ing. Temple, in his intervals of leisure, | of knowledge in which induction and had tried many experiments in horti- mathematical demonstration cooperate culture, and had proved that many for the discovery of truth, that the delicate fruits, the natives of more English genius won in that age the favoured climates, might, with the help most memorable triumphs. John Wallis of art, be grown on English ground. placed the whole system of statics on a Medicine, which in France was still in new foundation. Edmund Halley inabject bondage, and afforded an inex-vestigated the properties of the atmohaustible subject of just ridicule to sphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, Moliere, had in England become an the laws of magnetism, and the course experimental and progressive science, of the comets; nor did he shrink from and every day made some new advance, toil, peril, and exile in the cause of in defiance of Hippocrates and Galen. science. While he, on the rock of The attention of speculative men had Saint Helena, mapped the constellations been, for the first time, directed to the of the southern hemisphere, our naimportant subject of sanitary police. tional observatory was rising at GreenThe great plague of 1665 induced them wich; and John Flamsteed, the first to consider with care the defective Astronomer Royal, was commencing architecture, draining, and ventilation that long series of observations which of the capital. The great fire of 1666 is never mentioned without respect and afforded an opportunity for effecting gratitude in any part of the globe. extensive improvements. The whole But the glory of these men, eminent matter was diligently examined by the as they were, is cast into the shade by Royal Society; and to the suggestions the transcendent lustre of one immortal of that body must be partly attributed name. In Isaac Newton two kinds of the changes which, though far short of intellectual power, which have little in what the public welfare required, yet common, and which are not often found made a wide difference between the together in a very high degree of new and the old London, and probably vigour, but which nevertheless are put a final close to the ravages of equally necessary in the most sublime pestilence in our country.* At the departments of physics, were united as same time one of the founders of the they have never been united before or Society, Sir William Petty, created the since. There may have been minds as science of political arithmetic, the happily constituted as his for the cultihumble but indispensable handmaid of vation of pure mathematical science: political philosophy. No kingdom of there may have been minds as happily nature was left unexplored. To that constituted for the cultivation of science period belong the chemical discoveries purely experimental: but in no other of Boyle, and the earliest botanical mind have the demonstrative faculty researches of Sloane. It was then that and the inductive faculty coexisted in Ray made a new classification of birds such supreme excellence and perfect and fishes, and that the attention of harmony. Perhaps in the days of Woodward was first drawn towards Scotists and Thomists even his intellect fossils and shells. One after another might have run to waste, as many phantoms which had haunted the world intellects ran to waste which were infethrough ages of darkness fled before rior only to his. Happily the spirit of the light. Astrology and alchymy the age on which his lot was cast, became jests. Soon there was scarcely gave the right direction to his mind; a county in which some of the Quorum and his mind reacted with tenfold force did not smile contemptuously when an on the spirit of the age. In the year old woman was brought before them 1685 his fame, though splendid, was for riding on broomsticks or giving only dawning; but his genius was in cattle the murrain. But it was in those the meridian. His great work, that noblest and most arduous departments work which effected a revolution in the most important provinces of natural philosophy, had been completed but

Sprat's History of the Royal Society.

State of the

was not yet published, and was just | noble collection of drawings and pic about to be submitted to the considera- tures was, after his decease, exhibited tion of the Royal Society. by the royal permission in the BanIt is not very easy to explain why queting House at Whitehall, and was the nation which was so far sold by auction for the almost incredibefore its neighbours in science ble sum of twenty-six thousand pounds, Fine Arts. should in art have been far a sum which bore a greater proportion behind them. Yet such was the fact. to the fortunes of the rich men of that It is true that in architecture, an art day than a hundred thousand pounds which is half a science, an art in which would bear to the fortunes of the rich none but a geometrician can excel, an men of our time.* Lely was succeeded art which has no standard of grace but by his countryman Godfrey Kneller, what is directly or indirectly dependent who was made first a knight and then on utility, an art of which the creations a baronet, and who, after keeping up a derive a part, at least, of their majesty sumptuous establishment, and after from mere bulk, our country could losing much money by unlucky speculaboast of one truly great man, Christo- tions, was still able to bequeath a large pher Wren; and the fire which laid fortune to his family. The two VandeLondon in ruins had given him an veldes, natives of Holland, had been opportunity, unprecedented in modern tempted by English liberality to settle history, of displaying his powers. The here, and had produced for the King austere beauty of the Athenian portico, and his nobles some of the finest sea the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic pieces in the world. Another Dutcharcade, he was, like almost all his con-man, Simon Varelst, painted glorious temporaries, incapable of emulating, sunflowers and tulips for prices such and perhaps incapable of appreciating: as had never before been known. but no man, born on our side of the Alps, has imitated with so much success the magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles the Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious; for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the nation and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intellectual labour, were even larger than at present. Indeed the munificent patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us the rich curls, the full Îips, and the languishing eyes of the frail beauties celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680, having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of knight-Guildford. hood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the fruits of his skill. His

Verrio, a Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and Muses, Nymphs and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph. The income which he derived from his performances enabled him to keep one of the most expensive tables in England. For his pieces at Windsor alone he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of forty years, obtained from the booksellers.+ Verrio's assistant and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber, whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam, was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the

* Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting; Lon

don Gazette, May 31. 1683; North's Life of

The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.

designs for the coin were made by | according to Petty's calculation, fair French artists. Indeed, it was not till agricultural wages.* the reign of George the Second that our country could glory in a great painter; and George the Third was on the throne before she had reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.

That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by an Act of Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of wages for the county, and notified that every employer who gave more than the authorised sum, and every working man who received more, would be liable to punishment. The wages of the common agricultural labourer, from March to September, were fixed at the precise amount mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week without food. From September to March the wages were to be only three and sixpence a week.†

It is time that this description of the England which Charles the Second governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said of the great body of the people, of those who held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and squared the Portland stone for Saint Paul's. Nor can very much be said. The most numerous class is precisely the class respecting which we have the most meagre information. In those times philanthropists did not yet regard it But in that age, as in ours, the earnas a sacred duty, nor had demagogues ings of the peasant were very different yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk in different parts of the kingdom. The and write about the distress of the wages of Warwickshire were probably labourer. History was too much occu-about the average, and those of the pied with courts and camps to spare a counties near the Scottish border below line for the hut of the peasant or the it: but there were more favoured disgarret of the mechanic. The press now tricts. In the same year, 1685, a genoften sends forth in a day a greater tleman of Devonshire, named Richard quantity of discussion and declamation Dunning, published a small tract, in about the condition of the working man which he described the condition of than was published during the twenty-the poor of that county. That he eight years which elapsed between the understood his subject well it is imRestoration and the Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer from the increase of complaint that there has been any increase of misery. The great criterion of the state of the common people is the amount of their wages; and as four fifths of the common people were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact for our purpose.

State
of the

cammon

people.

Agri

Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight, incultural forms us that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state

wages.

who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eight pence without food. Four shillings a week therefore were,

possible to doubt; for a few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food, about five shillings a week.‡

Still better was the condition of the labourer in the neighbourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk met there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and resolved that, where the labourer was boarded, he should have five shillings a week in winter, and six in summer. § * Petty's Political Arithmetic.

not

† Stat. 5 Eliz. c. 4.; Archæologia, vol. xi. Plain and easy Method showing how the

Office of Overseer of the Poor may be managed, by Richard Dunning; 1st edition, 1685; 2nd

edition, 1686.

§ Cullum's History of Hawsted.

In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, had fixed the wages of the Essex and during the summer months, even labourer, who was not boarded, at six seven shillings were paid. At present shillings in winter and seven in sum- a district where a labouring man earns mer. This seems to have been the only seven shillings a week is thought highest remuneration given in the to be in a state shocking to humanity. kingdom for agricultural labour be- The average is very much higher; and, tween the Restoration and the Revolu- in prosperous counties, the weekly tion; and it is to be observed that, in wages of husbandmen amount to twelve, the year in which this order was made, fourteen, and even sixteen shillings. the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy shillings the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a famine price.*

Wages of

turers.

The remuneration of workmen employed in manufactures has always been higher than that manufac of the tillers of the soil. In the year 1680, a member of the These facts are in perfect accordance House of Commons remarked that with another fact which seems to de- the high wages paid in this country serve consideration. It is evident that, made it impossible for our textures to in a country where no man can be maintain a competition with the procompelled to become a soldier, the duce of the Indian looms. An English ranks of an army cannot be filled if mechanic, he said, instead of slaving the government offers much less than like a native of Bengal for a piece of the wages of common rustic labour. copper, exacted a shilling a day.* At present the pay and beer money of Other evidence is extant, which proves a private in a regiment of the line that a shilling a day was the pay to amount to seven shillings and seven- which the English manufacturer then pence a week. This stipend, coupled thought himself entitled, but that he with the hope of a pension, does not was often forced to work for less. The attract the English youth in sufficient common people of that age were not in numbers; and it is found necessary to the habit of meeting for public discussupply the deficiency by enlisting sion, of haranguing, or of petitioning largely from among the poorer popula- Parliament. No newspaper pleaded tion of Munster and Connaught. The their cause. It was in rude rhyme pay of the private foot soldier in 1685 that their love and hatred, their exulwas only four shillings and eightpence a tation and their distress found utterweek; yet it is certain that the governance. A great part of their history is ment in that year found no difficulty to be learned only from their ballads. in obtaining many thousands of English One of the most remarkable of the recruits at very short notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the army of the Commonwealth had been seven shillings a week, that is to say, as much as a corporal received under Charles the Second; and seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill the ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that, in the reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week; but that, in some parts of the

popular lays chaunted about the streets of Norwich and Leeds in the time of Charles the Second may still be read on the original broadside. It is the vehement and bitter cry of labour against capital. It describes the good old times when every artisan employed in the woollen manufacture lived as well as a farmer. But those times were past. Sixpence a day was now all that could be earned by hard labour at the loom. If the poor complained that they could not live on such a pittance, they were told that they were free to take it or leave it. For so miserable

*The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. See Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii.

a recompense were the producers of shall we find to dissent from those who wealth compelled to toil, rising early imagine that our age has been fruitful and lying down late, while the master of new social evils. The truth is that clothier, eating, sleeping, and idling, the evils are, with scarcely an excepbecame rich by their exertions. A tion, old. That which is new is the shilling a day, the poet declares, is intelligence which discerns and the what the weaver would have, if justice humanity which remedies them. were done.* We may therefore con- When we pass from the weavers of clude that, in the generation which cloth to a different class of wages of preceded the Revolution, a workman artisans, our inquiries will still different employed in the great staple manu-lead us to nearly the same con- artisans. facture of England thought himself clusions. During several generations, fairly paid if he gained six shillings a week.

children

in fac

It may here be noticed that the pracLabour of tice of setting children prematurely to work, a practice which tories. 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

* This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year is not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger Lestrange fixes the date sufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the The master clothier is introduced speaking as follows:

lines.

pay;

If at all they murmur and say 'tis too small, We bid them choose whether they'll work at all. And thus we do gain all our wealth and estate, By many poor men that work early and late. Then hey for the clothing trade! It goes on brave; We scorn for to toyl and moyl, nor yet to slave. Our workmen do work hard, but we live at ease, We go when we will, and we come when we please." +Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's Political Arithmetic, chapter viii.; Dunning's Plain and Easy Method; Firmin's Proposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to be observed that Firmin was an eminent philanthropist.

classes of

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 fivepence, and those of the plumber from three shillings to five and sixpence.

It seems clear, therefore, that the wages of labour, estimated in money, were, in 1685, not more than half of what they now are; and there were few articles important to the working man of which the price was not, in 1685, more than half of what it now is. Beer was undoubtedly much cheaper in that age than at present. Meat was also cheaper, but was still so dear that hundreds of thousands of families scarcely knew the taste of it.* In the cost of wheat there has been very little change. The average price of the quarter, during the last twelve years of Charles the Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is now given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen, even on the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great majority of the nation lived almost entirely on rye, barley, and oats.

The produce of tropical countries, the produce of the mines, the produce of

*King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly estimated the common people of England at 880,000 families. Of these families 440,000, according to him, ate animal food twice a week. The remaining 440,000 ate it not at all, or at most not oftener than once a week.