longer. Similarly, wages were graded according to the degree of skill required in the several employments. The regulations of the justices applied to the county, whereas gild regulations had applied only to the borough. The assessment was annual, but our information does not enable us to do more than conjecture the methods by which it was arrived at.

Poor-relief.

An integral part of the industrial regulation and legislation of Elizabeth's reign was that settlement of the problems of Problem of relief and of mendicancy which finally took shape in the Poor Law of 1601. In the past the relief of honest indigence had been left to the Church and to private charity, with the result on the whole, as far as we can ascertain, that during the Middle Ages there was not often serious suffering from want except in consequence of something catastrophic-famine, pestilence, or civil turmoil. How far this indiscriminate' charity had a demoralising effect we cannot very well estimate, especially as we do not know precisely how far it was really indiscriminate. But at any rate the Church at least recognised the duty of maintaining the indigent so far that indigence did not present itself as a problem calling for intervention by the civil authority. For the State the problem was in effect created first by enclosures, and secondly by the dissolution of the monasteries. The very extensive displacement of labour created increasing crowds who virtually had to choose between begging and stealing, with at the best occasional opportunities of employment on exceedingly hard terms. The suppression of the monasteries deprived indigency, honest or dishonest, of its main charitable resource, just at the time of extreme need, increasing the bias in favour of thieving; and it became obvious that in the interests of public order it was imperative that the State should devise means for the suppression of vagabondage and the relief of actual want.

The first efforts had been directed almost exclusively to

State
Remedies.

curing the evil by penalising vagabondage, apart from the attempts to solve the problem by striking at its cause and checking the process of enclosing.

Both had proved practically futile. Statesmanship now turned to the application of three remedies; the provision of employment for those who were willing to work, the provision of relief for those who were unable to work, and the severe punishment of those who would not work when they might.

Conditions.

Natural causes were helping in the first part of the programme. Actual displacement was ceasing because enclosure for pasturage was ceasing. On the other hand, Improving actual employment was increasing because the Natural introduction of convertible husbandry was increasing tillage by periodically bringing portions of pastureland under the plough. Beyond this, in the course of Elizabeth's reign, the profits of tillage were increasing by the adoption of improved methods, so that there was an increased inducement to bring land under cultivation and thereby give employment to labour. The industrial development gave employment to more hands in the towns, and that process was coming into play by which weaving and spinning, especially spinning, were growing into domestic industries by which the agricultural labourer, cottar, or small farmer could materially supplement his income. Hence, by the end of the reign, the surplus for whom the State sought to find work was becoming comparatively small. The work to be provided was mainly in order to meet exigencies, and to deprive the vagrant of excuse for his vagabondage.

The principle, then, of penalising persistent vagabondage was retained, but along with a serious effort to discriminate between wilful vagrancy and vagrancy that Discrimiwas willing to be reclaimed; that is to say, nation. the vagrants who were honestly prepared to work on reasonable terms, and the vagrants who were vagabonds by deliberate choice. The Poor Law of 1601 brought into one system the agencies for relieving the destitute, and for giving temporary employment to those who were in search of work.

The Act was not framed in haste; it was, in fact, the consummation of a series of experimental measures in poor

Steps to the
Poor Law.

relief extending over more than forty years. The Church, deprived of its own means of charity, exhorted the laity thereto, but with inadequate success. Therefore, by successive enactments, magistrates were authorised first, in general terms, to demand the weekly subscriptions from the charitable, then to assess the sum payable by each householder of the parish, and to appoint overseers, and then to provide a stock of materials on which the poor might be set to work for due wages, but under compulsion. As early as the reign of Queen Mary, the Bridewell House of Correction had been started by the London authorities, where offenders were set on compulsory work; and the methods adopted in London were to a considerable extent used as a model in the establishment of a national system. The Privy Council were, moreover, zealous in keeping the local authorities up to the mark. The Poor Poor Law. Law finally provided for the establishment of workhouses in each parish, where the destitute could be supported and temporary work provided with the alternative of punishment for wilful idleness, the Act incorporating the principles which had been gradually introduced.

The

It is further to be noted that government intervened to maintain regularity of employment when periods of trade depression drove industrial employers to the natural remedy of reducing the output and the number of their employees; but activity in this field is more noticeable in the earlier part of the century; in Elizabeth's reign trade depression was unusual.

It remains in this chapter to call attention to the great gain of industry and commerce in every direction derived Govern- from the restoration of the government's credit ment Credit. for honesty and trustworthiness, its promptitude in meeting its obligations, and especially its restoration of the coinage. The previous debasements had been destructive not only because the coins of inferior value drove coins of full value out of circulation, and artificially raised prices to the detriment of those who lived on money wages which did

not rise correspondingly, it had also created complete uncertainty as to what the actual value of the coinage was, and had made chaos of exchange with foreign countries. The restored coinage of Elizabeth fixed a definite standard from which there was no deviation, and re-established England's financial credit in foreign markets. With the advancing prosperity, wages adjusted themselves to the advance in prices which accompanied the gradual distribution of the store of precious metals imported to Europe from America. The country displayed all the characteristic marks of wealth, such as great expenditure on building, on the laying out of private estates, and on charitable munificence. And even

the extravagance of personal display, which rivalled that of the reign of Henry VIII., can have had no deleterious economic consequences, since it is evident that the prosperity of all classes alike advanced enormously.

L

CHAPTER XIII

The New

OCEANIC EXPANSION

THE expansion which followed the assertion of England's position as a maritime power of the front rank took the form of colonisation in America, and of the developColonial Type. ment of oceanic commerce with the East. The English type of colony which grew up in the seventeenth century had no very close precedent in history. In the ancient world the Greek colony had been in effect an independent city State set up in a new country, and having no intimate connection either political or commercial with the parent city. The Roman colony was primarily a garrison. The Spanish colony created in the sixteenth century was a royal estate. But the English colony in America was a settlement of Englishmen who had resolved to make their permanent home in a new country by licence from the State, without loss of citizenship, but without emancipation from control by the mother country. The necessary licence was granted always on the hypothesis that the interests of the mother country stood first, and where her interests collided with those of the colonists, the latter must give way. Subject to the safeguarding of these provisos, the colonists were to be left to manage their own affairs, developing the resources of the country as best they could, and exchanging its products for those of the mother country. The method was feasible in North America, where there were no consolidated native States, and the native population was either nomadic or was only just emerging into an agricultural stage; while the climate was suited to the habitation and propagation of the white races.