STATE OF ENGLAND IN 1685 .

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a shilling a day.* Other evidence is extant, which provesthat a shilling a day was the pay to which the English manu-'facturer then thought himself, entitled, but that he was oftenforced to work for less. The common people of that agewere not in the habit of meeting for public discussion, ofharanguing, or of petitioning Parliament. No newspaperpleaded their cause. It was in rude rhyme that their love andhatred, their exultation and their distress found utterance.A great part of their history is to be learned only from theirballads. One of the most remarkable of the popular layscliaunted about the streets of Norwich and Leeds in the timeof Charles the Second may still be read on the original broad-side. It is the vehement and bitter cry of labour againstcapital. It describes the good old times when every artisanemployed in the woollen manufacture lived as well as a farmer.But those times were past. Sixpence a day was now all thatcould be earned by hard labour at the loom. If the poorcomplained that they could not live on such a pittance, theywere told that they were free to take it or leave it. For somiserable a recompense were the producers of wealth com-pelled to toil, rising early and lying down late, while themaster clothier, eating, sleeping, and idling, became richby their exertions. A shilling a day, the poet declares, iswhat the weaver would have, if justice were done.** We may

* The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. SeeSmith’s Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii.

** This ballad is in the British Museum. The-precise year is notgiven ;-but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the dale sufficientlyfor my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The master clothier isintroduced speaking as follows: —

“ In former ages we used to give,

So that our workfolks like farmers did live;

But the limes are changed, we will make them know.

We will make them to work hard for sixpence a day,

Though a shilling they deserve if they had their just pay;

If at all they murmur and say T is too small,

We bid them choose whether they’ll work at all.

CHAP.

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