numerous enclosures of land. These all had their due effect upon his condition. But there were two other causes of equal power operating at the same time. (1) The conditions of industry had already largely changed; men were less bound to the land than formerly, having been in some cases driven off it by sheep-farms and enclosures, and in others attracted from it by the progress of manufacturing industries. There was, therefore, a much larger class than formerly dependent entirely on wages,1 with no land of their own to fall back upon, and consequently compelled to take what they could get from the nearest employer. This was in itself a source of weakness; and this weakness was increased by another cause. (2) The old unions of workmen had decayed, the craft gilds had become obsolete or effete, and there was nothing to bind the working-classes together in self-defence. The combined action that resulted in the Peasants' Revolt of the fourteenth century had become a thing so completely of the past that it had fallen into oblivion; and not only that, but the law had now been strained into that iniquitous doctrine of "conspiracy" which stamped all efforts of workmen to improve their condition as ipso facto illegal. It was accounted as a "conspiracy," 4 and, therefore, a legal offence, for workmen to enter into any associations to raise, or endeavour to raise, the rate of wages; and workmen who entered into such illegal combinations were punishable by fine or imprisonment. Meetings held for similar purposes were punishable in the same way, while every inducement was given to a workman to turn traitor and betray his fellows by the promise of indemnity to offenders who informed against their associates. For centuries 5 this tyrannical measure disgraced our statute books; and yet we are asked to believe that the legislators, who framed this law and invented the doctrine of conspiracy to supplement the scheme of assessment of wages, were actuated only 2 Above, pp. 189, 207-209, and cf. p. 247.

Above, p. 252.

3 Above, p. 163.

4 Cf. the Act 2 and 3 Edward VI., c. 15, and the 40 Geo. III., c. 106. The clauses 18, 19, and 20 of the 5 Eliz., c. 4, were also strained to support this doctrine; cf. Rogers, Six Centuries, pp. 397, 399.

5 Till the 6 Geo. IV., c. 129; see below,

pp. 416-420.

by their kindly concern for the welfare of the working man. But, leaving intentions and motives out of the question, it is easy to see how powerfully the foregoing causes must have operated in depressing the condition of the labourer, and thus rendering it easy to enforce the Elizabethan code of labour laws.

$155. The Law of Apprenticeship.

There are, however, certain clauses in this statute which are noticeable as regulating the apprenticeship system. In agriculture, any person who had half a ploughland in tillage might take a boy to serve as an apprentice in husbandry till he was twenty-one years of age. In crafts, a

period of seven years was laid down as the time of apprenticeship; and in order that apprenticeship might be a reality in its educational aspect, every master who had more than three apprentices was required to have one journeyman for every apprentice over this number. By this means masters would be prevented from getting work done by apprentices which ought to be done by more qualified workmen. These regulations applied to the whole country, and not merely, as in mediæval times, to trades which had gilds. It is interesting to note that certain limitations were made which were evidently intended to benefit the agricultural interest; and once again one cannot refrain from a suspicion that the landed classes, who constituted the majority in Parliament, were not actuated entirely by motives of pure benevolence to others. We find that persons engaged in agriculture, or in any trades connected there with (such as smiths, wheelwrights, and also the weavers of linen and household cloth 1) might take any apprentice they could find. But artisans in corporate towns and market towns were more restricted; they could not take any one who was not the son of a freeman of such town, and the apprentice taken by them was not to be withdrawn from agriculture; while merchants and shopkeepers in corporate towns were restricted to the sons of "forty-shilling freeholders," and

1 See § 23 of the 5 Eliz., c. 4. This shows how maufactures and agriculture were often combined. See above, p. 237, and note there.

those in market towns to the sons of "sixty-shilling freeholders." It has been said that "as a scheme of technical education the regulations for artisans were admirably suited to the needs of the times";1 and there is no doubt that in many respects these regulations were beneficial. But it is always a suspicious circumstance when legislators belonging to any particular class introduce restrictions that would naturally benefit the interests of their own order; and it is very obvious that what was sought in these apprenticeship clauses was quite as much the convenience of the agricultural interest as the promotion of a scheme of technical education. Neither the landed gentry nor the agriculturists whom they represented need be blamed for their action. Any other class in their position would no doubt have done the same. But it is superfluous, not to say absurd, to imagine that Elizabethan Parliamentarians were actuated, any more than other men, solely by a desire for the welfare. of others.

It should be added, when considering the effects of the apprenticeship system as thus laid down under Elizabeth, that in after years there grew up a vast number of trades that were never touched by this Act at all, since it only applied to those actually in existence at the time of its passing. The trades which arose in later times were outside its operations altogether, and were usually known as the "incorporated trades," because they were regulated not by this Act but under patents granted to those who invented a new manufacture or improved an old one.

§ 156. The Elizabethan Poor Law.

Closely connected with all this industrial regulation, which we have now briefly reviewed, was the new legislation rendered necessary by the steady increase of pauperism -a phenomenon all the more remarkable because it was also accompanied by a rapid growth of national wealth. The spectacle of Dives and Lazarus existing side by side is in our own day so common as to excite little remark; and the poor-rate is regarded with the same equanimity—or 1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 41,

But

hopelessness as the charges for water or police. it was still of sufficient novelty in the reigns of Henry VIII. and his children to cause English legislators considerable uneasiness. We have already seen (pp. 195, 205) how it was dealt with in former days, and later, in the last year1 of Edward VI., two collectors were appointed in every parish, whose business it was to obtain from every person of substance a promise of alms for the relief of the poor, to enter such promises in a book and collect the money, and to relieve the poor with it. In the beginning of Elizabeth's reign it was found that further pressure was needed to make people give, and therefore in 1563 another Act 2 was passed, by which a person who was unwilling to contribute to the relief of the poor, and who would not be affected even by the exhortations of his bishop, had to appear before the Justices of the Quarter Sessions and submit to a tax or assessment imposed upon him by them, or be thrown into prison. The provision for the relief of the poor was, in fact, altogether changing in character. It was no longer a free act of Christian charity, but a compulsory contribution towards the mitigation of a social evil, a contribution of the same nature as the nineteenth century poor-rate. There was now "only a step from the process under which a reluctant subscriber to the poor law was assessed by the Justices, and imprisoned on refusal, to a general assessment of all property." This step was taken by the celebrated Poor Law of Elizabeth in 1601. This famous and long-lived 5 Act prescribed the levy of a compulsory poor-rate in every parish, designated the kind of property on which the rate was to be levied, and inflicted penalties on those who disobeyed its provisions. Work was to be provided for those who would or could work, and relief for those who could not; poor children were to be trained to some craft; and the idle were to be punished. Such was the remarkable Act with which, as has been so justly pointed out, the history of English labour has been 2 The 5 Eliz., C. 3. * The 43 Eliz, c. 3.

1 By the 5 and 6 Ed. VI., c. 2.

3 Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 420.

5 It was only meant, however, at first to be temporary, but it was renewed in the next Parliament, and at last made permanent by the 16 Charles I., c. 4.

At

ever since its enactment most intimately associated.1 this space of time it is hard to look upon it with eyes unprejudiced, either favourably or unfavourably; but possibly the best comment upon it has been supplied by its own subsequent history, which has never been able to record its success. One of its greatest defects has been the lack of any adequate system of providing employment for the poor, and this has been the weak point of the whole English Poor-Law code. Work was indeed meant to be provided by this Act of 1601, but its local administrators never set themselves seriously to raise a fund and find such work for the unemployed 2 by providing a stock of hemp, wool, iron, and other materials. The training of children as parish apprentices led to their ill-treatment, and the system of providing relief from the rates developed into one of the most foolish of abuses. With these points we shall deal later, as their full effect becomes more visible; but there is one which requires notice before we go any further.

In the third clause of this historic Act there is a provision, that if a parish is not rich enough to maintain its own poor entirely, the deficiency, if any, in the rates shall be supplemented from the rest of the hundred. This seems at first sight a reasonable provision, and was probably inserted by the framers of the Act as requisite in view of a very possible contingency. It was not acted upon at first to any great extent," but subsequently it became a favourite instrument of employers of labour for reducing wages, first by lowering them in their own parish to such a point that it was necessary to give the labourer an enormous amount of relief out of the rates, and then by throwing the burden of this relief upon surrounding parishes. The use thus made of this clause in after years was certainly ingenious, for a large proportion of a labourer's wages would thus come out of the pockets of the general public, while a corresponding saving was effected

Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 421. For various views see Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 58-61, and Fowle, Poor Law, p. 58.

2 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 61.

Cf. the 18 Eliz., c. 3. 643 Eliz, c. 3, § 3.

See below, p. 388.

Below, pp. 412-414. 7 Fowle, Poor Law, p. 58. Below, p. 412.

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