was 120s., the rural mind was sullen in 1816 when it sunk to 578., -the protection given, though unpopular with the poor, did not satisfy the farmer.

The lower orders in the manufacturing districts were of necessity in great distress: the depression of trade produced its inevitable results of closed mills. and scanty employment; wages, when they could be. obtained, were very low. The artisan population was then new to the vicissitudes of industry. How far they are even now instructed in the laws of trade, recent prosperity will hardly let us judge: but at that time they had no doubt that it was the fault of the state- and if not of particular statesmen, then of the essential institutions-that they were in want; they believed the government ought to regulate their remuneration and make it sufficient. During some straitened years of the war the name of “Luddites" became known; they had principally shown their discontent by breaking certain machines, which they fancied deprived them of work. After the peace, the records of the time are full of "Spencean Philanthropists," "Hampden Clubs," and similar associations, all desiring a great reform, some of mere politics, others of the law of property and all social economy. Large meetings were everywhere held, something like those of the year 1839; a general insurrection (doubtless a wild dream of a few hot-brained dreamers) was fancied to have been really planned. The name "Radical" came to be associated with this discontent. The spirit which in after years clamored distinctly for the five points of the Charter* made itself heard in mutterings and threatenings.

Nor were the capitalists who had created the new wealth, socially more at ease. Many of them, as large employers of labor, had a taste for Toryism: the rule of the people to them meant the rule of their

*Six points: universal suffrage, uniform electoral districts, vote by ballot, no property qualification for members, annual Parliaments, payment of members; all of them embodied in the American system (the first two not quite thoroughly). Ed.

workpeople. Some of the wealthiest and most skillful became associated with the aristocracy, but it was in vain with the majority to attempt it: between them and the possessors of hereditary wealth there was fixed a great gulf; the contrast of habits, speech, manners, was too wide. The two might coincide in particular opinions; they might agree to support the same institutions; they might set forth, in a Conservative creed, the same form of sound words: but though the abstract conclusions were identical, the mode of holding them (to borrow a subtlety of Father Newman's) was exceedingly different, -the refined, discriminating, timorous immobility of the aristocracy was distinct from the coarse, dogmatic keep-downishness of the manufacturer. Yet more marked was the contrast when the opposite tendencies of temperament had produced, as they soon could not but do, a diversity of opinion. The case was not quite new in England: Mr. Burke spoke of the tendency of the first East-Indians to Jacobinism, - they could not, he said, bear that their present importance should have no proportion to their recently acquired riches.* No extravagant fortunes have in this century been made. by Englishmen in India; but Lancashire has been a California. Families have been created there, whose names we all know, which we think of when we mention wealth; some of which are now, by lapse of time, passing into the hereditary caste of recognized opulence. This, however, has been a work of time; and before it occurred, there was no such intermediate class between the new wealth and the old. “It takes," it is said that Sir Robert Peel observed, "three generations to make a gentleman;" in the mean time there was an inevitable misunderstanding, — the new cloth was too coarse for the old. Besides this, many actual institutions offended the eyes of the middle

"Thoughts on French Affairs," 1791:-"The East-Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their wealth."

class. The state of the law was opposed both to their prejudices and interests: that you could only recover your debts by spending more than the debt was hard; and the injury was aggravated, the money was spent in "special pleading,"-in "putting a plain thing so as to perplex and mislead a plain man." "Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery," as Sydney Smith expressed it, "pressed heavily on mankind."* The existence of slavery in our colonies, strongly supported by a strong aristocratic and parliamentary influence, offended the principles of middle-class Christianity and the natural sentiments of simple men. The cruelty of the penal law-the punishing with death sheep-stealing and shoplifting-jarred the humanity of that second order of English society,. which, from their habits of reading and non-reading, may be called par excellence the "Scriptural classes." The routine harshness of a not very wise executive did not mitigate the feeling: the modus operandi of government appeared coarse and oppressive.

We seemed to pay, too, a good deal for what we did not like. At the close of the war, the ten per cent. income tax was of course heavily oppressive. The public expenditure was beyond argument lavish; and it was spent in pensions, sinecures (for "them idlers," in the speech of Lancashire), and a mass of sundries that an economical man of business will scarcely admit to be necessary, and that even now, after countless prunings, produce periodically "financial reform associations," "administrative leagues," and other combinations which amply testify the enmity of thrifty efficiency to large figures and muddling management. There had remained from the eighteenth century a tradition of corruption, an impression that direct pecuniary malversation pervaded the public offices; an idea true in the days of Rigby or Bubb Dodington, but which, like many other impressions,

*Preface to his Works.

The latter under George I. and II.; the former one of George III.'s main jobbers. - ED.

continued to exist many years after the facts in which it originated had passed away. Government in the hands of such a man as Lord Liverpool was very different from government in the hands of Sir Robert Walpole respectability was exacted; of actual money-taking there was hardly any. Still, especially among inferior officials, there was something to shock modern purity. The size of jobs was large if the Treasury of that time could be revived, it would be. depressed at the littleness of whatever is perpetrated in modern administration. There were petty abuses, too, in the country, -in municipalities, in charitable trusts, in all outlying public moneys, which seemed to the offended man of business, who saw them with his own eyes, evident instances confirming his notion of the malpractices of Downing Street. "There are only five little boys in the school of Richester;* they may cost £200, and the income is £2,000, and the trustees don't account for the balance: which is the way things are done in England, we keeps an aristocracy,'" etc. The whole of this feeling was concentrated into a detestation of rotten boroughs. The very name was enough: that Lord Dover, with two patent sinecures in the Exchequer and a good total for assisting in nothing at the Audit office, should return two members for one House, while Birmingham, where they made buttons,-"as good buttons as there are in the world, sir," returned no members at all, was an evident indication that reform was necessary. Mr. Canning was an eloquent man; but "even he could not say that a decaying stump was the people." Gatton and Old Sarum became unpopular: the source of power seemed absurd, and the use of power was tainted. Side by side with the incipient Chartism of the Northern operative, there was growing daily more distinct and clear the Manchester philosophy, which has since expressed itself in the Anti-Corn - Law

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*An imaginary case, there is no such place in England. — ED.

"Laws, sir, we keeps a poet,"- the fabled reply of the wife of one of the firm of Day & Martin, in their early days, to a solicitation to subscribe for a volume of poems. - ED.

Imaginary, there was no such title at this time.- ED.

League, and which for good and evil is now element so potent in our national life. Both creeds were forms of discontent; and the counterpoise was wanting. The English Constitution has provided that there shall always be one estate raised above the storms of passion and controversy, which all parties may respect and honor, -the king is to be loved; but this theory requires, for a real efficiency, that the throne be filled by such a person as can be loved. In those times it was otherwise: the nominal possessor of the crown was a very old man, whom an incurable malady had long sequestered from earthly things; the actual possessor of the royal authority was a voluptuary of overgrown person, now too old for healthy pleasure, and half sickened himself at the corrupt pursuits in which nevertheless he indulged perpetually. His domestic vices had become disgracefully public: whatever might be the truth about Queen Caroline, no one could say she had been well treated. There was no loyalty on which suffering workers or an angry middle class could repose; all through the realm there was a miscellaneous agitation, a vague and wandering discontent.

The official mind of the time was troubled. We have a record of its speculations in the life of Lord Sidmouth, who more than any one [else] perhaps embodied it. He had been Speaker, and was much inclined to remedy the discontent of the middle classes by "naming them to the House." A more conscientious man perhaps has never filled a public position: if the forms of the House of Commons had been intuitively binding, no one could have obeyed them better; the "mace" was a "counsel of perfection' to him, all disorder hateful. In the Home Office it was the same: the Luddites were people who would not obey the Speaker; constituted authority must be enforced. The claims of a suffering multitude were not so much neglected as unappreciated: a certain illiberality, as we should now speak, pervades the

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