the plague and fire were recent, it was laison, an actuary of eminent skill, the fashion to say that the capital still subjected the ancient parochial registers had a million and a half of inhabit- of baptisms, marriages, and burials, ants.* Some persons, disgusted by to all the tests which the modern these exaggerations, ran violently into improvements in statistical science enthe opposite extreme. Thus Isaac abled him to apply. His opinion was, Vossius, a man of undoubted parts and that, at the close of the seventeenth learning, strenuously maintained that century, the population of England was there were only two millions of human a little under five million two hundred beings in England, Scotland, and Ire- thousand souls.* land taken together.† Of these three estimates, framed We are not, however, left without without concert by different persons the means of correcting the wild blun- from different sets of materials, the ders into which some minds were highest, which is that of King, does hurried by national vanity, and others not exceed the lowest, which is that of by a morbid love of paradox. There Finlaison, by one twelfth. We may, are extant three computations which therefore, with confidence, pronounce seem to be entitled to peculiar atten- that, when James the Second reigned, tion. They are entirely independent England contained between five million of each other: they proceed on differ- and five million five hundred thousand ent principles; and yet there is little inhabitants. difference in the results. On the very highest supposition, she then had less than one third of her present population, and less than three times the population which is now collected in her gigantic the north One of these computations was made in the year 1696, by Gregory King, Lancaster herald, a political arithmetician of great acuteness and judg-capital. ment. The basis of his calculations The increase of the people has been was the number of houses returned in great in every part of the king- Increase 1690 by the officers who made the last dom, but generally much greater of popu collection of the hearth money. The in the northern than in the greater in conclusion at which he arrived was, southern shires. In truth, a than in the that the population of England was large part of the country be- south. nearly five millions and a half.‡ yond Trent was, down to the eighteenth century, in a state of barbarism. Physical and moral causes had concurred to prevent civilisation from spreading to that region. The air was inclement; the soil was generally such as required skilful and industrious cultivation; and there could be little skill or industry in a tract which was often the theatre of war, and which, even when there was nominal peace, was constantly desolated by bands of Scottish marauders. Before the union of the two British crowns, and long after that union, there was as great a difference between Middlesex and About the same time, King William the Third was desirous to ascertain the comparative strength of the religious sects into which the community was divided. An inquiry was instituted, and reports were laid before him from all the dioceses of the realm. According to these reports, the number of his English subjects must have been about five million two hundred thousand.§ Lastly, in our own days, Mr. Fin "She doth comprehend Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend Great Britain's Beauty, 1671. Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius, as we learn from St. Evremond, talked on this subject oftener and longer than fashionable circles cared to listen. + King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696. This valuable treatise, which ought to be read as the author wrote it, and not as garbled by Davenant, will be found in some editions of Chalmers's Estimate. { Dalrymple's Appendix to Part II. Book I. The practice of reckoning the population by sects was long fashionable. Gulliver says of the King of Brobdingnag; "He laughed at my odd arithmetic, as he was pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion and politics." * Preface to the Population Returns of 1831. Northumberland as there now is be- derer who might venture to assail the tween Massachusetts and the settle- little garrison. No traveller ventured ments of those squatters who, far to into that country without making his the west of the Mississippi, administer will. The Judges on circuit, with the a rude justice with the rifle and the whole body of barristers, attorneys, dagger. In the reign of Charles the clerks, and serving men, rode on Second, the traces left by ages of horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle, slaughter and pillage were distinctly armed and escorted by a strong guard perceptible, many miles south of the under the command of the Sheriffs. Tweed, in the face of the country and It was necessary to carry provisions; in the lawless manners of the people. for the country was a wilderness which There was still a large class of moss- afforded no supplies. The spot where troopers, whose calling was to plunder the cavalcade halted to dine, under an dwellings and to drive away whole immense oak, is not yet forgotten. The herds of cattle. It was found neces- irregular vigour with which criminal sary, soon after the Restoration, to justice was administered shocked obenact laws of great severity for the servers whose lives had been passed in prevention of these outrages. The more tranquil districts. Juries, animagistrates of Northumberland and mated by hatred and by a sense of Cumberland were authorised to raise common danger, convicted housebands of armed men for the defence of breakers and cattle stealers with the property and order; and provision was promptitude of a court martial in a made for meeting the expense of these mutiny; and the convicts were hurried levies by local taxation. The parishes by scores to the gallows.* Within the were required to keep bloodhounds for memory of some whom this generation the purpose of hunting the freebooters. has seen, the sportsmen who wandered Many old men who were living in the in pursuit of game to the sources middle of the eighteenth century could of the Tyne found the heaths round well remember the time when those Keeldar Castle peopled by a race ferocious dogs were common. Yet, scarcely less savage than the Indians of even with such auxiliaries, it was often California, and heard with surprise the found impossible to track the robbers half naked women chaunting a wild to their retreats among the hills and measure, while the men with brandished morasses. For the geography of that dirks danced a war dance.† wild country was very imperfectly Slowly and with difficulty peace was known. Even after the accession of established on the border. In the train George the Third, the path over the of peace came industry and all the arts fells from Borrowdale to Ravenglas of life. Meanwhile it was discovered was still a secret carefully kept by the that the regions north of the Trent posdalesmen, some of whom had probably sessed in their coal beds a source of in their youth escaped from the pursuit wealth far more precious than the gold of justice by that road. The seats of mines of Peru. It was found that, in the gentry and the larger farmhouses the neighbourhood of these beds, almost were fortified. Oxen were penned at every manufacture might be most pronight beneath the overhanging battle-fitably carried on. A constant stream ments of the residence, which was of emigrants began to roll northward. known by the name of the Peel. The inmates slept with arms at their sides. Huge stones and boiling water were in readiness to crush and scald the plun * Statutes 14 Car. II. c. 22. ; 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 3.; 29 & 30 Car. II. c. 2. † Nicholson and Bourne, Discourse on the Ancient State of the Border, 1777. Gray's Journal of a Tour in the Lakes, Oct. 3. 1769. It appeared by the returns of 1841 that the ancient archiepiscopal province of York contained two sevenths of the population of England. At the time of the Revolution that province was believed to contain only one seventh of *North's Life of Guildford; Hutchinson's History of Cumberland, parish of Brampton. † See Sir Walter Scott's Journal, Oct. 7. 1827, in his life by Mr. Lockhart. * the population. In Lancashire the number of inhabitants appears to have increased ninefold, while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Northamptonshire it has hardly doubled.+ Revenue in 1685. Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and precision than of the population. The revenue of England, when Charles the Second died, was small when compared with the resources which she even then possessed, or with the sums which were raised by the governments of the neighbouring countries. It had, from the time of the Restoration, been almost constantly increasing: yet it was little more than three fourths of the revenue of the United Provinces, and was hardly one fifth of the revenue of France. proverbially the most rapacious. The collectors were loudly accused of performing their unpopular duty with harshness and insolence. It was said that, as soon as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, the children began to wail, and the old women ran to hide their earthenware. Nay, the single bed of a poor family had sometimes been carried away and sold. The net annual receipt from this tax was two hundred thousand pounds.* When to the three great sources of income which have been mentioned we add the royal domains, then far more extensive than at present, the first fruits and tenths, which had not yet been surrendered to the Church, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the forfeitures, and the fines, we shall find that the whole annual revenue of the crown may be fairly estimated at about fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of this revenue part was hereditary: the rest had been granted to Charles for life; and he was at liberty to lay out the whole exactly as he thought fit. Whatever he could save by retrenching from the expenditure of the public departments was an addition to his privy purse. Of the Post Office more will hereafter be said. The profits of that establishment had been appropriated by Parliament to the Duke of York. The most important head of receipt was the excise, which, in the last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The net proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to five hundred and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not lie very heavy on the nation. The tax on chimneys, though less productive, called forth far louder murmurs. The discontent excited by direct imposts is, indeed, almost always out of proportion to the quantity of money which they bring into the Exchequer; and the tax on chimneys was, even among direct imposts, peculiarly odious: for it could be levied only by means of domiciliary visits; and of such visits the English have always been impatient to a degree which the people of other countries can but faintly conceive. The poorer householders were frequently unable to pay their hearth But, if you talk of chimney men, will spare a curse or money to the day. When this happened, their furniture was distrained without mercy: for the tax was farmed; and a farmer of taxes is, of all creditors, Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The returns of the hearth money lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in the prevince of York were not a sixth of the hearths of England. +I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here; but I believe that whoever will take the trouble to compare the last returns of hearth money in the reign of William the Third with the census of 1841, will come to a conclusion not very different from mine. The King's revenue was, or rather ballads of that age on the chimney money. I There are in the Pepysian Library, some espied, hide. There is not one old dame in ten, and search the nation through, Again; "Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door, "Or, if through poverty it be not paid, For cruelty to tear away the single bed, On which the poor man rests his weary head, At once deprives him of his rest and bread." I take this opportunity, the first which occurs, of acknowledging most gratefully the kind and liberal manner in which the Master and Vicemaster of Magdalene College, Cambridge, gave me access to the valuable collections of Pepys. 1 ought to have been, charged with the payment of about eighty thousand pounds a year, the interest of the sum fraudulently detained in the Exchequer by the Cabal. While Danby was at the head of the finances, the creditors had received dividends, though not with the strict punctuality of modern times: but those who had succeeded him at the Treasury had been less expert, or less solicitous to maintain public faith. Since the victory won by the court over the Whigs not a farthing had been paid; and no redress was granted to the sufferers, till a new dynasty had been many years on the throne. There can be no greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting the exigencies of the state by loans was imported into our island by William the Third. What really dates from his reign is not the system of borrowing, but the system of funding. From a period of immemorial antiquity it had been the practice of every English government to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was the practice of honestly paying them.* the sentinels on the drawbridge of a for- By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make an income of about fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with some occasional help from Versailles, support the necessary charges of the government and the wasteful expenditure of the court. For that load which pressed most heavily on the finances of the great continental states was here scarcely felt. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, armies, such as Henry the Fourth and Philip the Second had never employed in time of war, were kept up in the midst of peace. Bastions and ravelins were everywhere rising, constructed on principles unknown to Parma and Spinola. Stores of artillery and ammunition were accumulated, such as even Richelieu, whom the preceding generation had regarded The only army which the law recog as a worker of prodigies, would have nised was the militia. That force had pronounced fabulous. No man could been remodelled by two Acts of Parjourney many leagues in those countries liament passed shortly after the Restowithout hearing the drums of a regi-ration. Every man who possessed five ment on march, or being challenged by *My chief authorities for this financial statement will be found in the Commons' Journals, March 1. and March 20. 1688. *See for example the picture of the mound at Marlborough, in Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum. † Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. hundred pounds a year derived from | ported pikes. The enemies of the land, or six thousand pounds of per- liberties and religion of England looked sonal estate, was bound to provide, equip, with aversion on a force which could and pay, at his own charge, one horse-not, without extreme risk, be employed man. Every man who had fifty pounds against those liberties and that religion, a year derived from land, or six hundred and missed no opportunity of throwing pounds of personal estate, was charged ridicule on the rustic soldiery.* Enin like manner with one pikeman or lightened patriots, when they conmusketeer. Smaller proprietors were trasted these rude levies with the batjoined together in a kind of society, for talions which, in time of war, a few which our language does not afford a hours might bring to the coast of Kent special name, but which an Athenian or Sussex, were forced to acknowledge would have called a Synteleia; and that, dangerous as it might be to keep each society was required to furnish, up a permanent military establishment, according to its means, a horse soldier it might be more dangerous still to or a foot soldier. The whole number stake the honour and independence of of cavalry and infantry thus maintained the country on the result of a contest was popularly estimated at a hundred between ploughmen officered by Jusand thirty thousand men.* tices of the Peace, and veteran warriors led by Marshals of France. In Parliament, however, it was necessary to express such opinions with some reserve; for the militia was an institution eminently popular. Every reflection thrown on it excited the indignation of both the great parties in the state, and especially of that party which was distinguished by peculiar zeal for monarchy and for the Anglican Church. The array of the counties was commanded almost exclusively by Tory noblemen and gentlemen. They were proud of their military rank, and considered an insult offered to the service to which they belonged as offered to themselves. They were also perfectly aware that whatever was said against a militia was said in favour of a standing army; and the name of standing army was hateful to them. One such army had held dominion in England; and under that dominion the King had been murdered, the nobility degraded, the landed gentry plundered, the Church persecuted. There was scarcely a rural grandee who could not tell a story of The King was, by the ancient constitution of the realm, and by the recent and solemn acknowledgment of both Houses of Parliament, the sole Captain General of this large force. The Lords Lieutenants and their Deputies held the command under him, and appointed meetings for drilling and inspection. The time occupied by such meetings, however, was not to exceed fourteen days in one year. The Justices of the Peace were authorised to inflict slight penalties for breaches of discipline. Of the ordinary cost no part was paid by the crown: but, when the trainbands were called out against an enemy, their subsistence became a charge on the general revenue of the state, and they were subject to the utmost rigour of martial law. There were those who looked on the militia with no friendly eye. Men who had travelled much on the Continent, who had marvelled at the stern precision with which every sentinel moved and spoke in the citadels built by Vauban, who had seen the mighty armies which poured along all the roads of Germany to chase the Ottoman from the gates of Vienna, and who had been dazzled by the well ordered pomp of the household troops of Lewis, sneered much at the way in which the peasants of Devonshire and Yorkshire marched and wheeled, shouldered muskets and 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 3.; 15 Car. II. c. 4. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. * Dryden, in his Cymon and Iphigenia, expressed, with his usual keenness and energy, among the sycophants of James the Second :"The country rings around with loud alarms, the sentiments which had been fashionable And raw in fields the rude militia swarms; Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day." |