hem to do all manner of service"--was now abolished by compensation
in a money wage payment. The institution of villeinage is last
mentioned in a commission of Queen Elizabeth, 1574, directing Lord
Burleigh and others in certain counties to compound with all such
bondmen or bondwomen for their manumission and freedom.

(1389) The next year the practice of fixing wages at a permanent sum
is abandoned and they are to be fixed semi-annually at Easter and
Michaelmas by a justice of the peace. In 1402 we find the remarkable
provision that laborers are not to work on feast days nor for more
than half a day before a holiday. Such legislation would hardly be
necessary in modern England, where, in many trades, no one works for
a whole day after the holiday as well. In 1425 is another statute
forbidding masons to confederate themselves in chapters; and in 1427
the attempt to fix wages by law is again abandoned and they are to
be fixed by the justices as in 1389, "because Masters could not get
Servants without giving higher Wages than allowed by the Statute."

(1436) Now, perhaps, we find the first use of the expression
"restraint of trade," that most important phrase, in a statute
forbidding by-laws of guilds or corporate companies "in restraint of
trade," also forbidding unlawful ordinances by them as to the price
of their wares "_for their own profit and to the common, hurt of the
people_," and such by-laws are made penal and invalid except when
approved by the chancellor; and this statute of Henry VI is re-enacted
again in 1503 under Henry VII, where by-laws of guilds, etc.,
restraining suits at law are made unlawful, and so "_ordinances
against the common weal of the people_." The meaning and importance of
such legislation as this has been, I hope, made clear above. Note the
words "_to the common hurt of the people_" and "_against the common
weal of the people_." From this century, at least, therefore, dates
that doctrine of the common law which makes unlawful any contract or
combination in restraint of trade, and it was left for the succeeding
century to develop the last great principle, that against monopoly,
caused either by unlawful combination of individuals or grant by the
crown itself.

The right to labor or to trade was thus fully established in England,
and from the very earliest times we find statutes that merchants may
freely buy and sell. The Statute of York, to this effect (1335), is
re-enacted sixteen years l