid lawfully, according to the bargain and covenant with them thereof made." A workman absenting himself from his service,
