CHAPTER XII.

REVIEW OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE FROM 1815 TO 1830-POPULATION, PAUPERISM, FOOD, AND CRIME-NATIONAL INCOME, EXPENDITURE, AND DEBT-EXPORTS AND IMPORTS-COMPARATIVE EXPANSION OF AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURES-WORKS OF PUBLIC UTILITY AND ADVENTURE-ADULT EDUCATION-PHILANTHROPISTS AND PUBLIC BENEFACTORS-PROSECUTIONS FOR IRRELIGION AND INFIDELITY-ARTISTS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND LITERATI-THE RELIGIOUS SPIRIT OF THE AGE.

IN concluding the first division of our narrative, we inquired into the progress of the people during that fifteen years in numbers, morals, and the means of subsistence. We have now to deal with similar particulars in relation to the second period of the same length. As before, we must be guided by such statistical data as are obtainable.

The first class of facts will be found in the following table, showing the population of England and Wales, the amount of rates for the relief of the poor, the equivalent of that amount in quarters of wheat, the average price of wheat per quarter, and the number of criminal commitments annually :

As the census had been taken only once (in 1821) between the years 1815 and 1830, the population returns for the intervening years were made up from the parish registries; and are, therefore, to be taken as only approximately accurate. The increase on the first decade of the century was 15.11 per cent.-on the second, somewhat less, 14.12 per cent.-and on the third, 14.91 per cent.; so that either the war put no check upon the rate of increase, or the fifteen years of peace were subject to some new influence unfavourable to human fecundity; and emigration could not have been that

influence, for the highest number of emigrants in one year (1830) was 30,000, and on the average of years it was not half that number. The next three columns have an ominously mutual significance. It will be observed, that the price of wheat and the amount paid for the relief of the poor rise and fall together, though not with invariable regularity; and some approach may be made to an appreciation of the burden of pauperism when it is seen how much bread-stuff was annually put aside from the national stock for the sustenance of the unemployed or disabled-the average consumption of wheat for each of the population being from six to eight bushels. The last column of the series is startling. The number of offenders committed for trial is declared to have risen nearly four thousand in one year, and to have doubled within fifteen years; a rate of increase quadruple that of the population. Of the number committed for trial, about two-thirds were convicted. A considerable proportion of these offences were against the person; and, towards the end of the period, there were many of a novel and revolting character. 66 Body-snatching," and its more frightful sequence, "Burking," were the worst of these. For some years the graveyards for miles around the metropolis, and wherever there were surgical schools, were infested nightly with the ghouls of civilization-ruffians who tore the newly-buried from their graves, for the sake of what the body would fetch at the dissecting-rooms; as much as ten, twelve, or even twenty guineas—while others laid fictitious claim to the corpses of persons who had died in the workhouse or by the wayside. But, towards the end of 1828, an accidental discovery horrified the profession and appalled the public-namely, that systematic murder had been going on in London and Edinburgh for the supply of the doctors. The detected accomplices, Burke and Hare, confessed to the death of fifteen victims, whom they had enticed home and stifled by a plaster or wet cloth. Uncertainty to what extent assassination had thus been practised produced a general consternation; and all who are old enough remember, that for a year or two after the wretch who gave a name to the method he used had been executed, amidst unparalleled expressions of execration, the timid avoided fields and byeways after dusk, lest they should be waylaid and "Burked.”—Another species of crime originated about the same time; and, unhappily, survives to this day to an appalling extent. At the Lancaster Assizes in 1828, Jane Scott was convicted of having poisoned her mother; and before her execution, she confessed to having murdered in the same way her father, and two children. As if the notoriety given to a new form of crime by its punishment stimulated to its repetition, poisoning has been ever since one of the commonest and most destructive of crimes, especially in the rural and more destitute districts.The name of Esther Hibner is also met with in the record of these years, as the type of another class of newly-discovered crimes-that of cruelty to

female servants. This woman had been in the habit of taking parish apprentices, and of treating them with the most wanton barbarity, till one died under her hands, which procured the release of the remainder, and the death of their tormentor. Again was morbid imitativeness excited; or perhaps, it was only that people's attention was excited-anyhow, a number of such cases were brought to light.-War upon machinery by the operatives it had unfortunately displaced, was no new thing; but in 1829 it took the new and desperate form of burning cotton-mills, and blowing-up with gunpowder the houses of the employers. A still wilder madness, that had first shown itself in France, was about to break forth in England-that of rickburning; of which many were incredulous till it glared upon their own sight.— In these scattered facts we find symptoms of the condition to which society had wrought itself, and proof that poisonous elements were running side by side with the quickened streams of healthful life.

That there was much but irregular industrial activity, our next class of facts testifies. We have here a tabulated statement of the annual income and expenditure of the Government, the sums applied to the reduction of the national debt, and the value of exports, produce and manufactures, British and Irish:→→→

The yearly revenue, it will be observed, was diminished to twelve millions less in 1830 than in 1816, but that for several years in succession it was exceeded by the expenditure; and it will be remembered, that this reduction was not effected, until within the last six or seven years of the period, on the rational principle of reaping large returns from small imposts on articles of reproductive consumption. How little was to be attributed, up to 1823, to the sagacity or integrity of the Government, may be concluded from the fact, that notwithstanding the sums put down as applied to the redemption of the debt, they had managed to increase its amount by eleven millions

since the close of the war, and its annual interest by £700,000. The national creditors, the fundholders-above 275,000 in number-had had the value of their property fixed, by the bill of 1819, at a rate considerably above that at which it was contracted; and profited by the depreciation of prices which followed every attempt to restrict the currency. The landholders, no doubt, suffered severely by that process, their mortgages foreclosing and their embarrassments becoming deeper with every inclination of the money market towards tightness. But whatever the agriculturists suffered, they could not attribute it to foreign competition. It will be seen by a glance at the first of the tables given above how loftily ranged the price of wheat; and we may here add, that the annual average importation from 1811 to 1820 was only 458,578 quarters; and from 1821 to 1830, 534,992 quarters. The home-growers had, meanwhile, so increased their productiveness as to feed nearly two millions more mouths than before. But the number of families dependent on agriculture was diminishing in proportion to the general progress. In 1811 it was 895,998-in 1821, 978,656; while the number of families supported by trade and agriculture was, at the former period, 1,119,049, and at the latter, 1,350,329-the one increasing only at the rate of 7, and the other of 34 per cent. Our exports to foreign countries and the colonies did not steadily increase the table shows that there was more than one reaction from over-production. The records of the cotton manufacture have a similar significance. The quantity of cotton imported in 1815, '20, '25, and '30, was respectively, 92,525,951 lbs., 152,829,633 lbs., 202,546,869 lbs., and 269,616,640 lbs. ; while the declared value of the cotton goods exported in the same years was £20,620,956, £16,516,748, £18,359,526, and £19,428,664. Of the wages of the labourers on the farm, of the factory operatives, or the general artizan, there are no data sufficiently authentic and copious to justify a comparison between either the previous or the succeeding periods. They appear to have averaged-the farm labourer, 10s. a week; the factory operative, 16s.; the skilled artizan, 25s. to 35s. It is on record, also, that in a bad time, the Lancashire spinners did not make more than 5s. or 6s. a week; and that for the relief of the Spitalfields weavers £30,000 was collected in one year, and £10,000 in another.

And that there was much healthful intellectual activity throughout this period, we have many enduring monuments. So soon as the energies of the nation, released from the misdirection of war, and recovered from the exhaustion of collapse, found themselves at once free and strong, they were put forth, as by instinct, to enterprises of spirit and utility. Discoveries and inventions that could before scarcely gain a listener, now found hands outstretched from all sides to give them application. Thus from fifteen to twenty miles of the metropolis were lighted with gas; steam-vessels were run up and down the

Thames and all the principal rivers ;* the Menai bridge was stretched a hundred feet above high water-mark; the Caledonian canal was completed at an expense of £900,000; Chat Moss, traditionally impassable as any Irish bog, was solidified for the passage of locomotives and railway-trains between Manchester and Liverpool; the Thames Tunnel was commenced, and perseveringly continued, spite of difficulties from soil and flood; the St. Katharine's Docks were built upon the site of 800 houses; the ugly and dangerous Old London Bridge was supplanted by the splendid arches which now connect the City with Southwark; whatever is creditable in the market-places of London was effected; two of the Parks at the West End were beautified, and a third constructed; and the Post-office stretched, in the progress of its erection, over the whole period of our review. James Watt was the genius of the age, and was honoured as such by men of the highest rank in society, and of the highest eminence for intellect. There was something of the spirit of adventure and romance in this rage for improvement and material creation. It was the same spirit, only flowing in another channel, that impelled a Sunderland shipmaster, named Smith, to venture so far beyond the usual track of the Pacific whalers as to stumble on the country he designated New South Shetland-that sent Captain Parry through the so-called Baffin's Bay into the Polar Sea, whence the Arctic enterprises of himself, Franklin, and Ross-that sustained Denham and Clapperton, Laing and Salt, to overcome, or consoled them in sinking under, the hardships of African discovery-and that inspired Belzoni, an Englishman by adoption, with the ardour of the antiquary and the skill of the engineer.

Education was another great work of the time. As upon no subject is there more disagreement than upon the provision now in existence for the instruction of the juvenile population, we will not hazard an estimate of the educational machinery that was then at work upon the rising generation. But it was not school instruction alone that had come to be in demand, or that the enlightened and benevolent were anxious to supply. It had begun to be perceived that what can be taught at school, however valuable, and though indispensable, is but an inconsiderable part of the process of education. It had occurred to a man of practical science and earnest philanthropy, Dr. Birkbeck, that adult workmen might be made acquainted with the principles which underlie their occupations; and that, to give them, if only an inkling of scientific knowledge, would be to ameliorate their condition, and to indefinitely advance the interests of science itself. He had made an experiment of the kind at Glasgow, and on his removing to London he resolved to renew it on a larger scale. He accordingly originated,

• Nine steam-vessels were built in 1815, in England and Scotland, 22 in 1821, and 72 in 1826.