It is difficult to ascertain the exact state of this town, or the nature of its police, and the social condition of its inhabitants, not only before and at the Conquest, but also for a good while after, any further than that its population appears to have then consisted chiefly, if not entirely, of the bishop’s slaves or vassals, governed by such agents or officers as he thought proper to appoint, whose administration as may be reasonably presumed, would not always be of the mildest, or most equitable and unexceptionable description. Had there been now in existence regular and authentic records of the affairs of the town, in those days, we should probably discover that its police, at least the spirit of it, bore but too much resemblance to our present West Indian jurisprudence. Slaves, in those ages, seem to have constituted the bulk of our population; and were, in all probability, the offspring of the lower orders of the original inhabitants, whose lives had been spared, when the Anglo-Saxons over-run and conquered the country, on condition of submitting to perpetual servitude. Such seems to have been the origin of those slaves of different descriptions which formerly abounded in this country for many ages. These, in country places, were the cultivators of the soil, or tillers of the ground; and in the towns, they were the tradesmen, mechanics, artificers, and labourers. In short, both in the towns and in country places all useful employments were occupied by them. As to their masters, the nobility, gentry, and every description of military men, who constituted the great or main body of reputed freemen, they were all above engaging in any such employments. War and the chace were the only occupations that were deemed worthy of them; and there lay the whole stock or sum of their knowledge and acquirements. Literature of every kind they usually set at nought; scorning to learn so much as to write their own names, as an attainment that would be too degrading for an English gentleman. Under such beings, how unenviable, miserable, and deplorable must have been the condition of the enslaved or unfree part of the community. Of the original, low, and servile state of the inhabitants of our English, and other European towns, and their progress from thraldom to freedom, no one has perhaps given a juster account than _Dr. Adam Smith_, in the second volume of his celebrated Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He there observes that the inhabitants of cities and towns, after the fall of the Roman Empire, were not more favoured than those of the country.