y
formed the dreaded bands of the Jacquerie, who desolated the most
fruitful portions of that fine country. They committed great
cruelties; but in the end they were crushed by the chivalry of the
upper ranks. In the results of the two insurrections, however, there
was a marked difference between England and France. Advance and
improvement have ever, fortunately, characterised the legislation of
this country. In France, and other parts of the continent, the
insurgents were crushed with terrible slaughter, and then they were
subjected to stricter and sterner laws, to prevent them from breaking
out again--laws so strict and stern, that the French peasantry and
working-classes were kept in chain by them till the Revolution of
1788. In England, on the other hand, the parliament which met after
Tyler's insurrection was put down, took into consideration the state
of the country; and the tyrannical and oppressive laws against the
peasantry and working-classes were modified.

Still these classes remained for centuries in a condition so closely
bordering on actual slavery, that a close, practical contemplation of
it would certainly be sufficiently startling to the workmen of the
present day. The celebrated statute of Elizabeth for the relief of the
poor, passed in 1597, shews us, in sufficiently distinct terms, the
position of the workman at that period. Various kinds of vagrants or
impostors are, in the first place, enumerated, much resembling the
same class at the present day--such as persons pretending to be
shipwrecked sailors, fortune-tellers, players, bear-keepers,
musicians, &c. And then we have 'all wandering persons and common
labourers, being persons able in body, using loitering and refusing to
work for such reasonable wages as is taxed or commonly given in such
parts where such persons do or shall happen to dwell or abide, not
having living otherwise to maintain themselves.' Among the punishments
attached to this offence are, that the offender 'be stripped naked
from the middle upward, and shall be openly whipped until his or her
body be bloody.' In fact, the whole poor-law legislation which
followed this enactment, down to the act of 1834, treated the peasant
in a great measure as a slave. Doubtless the workhouse-test, which
requires that the able-bodied man who gets relief shall give labour
for it, involves slavery within the bounds of the workhouse. But this,
fortunately, now only applies to a few. The evil of the