more, demanded less temporal return, and altogether claim more from our gratitude than does the feudal lord. Modern times have made the fields still more fruitful, but to the priests we owe the first draining of many a marish marsh, the first cutting down of the timber, the first hedging and laying out of the field. But it is to the rise of the town that we are to trace the origin of truly independent labour, to the existence of such places as cities, and boroughs; and the panting independence that from lonely villages throbbed towards those supposed seats of liberty and wealth, that we are to trace the origin of the first interferences of legislation with labour. It is indeed most interesting to watch the gradual escape of serfs from servitude, and their first adventures in art and industry to watch their gradual historic growth, until in yet greater numbers they fly from their lords, and appear before us no longer working as slaves, but as, a people for hire, no longer weak and succourless, but as a people strong and powerful, though clad as yet.only in fustian or cloth of frieze, yet able gradually to wring charters, guilds, and protections from kings, and to cope with haughty barons who despised their birth, but were unable to curb their power.

The remorselessness of old taxation, grim and hungry to the uttermost farthing, gives us not only an insight into the poverty, but the independence of that period. In 1296, there was a levy of a seventh on the town of Colchester for the war with France, and thus we know the amount of the property of one of the first re

fuges and homes of industrious liberty; it was clearly no better than a poor hamlet, composed of rude huts, strangely composed of twigs from the neighbouring wood, mud and dried pantiles; and the furniture, we may well guess, even the best of it, would make a sorry figure amongst the humblest modern fashions; but there is a venerable glory over these old relics, which modern fashions will never wear. A bed then was valued at 3s., another at 6s., brass pots from 1s. to 3s., silver cups from 1s. to 2s.; there was a poor shoemaker whose whole stock in trade was not worth more than 7s., handmills 12d.; this rude hamlet in the wild forest possessed no chimneys to its huts, and, plainly, its most respectable homes would bear no comparison with the poorest within our general knowledge. 1301, another valuation took place to levy a fifteenth, and we find a carpenter's whole stock worth only 1s., a blacksmith's from 2s. to 58. The name of poor Alice Maynard (a genuine good Saxon name) drifts up before us like a poor broken raft from the great ocean of the past,-poor Alice, she has long, long, been entire dust, and we had known nothing of her, but from the chronicle of the tax-gatherer,-who entered her humble cottage on the skirts of the yet unfelled forest, and the only things she had taxable were a brass pot, valued at 10d., and a towel at 5d.; a baker's old coat was 2d., and a hatchet was the only tool a carpenter possessed. Amidst these valuations and exactions from carpenters and blacksmiths, bakers and poor women, even to a towel and an old coat, as

usual the clergy go scot free. The value, however, of these valuations is, that they prove, that at the dates recorded above, the people had coats, and hatchets, and towels, which were really acknowledged to be theirs, thus old Colchester becomes venerable in our eyes; not Eboracum, not Londinivum, have so certain and excellent a veracity about their foundation as this rude collection of Saxon hearts and huts.

The statute of labourers of the time of Edward III. guides us to their condition at that period of our history; and here we first notice the commencement of that long series of impertinent interferences of legislation with industry which in late years became interference with commerce; though the people had secured some share of independence, the brand of serf was to be upon them still. All persons acquainted with country towns know those annual gatherings of hinds, and serving-men and maid servants, in the streets, on the occasions provincially called mopps or statiz-properly STATUTES, from the assembly being in accordance with the statute above mentioned; by the letter of the above statute, servants were enjoined to go to the market town in order to be hired, with some badge or mark expressive of his or her occupation. If we could only obtain a view of one of those meetings, it would give us an immediate insight into the state of the labourer at that day, nor does the fancy find it difficult to visit the old market town, to walk before the curious old houses with their quaint gables and casements, to stroll through the crowd, a most

motley group to our eyes; some actively enough occupied cheapening their goods-here and there a minstrel singing to the surrounding number news improbable enough, but awakening no doubt in the mind of the true believers of that time. In his coarse robe of black, seen far off by his cowled or shaven head, you would notice the priest; and by the hostel or spital, drinking and singing till the landlord trembled for his license, sat the soldier just returned from the wars, full of strange oaths, and mockeries, and legends of blood; and here at last we have the party waiting to be hired, idly lolling against the church gates, or sitting on the ill-paved street, much indeed after the fashion you have seen them in your own modernised town. You are perhaps surprised to find that the clothing of these people is better than you anticipated, but notice too, that although it is a warm summer day, the labourer can only wear that thick and most roughly woven gaberdine. There stands the carter, know him by the piece of whipcord in his head covering, and yonder is a cowherd with a piece of cowhair in his; the bonny girl whose dress is so slatternly is a dairy-maid, by the somewhat rough ensigns of cowhair in her breast; yonder bouquet of flowers seems to be bestowed appropriately enough, for he who has them is a gardener; but what a graceful ornament they make, one could imagine them plucked by the trunk of an elephant, and indeed they are fastened to the coarse frieze by a rough piece of hemp; one would think that these statutes do not please yon blacksmith standing there ham

mer in hand, for he is talking vehemently enough to yonder carpenter, who certainly has the roughest handsaw your eyes have ever seen. Such were some of the regulations of the statutes which also the great wisdom of the government made to regulate wages, and labourers were sworn to observe twice in the year, or to be put in the stocks; the terms enjoined by law, per day, were for master carpenters, 3d., for freemasons 4d., other carpenters 2d., other masons 3d., their knaves 1 d., tilers 3d., thatchers 3d., their knaves 1 d., plasterers 3d., their knaves 1d. Our wonder at these legal interferences will cease when we remember that at this period of which we speak, on many estates and farms men and women were still slaves, still personal property; they are mentioned as such in Magna Charta; and in 1225, there are prohibitions forbidding the wasting of men or cattle. We have the record in 1283, of a slave and family sold by the Abbot of Dunstable for 138. 4d.; in 1333 a lord granted a chantry to several messuages with the bodies of eight natives and all their chattels and offspring; in 1339, a female slave a neif was given away, and all her family and all the goods she might acquire.

We are aware how easy it is to produce evidence both of the inferior and superior condition of the early times of British History, the mistake we apprehend consists in the extreme views of theorists, who will have either that we have made advance in everything or nothing. The language of Sir John Fortescue,