220 ENFORCEMENT OF THE STATUTES OF LABOURERS 



plainly a crisis of an unprecedented character, involving real 

 danger to the welfare of the community. In an age when 

 the idea of a competitive price had not yet been evolved 

 and when for normal conditions regulation by local authori- 

 ties of both wages and prices was the accepted custom/ 

 it was natural and equitable that in an emergency the cen- 

 tral government should exert itself to the utmost to check 

 the evil. The evidence of the records examined in this 

 investigation goes to show that the attempt was honestly 

 meant to include prices as well as wages whenever there 

 had been a rise in the former also; under these circum- 

 stances it seems unreasonable to consider such an attempt 

 as unfair oppression of the working classes. From the 

 point of view of injustice, the inequity of the low statutory 

 rates of wages was surpassed by the exorbitance of the de- 

 mands of the labourers. 



In turning to the problem of whether success or failure 

 is to be attributed to the endeavor to lower wages and 

 prices, it is clear that the preceding study warrants at 

 least one positive conclusion. The large number of justices 

 appointed within a short interval to enforce the laws, the 

 existing records of their sessions, the references to similar 

 records that have ceased to exist, the entries for the pay- 

 ment of their wages, — convincing proof of the regularity 

 of their sessions,— the importance to various claimants of 

 the penalties imposed by the justices, — chiefly, as has ap- 

 peared, for the receipt of excess wages and prices, — the 

 figures of the amounts of these penalties, — evidence of the 

 large sums actually levied on the labouring classes, — all 

 these facts point to the zealous administration of this por- 

 tion of the enactments. To the work of the special justices 

 in convicting labourers must be added the occasional efforts 



'Page 4, note 3; pt. ii, ch. i. 



