ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 499 



were, as we have seen, low, so employment, unless under a 

 regular hiring, as a farm hand, living in the master's house, was 

 precarious, and that consequently the husbandman's condition 

 was even worse than it appears. 



The legislature had at last succeeded in permanently de- 

 grading the agricultural labourer. For more than two centuries 

 it had striven in vain to do so. The oft-enacted statute of 

 labourers had failed of its purpose, for it is impossible for law 

 to fix prices of labour, or indeed of any product which is 

 absolutely necessary for the conduct of society, and in which 

 any choice of accepting prices is left to the vendor of the 

 article. Now, however, a set of circumstances had arisen 

 which enabled the legislature to achieve that indirectly which 

 it had failed to effect directly. The statute of apprenticeship, 

 under which artisans and traders were compelled to pass through 

 a period of servitude, and all other persons were constrained to 

 accept the conditions of farm labourers, was enacted at a time 

 in which customary prices were hopelessly deranged, poverty 

 was general, employment was scanty, and discontent was too 

 dangerous to be allowed overt expression. It is probable that 

 Elizabeth and her advisers imagined that the distress was 

 temporary. It is certain that well-meant but futile endeavours 

 were made to alleviate the condition of the farm labourer, 

 especially by providing a statute which instantly became in- 

 operative that he should be, in part at least, a peasant occupier, 

 perhaps a peasant proprietor. But a much more important 

 step was taken in making him the residuum of all other labour. 

 Henceforth the artisan class was artificially limited, the 

 agricultural labourers were artificially increased. The number of 

 those who sought employment grew steadily and rapidly. But 

 employment became more scanty, partly through the poverty of 

 employers, partly through the extension of sheep farming. The 

 practice of enclosures became also general, and the commonable 

 rights of the peasant were stinted. It was now no longer difficult 

 for the magistrates in quarter sessions to enact that hard and fast 

 rate of wages which the legislature for two centuries had vainly 



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