Blackstone, whose Commentaries have been, for half a century, a common school-book, and whose opinions on the rise, growth and full development of British liberty, are generally received as true, as well in America as in Europe, maintains a theory the very opposite of that for which we are about to contend.

He holds that the appearance of the House of Commons, about the reign of Henry the Third, was the dawn of approaching liberty. We contend that it was the origin of the capitalist and moneyed interest government, destined finally to swallow up all other powers in the State, and to bring about the most selfish, exacting and unfeeling class, despotism. He thinks the emancipation of the serfs was another advance towards equality of rights and conditions. We think it aggravated inequality of conditions, and divested the liberated class of every valuable, social and political right. A short history of the English Poor Laws, which we shall annex, will enable the reader to decide between us on this head. He thinks the Reformation increased the liberties of the subject. We think that, in destroying the noblest charity fund in the world, the church lands, and abolishing a priesthood, the efficient and zealous friends of the poor, the Reformation tended to diminish the liberty of the mass of the peoples and to impair their moral, social and physical well-being. He thinks that the Revolution, by increasing the power of the House of Commons, and lessening the prerogative of the Crown, and the influence of the Church, promoted liberty. We think the Crown and the Church the natural friends, allies and guardians of the laboring class; the House of Commons, a moneyed firm, their natural enemies; and that the Revolution was a marked epoch in the steady decay of British liberty.

He thinks that the settlement of 1688 that successfully asserted in theory the supreme sovereignty of Parliament, but particularly the supreme sovereignty of the House of Commons, was the consummation or perfection of British liberty. We are sure, that that settlement, and the chartering of the Bank of England, which soon succeeded it, united the landed and moneyed interests, placed all the powers of government in their hands, and deprived the great laboring class of every valuable right and liberty. The nobility, the church, the king, were now powerless; and the mass of the people, wholly unrepresented in the government, found themselves exposed to the grinding and pitiless despotism of their natural and hereditary enemies. Mr. Charles Dickens, who pities the condition of the negro slaves, thus sums up, in a late speech, the worse condition of the “Slaves without Masters,” in Great Britain: “Beneath all this, is a heaving mass of poverty, ignorance and crime.” Such is English liberty for the masses. Thirty thousand men own the lands of England, three thousand those of Scotland, and fewer still those of Ireland. The great mass of the people are cut off from the soil, have no certain means of subsistence, and are trespassers upon the earth, without a single valuable or available right. Contrast their situations with that of the old villeins, and see then whether our theory of British liberty and the British constitution be true, or that of Blackstone.

All writers agree there were no beggars or paupers in England until the liberation of the serfs; and moreover admit that slaves, in all ages and in all countries, have had all their physical wants sufficiently supplied. They also concur in stating, that crime was multiplied by turning loose on society a class of men who had been accustomed to and still needed the control of masters.

Until the liberation of the villeins, every man in England had his appropriate situation and duties, and a mutual and adequate interest in the soil. Practically the lands of England were the common property of the people of England. The old Barons were not the representatives of particular classes in Parliament, but the friends, and faithful and able representatives of all classes; for the interests of all classes were identified. Monteil, a recent French author, who has written the most accurate and graphic description of social conditions during the Feudal ages, describes the serfs as the especial pets and favorites of the Barons. They were the most dependent, obedient, and useful members of the feudal society, and like younger children , became favorites. The same class now constitute the Proletariat, the Lazzaroni, the Gypsies, the Parias, and the “pauper banditti” of Western Europe, and the Leperos of Mexico. As slaves, they were loved and protected; as pretended freemen, they were execrated and persecuted.

Mr. Lester, a New York abolitionist, after a long and careful observation and study of the present condition of the English laboring class, solemnly avers, in his “Glory and Shame of England,” that he would sooner subject his child to Southern slavery, than have him to be a free laborer of England.

But it is the early history of the English Poor Laws, that proves most conclusively that the liberation of the villeins was a sham and a pretence, and that their situation has been worse, their rights fewer, and their liberties less, since emancipation than before. The Poor Laws, from the time of Edward the Third to that of Elizabeth, were laws to punish the poor, and to keep them at work for low wages. Not till late in the reign of Elizabeth, was any charitable provision made for them. Then, most of them would have starved, as the confiscation and sales of the church lands had deprived them of their only refuge, but for the new system of charity. The rich must have labor, and could not afford to let them all starve, although they were ready to attempt the most stringent means to prevent their increase.

In the Edinburgh Review, October, 1841, on Poor Law Reform, we find the following admirable history and synopsis of the English Poor Laws:

The great experiment of Poor Law amendment, which has now for seven years been in progress among our southern neighbors, appears to us to have been insufficiently attended to, and therefore to have been imperfectly understood in this part of the island. We do not believe that many of our Scottish readers are fully aware of the origin of the English Poor Laws, of the changes which they underwent, of the abuses which they created of the remedy which has been applied; or of the obstacles which have diminished the success of that great measure, and now threaten its efficiency. And yet these are subjects of the deepest interest, even to those who study legislation merely as a science. A series of laws are exhibited, persevered in for centuries, by a nation always eminent for practical wisdom, of which the result has almost invariably been failure, or worse than failure; which in scarcely a single instance have attained their objects, and in most cases have produced effects precisely opposite to the intentions of their framers; - have aggravated whatever they were intended to diminish, and produced whatever they were intended to prevent. From us, as Scotchmen, they merit peculiar attention, not only from the resemblance of our poor laws to the earlier English statutes; but from the probability that, as the connection between the two count countries becomes more intimate, we shall at no distant period follow the example, whatever it may be, of the larger country to which we are united; and participate in the evils and advantages of the system which she may finally adopt. This fate already threatens Ireland. It is scarcely probable that Scotland can avoid it.

Each of the subjects to which we have alluded, would require a volume for its complete development; but we are constrained to give to them such consideration as is admissible within the limits of an article of moderate length.

The Committee of the House of Commons which considered the Poor Laws in 1817, commence their able Report by stating, that “the principle of a compulsory provision for the impotent, and for setting to work the able-bodied, originated, without doubt, in motives of the purest humanity.” From this statement, plausible as it is, we utterly dissent. We believe that the English poor laws originated in selfishness, ignorance, and pride. Better motives, without doubt, though misdirected by almost equal ignorance, dictated the changes which were made in those laws during the 18th century - the fourth which elapsed from their commencement; but we are convinced that their origin was an attempt substantially to restore the expiring system of slavery. The evils of slavery are now understood; it is admitted that it destroys all the nobler virtues, both moral and intellectual; that it leaves the slave without energy, without truth, without honesty, without industry, without providence; in short, without any of the qualities which fit men to be respected or even esteemed. But mischievous as slavery is, it has many plausible advantages, and freedom many apparent dangers. The subsistence of a slave is safe; he cannot suffer from insufficient wages, or from want of employment; he has not to save for sickness or old age; he has not to provide for his family; he cannot waste in drunkenness the wages by which they were to be supported; his idleness or dishonesty cannot reduce them to misery; they suffer neither from his faults nor his follies. We believe that there are few of our Highland parishes in which there is not more suffering from poverty than would be found in an equal Russian population. Again, the master thinks that he gains by being able to proportion the slave's subsistence to his wants. In a state of freedom, average wages are always enough to support, with more or less comfort, but still to support, an average family. The unmarried slave receives merely his own maintenance. A freeman makes a bargain; he asks whatever his master can afford to pay. The competition among employers forces them to submit to these terms; and the highly paid workman often wastes his extra wages in idleness and debauchery. And when employment is abundant; that is, when his services are most wanted, he often tries to better himself by quitting his master. All this is disagreeable to masters who have been accustomed to the apparent economy of servile labor, and to its lethargic obedience.

The great motive of the framers of the earlier English poor laws was to remedy the latter class of inconveniences; those which affect, or appear to affect the master. The motive of the framers of the later acts again, beginning with George I., was to remedy the first class of evils: those which affect the free laborer and his family.

The first set of laws were barbarous and unskillful, and their failure is evident from their constant re-enactment or amendment, with different provisions and severer penalties. The second set had a different fate - they ultimately succeeded, in many districts, in giving to the laborer and to his family the security of servitude. They succeeded in relieving him and those who, in a state of real freedom, would have been dependent on him, from many of the penalties imposed by nature on idleness and misconduct. And by doing this they in a great measure effected, though certainly against the intentions of the legislature, the object which had been vainly attempted by the earlier laws. They confined the laborer to his parish; they dictated to him who should be his master; and they proportioned his wages, not to his services, but to his wants. Before the poor law amendment act, nothing but the power of arbitrary punishment was wanting in the pauperized parishes to a complete system of praedial slavery.

Our limits will not allow us to do more than to state very briefly the material parts of the numerous statutes, beginning by the statute of laborers, 23d Edward III., (1349,) and ending by the 39th Eliz. cap. 4, (1597,) which were passed for the supposed benefit of masters.

The 23d Ed. III. requires all servants to accept the wages which were usually given five or six years before, and to serve by the year, not by the day; it fixes a positive rate of wages in many employments; forbids persons to quit the places in which they had dwelt in the winter, and search employment elsewhere in the summer; or to remove, in order to evade the act, from one county to another. A few years after, in 1360, the 34th Ed. III. confirmed the previous statute, and added to the penalties, which it imposed on laborers or artificers absenting themselves from their services, that they should be branded on the forehead with the letter F. It imposed also a fine of £10 on the mayor and bailiffs of a town which did not deliver up a laborer or artificer who had left his service.

Twenty-eight years after, in 1388, was passed the 12th Rich. II., which has generally been considered as the origin of the English poor laws. By that act the acts of Ed. III. are confirmed - laborers are prohibited, on pain of imprisonment, from quitting their residences in search of work, unless provided with testimonials stating the cause of their absence, and the time of their returning, to be issued by justices of the peace at their discretion. And, “because laborers will not, nor, for a long season, would not, serve without extrageous and excessive hire,” prices are fixed for their labor; and punishment awarded against the laborer who receives more, and the master who gives more. Persons who have been employed in husbandry until twelve years of age, are prohibited becoming artisans. Able-bodied beggars are to be treated as laborers wandering without passports. Impotent beggars are to remain where they are at the time of the proclamation of the act; or, if those places are unwilling or unable to support them, they are, within forty days, to repair to the places where they were born, and there dwell during their lives.

We have said that this act has been treated as the origin of the English poor laws. It has been so considered in consequence of the last clause, which is the first enactment recognizing the existence of the impotent poor. But this enactment makes no provision for them: though, by requiring them to be stationary in a given spot for the rest of their lives, it seems to assume that they would be supported there. It gives then, however, no claim, nor is there a clause in the whole act intended to benefit any persons except the employers of labor, and principally of agricultural labor - that is to say, the landowners who made the law. If the provisions of the act could have been enforced, the agricultural laborers, and they formed probably four-fifths of the population of England, though nominally free, would have been as effectually ascripti glebæ as any Polish serf. And, to make a nearer approximation to slavery, in the next year (1389), the 13th Rich II. was passed; which directs the justices of every county to make proclamation every half year, at their discretion, according to the price of food, what wages every artificer and laborer shall receive by the day. This act, with some intervals, during which the legislature attempted itself to fix the prices of labor, remained substantially in force until the present century. A further attempt to reduce husbandry laborers to a hereditary caste of serfs, was made by the 7th Hen. IV. cap. 17, (1405,) which, after reciting that the provisions of the former acts were evaded by persons apprenticing their children to crafts in towns - so that there is such a scarcity of husbandry laborers that gentlemen are impoverished - forbids persons not having 20s. a-year in land to do so, under penalty of a year's imprisonment.

It appears, however, that the laborers did not readily submit to the villenage to which the law strove to reduce them; for from this time the English statute book is deformed by the enactments against able-bodied persons leaving their homes, or refusing to work at the wages offered to them, or loitering, (that is to say, professing to be out of work,) which, to use the words of Dr. Burn, “make this part of English history look like the history of the savages in America. Almost all the severities have been inflicted, except scalping.”* A new class of criminals, designated by the terms “sturdy rogues” and “vagabonds,” was created. Among these were included idle and suspect persons, living suspiciously.† Persons *History of the Poor Laws, p. 120. †11 Hen. VII. cap. 2. having no land or craft whereby they get their living.* Idle persons calling themselves serving-men, having no masters. Persons who, after having been sent home, absent themselves from such labor as they shall be appointed to.† Able-bodied poor persons who do not apply themselves to some honest labor or other; or serve even for meat and drink, if nothing more is to be obtained.‡ Persons able to labor, not having land or master, nor using any lawful employment. Laborers using loitering, and refusing to work for reasonable wages.§

The first attempt on the part of a person dependent on his labor for his support to assert free agency, by changing his abode, or by making a bargain for his services, or even by refusing to work for “bare meat and drink,” rendered him liable to be whipped and sent back to his place of birth, or last residence, for three years; or, according to some statutes, for one year, there to be at the disposal of the local authorities. The second attempt subjected him, at one time, to slavery for life, “to be on bread and water and refuse meat, and caused to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise;” and for the third, he was to suffer death as a felon.

We have seen that the 12th Rich. II. required the impotent poor to remain for life where they were found at the proclamation of the act, or at the places of their birth. The subsequent statutes require them to proceed *22 Hen. VIII. cap. 12. †27 Hen. VIII. cap. 25. ‡1 Ed. VI. cap 3. §3 and 4 Ed. VI. cap. 16. 14 Eliz. cap. 5. 39 Eliz. cap. 4. either to their places of birth, or last places of residence, for three years. The law assumed, as we have already remarked, that they would be supported there by voluntary alms, and as respects the able-bodied, it assumed that an able-bodied slave, for such the laborer given up to the local authorities was, could always be made worth his maintenance; that maintenance being, of course, the lowest that could keep him in working order. It appears, however, that casual alms were found an insufficient, or an inconvenient provision for the impotent; that the local authorities were not sufficiently severe taskmasters of the able-bodied; and that the keeping them at work required some fund, by way of capital. The 27th Hen. VIII. cap. 25, (1536,) therefore, requires the parishes to which the able-bodied should be sent, “to keep them to continual labor in such wise that they may get their own living by the continual labor of their own hands;” on pain that every parish making default shall forfeit twenty shillings a-month. It directs the church-wardens, and two others of every parish, to collect alms and broken meat, to be employed in supporting the impotent poor, and “setting and keeping to work the sturdy vagabonds;” and forbids other almsgiving, on pain of forfeiting ten times the amount. This is the first attempt at making charity legal and systematic; and it was obviously a part of the scheme for confining the laboring population to their own parishes. It seems to have been supposed that voluntary alms, systematically distributed, would provide wholly for the impotent, and form a fund which, aided by the fruits of their forced labor; would support the “sturdy vagabonds;” and, therefore, that one could have an excuse for changing his residence. In the early part of Elizabeth's reign was passed a statute, 5th Eliz. cap. 2, (1562,) inflicting the usual penalties, whipping, slavery, and death, on sturdy vagabonds; that is to say, on those who, having no property but their labor, presumed to act as if they had a right to dispose of it; and containing the usual provisions for confining the impotent poor to their parishes. In one respect, however, it was a great step in advance; for it contains for the first time a provision enabling the justices to tax, at their discretion, those who refused to contribute to the relief of the impotent and the keeping at work the able-bodied. Concurrently with this statute, and indeed as part of it, for it is the next chapter on the roll of parliament, was passed the 5th Eliz. cap. 4. This statute requires all persons brought up to certain specified trades, at that time the principal trades of the country, and not possessed of property, or employed in husbandry, or a gentleman's service, to continue to serve in such trades; and orders that all other persons, between twelve years old and sixty, not being gentlemen, or students in school or university, or entitled to property, and not engaged in maritime or mining operations, be compelled to serve in husbandry with any person that will require such person to serve, within the same county. Females, in corporate towns, between the ages of twelve and forty, and unmarried, are to be disposed of in service by corporate authorities, at such wages, and in such sort and manner, as the authorities think meet. The hours of work are fixed by the statute; and the justices are, twice a-year, after “conferring together respecting the plenty or scarcity of the time,” to fix the wages. Persons directly or indirectly paying more, are to be punished by imprisonment and fine; persons receiving more, by imprisonment. No person is to depart from one parish to another, or from one hundred or county to serve in another hundred or county, without a license from the local authorities.

When we recollect that disobedience to these enactments exposed a man or a woman to be included in the proscribed class of vagabonds, punishable by whipping, branding, slavery, and death, it must be admitted that, whatever might be the practice, the law gave little freedom to the laboring classes.

The 11th Eliz. cap. 5, (1572,) carried on the same legislation against the able-bodied, merely aggravating the penalty, by subjecting the offenders (that is, all persons who would not work for what the justices should think reasonable wages) to whipping and burning for the first offence, and to the penalties of felony for the second. It made a further approach to the present system, by directing the fund “for setting to work the rogues and vagabonds,” and relieving the impotent, to be raised by a general assessment.

Twenty-five years afterwards, the two acts of the 39th Eliz. cap. 3 and 4, were passed, which for the first time divided into separate statutes the punishment of the able-bodied, and the relief of the impotent. By the second of these acts, vagabonds (including, we repeat, persons able to labor, having no lord or master, not using any lawful employments, and laborers refusing to work for common wages) are to be whipped, but not branded, and sent back to their parishes: if they appear to be such as will not be reformed, they are to be transported or adjudged perpetually to the galleys.

The other act, the 39th Eliz. cap. 3, differs so slightly from the 43d Eliz. cap. 2, that it requires no further attention.

The 43d of Eliz. directs, that the churchwardens and two or more householders, to be appointed by the justices, shall take order, with the consent of the justices, for setting to work children, and all persons having no means to maintain themselves, and using no ordinary or daily trade of life to get their living by; and to raise a fund by taxation of the inhabitants for such setting to work, and for the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, and blind poor not able to work. And the justices are directed to send to the House of Correction, or common jail, “such as shall not employ themselves to work, being appointed thereunto as aforesaid.”

It appears from this statement, that the 43d of Elizabeth deserves neither the praise nor the blame which have been lavished on it. So far from having been prompted by benevolence, it was a necessary link in one of the heaviest chains in which a people calling itself free has been bound. It was part of a scheme prosecuted for centuries, in defiance of reason, justice, and humanity, to reduce the laboring classes to serfs, to imprison them in their parishes, and to dictate to them their employments and their wages. Of course, persons confined to certain districts by penalties of whipping, mutilation, and death, must be supported; and, if they were capable of labor, it was obvious that they ought to be made to contribute to the expense of their maintenance. Thence arose the provisions for relieving the impotent, and setting to work the able-bodied. But these provisions do not, on the other hand, deserve the censure passed on them by the Committee of the House of Commons in 1817. They were not of a nature to induce the industrious to relax their efforts. They held out no temptations to idleness. The able-bodied, who were the objects of the 43d Elizabeth, were those “who, having no means to maintain themselves, used no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by;” such persons were, by the previous acts, criminals; the work to which they were to be put was forced work; and if they did not employ themselves in it, “being thereunto appointed as aforesaid,” the justices were to commit them to jail. The industrious laborer was not within the spirit or the words of the act. This was, indeed, the complaint of Lord Hale: “The plaster,” says his Lordship, “is not so large as the sore. There are many poor who are able to work if they had it, and had it at reasonable wages, whereby they might support themselves and their families. These are not within the provisions of the law.”*

And it was long before the legislature assented to any extension of the 43d Elizabeth. The 8th and 9th Will. III. cap. 30, passed nearly a century afterwards, “To the intent that the money raised only for the relief of such as are impotent as well as poor, may not be misapplied,” requires all persons receiving relief, and their families, to wear a badge, containing a large Roman P. and the *See Lord Hale's paper at length, in “Burn's History of the Poor Laws,” p. 144. first letter of the name of the parish from which they received relief; the object being not, as has been supposed, to degrade the pauper, but to afford an easy means of detecting the overseer who had relieved an able bodied person.

The oppressive legislation of the Plantagenets and Tudors was unsuccessful. The provisions on which its efficacy depended, namely, the regulation of wages by the justices, the punishment of those who refused to work for such wages, or who paid more than such wages, and the punishment of those who left their parishes without license, became gradually obsolete. Legally considered, they remained in force until the present century. Sir Frederic Eden has collected regulations of wages by the justices, from the 35th of Eliz. (1593) down to 1725. And the last which he gives, that regulating wages for the county of Lancaster in 1725, contains an exposition of the law by the justices, in the spirit of the times of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth: “That the transgressors may be inexcusable when punished, we, the said justices, publish these denunciations, penalties, punishments, and forfeitures which the statutes impose. No servant that hath been in service before, ought to be retained without a testimonial that he or she is legally licensed to depart, and at liberty to serve elsewhere, to be registered with the minister of the parish whence the servant departs. The master retaining a servant without such testimonial forfeits five pounds. The person wanting such testimonial shall be imprisoned till he procure it. If he do not produce one within twenty-one days, to be whipped as a vagabond. The person that gives more wages than is appointed by the justices shall forfeit five pounds, and be imprisoned ten days; the servant that takes more to be imprisoned twenty-one days. Every promise or gift whatever to the contrary shall be void. We, the said justices, shall make strict enquiries, and see the defaults against these ancient and useful statutes severely corrected and punished.”

Free society is a recent and small experiment. The English Poor Laws and the English poor, constitute its only history; for only in England has the experiment been made on a large scale for several centuries. If we have not proved its total and disastrous failure in England, in our Sociology, and in this chapter, we are resolved to prove it before we have done.

It is a favorite political maxim of Englishmen, that taxation and representation should go hand in hand; and that none shall be taxed without their own consent. Yet in Great Britain, the working men, who pay every cent of tax, are not represented at all, have no vote in elections, and are taxed without and against their own consent; whilst the capitalist class, who pay no taxes, but, as Gerrit Smith truly says, are the mere conduits, that pass them from the laborers to the government. This vampire capitalist class impose all the taxes, and pay none. Alas! poor human nature! It is ever grasping at truth and hugging itself.