two shillings when he went elsewhere on the duties of his office,"
three shillings a week being the pay of his clerk. It becomes at once
obvious that the margin for "rings" was but slender in those days.
The labor question gave not the least trouble. The law of supply
and demand was not consulted. "Three hundred and sixty workmen were
impressed, to be employed on the building at the king's wages; some
of whom having clandestinely left Windsor and engaged in other
employments to greater advantage, writs were issued prohibiting all
persons from employing them on pain of forfeiting all their goods and
chattels." In presence of so simple and effective a definition of the
rights of the workingman, strikes sink into nothingness. And Magna
Charta had been signed a hundred and fifty years before! That
document, however, in honor of which the free and enlightened Briton
of to-day is wont to elevate his hat and his voice, was only in the
name and on behalf of the barons. The English people derived under it
neither name, place nor right. English liberty is only incidental, a
foundling of untraced parentage, a _filius nullius_. True, its
growth was indirectly fostered by aught that checked the power of the
monarch, and the nobles builded more wisely than they knew or intended
when they brought Lackland to book, or to parchment, at Runnymede,
not far down the river and close to the edge of the royal park. The
memorable plain is still a meadow, kept ever green and inviolate of
the plough. A pleasant row it is for the Eton youngsters to this spot.
On Magna Charta island, opposite, they may take their rest and their
lunch, and refresh their minds as well with the memories of the place.
The task of reform is by no means complete. There is room and call
for further concessions in favor of the masses. These embryo statesmen
have work blocked out for them in the future, and this is a good place
for them to adjust to it the focus of their bright young optics.