To a baronet's house. I am a gentleman, with another gentleman's

[Swineford Vanrossum]

 On this, the Count of Alencon cried out: 'Kill the lazy scoundrels!'
A number of the men-at-arms rushed in among them, to chastise them,
and this produced a confusion which assisted the English to their
victory. From these battles, and a multitude of other sources, we can
see the great superiority, in freedom
and condition of living, of the humbler class in England over that in
France; and yet, at the same time, it is difficult in the nineteenth
century to believe in the extent of tyranny exercised, down to a
comparatively recent period, over the working-classes in Britain. We
may judge of the tyrannical
interference of the government with the freedom of labour by the
Statute of Labourers, passed in 1349. One of the frightful
famines of the middle
ages had occurred, and labourers were scarce in comparison with the
means
of employment. It is said that the same phenomenon has now in some
measure
recurred in Ireland; but there is little chance of our statesmen
treating it as those of the fourteenth century did. Justice says,
that the labourer is entitled to obtain the value of his labour, be
it much or little. Parliament, however, fixed the amount which it
thought the reasonable price of labour--the rate at which the members
of the legislature desired to have it; and endeavoured, by penalties
and persecution, to obtain it at that rate. The statute commences by
abusing the labourers
for taking advantage of the scarcity of hands to demand high
wages--as if there ever were human beings, employed in the ordinary
affairs of life, who would not take what wages or profits they could
obtain; and as if labourers were like missionaries, and other
devotees, who are not led by any mercenary motive. The statute then
enacts, that every person able in body, and under the age of
sixty, not having means of maintaining himself, is bound to serve
whoever shall be willing to employ him, at the wages which were
usually paid during the six
years preceding
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