It will, perhaps, be supposed that such comparative prosperity of labour
was the result of the condition of the market in which it was sold, that
the demand for labour was large and the supply limited, and that the state
of England in the sixteenth century was analogous to that of Australia or
Canada at the present time. And so long as we confine our view to the
question of wages alone, it is undoubted that legislation was in favour of
the employer. The Wages Act of Henry VIII. was unpopular with the
labourers, and was held to deprive them of an opportunity of making better
terms for themselves.[33] But we shall fall into extreme error if we
translate into the language of modern political economy the social features
of a state of things which in no way correspond to our own. There was this
essential difference, that labour was not looked upon as a market
commodity; the government (whether wisely or not, I do not presume to
determine) attempting to portion out the rights of the various classes of
society by the rule, not of economy, but of equity. Statesmen did not care
for the accumulation of capital; they desired to see the physical
well-being of all classes of the commonwealth maintained at the highest
degree which the producing power of the country admitted; and population
and production remaining stationary, they were able to do it. This was
their object, and they were supported in it by a powerful and efficient
majority of the nation. On the one side parliament interfered to protect
employers against their labourers; but it was equally determined that
employers should not be allowed to abuse their opportunities; and this
directly appears from the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth, by which, on the
most trifling appearance of a depreciation in the currency, it was declared
that the labouring man could no longer live on the wages assigned to him by
the act of Henry; and a sliding scale was instituted by which, for the
future, wages should be adjusted to the price of food.[34]