28

MILITARY LIABILITIES.

[Book I.

that the people were thought of at all, except in the relation of obedience.

classes.

As for the operative class, their condition was often such as to Of industrial make the student pause, and ask if he can be reading of only fifty years ago. The artisan found that since he began life, the expenses of living had become fivefold or more. Meat, which had been 4d. per lb. when he married, was now 9d. Butter was trebled in price, and sugar doubled, and salt quadrupled, and poor-rate quintupled.1 The liability to military serMilitary vice was forever impending. If he did not enroll liabilities. himself as a volunteer, to the sacrifice of much time and money, he was liable to be drawn for the militia; and he must go soldiering, when required, or pay for a substitute. And the means for recruiting the regular army were put in force so variously and so stringently, that the wife and children lived in a perpetual dread that the mechanic or laborer would, some way or another, go for a soldier. The proportion was indeed very large. Besides the militia and volunteer forces, of which the militia alone consisted of 200,000 men at one time, the number of new soldiers raised in the first eight years of the war was 208,388.2 Of these, 49,000 had been killed, or had otherwise died of their service; and 76,000 had been sent home disabled. Out of the population of that time, this was a very serious proportion and so plentiful a sprinkling of maimed and sickly returned soldiers, and of the widows and orphans of those who had never returned, was enough to destroy all sense of domestic security among the industrial classes. They were told, and truly, how blessed their condition was in comparison with that of the inhabitants of the countries actually laid waste by the war. They were reminded, and properly, of their duty to the state, and the obligation they were under to contribute to its support. All this was very true: but not the less did those who lived near the coast dread the press-gang, and villagers everywhere abhor the recruiting party. In merely opening the Annual Registers towards the close of the century, we light upon notices of riots on occasion of enrolling the militia, and burning the muster-rolls and books at market-crosses; of mutiny in the fleet; of addresses to the King about the oppressions of the war so tremendously worded as that magistrates rode in among the assemblage to stop the reading; and of one month (in 1797)3 in which "most of the counties, cities, and towns of the kingdom petitioned his majesty for the removal of ministers, and the consequent restoration of peace."-While the course of daily living was thus hard to the working man, and his future precarious, the Law

1 Annual Register, 1800. Chron. 94.

8 Ibid. 1797. Chron. 18.

2 Ibid. Chron. 144.

CHAP. I.]

HEALTH.

29

was very cruel. The records of the Assizes in the Chronicle of Events are sickening to read. The vast and absurd Severity of variety of offences for which men and women were the Law. sentenced to death by the score, out of which one third or so were really hanged, gives now an impression of devilish levity in dealing with human life, and must, at the time, have precluded all rational conception, on the part of the many, as to what Law is, -to say nothing of that attachment to it, and reverence and trust in regard to it, which are indispensable to the true citizen temper.

Health.

The general health was at a lower average, among all these distresses, than was even safe for a people who might, at any moment, have to struggle for their existence. The habit of intemperance in wine was still prevalent among gentlemen; so that we read of one public man after another whose death or incapacity was ascribable to disease from drinking. Members of the Cabinet, Members of Parliament, and others, are quietly reported to have said this and that when they were drunk. The spirit decanters were brought out in the evenings, in middle-class houses, as a matter of course; and gout, and other liver and stomach disorders were prevalent to a degree which the children of our time have no conception of. During the scarcity, the diseases of scarcity abounded, of course. Hundreds ate nettles and other weeds; and without salt, which was then taxed 15s. per bushel. Thousands of families adulterated their bread. More meat, however, was eaten by laborers in ordinary times than now. It was more commonly considered a part of their necessary food: but when meat averaged 9d. per lb., as it did in 1800, it was out of the reach of the laboring class. An address of Dr. Ferriar to the working people of Manchester in 18001 has been preserved, by which we see, not only how ripe was his wisdom in sanitary matters, but what were the sanitary conditions of the class and time. It is now believed that, at that period, the persons who daily washed from head to foot were extremely few; yet Dr. Ferriar counsels parents so to wash their children, in cold water, before they send them to work in the morning: so that he was thinking of others than infants. He warns the people against damp cellars, broken windows, stagnant air in back-rooms, unaired bedclothes, wet feet, work on an empty stomach, and pollution from slaughterhouses, and other foul places. He joins with the warning against ale-house indulgence one which appears rather strange, "strolling in the fields adjoining to the town," which he seems to think a rash exposure to cold. There was a notion abroad at that time that the worst peril to health was from "catching

1 Sanitary Report of 1842, p. 462.

30

IRELAND.

[BOOK I. cold," and hence the popular treatment of fever - by heat and exclusion of air. The horrors of small-pox were the worst of the time. Well intended as was the introduction of Inoculation, and great as were its benefits to those properly submitted to it, it had the effect of enormously increasing the mortality from smallpox. Before, disease had come in a flood, every few years, and swept away thousands like a plague, diminishing in the intervals. to a point almost below notice. After the practice of Inoculation became extensive, the infection was kept always afloat. The scourge was most fearful towards the close of the last century.1 Ninety-two in every thousand deaths were from small-pox, in the last ten years; and in all our streets and villages and hospitals were the blind and diseased and disfigured who had survived. This was a woe about to be removed. Dr. Jenner had made and published his discovery; and Vaccination began to be practised in 1800. Whatever improvements may hereafter take place in sanitary management, this date must always stand conspicuous in the history of the national health.

Ireland

In the midst of all other perplexities and troubles, however severe, the condition of Ireland always remained the worst the crowning affliction of the statesman. Before the end of the American war, Ireland had been cruelly neglected as to her means of defence, her protection and comfort. A handful of dismounted cavalry and of invalid soldiery was sent in reply to the request of port towns and populous districts to be furnished with the means of defence. The Irish then very naturally took measures for defending themselves; and before the end of 1781, the Volunteers exhibited a force of 80,000 men. This force could now obtain whatever it pleased to ask; and it asked and obtained the absolute independence and supremacy of the Irish parliament under the same relations to the throne as the English parliament. Superficial observers, and few others, hoped that now all would go well in Ireland. This was called a final settlement; and English people asked what more the Irish could possibly want. They wanted (what could not be had) a faithful parliament, a real representation. For want of this reality in their so-called representation, they were worse off after this settlement than before. While the numbers of Protestants in Ireland had been stationary, that of Catholics had been on the increase, till, from being two to one, they had now become four to one; and yet their House of Commons was returned almost entirely by the Orange interest. It was believed that about three fourths of the 300 members were of the Orange party; and not less than 100 were placemen or pensioners in the direct interest of the government. Such a scene of faction and

1 Companion to the Almanac, 1834, p. 32.

CHAP. I.]

UNION PROPOSED.

31

jobbing has perhaps never been witnessed under the pretence of working at legislation. As might be expected, the unrepresented and oppressed had recourse to rebellion. They invited the French to come and annex them to France. The French came, and would have annexed Ireland to France, but for a series of accidents, and some miscalculation of the force required. In 1797, the government were warned that an insurrection was meditated. They did not believe it, though there were 500,000 men banded together in conspiracy; and the militia who mounted guard in Dublin, and almost everywhere else throughout the island, would have let in the insurgents "with the greatest pleasure in life.” But by the following March, no one pretended to have any doubt of the danger. The towns were nearly empty of men; and in the country, the cottages were full of women and children who could give no account of any men belonging to them.1 In Dublin the name of every inhabitant was registered upon his door: the walls displayed government proclamations: there were prayers in the churches for life and safety: the theatre and other public exhibitions were closed: the prisons overflowed: the lawyers in the Courts and the members in the parliament House were in military uniform: a mournful satire on the "final settlement" of Ireland by means of an independent legislature. The outbreak was fearful. The mere cost of human life was not less than 70,000 lives, of which 50,000 were on the Irish side. And there was much else, besides the extinction of life, to make the Irish rebellion one of the most fearful and painful spectacles that the student of history can be compelled to look upon.

The Union.

As it was clear that Ireland could, in no case, be more misgoverned than by her present parliament, and it was probable that a British parliament, with all its shortcomings, both of knowledge and of will, would give the people some better chance of improving their state than they had at present, the proposal to unite the legislatures gained adherents from this time forward, till the proposition became affirmed by the London parliament in 1799. Mr. Pitt was sanguine about this being the shortest and easiest method of emancipating the Catholics; and he allowed this view so far to influence his conversation and conduct as that the Catholics believed him pledged to procure their emancipation, if they assisted in carrying the Union; and this in the face of the King's declaration that he would favor the Union if it conduced to the stability of the Church: if otherwise, not.2 The King was, probably, told that all fear of Catholic ascendency was put an end to by bringing the Irish representation into a really supreme parliament; while the Catholics might reasonably hope that their numerical superiority must become 1 Life of Curran, ii. p. 41. 2 Life of Wilberforce, ii. p. 325

82

THE UNITED KINGDOM.

[BOOK I. understood and recognized when the obstruction of the Protestant legislature in Dublin was done away. However this might be, there was a mistake. The Catholics believed themselves to be consenting to the Union on a vital condition which was not fulfilled; and thus, as we shall see, did the Union turn out to be no more of a "final settlement" of Ireland than any preceding

arrangement.

Imputations of other kinds of inducement, charges of "profligacy and corruption," were freely thrown out in the Irish parliament-house and elsewhere, in the first months of 1800: and from that day to this, the calmest approvers of the Irish Union have been observed to make reservations in regard to the means by which the assent of the Irish to the measure was obtained. Perhaps there was secret corruption: but it seems also probable that the surprising change of mind manifested by the Dublin parliament between the sessions of 1799 and 1800 might suggest suspicions of bribery, while in fact the members were only exhibiting another instance of the passion, short-sightedness, and consequent fluctuation, which too often characterized their proceedings. In 1799, the Irish parliament assented to the English parliamentary resolutions in favor of the Union by a majority of only one vote. In the next year, the majorities on the same side were large; and in March, the two Houses agreed in an address to the King, assenting to the wisdom of the measure. Some members of both Houses, on both sides the Channel, implored the government to grant such delay as should be necessary for ascertaining the real feelings of the Irish nation on the subject but this was refused by overwhelming majorities; and the Act of Union received the royal assent on the 2d of July, 1800.

:

By this act, Great Britain and Ireland were henceforth to constitute one kingdom, and to be called “The United Kingdom” accordingly.1 There was to be one parliament: and in this parliament the spiritual peers of Ireland, and twenty-eight temporal peers, elected for life by the peers of Ireland, were to sit in the House of Lords, and one hundred members in the House of Commons. The Protestant churches of the two countries were to be united. The two countries were to be on equal terms as regarded trade and navigation and treaties with foreign powers. The laws and courts of both kingdoms were to remain unaltered. From the date of the Union, all Acts of Parliament were to extend to Ireland, unless special exception were made. The succession to the imperial crown was to be the same as heretofore to the two kingdoms. It was on the 2d of August, 1800, that the Irish Parliament met for the last time; and there is something

1 Stephen's Commentaries, i. pp. 94, 95.