1^4 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



enjoy the scanty privileges of freemen.' Many of the 

 most devoted Druids doubtless fled to remote places, and 

 exercised their arts in secret, in order to maintain a precari- 

 ous living ; so that the sound of the anvil in caves and forest 

 fastnesses, would alone denote the dwelling-place of those 

 Druid priests, who had become fugitives to avoid the 

 degradation of slavery. 



The Druidical monopoly in the arts was abolished by 

 the Romans, who established large manufactories of arms 

 in eight diff'erent parts of Gaul, and in them the slaves 

 fabricated weapons for their conquerors. When these 

 bondsmen contrived to obtain their liberty, they then 

 worked on their own account, and with the trading class 

 formed a bourgeoisie who dwelt in the towns ; but they 

 were so heavily taxed and kept under that they never at- 

 tained any position.^ Only the nobles who had given in 



' Meg}i'in. 'The freemen were a very numerous class in Gaul, 

 who derived their origin from the various nations against which tlie 

 Romans had carried their arms. And the most numerous chiss at the 

 time of the invasion of the barbarians was that of the slaves. . . . All 

 the Gauls invested with the title of citizen had to renounce Druidism. 

 The edicts of Augustus proscribed it, and the other Celtic notions, to- 

 gether with the language, were consigned to the lower classes 



The freedmen were in possession of nearly all the arts and handicrafts, 

 and they laboured at them unceasingly 3 but they enjoyed no consider- 

 ation or authority, and had to submit to vexatious laws.' — Sis/voinli. 

 Hist, des Fran^ais, vol. i. pp. 6, 58, 104. 



" 'The tradespeople and artisans were responsible for the industrial 

 impost, as the Curials were for the land-tax. An iron hand stifled tree 

 trade and prevented its competing with slave labour, which was devoted 



to the imperial exchequer This oppression gave rise to such 



a degree of despair, that they abandoned their homes to live in the 

 forests and deserts with the Bagauds and fugitive slaves.' — H. Martin. 

 Hist, de France, p. 327. 



