also, so that the guilds became all-powerful; they imposed their rules and regulations to such an extent that it was almost impossible for any man to get employment except by their permission and under their regulation, or without membership.  They naturally developed into wealthy combinations, more of employers than of journeymen, until they ended as the richly endowed dinner-giving corporations that we see in the city of London to-day.  In France, at least, they were considered the greatest menace to labor, and were all swept away at the time of the French Revolution amid the joy of the masses and the pealing of bells.  Unfortunately, our labor leaders are sometimes scornful of history and unmindful of past example; the fact that a thing has been tried and failed or has, in past history, developed in a certain manner, carries no conviction to their minds.

(1444) A servant in husbandry had to give six months’ notice before leaving and wages were again fixed; and in 1452, the time of Jack Cade’s Rebellion, one finds the first prototype of “government by injunction,” that is to say, of the interference by the lord chancellor or courts of equity with labor and the labor contract, particularly in times of riot or disorder.

But the first trace of this practice, now obnoxious to many under the phrase quoted, dates back to 1327, when King Edward III found it necessary to adopt some more effectual measures of police than those which already existed.  For this purpose justices of the peace were first instituted throughout the country with power to take security for the peace and bind over parties who threatened offence.[1] Fifty years later, in the reign of Richard II, it was found necessary to provide further measures for repressing forcible entries on lands.  The course of justice was interrupted and all these provisions were rendered in a great degree ineffectual by the lawless spirit of the times.  The Statute of 1379 recites that “our Sovereign Lord the King hath perceived ... that divers of his Liege People claiming to have Right to divers Lands, Tenements, and other Possessions, and some espying Women and Damsels unmarried ... do gather them together to a great Number of Men of Arms and Archers ... not having Consideration to God, but refusing and setting apart all Process of the Law, do ride in great Routs ... and take Possession of Lands and in some Places do ravish Women and Damsels, and bring them into strange Countries.”  Therefore the Statute of Northampton, the 2d of Edward III, is recited and confirmed and the justices of the king’s commission ordered to arrest such persons incontinent without tarrying for indictment or other process of law.  But that this summary process was already obnoxious to the people was shown by the fact that it was repealed the very following year because the articles “seemeth to the said Commons very grievous.”  Only the Statute of Northampton is preserved, and those who had been so taken and imprisoned by virtue of said article without other indictment “shall be utterly delivered.”