soever of the devil's power. And to have beaten back, or
even to have struggled against and stemmed in ever so small a degree those
besetting basenesses of human nature, now held so invincible that the
influences of them are assumed as the fundamental axioms of economic
science; this appears to me a greater victory than Agincourt, a grander
triumph of wisdom and faith and courage than even the English constitution
or the English liturgy. Such a history, however, lies beside the purpose
which I may here permit myself; and the two acts with which the session
closed, alone in this place require our attention.

The first of these is one of the many "Acts of Apparel," which are to be
found in the early volumes of the statute book. The meaning of these laws
becomes intelligible when we reflect upon the condition of the people. The
English were an organised nation of soldiers; they formed an army
perpetually ready for the field, where the degrees were determined by
social position; and the dresses prescribed to the various orders of
society were the graduated uniforms which indicated the rank of the
wearers. When every man was a soldier, and every gentleman was an officer,
the same causes existed for marking, by costume, the distinctions of
authority, which lead to the answering differences in the modern regiments.

The changing conditions of the country at the time of the Reformation, the
growth of a middle class, with no landed possessions, yet made wealthy by
trade or other industry, had tended necessarily to introduce confusion; and
the policy of this reign, which was never more markedly operative than
during the most critical periods of it, was to reinvigorate the discipline
of the feudal system; and pending the growth of what might better suit the
age, pending the great struggle in which the nation was engaged, to hold
every man at his post. The statute specifies its object, and the motives
with which it was passed.

"Whereas," says the preamble, "divers laws, ordinances, and statutes have
been with great deliberation and advice provided and established for the
necessary repressing and avoiding the inordinate excess daily more and more
used in the sumptuous and costly array and apparel accustomably worn in
this realm, whereof hath ensued, and daily do chance such sundry high and
notable inconveniences as be to the great and notorious detriment of the
commonweal, the subversion of politic order in knowledge and distinctio