Page:Landholding in England.djvu/188

 poor indeed. An English judge said publicly not long since that the law respecting companies seemed framed to protect fraud. The same has been said of the law of bankruptcy. Sometimes, indeed, the law appears to connive at the escape of the dishonest. In an action to recover money, the jury may find for the plaintiff, and the Court may order the money to be paid at once into court; but the defendant has only to give notice of appeal, to be allowed to leave the court with the money in his pocket. He can then withdraw his appeal, and the successful but unfortunate plaintiff has no redress. How different is the protection which the law affords to the landowner!



E have seen the grand old word "freeman" change its meaning. At first it meant the man whose land was his own, who could not be turned out of his house and his little fields at the will of another man. Then, the "freeman" was a countryman. But, as towns grew, and welcomed more inhabitants, the serfs escaping to the towns became "free"; and now the "freeman" was a townsman. Again in our own time, the meaning changed so much that another old word was used with a new meaning, and we say now that the £6 householder is "enfranchised," because he has a vote. It is an admission that the person without a vote is something less than free.

Now, he is free. The justices no longer fix the maximum of his wage. But neither do they fix a minimum—ironically called "a living wage." The man as low down as the serf of old, the man who does the hard, thankless, "unskilled" labour on which all other labour rests, has now no place to call his own. He has been driven from the fields into the towns, there to hang on the skirts of regular labour and pull it down. He belongs to nobody, and nobody belongs to him, not even his master, who coolly tells him he is too old at forty, and shakes him off like an old shoe. In a high state of civilisation there is hardly anything which is not worth more than a man. A horse is taken care of—he costs money to