disturbances, or other notorious misdemeanors, unless evidence on oath was given, relating the complaint or a sufficient cause of suspicion.

It is amusing and instructive to observe the arbitrary and most tyrannical laws made against the lower orders of the people, and to mark their consequences. All persons, having no regular occupation, or not being in a farm, were liable to be taken for servants, and have only such wages as the law allowed. A ploughman was entitled to 18s. 4d. a year, besides meat and drink; a driver to 10s. and a horseman to 8s.: a mason, carpenter, or shipwright, to 4d. a day, and other workmen in proportion. Employers giving more were liable to forfeit to the Lord a sum equal to the whole wages.* The Lord and his officers had the first choice of servants, and might, at the beginning of a half year, even take them away from any of the inhabitants, except the twenty-four Keys.

Children not brought up, or put apprentice, to any trade, were liable to be ordered into service, unless the parent was old or decrepid, and required assistance. In this case, one child might be kept at home, but the parents were *Statute, 1609.

obliged to give public notice of their intention, in order that no "deemster, moare, coroner, or farmer might expect such choice child, and be disappointed."*

In 1691, the laws were rendered still more severe, and servants refusing to work on the legal terms were to be imprisoned till they consented. In order to encourage foreign artificers, the laws were made relative to Manks work-people only.

The children of the poorer class being thus, by various unjust laws, reduced to a situation much worse than that of their neighbours, were induced by their own choice, and that of their parents, to leave the island and so frequent was their emigration, that the legislature judged it necessary to interfere once more respecting them. Thus, does it often happen, that one unjust proceeding necessarily brings on another. We learn, by the act of Tinwald, that all the industrious people and the good servants had gone abroad for the sake of higher wages, and that none were left but the drunken, the idle, and the dissolute, who were rather a clog upon the community than any advantage to it. "By

* Statute, 1662.

the practice of such emigration was expected inevitably to ensue the utter decay, not only of husbandry and tillage, but also of all kind of trade, being thus drained of its useful strength and substance." * It was therefore enacted, that all natives, who had ever done any work for money, clothes, food, or other consideration, should not be permitted to leave the island till they had attained the age of twenty-five years; and had either been seven years in service, or had served an apprenticeship of five years; the Governor, nevertheless, being authorized to grant his licence or pass to any one, on a special cause, by him deemed sufficient.

This was the last of the vain attempts of Government to overturn the natural course of things; for the purpose of the next act upon the subject, passed in the year 1777, was to repeal all former laws respecting servants and their wages, at length found worse than useless, and at that time nearly obsolete. The same act sets aside several old laws and feudal customs.

A house-servant is supposed to be hired for half a year, when no special agreement is made between the employer and the employed. The *Statute, 1691.

contract is mutual; either party may be punished for breaking it; the master by the payment of damages, the servant by imprisonment.

Between an apprentice and his master the contract is also mutual.

The laws were nearly silent respecting marriages till the year 1757. Persons of any age might intermarry, without either licence or the publication of banns. Even the prohibited degree of affinity was never settled by an act of Tinwald; and to the present time no other legal disabilities exist. The marriage ceremony is according to the Protestant church, and several of the regulations observed in England were, at this time, adopted here. No person can be married till he has received the sacrament, except by special leave of the ordinary; nor any one, except a widow or widower, under twentyone years of age, without the consent of the father or guardian, or in default of these, of the mother, except by the publication of banns for three successive Sundays, which, if not objected to, implies their consent. If the father is dead, and the minor is unable to procure the consent of his guardian or mother to the pro

* Statute, 1703.

posed marriage, he may petition the Governor for leave and if the Governor deems the objection of the guardian or mother insufficient, he may grant leave accordingly.

Aliens may not marry till they have resided three months on the island.

When banns have not been published, a licence from the Bishop or his deputy is always necessary: the solemnization must be by a minister; and at the parish church of one of the parties, unless the Bishop grant a special licence, under his own hand and seal, to marry elsewhere. The cost of a licence is a British crown; of a special licence forty shillings. These sums being moderate, banns are not very frequent. A residence of three days renders the party a parishioner.

On the subject of divorces we find nothing in the statutes.

Man and wife, baron and feme, are not so completely united into one person by the Manks, as by the English law. All property, except landed estates of inheritance, they possess in common, with this difference, that the husband may bequeath his share of the property to whom he will; the wife, if she makes a will at all,