[1685 A.D.] if justice were done. We may therefore conclude that, in the generation which preceded the Revolution, a workman employed in the great staple manufacture of England thought himself fairly paid if he gained six shillings a week.

It may here be noticed that the practice of setting children prematurely to work, a practice which the state, the legitimate protector of those who cannot protect themselves, has, in our time, wisely and humanely interdicted, prevailed in the seventeenth century to an extent which, when compared with the extent of the manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little creature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some who were considered as eminently benevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact that in that single city boys and girls of very tender age created wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve thousand pounds a year. The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them.

When we pass from the weavers of cloth to a different class of artisans, our inquiries will still lead us to nearly the same conclusions. During several generations, the commissioners of Greenwich hospital have kept a register of the wages paid to different classes of workmen who have been employed in the repairs of the building. From this valuable record it appears that, in the course of a hundred and twenty years, the daily earnings of the bricklayer have risen from half a crown to four and tenpence, those of the mason from half a crown to five and threepence, those of the carpenter from half a crown to five and five pence, and those of the plumber from three shillings to five and sixpence.

It must be remembered that those labourers who were able to maintain themselves and their families by means of wages were not the most necessitous members of the community. Beneath them lay a large class which could not subsist without some aid from the parish. There can hardly be a more important test of the condition of the common people than the ratio which this class bears to the whole society. At present the men, women, and children who receive relief appear from the official returns to be, in bad years, one-tenth of the inhabitants of England, and, in good years, one-thirteenth. Gregory King estimated them in his time at more than a fifth; and this estimate, which all our respect for his authority will scarcely prevent us from calling extravagant, was pronounced by Davenant eminently judicious.

We are not quite without the means of forming an estimate for ourselves. The poor rate was undoubtedly the heaviest tax borne by our ancestors in those days. It was computed, in the reign of Charles II, at near seven hundred thousand pounds a year, much more than the produce either of the excise or of the customs, and little less than half the entire revenue of the crown. The poor rate went on increasing rapidly, and appears to have risen in a short time to between eight and nine hundred thousand a year, that is to say, to one-sixth of what it now is. The population was then less than a third of what it now is. The minimum of wages, estimated in money, was half of what it now is; and we can therefore hardly suppose that the average allowance made to a pauper can have been more than half of what it now is. It seems to follow that the proportion of the English people which received parochial relief then must have been larger than the proportion which receives

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relief now. It is good to speak on such questions with diffidence: but it has certainly never yet been proved that pauperism was a less heavy burden or a less serious social evil during the last quarter of the seventeenth century than it is in our own time.

In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of civilisation has diminished the physical comforts of a portion of the poorest class. It has already been mentioned that, before the Revolution, many thousands of square miles, now enclosed and cultivated, were marsh, forest, and heath. Of this wild land much was, by law, common, and much of what was not common by law was worth so little that the proprietors suffered it to be common in fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were tolerated to an extent now unknown. The peasant who dwelt there could, at little or no charge, procure occasionally some palatable addition to his hard fare, and provide himself with fuel for the winter. He kept a flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the fen which has long since been drained and divided into corn fields and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the moor which is now a meadow bright with clover and renowned for butter and cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase of population necessarily deprived him of these privileges.

BENEFITS OF THE PROGRESS OF CIVILISATION

But against this disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be set off. Of the blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring with them a large proportion is common to all ranks, and would, if withdrawn, be missed as painfully by the labourer as by the peer. The market place which the rustic can now reach with his cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixty years ago, a day's journey from him. The street which now affords to the artisan, during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and a brilliantly lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so dark after sunset that he would not have been able to see his hand, so ill paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck, and so ill watched that he would have been in imminent danger of being knocked down and plundered of his small earnings. Every bricklayer who falls from a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing who is run over by a carriage, may now have his wounds dressed and his limbs set with a skill such as, a hundred and sixty years ago, all the wealth of a great lord like Ormonde, or of a merchant prince like Clayton, could not have purchased. Some frightful diseases have been extirpated by science; and some have been banished by police. The term of human life has been lengthened over the whole kingdom, and especially in the towns. The year 1685 was not accounted sickly; yet in the year 1685 more than one in twentythree of the inhabitants of the capital died. The difference in salubrity between London of the nineteenth century and the London of the seventeenth century is very far greater than the difference between London in an ordinary season and London in the cholera.

Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society, and especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying influence of civilisation on the national character. The groundwork of that character has indeed been the same through many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the character of an individual may be said to be the same when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined and accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the public mind of England has softened

[1685 A.D.] while it has ripened, and that we have, in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a kinder people. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter literature of the seventeenth century which does not contain some proof that our ancestors were less humane than their posterity. The discipline of workshops, of schools, of private families, though not more efficient than at present, was infinitely harsher. Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of imparting knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives.

The implacability of hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs were disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russell as his coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with life from the shower of brick bats and paving stones. If he was tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed round him, imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl. Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court days, for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there whipped. A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman burned for coining, excited less sympathy than is now felt for a galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a boxing match is a refined and humane spectacle were among the favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries of every crime and of every disease.

But on all this misery society looked with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that sensitive and restless compassion which has, in our time, extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the Hindoo widow, to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and watercasks of every emigrant ship, which winces at every lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked, and which has repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer. It is true that compassion ought, like all other feelings, to be under the government of reason, and has, for want of such government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects. But the more we study the annals of the past the more shall we rejoice that we live in a merciful age, in an age in which cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every class doubtless has gained largely by this great moral change. but the class which has gained most is the poorest, the most dependent, and the most defenceless.b

The government of James II will lose little by comparison with that of his father. It is indeed amusing to observe that many who scarcely put bounds to their eulogies of Charles I have been content to abandon the cause of one who had no faults in his public conduct but such as seemed to have come by inheritance The characters of the father and son were very closely similar, both proud of their judg. ment as well as their station, and still more obstinate in their understanding than in their purpose; both scrupulously conscientious in certain great points of conduct, to the sacrifice of that power which they had preferred to everything else; the one far superior in relish for the arts and for polite letters, the other more diligent and indefatigable in business; the father exempt from those vices of a court to which the son was too long addicted; not so harsh, perhaps, or prone to severity in his temper, but inferior in general sincerity and adherence to his word. They were both equally unfitted for the condition in which they were meant to stand-the limited kings of a wise and free people, the chiefs of the English commonwealth.-HALLAM.P

IMMEDIATELY on the demise of King Charles, the privy council assembled, and the new monarch addressed them, assuring them of his determination to follow the example of his late brother, "especially in that of his great clemency and tenderness to his people"; that "he would make it his endeavour to preserve this government, both in church and state, as it is by law established"; and, "that he would always take care to defend and support the church." His brother-in-law, Lord Rochester, requested that this address, which had filled them all with joy, might be made public. The king said he had no copy; but one of the council wrote it down from memory, and the king, who had not expected this result, found it necessary to consent to its publication. He was forthwith proclaimed, amid the loud acclamations of the populace.

The king's speech gave great satisfaction to those who called themselves the loyal part of the nation. It was regarded as a security greater than any law. 'We have now the word of a king, and a word never broken," was the common phrase. The pulpits resounded as usual; loyal addresses poured in from all sides; the University of Oxford promised obedience, "without limitations or restrictions"; the London clergy, more sincere, said, "our religion established by law is dearer to us than our lives"; and this expression gave offence at court, a proof of what was the real feeling in the royal bosom.

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The funeral of the late king was private (May 14th), for the successor was unwilling, as he says himself, to communicate with the Church of England in spiritual things, as he must have done had it been public.c

The funeral called forth much censure. It would, indeed, hardly have been accounted worthy of a noble and opulent subject. The tories gently blamed the new king's parsimony; the whigs sneered at his want of natural affection; and the fiery covenanters of Scotland exultingly proclaimed that the curse denounced of old against wicked princes had been signally fulfilled, and that the departed tyrant had been buried with the burial of an ass. Yet James commenced his administration with a large measure of public good will.b

JAMES ILLEGALLY LEVIES CUSTOMS; AND RELEASES CATHOLIC PRISONERS James had not been more than three days king, when his government committed an illegal act. The grant of customs for the life of the king expired on the death of Charles. A proclamation was issued ordering that the duties on merchandise should be levied as usual, till the royal revenue had been settled by parliament. This was against the advice of the lord keeper, Guilford, who recommended that the duties should be collected and kept apart in the exchequer, till the parliament should dispose of them. But, says North,d "the temper of the public was, then, so propitious to the crown that almost anything would be borne with, which, in other times, would have raised a flame." The counsellors chosen by the king for his especial confidence were his brother-in-law, Rochester; Sunderland, who had been Charles' secretary of state; and Godolphin, who had been first lord of the treasury: Halifax, who had held the privy seal, was appointed to the unimportant office of president of the council. It was nominally a higher office, and therefore a witticism which he had used on the promotion of Rochester was applied to himself - he was kicked up-stairs. The king's other brother-in-law, Clarendon, was made privy seal. Sunderland had voted for the Exclusion Bill, and therefore his continuance in office was a matter of surprise. But, if we are to credit the king's own assertion, this crafty minister saw the policy of connecting himself, however secretly, with the Roman Catholic party. James, in his so-called Memoirs,e says that in a consultation soon after his accession to the throne between Lord Sunderland, Father Petre, Mr. Jermyn, and Lord Tyrconnel, "it was agreed that Father Petre should be a cardinal, Lord Sunderland lord treasurer, Lord Tyrconnel lord lieutenant of Ireland (who engaged to procure my lord Sunderland £5,000 per annum out of that kingdom, or £50,000 in money), and that Mr. Henry Jermyn should be made a lord, and captain of the horse guards." Tyrconnel and Jermyn were Roman Catholics. The king did not stand alone in his inclination to tread a path beset with dangers.

The apologists of James have endeavoured to induce a belief that, soon after his accession, "he limited his views to the accomplishment of two objects, which he called liberty of conscience and freedom of worship, and which, had he been successful, would have benefited not the Catholics only but every class of religionists." Doctor Lingard / expresses this opinion, after having stated that James "gave it in charge to the judges to discourage prosecutions in matters of religion, and ordered by proclamation the discharge of all persons confined for the refusal of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy.

It is implied that the "dissenters" were relieved by this tolerant disposition. The relief extended only to Roman Catholics and Quakers. The Puritan