“Well, Montesinos,” said the spirit, when he visited me next, “have you recollected or found any solid arguments for maintaining that the labouring classes, who form the great bulk of the population, are in a happier condition, physical, moral, or intellectual, in these times, than they were in mine?”

Montesinos.—­Perhaps, Sir Thomas, their condition was better precisely during your age than it ever has been either before or since.  The feudal system had well-nigh lost all its inhuman parts, and the worse inhumanity of the commercial system had not yet shown itself.

Sir Thomas More.—­It was, indeed, a most important age in English history, and, till the Reformation so fearfully disturbed it, in many respects a happy and an enviable one.  But the process was then beginning which is not yet completed.  As the feudal system relaxed and tended to dissolution the condition of the multitude was changed.  Let us trace it from earlier times!  In what state do you suppose the people of this island to have been when they were invaded by the Romans?

Montesinos.—­Something worse than the Greeks of the Homeric age:  something better than the Sandwich or Tonga islanders when they were visited by Captain Cook.  Inferior to the former in arts, in polity, and, above all, in their domestic institutions; superior to the latter as having the use of cattle and being under a superstition in which, amid many abominations, some patriarchal truths were preserved.  Less fortunate in physical circumstances than either, because of the climate.

Sir Thomas More.—­A viler state of morals than their polyandrian system must have produced can scarcely be imagined; and the ferocity of their manners, little as is otherwise known of them, is sufficiently shown by their scythed war-chariots, and the fact that in the open country the path from one town to another was by a covered way.  But in what condition were the labouring classes?

Montesinos.—­In slavery, I suppose.  When the Romans first attacked the island it was believed at Rome that slaves were the only booty which Britain could afford; and slaves, no doubt, must have been the staple commodity for which its ports were visited.  Different tribes had at different times established themselves here by conquest, and wherever settlements are thus made slavery is the natural consequence.  It was a part of the Roman economy; and when the Saxons carved out their kingdoms with the sword, the slaves, and their masters too, if any survived, became the property of the new lords of the land, like the cattle who pastured upon it.  It is not likely even that the Saxons should have brought artificers of any kind with them, smiths perhaps alone excepted.  Trades of every description must have been practised by the slaves whom they found.  The same sort of transfer ensued upon the Norman conquest.  After that event there could have been no fresh supply of domestic slaves, unless they were imported from Ireland, as well as carried thither for sale.  That trade did not continue long.  Emancipation was promoted by the clergy, and slavery was exchanged for vassalage, which in like manner gradually disappeared as the condition of the people improved.