During the next two centuries, the condition of the people had been materially improved. Capital had increased, and so had population. But capital had increased faster than population, and hence the improvement. The class of free labourers had for the most part succeeded to the old class of villeins. Labourers for hire, without understanding the great principles which govern the rate of wages, any more than did their masters, would practically seek to measure their earnings according to those principles. The lawgivers determined the contrary.[37] The Statute of Labourers, 23rd Edward III., says:--"Because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants, late died of the pestilence, many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they receive excessive wages." They were therefore to be compelled to serve, and they were to serve at the same wages which they had received three years before. The ratio of population, in consequence of the pestilence, had fallen considerably below the ratio of accumulated capital seeking to employ labour. Under the natural laws of demand and supply, the scarcity of labourers and the excess of capital would have raised the wages of labour. These laws were not to operate. Forty years after this enactment of Edward III., comes the statute of Richard II., which says that "Servants and labourers will not, nor by a long season would, serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rents, nor scarcely live upon their lands." Here was a distinct conflict between the capitalists seeking profits and the labourers seeking wages. The law-makers resolved that the hires of the servants and labourers should be "put in certainty;" and they fixed the rate of wages throughout the land. They settled the contest in favour of profits, arbitrarily. To avoid this interference with the due payments of their labour in proportion to the ratio of capital and labour, the husbandmen might have fled to the towns, and some did so. But they were met there by the enactment that the artificers should be subject to the same controlling power, and that the boy who had laboured at the plough and cart till he was twelve years old should continue so to labour for the rest of his life. This state of things was truly slavery without the name. Some such marvellous folly and injustice went on for several centuries. But, regulating wages, the laws also undertook to regulate the cost of food and of clothing--their quality, and their consumption--how much people should eat, and what coats they should wear. These absurdities also went on for centuries--of course under a perpetual system of open violation or secret evasion. The people, we may safely conclude, never fully