to a trade. Scotland One provision of considerable interest arose in Scotland, which was nearly a century later in organising provisions for fixing conditions of hire and wages of workmen, labourers and servants, similar to those consolidated in the Elizabethan Statute of Labourers. In 1617 it was provided (and reaffirmed in 1661) that power should be given to the sheriffs to compel payment of wages, "that servants may be the more willing to obey the ordinance." The difficulties in regulation of compulsory labour in Scotland must, however, have been great, for in 1672 houses of correction were erected for disobedient servants, and masters of these houses were empowered to force them to work and to correct them according to their demerits. While servants in manufacture were compelled to work at reasonable rates they might not enter on a new hire without their previous master's consent. Statute of Laborers 1562, required "some reasonable and sufficient cause or matter" to justify firing an employee. Originally English courts treated an employment to last for one year, where the contract was silent. Industrial Revolution Such legislation continued, at least theoretically, in force until the awakening affected by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution—that is, until the combined effects of steady concentration of capital in the hands of employers and expansion of trade, followed closely by an unexampled development of invention in machinery and application of power to its use, xvi. 1 a completely altered the face of industrial England. From time to time, in respect of particular trades, provisions against truck and for payment of wages in current coin, similar to the act of Edward IV. in the woollen industry, were found necessary, and this branch of labour legislation developed through the reigns of Anne and the four Georges until consolidation and amendment were effected, after the completion of the industrial revolution, in the Truck Act 1831. From the close of the seventeenth century and during the eighteenth century the legislature is no longer mainly engaged in devising means for compelling labourers and artisans to enter into involuntary service, but rather in regulating the summary powers of justices of the peace in the matter of dispute between masters and servants in relation to contracts and agreements, express or implied, presumed to have been entered into voluntarily on both sides. While the movement to refer labour questions to the jurisdiction of the justices thus gradually