PREFACE. xi 



The next great economical fact is the success of the 

 conspiracy, baffled for more than two centuries, against 

 English labourers. This is indeed the saddest part 

 of the retrospect. I have attempted in an earlier 

 volume as in this to narrate, not without indignation 

 ]>< rhaps, but with no conscious unfairness, the early 

 history of the strife between employers and workmen 

 and the commencement of that crisis in the struggle 

 during which the labourer was hopelessly beaten. The 

 seventeenth century witnessed the course of that 

 strategy, the issue of which at the end of the century 

 was that Gregory King classified the whole mass of 

 workmen among those who do not increase but diminish 

 the national savings. 



The mechanism employed for the degradation of the 

 English labourer was the Justice of the peace. There 

 is much obscurity about the origin of this office, the 

 time at which it was invented, and the process by 

 which this official appears to have superseded the 

 ;m lent local jurisdictions, and to have punished of- 

 fenders without the intervention of a jury of present- 

 ment or a petty jury. But it seems that the office was 

 in working order after the struggle was commenced 

 between employer and labourer. In the end, all the 

 force which law could give the former was entrusted to 

 tin Justice, he being by the very condition of his office 

 . judov in his own cause 1 . It is sufficient to say that 



1 At first, the Lord's Court was the tribunal before whirh tlio 

 1..1...1M-. r who claimed higher wages was to be arraigned. This had 

 a very different procedure from that of the Quarter Sessions. 



