frequently compelled
their employment at the advanced prices. The receipt of higher wages
only temporarily bettered their condition. Accustomed to griping hunger
and short allowances of food, when better days came, they thought only
of enjoying the present, and took no heed of the future. After harvest,
with its high wages and cheapness of provision, the laborer frequently
became wasteful and improvident. Instead of the stinted allowance of
salted meat or fish, with the pinched loaf of bean-flour, and an
occasional draught of weak beer, his fastidious appetite demanded fresh
meat or fish, white bread, vegetables freshly gathered, and ale of the
best. As long as his store lasted, he worked as little as possible, and
grumbled at the fortune that made him a laborer. But these halcyon days
were few, and soon passed away, to be followed by decreasing allowances
of the commonest food, fierce pangs of hunger, and miserable
destitution. A bad harvest inflicted untold wretchedness on the poor.
Ill lodged, ill fed, and scantily clothed, disease cut them down like
grass before the scythe. A deadly pestilence swept over the land in
1348, carrying off about two thirds of the people; and nearly all the
victims were from among the poorest classes. In 1361, another pestilence
carried off thousands, again spreading terror and dismay through the
country. Seven years later a third visitation desolated England. Here
and there one of the better class fell a victim to the destroyer; but
the great mass were from the ranks of the half-starved and poorly lodged
laborers.

The morality of the poor was, as might be expected, at a low ebb.
Modesty, chastity, and temperance could scarcely be looked for in
wretched mud huts, where all ages and sexes herded together like swine.
Men and women alike fled from their miserable homes to the ale-house,
where they drank long draughts of cheap ale, and, in imitation of their
superiors in station, listened to a low class of "japers" who recited
"rhymes of Robin Hood," or told coarse and obscene stories for the sake
of a share of the ale, or such few small coins as could be drawn from
the ragged pouches of the bacchanals.

Between proud wealth and abject poverty there can be no friendly
feeling. Stolid, brutish ignorance can alone render the bonds of the
slave endurable. As his eyes are slowly opened by increasing knowledge,
and he can compare his condition with that of the freeman, his fetters
gall him, he