CHAP. I.] PEACE ANXIOUSLY WISHED. Mutiny. 23 Act was brought in, by which the Bank was relieved from the obligation to pay cash for notes. The government was actually alarmed for the provisioning of London, and for the means of paying the army and navy. In February and March, various anonymous letters from sailors had been received by the authorities, complaining of insufficient pay during years of high prices, and of other grievances; and in April, when the Channel fleet at Spithead was ordered to proceed to sea, ship after ship refused to weigh anchor; and in a few weeks mutiny seemed to have deprived Great Britain of her naval defence - her best reliance. From port to port the mutiny spread, and at the Nore it seemed for a time unmanageable. The ministry advised parliament to grant the demands of the sailors; and money was voted accordingly; only the ringleader and a few delegates of the mutineers being executed, to keep up Irish rebelsome appearance of authority. In the next year happened the terrible Irish rebellion. Such was the condition of affairs in the hands of the minister who distrusted the people the more as his difficulties increased; and became the more severe with the growth of his difficulties and his distrust; while Napoleon was again abroad on his victorious course; and on the Continent all seemed lost. lion. The time was now come for this continental adversity to tranquillize England. All other powers were prostrate; and the people, as well as the government of England, was now engrossed by apprehension. The pressure from without was becoming serious enough to still all within. By the opening of the century, the great minister and the people seem, by a sort of mutual consent, to have suspended hostilities in awe or hatred of the common foe. Mr. Pitt appears to have lost some of his constant dread of " the spread of revolutionary principles" in view of the stronger peril to the French themselves, as well as their neighbors, of the establishment of a military despotism: and the most liberal of English politicians were becoming almost as anxious for peace as the overtaxed and suffering people; seeing that nothing more was now to be done on the Continent, and that it was not perfectly certain that our national existence would be preserved suspended (for no one supposed that Great Britain could remain permanently a province of France) - if we defied the conqueror to decisive war. or un For obvious reasons, one point of the question could not be publicly discussed. There were many who seriously doubted whether we could support a war. Dark and dreary was the state of affairs; so dark and dreary that it was to be hoped Napoleon would not hear how bad it was. The King could not The royal be depended on for any kind of assistance. He was family. 24 CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. [BOOK I. purely an obstruction, except to a few who wheedled him, in order to use his name in furtherance of their own objects. He had been insane, and might at any moment be so again. It is difficult now, in reading his letters, and records of his conversation and behavior, to say whether he was ever quite rational, even up to the level of his originally small capacity. He was harsh and cruel to his eldest son, while ludicrously sentimental with those of his ministers who gratified him most by that mixture of flattery and pious profession which suited his taste. He was obstinate and prejudiced, weak and ignorant, before his illness; and he was, naturally, neither wiser nor more flexible now. It was a misfortune to have to manage him: it would have been folly to look to him for any sort of aid. The Prince of Wales offered no resource of hope. He was at variance with his parents, parted from his wife, deep in debt, querulous in his discontent, and thoroughly provoking in his methods of political opposition. As for the Administration, we have seen what must have been its unpopularity. As for the people, we are able to form a pretty accurate notion of their numbers and condition, though, strange to say, there had as yet been no Census. The first Census was Classes of the taken in 1801. As the first, it was not so well manpeople. aged as it might have been; but it so far affords guidance as that we may venture to say that the population of England, Wales, and Scotland, including the soldiers and sailors serving abroad, was about eleven millions. The proportion of this population employed in agriculture, in comparison with that employed in manufacture and commerce, was much greater than it is now. Since 1795 there had been a series of deficient harvests; and that of 1800 was so bad that the price of wheat rose to 115s. 11d. per quarter. To the middle classes, employed in manufacture and commerce, this was a cruel aggravation of their hardships, while taxation was becoming inordinately oppressive. The misery was felt also by the poorest class, as was shown by the swelling of the poor-rate to the then enormous sum of nearly four millions per annum, for the poor of England and Wales; a sum truly enormous, in the eye of all times, for the relief of pauperism in a population of 9,000,000, which was about that of England and Wales. But the land-owners were in a highly flourishing condition. With wheat at 115s. 11d. per Land-owners. quarter, they had no great reason to care for the deficiency in the harvest, in this last season of the century, and they lived in a style which abundantly asserted their prosperity. While the tradesman or manufacturer came in from his daily business depressed and anxious, unable to extend his Tradesmen. market, on account of the war or its consequences, CHAP. I.] AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS. 25 pressed for poor-rate, threatened with an increased property tax, worried by the Excise in his business, warned of bad debts in his trade, and with bakers' and butchers' bills growing more formidable from week to week, the farmer was cheerful, and his landlord growing grand. While the townsman was paying 1s. 10d. for the quartern loaf, and 2s. per lb. for butter, and the children were told they must eat their bread dry; and there was a dinner of shell-fish or other substitute for meat once or twice aweek, and housewives were trying to make bread with potatoes, to save flour, Farmers. the farmers kept open house, set up gigs, sent their children to expensive schools, and upheld Mr. Pitt and the war, their king and country. The landlords obtained Enclosure bills in great and increasing numbers; and some of the more enlightened, looking beyond the present privilege of high prices which so swelled their rents, began to attend to suggestions for improving the soil.1 It was in 1800 that we meet with mention of the first trial of bone manure. The farmers laughed, and declared they would let well alone, and not spend their money and trouble on new devices which they did not need; but the philosophers were at work — such a man as Davy for one and the best order of land-owners were willing to learn; and thus provision was made for future agricultural improvement, and some Agricultural preparation for that scientific practice of agriculture improvement. which was sure to be rendered necessary, sooner or later, by the increasing proportion of the more enlightened manufacturing to the less enlightened agricultural population of the country. It appears that at the opening of the century, 10,000 acres of raw, newly enclosed arable and pasture land would support 4327 persons; while, thirty-five years later, the same quantity of similar land would maintain 5555: and the fifteen years that have elapsed since the later date have witnessed a far more rapid advance of improvement. It is a fact worth remembering that the first decided step in this direction, the first recorded application of bone dust as an introduction to the use of artificial manures, was made in the first year of our century, while the prices of agricultural produce were such as were then called "unheard of." 2 In 1790, Arkwright's inventions had been thrown open to the public, by the setting aside of his patents. At that Cotton manutime, our exports of manufactured cotton goods little facture. exceeded a million and a half. In 1800, they reached nearly to five millions and a half. This seems a small amount to us now ; but the rate of increase during a season of war and trouble is remarkable. The time for flagging under the burdens and impediments of war was at hand, but was not yet foreseen by gov2 Ibid. p. 178. 1 Progress of the Nation, i. p. 149 (note). 26 MANUFACTURES AND OPERATIVES. [BOOK I. ernment. Dr. Cartwright's power-loom had been invented for thirteen years; but it was not brought into use till 1801. Even then, it was not for some years that the invention became easy to use, and duly profitable: so, in contemplating the cotton manufactures at this period, we must remember, that, though the spinning was very perfectly done, the handloom weavers had the weaving business all to themselves. We have no records which can make us certain of the number of persons employed in the cotton manufacture at the opening of the century. What we do know is, that the mechanical inventions in which Arkwright led the way have added a permanent two millions to our population; and that by the improvements of the last fifty years, less than half the number of hands can deal with the same amount of cotton as at the beginning of the century. The supposition has been offered that the number of cotton-spinners in 1801 was about 27,000;1 but this is little more than conjecture; and then we know nothing of the number of weavers. But of the condition of this part of our industrial population we do know something.2 We learn, by information laid before a Parliamentary Operatives. Committee in 1833, that, at the beginning of the century, a cotton-spinner worked 74 hours in a week; for which his clear earnings were 32s. 6d. We have seen what was then the price of bread. It is evident at a glance how inferior was the condition of an operative of that class then, in comparison with that of his successors, who work a shorter time, obtain higher wages, pay less for food, and have the advantage of this same cotton manufacture for cheap and cleanly clothing for themselves and their families. 3 4 The money value of our woollen exports in 1800 was about 6,000,0007.; that is, doubled within a hundred years; but, as the Woollen price of wool had doubled also, it does not appear that manufacture. the manufacture was on the increase. The population of Bradford, in those days, was under 30,000; of Huddersfield, under 15,000; of Leeds, 53,000. The city of Norwich, the chief seat of the bombazeen and camlet manufacture, was in a state of deep depression; and for the first ten years of the century, the population scarcely increased at all. Yet the wear of woollen was much more general then than now, among the body of the people. Linen fabrics were expensive, and cotton not yet cheap. The linen manufacture was on the increase; but not to any striking degree. As for silk attire, there were few out of the highest classes who could afford more than an occasional indulgence in it. A silk gown lasted a dozen years; and its purchase was a serious event to a woman of the Silk. 1 Progress of the Nation, i. p. 229. 2 Ibid. p. 230. CHAP. I.] THE MIDDLE CLASS. 27 Hardware. middle class. A good deal of silk was smuggled into the country; and that which was manufactured at home was in the hands of a small population, who, while prizing their monopoly as their heart's blood, were yet forever oscillating between high prosperity and the deepest distress. Birmingham and Sheffield were modest, middle-sized towns, when the century opened, -— Birmingham having under 74,000 inhabitants, and Sheffield less than 46,000. The more languid manufactures grew under the protraction of the war, the heavier became the taxation: so that it requires some consideration to conceive how either capitalists or operatives lived in such times. There was less expenditure for amusement in those days. Travelling was seldom thought of by middle-class peo- Condition of ple, except for purpose of business. Middle-class middle class. families in the provincial towns and in the country lived on for five or ten years together, without a thought of stirring. The number of that class out of London who had ever seen London was very small. Few who lived in the inland counties had ever seen the sea. Mountains and Lakes were read and talked of almost as Rome and the Mediterranean. Little money was spent in travelling. Scarcely any was spent on books, music, or pictures. Children and young people had cheaper schooling, and less of it, and fewer masters than now. The business of living was done at home, more than now; especially the needlework, to the serious injury of female health. The routine of living, in orderly families, was so established that it did not vary 207. in amount for a series of years. To householders of this order, it was a bitter and exasperating thing to see millions upon millions voted for carrying on the war; and hundreds of thousands lavished in rewards to military and naval officers; the tone of government, and of too large a proportion of parliament being as if money was inexhaustible. From these middle classes, taxed in property and income, taxed in bread and salt, taxed in the house over their heads and in the shoes on their feet, compelled to take their children from school, and to lower the destination of their sons, proceeded those deputations, and petitions, and demands, and outcries, in the closing days of the century, that the King would "dismiss his weak and wicked ministers.' Such sufferers did not mince matters in those days, nor choose their terms with over-civility; and certainly the records of the time give a strong and painful impression that the government regarded the people with little other view than as a taxable and soldier-yielding mass, troublesome at best, but a nuisance when it in any way moved or spoke. To statesmen, the State, as a unit, was all in all; and it is really difficult to find any evidence 1 Progress of the Nation, i. p. 293, 299. |