acquired under contracts of hiring and service, as contained in the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1871, and the Law of Conspiracy as applicable to such cases. "First, as to the Master and Servant Act, 1867 : "In pursuing the inquiry of which we are about to state the result, we have kept in view the scope of the Commission and the limits prescribed by it to our labours. "The relation of master and servant, arising out of the form of contract known to the law under the name of hiring and service, embraces many varieties of service. We have, in the first place, the broad distinction between domestic servants and every other class of servants. Next to these come servants employed in trade and business, such as clerks, shopmen, and the like. With the foregoing classes of servants the Legislature has never thought it necessary to interfere. The respective rights and obligations of master and servant, as arising from the contract between them, have been left to be determined by the common law of the land, and any differences between them to be dealt with by the ordinary tribunals. The contract of hiring and service, as relates to servants of these two classes not being within the operation of the Master and Servant Act, it does not fall within our province to consider it. 66 Passing by these classes of servants we come to the numerous class who serve by placing at the service of their employers their labour, whether rude or skilled, according to the branch of productive industry or manufacture to which they belong. "It is to this class, including labourers in husbandry, miners, quarrymen, and the like, and to manufacturers, artificers, and others employed in the various forms of creative industry, that statutory legislation has been directed, and that the Act of the 30 & 31 Vict. c. 141, commonly called the Master and Servant Act, 1867, applies. Called upon to report on this statute, it is to this class of servants that we have confined our attention, and are now about to direct our observations. "It may be useful before we proceed to report the result of our inquiry into the working of the Master and Servant Act, to pass briefly in review the prior legislation on the relation of master and servant, as leading up to the statute in question. It will be seen how great were the restraints placed by the Legislature on the free action of labour, and how much has been done of late to place those who have only their labour to depend upon on a proper footing. "The legislation on this subject dates back as far as the 23 Edward 3, (a) when was passed the first Statute of Labourers. "The population had been much reduced by the recent pestilence, and the demand for labour naturally led the labouring classes to insist on higher wages. Vagrancy had increased by reason of many villeins, in order to escape from the thraldom of villenage, betaking themselves to a vagrant life. In the interest, therefore, of the lords and of the landowners, it was enacted that 'every man and woman able in body, and within the age of threescore, not living in merchandize, nor exercising any craft, not having of his own whereof to live, nor land about whose tillage he might employ himself, nor serving any other, should be bound to serve, if required, at the accustomed wages.' If he refused, (a) A. D. 1349 (Ed.). he was to be committed to jail till he found surety to enter the service; if he departed before the term agreed he was to be imprisoned. None were to pay more than the old wages upon pain of forfeiting double what they paid; if the workman took more, he was to be committed to jail, the overplus wages to go to the King's use, in alleviation of the dismes or quinzimes assessed on the town or district.' "A statute passed two years later (25 Edward 3, s. 2) (b) interfered not only with hiring in husbandry, but also with several other branches of industry. Carters, ploughmen, and other servants were to serve by the whole year or by other usual terms, and not by the day. None was to go out of the town where he dwelt in winter, to serve in summer, if he could get work therein. The wages of servants in husbandry and of certain artificers were fixed by the Act. Cordwainers and shoemakers were not to sell boots or shoes in any other manner than they were wont in the 20th year of the reign of Edward 3. Saddlers, horse-smiths, tailors, and all other servants not mentioned in the Act were to be sworn before the justices to do and use their crafts in offices in the manner they were wont to do in the said 20th year and time before; and any one breaking this statute after such oath was to be punished by fine and imprisonment. If labourers or artificers left their work and went into another county, process was to be issued to the sheriff to arrest and bring them back. "By another statute (12 Richard 2) (c), it was enacted that no servant or labourer, whether man or woman, should depart out of the hundred where he dwelt (d) to serve else (b) A. D. 1350-1 (Ed.). (c) Cap. 111, A. D. 1388 (Ed.). where, unless he brought a letter patent containing the cause of his going and the time of his return, if he was to return, under the King's seal, which for this purpose was to be in the keeping of some man of the hundred. A servant wandering without such testimonial was to be put into the stocks till he gave surety to return to his place. By a statute of the ensuing year (13 Richard 2 (a) c. 8) (b), the justices were to settle and proclaim between Easter and Michaelmas what should be the wages of day labourers. "It appears that about this time an apprehension was entertained that the tendency of the rural population to apprentice their children to trades in cities and boroughs might reduce the number of servants in husbandry below the proper level. By the statute of 12 Richard 2, already referred to, it was provided (c) that he or she who used to labour at the plough and cart, or other service in husbandry, till 12 years of age, should so abide and not be put to any other mystery.' By a statute, 7 Hen. 4 (d), no person was to put a son or daughter apprentice within a city or borough, except he had land or rent to the value of 20s. a year at the least, on pain of a year's imprisonment. And any person offering to apprentice a child in a city or borough was obliged to bring a bill sealed by two justices of the county testifying the value of his land or rent. By a statute of 3 & 4 Edward 6, c. 22 (e), it was enacted that clothmakers, fullers, sheermen, tailors, and shoemakers should not retain journeymen for less than a quarter of a year. Every one in these trades having three apprentices was to have one journeyman. (a) Stat. 1 (Ed.). A D. 1389-90 (Ed.). (c) Cap. 5 (Ed.). (d) Cap. 17, A. D. 1405–6 (Ed.). (e) A. D. 1549–50 (Ed.). "There were several other statutes for the regulation of particular trades, but it is unnecessary to dwell on them, as all these statutes were repealed and consolidated by the Act of 5 Elizabeth, c. 4 (ƒ), known also by the name of the 'Statute of Labourers,' an Act to which we shall have occasion to refer further on. "In the meantime a great social evil had arisen, with which it was necessary that the Legislature should grapple, and which it sought to overcome by imposing rigourous restraints on the freedom of labour. "The great social revolution caused by the suppression of the monasteries, and by the consequent withdrawal of the support which those institutions afforded to the indigent, and too often to the idle, had led to the dispersion of a multitude of people over the face of the country for the purpose of begging, under the pretence of which many persons of strength and capacity to labour, but preferring a life of vagrancy and idleness to earning their livelihood by industry, too often superadded depredation and robbery. Under these circumstances Parliament set to work to suppress (ƒ) A. D. 1562-3. This statute does not in terms repeal any previous statute, but after reciting the insufficiency of the existing laws, enacts "that asmuche of the Estatutes heretofore made, and every branche of them as touche or concerne the hiring, keping, departing, woorcking, wages, or order of Servantes, Woorckmen, Artificers, Apprentyses, and Labourers or any of them, and the Penalties and Forfeitures concerning the same, shalbe from and after the last daye of September next ensuing, repealed and utterly voide and of none effect; And that all the said Statutes and every branch thereof for any Matter contained in them and not repealed by this Statute, shall remaine and bee in full force and effecte, Anything in this Statute to the contrarye nothwithstanding.' The construction of this statute, as to what it did repeal, and what it did not, must have been a puzzle to many a justice in those days. It is now repealed by the Conspiracy and Protection to Property Act, 1875, 38 & 39 Vict. c. 86, s. 17 (III-a) (Ed.), |