And from the midst of September to the midst of March every artificer and labourer must be at work in the spring of the day, and shall not depart afore night. And the said artificers might not sleep by day but only from the midst of the month of May unto the midst of the month of August. The same hours of labour are ordered by a statute of Queen Elizabeth passed in 1562; but the Legislature, convinced at length that no uniform standard could be maintained, directed that the wages of servants, labourers, and artificers should be assessed by the sheriffs and other magistrates.*

While our Parliaments were thus dealing with labour, they passed a concurrent series of Acts concerning badges, liveries, and apparel. These Acts were in some measure provoked by attempts to evade the former class of enactments. Landlords could not always hire servants in husbandry at the rates fixed by Parliament, and they could not give better wages with impunity. Hence the expedient was adopted of giving livery coats to ploughmen and carters to enhance their wages. This crafty device was encountered by Acts of Edward IV., ordaining that labourers should not wear hose costing more than thirteen pence a pair; that labourers and the wives of labourers should wear no cloth worth more than two shillings a yard; should have no silver lace upon their belts or girdles. People have been innocent enough to believe that people of Derbyshire did not adhere to them in the middle of the seventeenth century.

"For diet, the gentrie, after the southern mode, have two state meales a day, with a bit in the buttery to a morning draught; but your peasants exceed the Greeks, who had four meales a day, for the moorlanders add three more; ye bit in the morning, ye anders meate, and the yenders meate, and so make up seaven; and for certaine, ye great housekeeper doth allow his people, especially in summer tyme, so many commessations."-Philip Kinder(Lyson's Derbyshire, Introduction.)

5 Eliz. c. 4. The rates of Servants' Wages within the City of Chester, limited at the general Sessions, anno 12 Eliz. (1570,) (Harl. 2054,) anno 38 Eliz. (1596). (Hal. 2091, f. 212 b.)

† 37 Ed. III. c. 8, 14. 16 Ric. II. c. 4. 1 Hen. IV. c. 7. 2 Hen. IV. c. 21.

Juratores dicunt quia S.M. nunc serviens W.L. cepit apud K ad serviend' ejusdem W.L. in servitio Husbandrie apud K. à festo Sancti Michaelis archangeli anno iiii domini regis nunc, per unum annum tunc proximo sequentem, pro xxx in pecunia numerata, unam rogam, unum

when ploughmen figured in silver lace they really paid for all their bravery; that ploughmen lived under Edward IV. in ease and comfort and absolute luxury.

These Acts of Edward* had, of course, a further object. They were designed to check extravagance, for people in those days were really very fond of gay clothing. Monstrelet's Friar Thomas Conecte is a witness that the taste was not confined to England. In England it extended to persons in low ranks of life, even to priests and friars. The laws were likewise aimed at the custom of maintenance; by giving badges and liveries, noblemen attached to themselves a crowd of followers and partisans, to the great detriment of peace and justice. It became the main business of a justice of the peace to enforce the laws relating to labourers, vagabonds, retinues, badges, liveries, and apparel.§

The landlords still tried to get ploughing and reaping done for them by the tenants, and the tenants being more willing to pay than to work, the landlords improved their rents by increasing the fines which were due for services unperformed; thus raising the conversion price of labour, while they tried to capicium, unum par callegarum, unum par sotularium ad valentiam vii, necnon cultur' octo acr' terre, precii x, contra formam statuti in hujusmodi casu edit' et provisi etc.-(Tottyl's Tracts, 66.)

Quia cum in statuto domini regis H. 4 nuper regis Anglie anno regni sui vii etc ac in statuto in parliamento domini Henrici sexti bone memorie anno regni sui octavo . . . inter cetera contineant, quod non liceat alicui cuiuscunque status gradus seu condicionis fuerit, dare aliquam liberatam vesturam, vel capis' alicui persone nisi tantum modo familiaribus, officiariis, ballivis et servientibus suis, et aliis hominibus de consilio suo in una lege seu altera eruditis . . . quidam tamen R. B. de C. in com, Huntingdon armiger statuta predicta minime ponderans, quandam liberatam vestur' videlicet diversas togas coloris frost medow quibusdam J. de B. yoman etc et R. C. de eodem yoman, qui non sunt neque unquam fuerunt servientes . . ipsius R. B. dedit et distribuit. (74 b.)

* 3 Ed. IV. c. 5. 22 Ed. IV. c 1.

2 Johnes' Monstrelet, 490.

66

"It is the guise of your countrymen to spend all the goods they have A saying of Chief Justice Billing, recorded in

on men and livery gowns." the Paston Letters.

§ Tottyl's Tracts, 30 b.

in ancient times, almost all rents were paid in kind, in a certain quantity of corn, cattle, poultry, &c. It sometimes happened, however, that the landlord would stipulate that he should be at liberty to demand of the tenant, either the annual payment in kind or a certain sum of money instead of it. The price at which the payment in kind was in this manner ex

beat down its market price. The tenants might well ponder over this, and might well ask their rulers to explain the sense and the justice of it. In the year 1438 the tenants of Rickinghall, which lies between Norwich and Bury, presented a petition to their landlord, the Abbot of Bury, showing that in former times they had been accustomed to render divers quarters of oats, and to do diverse operations in winter, summer, and autumn, as well as acts of porterage on foot or on horseback; all which things, as appeared by a certain old register of the Lord Abbot, had been converted into money; that is to say, it had been arranged that the tenants should give for every quarter of oats two shillings, and for three works in summer and winter one penny, and for every autumnal work without reserve one penny halfpenny, and for every summage or horse load, one penny, and for each act of common porterage, or footaver, one halfpenny. And whereas certain land-agents of Rickinghall, of their own authority had altered these accustomed rates, and had for some time past directed that two shillings and eight pence should be paid for every quarter of oats, one penny for every work in summer and winter, fourpence for every work in autumn, twopence for summage, and a penny for porterage, it was the object of the petition to induce the Lord Abbot to concede that thenceforth two shillings and twopence might be paid for the quarter of oats, a halfpenny for each work in summer and winter, threepence for each autumnal work, a penny-halfpenny for summage, and a penny for porterage; and to release the tenants from the obligation of undertaking the offices of reeve and hayward, which they found very burdensome, and desired to be quit of altogether: in return for these concessions the tenants were willing to pay an additional rent of one farthing upon the acre. Abbas suum temperavit responsum - The Abbot made a considerate answer, declared himself personally well

changed for a certain sum of money, is in Scotland called the conversion price. (Adam Smith.)

inclined to meet the wishes of the tenants; but it does not appear that their memorial received any further attention.†

ART. III.-ON THE TRIAL OF ISSUES INVOLVING THE CONSIDERATION OF SCIENTIFIC AND THE EVIDENCE OF

EVIDENCE

EXPERTS.t

ALTHOUGH this subject so recently occupied our atten

tion, I cannot help feeling that neither the Society nor any individual members of it can require from me an apology for the continued discussion of so important a question as that which relates to the true position of science and skill in the administration of justice. Much less can I allow myself to believe that the Society could deprecate the use of its time in endeavouring to discover how the different departments of human knowledge may be made subservient to the practical efficiency among the people of the principles of our system of jurisprudence.

And, in truth, this serious question, notwithstanding all the debate and controversy we have had about it, has not yet received its solution. Nor, when we attentively consider the objections that have been made to proposed changes in the existing procedure, can we wonder at the hesitation, so plainly manifested by our profession, to interfere with the present mode of trial which does not exempt skilled knowledge from the ordinary conditions of sworn testimony.

† A Paper by Robert Stuart, Esq., read at a general meeting of the Society for the Amendment of the Law, held on Monday, the 22nd of June, 1863

It is, indeed, well that it should be so, and that a right and discriminating conclusion should not be arrived at, on so large and difficult a subject, without reiterated and anxious consideration, and without hastily setting aside a practice, like the present, which, whatever its intrinsic defects, has contrived not only to maintain itself without disrepute, but to have attracted to its support a great and learned experience. Its very detractors (if I may be allowed to use an expression that may appear harsh to the minds of some) have been its disciples; and our learned and able colleague, Mr. Webster, will, I feel assured, not refuse to admit the claims of a procedure in the service of which he has himself accumulated that learning and forensic ability which have made him one of our chief authorities in this delicate branch of legal administration.

But undoubtedly an amendment of the law is here required. What form that amendment may assume, and what may be the weak spot it may discover, I fear we are scarcely yet able to show. Is it that our present mode of trial overlays too much the witness's scientific mind, or the generic quality of the expert's skill, and that nisi prius does not treat these aids to its justice with becoming respect? Or is it that juries take too low a measure of the claims of science, regarding them simply as helps and contributors of those particulars which are inductively to lead to their verdict? Or is it that the breast of the judge requires to be scientifically instructed and expanded, and that the mind and conscience of the Court itself are judicially wanting in this one great element of its constitution? Or is it that the scientific man should not be a witness at all, but a juror, or it may be a judge? These and such like are among the considerations which must be taken into account. Clear it is that this matter of science, if it be, indeed, a reproach and embarrassment to the Courts, is not too large or difficult for the law; nor was the Roman lawyer mistaken when, with lofty ideas of his calling, he defined jurisprudence to be "divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque injusti scientia."