by the public; while to his family were proffered in vain the royal rewards he had rejected for himself. The son of the Lancashire cotton-spinner had grown to be an apparent essential to the State. Sovereign and people had learned to look to him, with a confidence not altogether good, for service in any perplexity and direction in any crisis. The words in which he bade farewell to office were now literally verified-he was remembered with momentary anger by a vanquished party and blinded interests; but in the homes of all bread-winners, with gratitude approaching affection. His early and later errors were forgotten, or recalled without reproach; his openness to conviction and his power to achieve-the sagacity and resolution of the statesman, the kindly generosity of the man-were dwelt upon by friends, and ungrudgingly acknowledged by opponents. He was the man of the era with some of its characteristic defects, its excess of caution, its over-respect for material interests, its distrust of abstract principles—but he seemed also the man of the future, and would possibly have proved how inadequate are these to the new era which events appear to have marked out.

CHAPTER X.

GENERAL REVIEW OF THE PERIOD, 1830 TO 1850-POPULATION, PAUPERISM, CRIME, AND FOODTHE CENSUS OF 1851-EMIGRATION-PUBLIC INCOME AND EXPENDITURE - EXPORTS AND IMPORTS-RAILWAY SPECULATION-INTERNATIONAL UNITY: THE GREAT EXHIBITION-THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION-THE NEW RELATION OF LITERATURE, RELIGION, AND INDUSTRY.

IN the two former divisions of this narrative, we closed the record of legislative proceedings and political movements with a sketch of the condition of the people, the subjects of that legislation and of these excitements. The materials of the former are collected and unimpeachable-of the latter, scattered and uncertain. The People, inorganic in their social capacity, are also and necessarily unreported. It is only since the beginning of the present century that their numerical condition has been periodically tabled-only since 1838 that the natural incidence of life have been submitted to a process that promises to lay an adequate basis for a system of inductive social philosophy. The balances of trade are not fairly poised by the hand of statistical authority: the antiquated and perplexing distinction between official and real values leaves the facts of commerce almost as debateable as the inferences to be deduced. Of the prices of food and labour, no general, impartial averages are struck. The historian of another half century may find it quite otherwise: he may have access to archives of Industry as copious and reliable as those of Legislation. Already

Industry has a philosophy, a polity, a literature, a religion of its ownsay rather, the condition and claims of Industry have given a new complexion, have infused a new element, into all philosophy, politics, literature, and religion; as we shall show in our few remaining pages.

The following table exhibits the population of England and Wales, the amount expended in legal provision for the poor, the equivalent of that amount in quarters of wheat, its average price per quarter, and the number of criminal commitments, in each of the years 1831 to 1850:

It will be remembered-or, if forgotten, may be seen by reference to page 210-that the increase in the population in the first decade of the century was 15.11 per cent.—on the second, 14.12 per cent.—and on the third, 14.91 per cent. The census of 1841 declared, that the actual increase during the fourth decade had been 14 per cent.; while the calculated natural increase would have been rather less than 10 per cent. The excess of the actual over the calculated increment was attributed to the immigration of Scotch and Irish labourers; for the ascertained increase for Scotland and Ireland was less than that of England. This census also bore striking testimony to the accelerated force of a tendency we have before noticed-namely, the transference of population from the agricultural to the manufacturing districts. The ratio of this process, during thirty years, was shown in the following centennial statement of the distribution of the population :— Agricultural. Commercial. Miscellaneous.

1811

35

At the time we write, only the grand totals of the census of 1851 have been published; we are therefore unable to say whether, and to what extent, this tendency has continued to operate. The facts disclosed by those grand totals, however, were serious as regards England-as regards Ireland, appalling. The population of England and Wales was shown to be 17,905,831 -the decennial increase only 12 per cent.; that the total population of Great Britain and Ireland was only 568,108 more than in 1841-27,452,262 against 26,833,496; and that the increase was considerably in favour of the female sex—a fact at variance with the received law of population. The population of Ireland was ascertained to be 6,615,794-whereas it was in 1841,8,175,124; in 1831, 7,767,401; in 1821, 6,801,827. Thus, instead of an increase of about six per cent. as in the preceding twenty years, there had been a decrease of 20 per cent. Absolutely, the population which was believed in 1841 to have exceeded the returns, had been reduced nearly 300,000 below that of 1821. Inferentially, had the natural rate of increase been followed, the population would have been two millions more than at present. A new power had been at work: not alone the permanent sources of Irish decadence, but the new element of emigration. Within twenty years, 2,566,023 persons had sailed from the ports of the United Kingdom, whither, and in what number, year by year, the following table shows:

Of the 1,692,063 persons constituting the emigration in the interval of the censuses of 1841 and '51, 1,100,000 sailed directly from Irish ports. It is known that of the remaining half-million, a large proportion had made Liverpool only a point of embarkation for the West; and it is probable that,

as the increase of population in Great Britain had exceeded the natural rate, numbers of Irish had settled in our large towns. Still, five hundred thousand souls were unaccounted for. Had they perished miserably, or were they never born? In support of the latter theory, it was said, that as emigrants are usually neither the old nor the very young, but persons of the age to become parents, the natural offspring of Ireland had swelled the registries of other lands. With this abatement, it must still be true that several hundreds of thousands had either been prematurely deprived of life, or prevented by abnormal causes from entering upon it.

The amount of public revenue and expenditure, the sums applied to the reduction of the National Debt, the value of our imports and exports, in each of the years 1831 to 1850, were as follows:

We have noticed, in another place, the progress of railway legislation. It will be remembered that the opening of the first English line—the Manchester and Liverpool-was so recent as 1830. The immediate and unexpected success of this enterprise unexpected, that is, of its kind and to its degree; the conveyance proving much swifter and the traffic vastly greater than had been calculated-stimulated others, and procured for them Parliamentary sanction, despite the blindly selfish opposition of landowners. The London and Birmingham, and the Birmingham and Liverpool, lines were commenced in 1833-the London and South Western in 1834-the Great Western in 1835-the Eastern Counties, and the London and South Eastern, in 1836. The revival of 'commerce in 1843 developed a strong tendency to railway speculation; in

1845, the tendency became a madness. In the former year, twenty-four railway acts passed-in the next, forty-eight. In the session of '45, the railway department of the Board of Trade had to be remodelled, and the House of Commons was obliged to set aside its standing orders, and to consider railway projects in groups. Within and without the House, the excitement was prodigious. The newspapers were loaded with advertisements of lines to places before unheard of, on the proposal of men equally obscure. A number of journals started, and lived for some time, upon the railway interest. One hundred and twenty bills passed. The 30th of November was fixed as the day for lodging at the Board of Trade, and with the clerks of the peace in parishes affected, plans and specifications. The 30th was a Sunday-unforeseen, of course, when appointed; and the scene of racing and scuffling which prevailed till past midnight in Whitehall, was an appropriate climax to the whole. Of the 1,200 companies started, more than half succeeded in registering their prospectuses, representing a capital of £563,203,000. The bursting of the bubble could not then be long delayed. The preliminary expenses of many bona fide schemes exceeded the total means of their promoters-with the hundreds of projects which were a mere swindle, to obtain these expenses was the only object. A committee in the House of Commons in the following session obtained a classification of subscribers. It included men and women of all ranks, from the Dowager Duchess to the shopboy. The panic that succeeded to the mania scarcely retarded, however, the construction of really needed lines. In 1846, 272 bills passed, and within the next four years, 358 more. At the date of the last Report of the Commissioners of Railways (December, 1850), there were 5,312 miles of railway communication in England and Wales, 951 in Scotland, and 538 in Ireland: the lines authorized by Parliament extended to 12,182 miles. The number of persons employed in the conduct or construction of railways was upwards of 150,000; the number of passengers during the past year 60,000,000; and the amount of the capital invested, £220,000,000. And this, the creation of twenty years! How unlike the result of twenty years of warfare !

Other works of peace were in progress. Steam-ships were bringing New York within ten days of London, and rendering the Nile nearly as accessible to tourists as the Rhine; telegraphic wires were being strung along the path of every railway train, and stretched beneath the Straits of Dover, to unite the capitals of Europe. Men of bold and philanthropic thought were turning these new-born appliances of science to their own high purposes, and interweaving the unconscious agencies of commercial enterprise with the moral elements of a new civilization. Congresses were held in successive years at London, Brussels, Paris, and Frankfort, of the politicians, literati, and philanthropists, of all nations, to promote universal and per