"In 1533 . . . the farm labourer [he tells us, after stating the prices then ruling] would have had to give nearly double the labour in wheat and oats and more than double in the case of malt, though a good deal less than double in that of oatmeal, to make such a provision as his ancestor did in 1495; while the artisan at 3s. would have had to give between fourteen and fifteen weeks' work (instead of ten) for a similar store. The firstnamed year is an exceedingly cheap one; the latter, though less advantageous to the labourer, is one in which he might still be able, as we see, to maintain his family, and lay by a considerable margin from the charges of his household, from a fourth to a half of his earnings." 1

Think of it, ye farm labourers, in 1533 the labourer could save "from a fourth to a half of his earnings"!

Note the change, however, a century later. In 1634, we are told, the "artisan .. would have to work forty-three weeks in order to earn that which an artisan in 1495 obtained with ten weeks' labour; while the wages of the peasant, who got this supply by fifteen weeks' labour 115 years before, would be insufficient, even if he worked for fifty-two weeks in the year and every day except Sunday, by 24s. 9 d., to win that quantity of provisions. Even the extra payments in harvest would not make up the deficiency." 2 And in 1725, "what a husbandman earned with fifteen weeks' work, and an artisan with ten weeks' work in 1495, a whole year's labour would not supply artisan or labourer with . . . throughout Lancashire." 3

...

Coming down to the nineteenth century, he tells us :

"In 1801 Arthur Young calculated that a Suffolk labourer could (at some date which he does not give, but it must have been nearly sixty years before) have bought for 58. what, in 1800, would have cost him 26s. 5d., and that, therefore, as his wages and parish allowance would at the best have given him only 15s., he was virtually put on little more than half the scale of his earnings in the earlier period." 4

And again, page 93, Rogers says:

"By contrast with what prevailed during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century, the wages of the labourer were again depressed during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries, when the old rates continued and wheat kept rising; for the average price between 1801 and 1810 was . . . more than double that which existed in the worst decade in the first half of the seventeenth century... but the poverty of the poor was practically unalleviated, their wages only nominally improved, the assessment of their earnings unchanged, and no thought whatever was taken of their condition by the Legislature, unless it be that the attempt to repress the violence, which their unparalleled sufferings drove them occasionally to commit, by atrocious penal laws may be called thought."5

Dealing with the rate of wages towards the close of the nineteenth century, Rogers says:

"At present I believe that the workmen of this country, speaking of them in the mass, are better paid than those of any other settled and fully

1 P. 57.

2 P. 59.

3 P. 65.

+ P. 75.

5 P. 94.

peopled community, if one takes into account not merely the money wages which they earn, but the power which these wages have over commodities. But the rise is entirely of the last thirty years, and, unfortunately, it has not been shared by all in equal proportion, while the case of some has been rendered worse." "1

Again, pp. 171-2, he says:

"Some of the working-classes in London, and those who have been long educated in the machinery of labour partnerships (trades unions), have at last regained the relative rate of wages which they earned in the fifteenth century, though perhaps in some particulars the recovery is not complete. I can illustrate what I mean. From 1449 to 1450 divers workmen were engaged in building at Oxford. The head-mason got 4s. a week for nine months in the year; the others 3s. 4d. for ten. For ten months the under-masons got 2s. 10d. . . . In modern values. . . these sums represent 488., 408. and 348. Mr. Howell informs us that the building trades in London in 1877 had reached 7s. 1d. a day, or 428. 9d. a week. I have taken," he adds, "the best prices of artisan labour in the best English market for such labour to contrast them, improved as they are by the mechanism of a trade union, with the prices paid spontaneously in a country town in England 434 years ago."

On page 175, too, we are reminded that

"The artisan who is demanding at this time an eight hours' day in the building trades is simply trying to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago."

But in the case of the agricultural labourer the position is very different. Thorold Rogers shows us (pages 116 and 117) that since the fifteenth century rents have risen twenty-fold at the expense of labour.

"Scattered and incapable of combined action with his fellows, bowed down by centuries of oppression, hard usage and hard words, with, as he believes, every social force against him, the landlord in league with the farmer, and the clergyman in league with both, the latter constantly preaching resignation, and the two former constantly enforcing it, he [the agricultural labourer] has lived through evil times. Under the allowance system, he seems to have been guaranteed against starvation, and under the law of parochial settlement he avenged himself on some of his oppressors, though not on the worst, those who, on one pretext or another, quartered him on another parish, employed him on quarter sessions or farmers' vestry assessment wages, and left others to supplement his wages by the allowance, and to support him when they had worn out his body, as they had worn out his spirit long before. There is nothing in the history of civilisation more odious than the meanness of some English landlords, except it be their insolence. They have been abetted by the foolish farmers, who ground down their labourers in order to enrich the landlords, and have finally sacrificed themselves to the rent-rolls of profligates and gamblers."

To this "foolish payment of excessive rent and the equally foolish receipt of excessive rent "2 Rogers attributes the downfall of British agriculture. He very strongly condemns the Corn Law, showing

that it resulted in inflated rents, depressed wages, and enormously enhanced prices for food. And in the following scathing terms he exposes those who would revert to taxes on food :

"There are, moreover, persons who have the effrontery to invite workmen to accept and acquiesce in a tax on their food, in order that landlords may keep up their rents at the expense of the general public. Such shameless mendicancy is in keeping with the tradition of aristocratic government, which has in the history of English finance and legislation, put the burdens of State on the many, and freed the property of the few; but when it is fully understood, it will not serve the men who advocate it, or the party which has the meanness to encourage it."

Professor Rogers refers here, of course, to the manner in which the landholders have shuffled out of their feudal dues and services, the redditum or rent for the land they hold, and shouldered the burdens of State off on to the general public.

[To be continued.]

WANTED-AN OPPOSITION.

IN his famous address "On Conciliation with America," Burke declared, "A great empire and little minds go ill together." The political opponents of Burke doubtless retorted that his was the little mind, and confidently asserted that to adopt the views of conciliation he advocated would mean loss and humiliation to the British Empire. Posterity, however, has a different opinion. In the clear light of after-events we of to-day see that Burke was right and his opponents the majority-wrong. We now know that, thanks to a foolish and arrogant policy of narrow-minded Ministers and an obstinate King, the British Empire lost what would at the present time have been the largest and fairest gem in her Imperial crown. But the majority in Parliament failed to see this when Burke and Chatham and Barré, and the few other members of the small but fearless minority, were pleading for conciliation and uttering direful prophecies that were, alas, to be fulfilled.

Eighty years later, the warning voice of John Bright sounded almost alone in denunciation of the new "jingo" policy that was hurrying the country into war with Russia in behalf of the "unspeakable Turk." Again the minority-a hopeless one at the time-was right. Again it was proven that vox populi is not always vox Dei, and it was left for a subsequent Premier of the very party that had denounced as "traitors" those who opposed their war policy to sadly admit that "we put our money on the wrong horse" in the matter of the Crimean War.

It has been said that "history is only past politics, and present politics are future history." If such be the case, the politics of to-day will furnish a fruitful field for the future historian.

To the thoughtful man, even though he be no deep student of history, the present situation of things in regard to South Africa offers many points of analogy with the two instances from the past mentioned above. Will the outcome be the same? Shall the future historian have to record that South Africa was also lost to the British Empire because of the same fatnous levity and indifference, the same crass ignorance, the same stupid severities of arrogant and misguided Ministers? Or, though chronicling a victory for British arms, will it be as costly and as barren a triumph as that won at

Bunker Hill or in the Crimea? The future will tell. What that verdict shall then be, we of to-day are determining now.

After twenty-five months of fighting in South Africa, what is the actual situation confronting us there at the present moment? We need go no farther than the recent speeches made by Lord Salisbury and Mr. Brodrick to get an answer that should cause even the man in the street" to pause and consider.

66

According to the Secretary of War in his latest speech, we find that after all these weary months, after all the terrible cost in money and in blood, after all the specious assurances that "the war was over," British arms are to-day supreme in only one-eighth (1) of the Transvaal and in less than one-third (1) of the Orange Free State ! The regularly appointed governments of the two republics-incorrectly called ex-republics, for de facto governments still exist-are uncaptured, and continue to exercise jurisdiction; their daring commandants apparently move in whatever direction they choose, while the end of the war none can foresee or predict. There have been many official predictions, but all of these have been contradicted by the course of events. Could more damning proof be given of the woeful ineptitude, the hopeless lack of diplomacy and statesmanship, the criminal levity and self-complacency of the present Government? Proclamations, farm burnings, banishment, confiscation, hangings, floggings, and concentration camps have all been tried, and tried in vain. Such measures were also with the exception of the concentration camps and banishment-employed without success in the war with the American Colonies. They had the same effect on the Americans that they have had on the Boers-simply stiffening the resistance of the people and breeding a hatred that has not yet wholly died out.

The only measures to bring about a lasting peace and end the war, namely, conciliation and generous terms, have been the very measures omitted. It is meaningless buncombe to assert (as has been asserted) that "the most generous terms ever offered to a beaten foe" have been held out to the Boers. Lord Kitchener knows better. Any thinking man knows better. Such an assertion is on a par with the reiterated declarations that the "war was over"; or, with the unctuous pharisaism that declares the concentration camps to be healthier places than the average Boer home before the war. Their unreliability, to use a mild term, is self-evident and conspicuous. The death-rate in the concentration camps is over two hundred and fifty (250) in the thousand (1000). The death-rate in the Transvaal before the war was under sixteen (16) in the thousand (1000). Comment is unnecessary. It is also instructive to note that of all the many thousands of prisoners taken by the Boers, five or six thousand of whom were kept for many months before being released, less than one hundred (100) have died in captivity.