aesar lauded. It
existed in Saxon times, when the household work was done by slaves. The
Saxons were notorious slave-dealers, and the Irish were their best
customers. The principal mart was at Bristol, from whence the Saxons
exported large numbers of slaves into Ireland so that, according to
Irish historians, there was scarcely a house in Ireland without a
British slave in it.

When the Normans took possession of England, they continued slavery.
They made slaves of the Saxons themselves whom they decreed villeins and
bondsmen. Domesday Book shows that the toll of the market at Lewes in
Sussex was a penny for a cow, and fourpence for a slave--not a serf
(_adscriptus glebae_), but an unconditional bondsman. From that time
slavery continued in various forms. It is recorded of "the good old
times," that it was not till the reign of Henry IV. (1320--1413) that
villeins, farmers, and mechanics were permitted by law to put their
children to school; and long after that, they dared not educate a son
for the Church without a licence from the lord.[1] The Kings of England,
in their contests with the feudal aristocracy, gradually relaxed the
slave laws. They granted charters founding Royal Burghs; and when the
slaves fled into them, and were able to conceal themselves for a year
and a day, they then became freemen of the burgh, and were declared by
law to be free.

[Footnote 1: _Henry's History of England_, Book v., chap. 4]

The last serfs in England were emancipated in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth; but the last serfs in Scotland, were not emancipated until
the reign of George III, at the end of last century. Before then, the
colliers and salters belonged to the soil. They were bought and sold
with it. They had no power to determine what their wages should be. Like
the slaves in the Southern States of America, they merely accepted such
sustenance as was sufficient to maintain their muscles and sinews in
working order.

They were never required to save for any purpose, for they had no right
to their own savings. They did not need to provide for to-morrow; their
masters provided for them. The habit of improvidence was thus formed;
and it still continues. The Scotch colliers, who were recently earning
from ten to fourteen shillings a day, are the grandsons of men who were
slaves down to the end of last century. The preamble of an Act passed in
1799 (39th Geo. III., c. 56), runs as follows: "Whereas, before the
passing of an Act