Some months ago I solicited the assistance of a friend, a respectable farmer, residing at Wootton, in Warwickshire, who not only very readily promised to give me every information he possessed on the subject, but proposed that I should pass a week at his farm at the time these Statutes were holding. So valuable an opportunity of visiting them and making my own observations, I, of course, readily embraced. Before I proceed to lay before you the results, it may be as well, perhaps, to give something like a definition of the name applied to this peculiar custom, as also when and for what purpose the usage was established. “Statutes,” or “Statute Sessions,” otherwise called “Petit Sessions,” are meetings, in every hundred of each shire in England where they are held, to which the constables and others, both householders and servants, repair for the determining of differences between masters and servants; the rating, by the sheriff or magistrates, of wages for the ensuing year; and the bestowing of such people in service as are able to serve, and refuse to seek, or cannot get masters. The first act of parliament for regulating servants’ wages passed in the year 1351, 25th Edward III. At an early period labourers were serfs, or slaves, and consequently there was no law upon the subject. The immediate cause of the act of Edward III. was that plague which wasted Europe from 1347 to 1349, and destroyed a great proportion of its inhabitants. The consequent scarcity of labourers, and the high price demanded for labour, caused those who employed them to obtain legislative enactments, imposing fines on all who gave or accepted more than a stipulated sum. Since that period there have been various regulations of a similar nature. By the 13th of Richard II. the justices of every county were to meet once a year, between Easter and Michaelmas, to regulate, according to circumstances, the rates of wages of agricultural servants for the year ensuing, and cause the same to be proclaimed. But though this power was confirmed to the justices by the 5th of Elizabeth, this part of the custom of Statute Sessions is almost, if not quite, fallen into disuse. It is probable that in the years immediately succeeding the first enactment the population was so restored as to cause the laws to be relaxed, though they still remain as an example of the wisdom of past ages. However this may be, it is certain, that all that is at present understood by “Statutes,” or, as the vulgar call them, “Mops,” is the assembling of masters and servants, the former to seek the latter, and the latter to obtain employment of the former. It is undoubtedly a mutual accommodation; for although the servants now rate and ask what wages they think fit, still they have an opportunity of knowing how wages are usually going, and the masters have hundreds, and, in some cases, thousands of servants to choose from.