In every age and country, until times comparatively recent, compulsory personal servitude appears to have been the lot of a large, perhaps the greater, portion of mankind. The slave was a man who had been captured in war or procured by purchase, or who had surrendered himself to the dominion of another as the alternative of starvation or in discharge of a debt, and it was his hands that tilled the soil, dug the mine, wove the cloth, and built the walls in ancient Greece and Italy. It has been asserted that in the early state of Rome the proportion of slaves, who were valued as property, was more considerable than that of hired servants, who could be computed only as an expense. It was thought more for the interest of the merchant or manufacturer to purchase than to hire his workmen, and in the country slaves were employed as the cheapest and most laborious instruments of agriculture. On the other hand, it has been inferred from guγ scanty materials that, as the Roman empire extended, the agricultural labourer and the citizen in Spain, Gaul, and Britain, in Syria and Egypt, maintained himself, as in the present day, by his own labour and that of his household, without the aid of any slave; but this is probably too favourable a picture. In the decline of the Roman empire, Roman captives were taken home by the northern conquerors. The useful craftsmen—smiths, carpenters, workmen in the metals, shoemakers, tailors, dyers, and others—employed their skill for the use or profit of their masters; while those who were destitute of art but capable of labour were condemned, without regard to their former rank, to tend the cattle and cultivate the lands of the victors. This, however, was only turning the tables on the Romans, for capture in war forms one of the principal sources of supply of slaves wherever slavery exists.

The Germans, in their primitive settlements, were accustomed to the notion of slavery, incurred, not only by captivity, but by crimes, by debt, and the wager of personal liberty in gaming. In the glimpses we get of the conditions of labour elsewhere the same essential features are discernible. In the changes of time and of geographical area of observation the harsher word slave may disappear; yet the thing not only survived the introduction of Christianity but was long regarded as not inconsistent with it, and was recognized as a national institution in civilized Europe. Whether under the name of slavery or of serfdom, or without either name, north, south, east, and west, an absolute right, apart from contract, to earnings and to the person of the labourer was accepted, if not openly vindicated. In looking at the present day at the vestiges of man’s former and most permanent handiwork, it is instructive to regard them with an eye to the distinctions between periods of forced and voluntary labour. The pyramids of Egypt and the wall of China are monuments of slave labour; and the same is the case with the classic remains at Athens and Rome, so far at least as relates to the labour involved in the quarrying and hewing of stone, and the making of bricks and placing them in position. As regards Britain, our knowledge is too slight, and the conjectures as to the origin and objects of such structures as Stonehenge and Avebury are too varied, to allow of positive assertion; but it seems legitimate to conclude that the labour was forced. British and Romau camps 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 Caesar 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, <Lc., 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 qγ 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 and lawfully, according to the bargain and covenant with them thereof made.” A workman absenting himself from his service, and going to another town or county, was to be proceeded against under the previous statute, to outlawry, to be followed by imprisonment till he did as required by law, and made satisfaction to the party; nevertheless he was to be burnt in the forehead with the letter F, “in token of the falsity,” if the party aggrieved so required, and if the justices should so advise. Eight years later, in the same reign (1368,42 Edward HL), the statute and ordinance concerning labourers was confirmed, and commissions directed to justices to hear and determine matters concerning it.

Indubitable records still exist, proving that before the passing of those statutes, and down to the 15th century, workmen of various descriptions were pressed by writs addressed to sheriffs to work for their king at wages, regardless of their will as to the terms and place of work. Diggers and hewers of stone, masons, and carpenters, as well as ordinary labourers, were so impressed, and by services thus obtained the buildings at Windsor for the Knights of the Round Table, on the institution of the order of the Garter, were erected. In this case the sheriffs were commanded to take security from the workmen not to depart from Windsor without the permission of William of Wykeham, the king’s surveyor. Notwithstanding these precautions, many workmen, so impressed, secretly left, in order to work for other persons at higher wages, and writs were directed to the sheriffs of London, commanding them to make proclamation prohibiting any person from employing or retaining any of the workmen on pain of forfeiting all their goods, and, as regards the workmen, commanding their arrest and imprisonment.

An Act was passed in the reign of Richard II. (1388, 12 Richard II.) by which no servant or labourer, whether man or woman, could depart out of the hundred to serve elsewhere, unless bearing a letter patent under the king’s seal, expressing the cause of going and the time of return. Wages were fixed in a way that shows the classification of agricultural labour. The “bailiff for husbandry” stands first. The “master hine,” the carter, and the shepherd are on an equality; the ploughman follows; after him the oxherd and cowherd, then the swineherd, the dairymaid and other women receiving equal wages, and every other labourer and servant according to his degree; no servant of artificers is to take more than the servants and labourers above named after their estate. The givers and takers forfeited the excess, or double or treble if attainted before; “and, if the taker so attainted have nothing whereof to pay the said excess, he shall have forty days imprisonment.” This was followed by a remarkable clause: “also it is ordained and assented that he or she which useth to labour at the plough and cart, or other labour or service of husbandry, till they be of the age of twelve years, shall from thenceforth abide at the said labour, without being put to any trade or handicraft; and, if any covenant or bond of apprenticeship be from henceforth made to the contrary, the same shall be holden for none.” By a statute of the following year (13 Richard II.), the justices were to settle and proclaim between Easter and Michaelmas what should be the wages of day labourers.

Early in the 15th century we have a glimpse of something beyond this continued legislation interfering with freedom of labour, in a reservation in favour of children being sent to school. An Act of 7 Henry IV., putting a property qualification on apprenticeship and requiring children to be put to such labour as their fathers or mothers are of, or as their estates require, on penalty of one year’s imprisonment, fine, and ransom, and of one hundred shillings for receiving such apprentices, has this sentence: “But any person may send their children to school to learn literature.” Labourers and artificers are to be sworn to observe the statutes in force or be put in the stocks, and a penalty is imposed on towns neglecting to have stocks. In 1414, by a statute (2 Henry V.) reciting that the servants and labourers of the shires of the realm flee from county to county because they would not conform to the law, and because the law was not put in force in every county, the former Acts were confirmed and directed to be put in force and proclaimed by the sheriff. Justices of the peace were empowered to send writs to the sheriffs for fugitive labourers in like manner as the justices have power to send to every sheriff for the felons or thieves before they are indicted, and to examine all kinds of labourers, servants, and their masters as well as artificers, and to punish them upon confession in accordance with the statutes.

Early in the following reign (2 Henry VI., 1423) further power was given to justices to compel by process an appearance before them of masters as well as servants for examination as to the execution of the statute of Henry V., and to give offenders a month’s imprisonment. Four years later (1427) the conclusion was drawn that the statutes of Richard II. were faulty,—that of 12 Richard II. because it was too hard upon the masters, that of 13 Richard II. because no penalty was attached to its breach; and, besides remedying the defects, it was enacted (6 Henry VI. c. 3) that justices should fix and make proclamation of wages. Two years earlier (1425) legislation had been directed against meetings of masons. The statute 3 Henry VI. c. 1 recites that, “by the annual congregations and confederacies made by masons in their general chapters assembled, the good courses and effect of the Statutes of Labourers are publicly violated and broken, in subversion of the law, and grievous damage of all the commonalty”; and such chapters and congregations were forbidden. It was made felony to cause them to be assembled and held, and masons attending them were to be punished by imprisonment and fine. In 1444 (23 Henry VI.) a scale of wages in agriculture and trade was fixed (including freemasons and “rough” masons, master carpenters and mesne carpenters, and master tilers and slaters), and a servant in husbandry was required before departing to give half a year’s warning or else to serve his master the year following. Persons refusing to serve or labour were to be committed to jail, there to remain until they found sufficient surety to serve, and masters were entitled to a fixed fine on such.

A statute towards the close of the 15th century (1495, 11 Henry VII.) referring to previous statutes, especially to the 23 Henry VI., and complaining of their inadequacy or imperfect execution, proceeds to fix the wages of artificers and labourers with great minuteness. This Act contained a remarkable clause against unlawful conspiracy by workmen engaged in building; if such artificers or labourers “make or cause to be made any assembly to assault, harm, or hurt any person assigned to control and oversee them in their working, that he or they so offending have imprisonment for a year without letting to bail or mainprise, and further to make fine at the king’s will.” It is not surprising that even with so very limited knowledge of principles a short time sufficed to show how ineffectual minute legislation was to control wages. The statute was repealed in the following year, “for divers and many reasonable considerations and causes, the king’s highness moving, and for the common wealth of the poor artificers, as freemasons, carpenters, and other persons necessary and convenient for the reparations and buildings, and other labourers and servants of husbandry.” But what is surprising is that (although the first legislation of the 16th century was in favour...