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 lord who, if he came near to possessing him, in return secured him from destitution, and had an interest in protecting him from all oppression but his own. If the serf tilled the soil for his lord, he tilled it also for himself. He had deep roots in the soil, whereas the whole tendency of modern social policy is to uproot him from the soil, with the result of leaving him no place, and sometimes a doubtful right to exist; to call him a peasant is to confuse the meaning of words.

The feudal system, with all its faults, was a reciprocal system. If the villein owed much to his lord, the lord owed something to the villein. When that system broke up under the Tudors, money began to rule as it had not done before; and the direct effect was to make money more valuable than men. The English labourer, robbed of his Gild, tuned out of his field and common, literally lost the right to exist, except during such time as he could obtain a master. He was liable to be hanged for no other crime than having no work to do. Twice, he might be spared—if somebody wanted him for a slave. The third time he was out of work, it was hanging. If it was evident that he was too old or too sick to work he was flung back an unwelcome burden on the place of his birth—to be a slave for ever if he had tried to inflict himself on the wrong place. He esteemed himself fortunate if he was allowed to beg. Yet, now and always, he executed the manual part of the "great works" of which the nation took the credit. He did whatever was too hard and too disagreeable for his betters to do. He was cajoled into fighting his country's battles by land, and kidnapped to fight her battles by sea. And there his part in fashioning the country's destinies ended. He had no voice in the quarrels in which he fought, or in the great affairs of the nation—nor even in the little affair of what wage he was to receive for his blood and his toil. It was for long a hanging matter for him even to discuss with his fellows any rise in wages. The justices set his wage just high enough to keep him alive, with heart enough in him to beget children to do the hard work of the next generation. He had been thrust off, weeded off, edged off the lands his fathers tilled—if he still tilled them, it was for the rich farmer who had persuaded him and a score of his fellows to sell their few acres—gaining their consent more easily by