CHAPTER XXIV 



ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 



DURING many past centuries of oppression and wrong 

 there has been an ever-present but rarely expressed cry for 

 redress, for some small instalment of Justice to the down- 

 trodden workers. It has been the aspiration alike of the 

 peasant and the philosopher, of the poet and the saint. But 

 the rule of the lords of the soil has ever been so hard, and 

 supported by power so overwhelming and punishment so 

 severe, that the born thralls or serfs have rarely dared to 

 do more than humbly petition for some partial relief ; or, 

 if roused to rebel by unbearable misery and wrongs, they 

 have soon been crushed by the power of mailed knights 

 and armed retainers. The peasant revolt at the end of 

 the fourteenth century was to gain relief from the 

 oppressive serfdom that was enforced after the black 

 death had diminished the number of workers. John 

 Ball then preached Socialism for the first time. 



"By what right," he said, "are they whom we call lords greater 

 folk than we ? Why do they hold us in serfage ? . . . They are 

 clothed in velvet, while we are covered with rags. They have wine 

 and spices and fair bread ; and we oat-cake and straw, and water to 

 drink. They have leisure and fine houses ; we have pain and labour, 

 the rain and the wind in the fields. And yet it is of us and our toil 

 that these men hold their state. 5 ' 



John Ball and Wat Tyler lived five hundred years too 

 soon. To-day the very same claims are made by men 

 who, having got political power, cannot be so easily 

 suppressed. 



