After him, there comes a lull in reforming ideas. But half a century later occurs a very curious and sudden outburst of rebellion all over Europe. From about the middle of the fourteenth century to the early fifteenth there seemed to be an epidemic of severe social unrest. There were at Paris, which has always been the nursery of revolutions, four separate risings. Etienne Marcel, who, however, was rather a tribune of the people than a revolutionary leader, came into prominence in 1355; he was followed by the Jacquerie in 1358, by the Maillotins in 1382, and the Cabochiens in 1411. In Rome we know of Rienzi in 1347, who eventually became hardly more than a popular demagogue; in Florence there was the outbreak of Ciompi in 1378; in Bohemia the excesses of Taborites in 1409; in England the Peasant Revolt of 1381.
It is perfectly obvious that a series of social disturbances of this nature could not leave the economic literature of the succeeding period quite as placid as it had found it. We notice now that, putting away questions of mere academic character, the thinkers and writers concern themselves with the actual state of the people. Parliament has its answer to the problem in a long list of statutes intended to muzzle the turbulent and restless revolutionaries. But this could not satisfy men who set their thought to study the lives and circumstances of their fellow-citizens. Consequently, as a result, we can notice the rise of a school of writers who interest themselves above all things in the economic conditions of labour. Of this school the easiest exponent to describe is Antonino of Florence, Archbishop and canonised saint. His four great volumes on the exposition of the moral law are fascinating as much for the quotations of other moralists which they contain, as for the actual theories of the saint himself. For the Archbishop cites on almost every page contemporary after contemporary who had had his say on the same problems. He openly asserts that he has read widely, taken notes of all his reading, has deliberately formed his opinions on the judgments, reasoned or merely expressed, of his authors. To read his books, then, is to realise that Antonino is summing up the whole experience of his generation. Indeed he was particularly well placed for one who wished for information. Florence, then at the height of its renown under the brilliant despotism of Cosimo dei Medici, was the scene where the great events of the life of Antonino took place. There he had seen within the city walls, three Popes, a Patriarch of Constantinople, the Emperors of East and West, and the most eminent men of both civilisations. He had taken part in a General Council of the Church, and knew thinkers as widely divergent as Giovanni Dominici and Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini. He was, therefore, more likely than most to have heard whatever theories were proposed by the various great political statesmen of Europe, whether they were churchmen or lawyers. Consequently, his schemes, as we might well expect, are startlingly advanced.
He begins by attacking the growing spirit of usury, and the resulting idleness. Men were finding out that under the new conditions which governed the money market it was possible to make a fortune without having done a day's work. The sons of the aristocracy of Florence, which was built up of merchant princes, and which had amassed its own fortunes in honest trading, had been tempted by the bankers to put their wealth out to interest, and to live on the surplus profit. The ease and security with which this could be done made it a popular investment, especially among the young men of fashion who came in, simply by inheritance, for large sums of money. As a consequence Florence found itself, for the first time in its history, beginning to possess a wealthy class of men who had never themselves engaged in any profession. The old reverence, therefore, which had always existed in the city for the man who laboured in his art or guild, began to slacken. No longer was there the same eagerness noticeable which used to boast openly that its rewards consisted in the consciousness of work well done. Instead, idleness became the badge of gentility, and trade a slur upon a man's reputation. No city can long survive so listless and languid an ideal. The Archbishop, therefore, denounced this new method of usurious traffic, and hinted further that to it was due the fierce rebellion which had for a while plunged Florence into the horrors of the Jacquerie. Wealth, he taught, should not of itself breed wealth, but only through the toil of honest labour, and that labour should be the labour of oneself, not of another.
Then he proceeded to argue that as upon the husband lies the labour of trade, the greater portion of his day must necessarily be passed outside the circle of family life. The breadwinner can attend neither to works of piety nor of charity in the way he should, and, consequently, to his wife it must be left to supply for his defects. She must take his place in the church, and amid the slums of the poor; she must for him and his lift her hands in prayer, and dispense his superfluous wealth in succouring the poverty-stricken. For the Archbishop will have none of the soothing doctrine which the millionaire preaches to the mob. He asserts that poverty is not a good thing; in itself it is an evil, and can be considered to lead only accidentally to any good. When, therefore, it assumes the form of destitution, every effort must be made to banish it from the State. For if it were to become at all prevalent in a nation, then would that people be on the pathway to its ruin. The politicians should therefore make it the end of their endeavours—though this, it may be, is an ideal which can never be fully brought to realisation—to leave each man in a state of sufficiency. No one, for whatever reason, should be allowed to become destitute. Even should it be by his own fault that he were brought low, he must be provided for by the State, which has, however, in these circumstances, at the same time, the duty of punishing him.
But he remarks that the cause of poverty is more often the unjust rate of wages. The competition even of those days made men beat each other down in clamouring for work to be given them, and afforded to the employers an opportunity of taking workers who willingly accepted an inadequate scale of remuneration. This state of things he considered to be unjustifiable and unjust. No one had any right to make profit out of the wretchedness of the poor. Each human being had the duty of supporting his own life, and this he could not do except by the hiring of his own labour to another. That other, therefore, by the immutable laws of justice, when he used the powers of his fellow-man, was obliged in conscience to see that those powers could be fittingly sustained by the commodity which he exchanged for them. That is, the employer was bound to take note that his employees received such return for their labour as should compensate them for his use of it. The payment promised and given should be, in other words, what we would now speak of as a "living wage." But further, above this mere margin, additional rewards should be added according to the skill of the workman, or the dangerous nature of his employment, or the number of his children. The wages also should be paid promptly, without delay.
But it may sometimes happen that the labour which a man can contribute is not of such a kind as will enable him to receive the fair remuneration that should suffice for his bodily comfort. The saint is thinking of boy-labour, and the case of those too enfeebled by age or illness to work adequately, or perhaps at all. What is to be done for them? Let the State look to it, is his reply. The community must, by the law of its own existence, support all its members, and out of its superfluous wealth must provide for its weaker citizens. Those, therefore, who can labour harder than they need, or who already possess more riches than suffice for them, are obliged by the natural law of charity to give to those less favourably circumstanced than themselves.
St. Antonino does not, therefore, pretend to advocate any system of rigid equality among men. There is bound to be, in his opinion, variety among them, and from this variety comes indeed the harmony of the universe. For some are born to rule, and others, by the feebleness of their understanding or of their will, are fitted only to obey. The workman and servant must faithfully discharge the duties of their trade or service, be quick to receive a command, and reverent in their obedience. And the masters, in their turn, must be forbearing in their language, generous in their remuneration, and temperate in their commands. It is their business to study the powers of each of those whom they employ, and to measure out the work to each one according to the capacity which is discoverable in him. When a faithful labourer has become ill, the employer must himself tend and care for him, and be in no hurry to send him to a hospital.
About the hospitals themselves he has his own ideas, or at least he has picked out the sanest that he can find in the books and conversation of people whom he has come across. He insists strongly that women should, as matrons and nurses, manage those institutions which are solely for the benefit of women; and even in those where men also are received, he can see no incompatibility in their being administered by these same capable directors. He much commends the custom of chemists in Florence on Sundays, feast-days, and holidays of opening their dispensaries in turn. So that even should all the other shops be closed, there would always be one place open where medicines and drugs could be obtained in an emergency.
The education of the citizens, too, is another work which the State must consider. It is not something merely optional which is to be left to the judgment of the parent. The Archbishop holds that its proper organisation is the duty of the prince. Education, in his eyes, means that the children must be taught the knowledge of God, of letters, and of the arts and crafts they are to pursue in after life.
Again, he has thought out the theory of taxation. He admits its necessity. The State is obliged to perform certain duties for the community. It is obliged, for example, to make its roads fit for travelling, and so render them passable for the transfer of merchandise. It is bound to clear away all brigandage, highway robbery, and the like, for were this not done, no merchant would venture out through that State's territory, and its people would accordingly suffer.