minister has ever solved to the satisfaction of all the interests in the
country, and Walpole, one of the ablest of financiers, was unable to
effect an adjustment of the burden which would please everybody. In the
reign of William III. a land-tax had been imposed to meet the expenses
of the French war, and this was alleged to press heavily and unfairly on
the country gentry, who demanded that the wealthy trading interests
should pay more. Walpole tried a salt-tax, which, of course, was very
hard on the poorer classes; and in 1733 he proposed to turn the Customs
levied at the ports on wine and tobacco into an excise levied on these
articles in the possession of the traders. His reason was that owing to
the prevalence of smuggling the Customs did not produce as much as they
ought, and he thought that the excise duties would be more efficiently
collected. The proposal was violently opposed; it was stated that the
necessary inspection of warehouses was a violation of liberty, and
Walpole was forced to give way. The citizens of London shared the
general hatred of the measure, and set forth their reasons in a petition
to the House of Commons.
=Source.=—Document quoted by Maitland, vol. i., p. 560.
Your petitioners observe in the votes of this Honourable House, that
a Bill has been brought in, pursuant to the resolutions of the
sixteenth day of March, for repealing several subsidies, and an
impost now payable on tobacco of the British plantations, and for
granting an Inland-duty in lieu thereof.
That they presume therefore, in all humility, by a respectful
application to this Honourable House, to express, as they have
already done in some measure by their representation to their
members, the universal sense of the City of London, concerning any
further extension of the laws of excise.
That the burden of taxes already imposed on every branch of trade,
however cheerfully borne, is severely felt; but that your
petitioners apprehend this burden will grow too heavy to be borne,
if it be increased by such vexatious and oppressive methods of
levying and collecting the duties, as they are assured, by
melancholy experience, that the nature of all Excises must
necessarily produce.
That the merchants, tradesmen, and manufacturers of this Kingdom
have supported themselves under the pressure of the excise-laws now
in force, by the comfortable and reasonable expectation, that laws,
which nothing but public necessity could be a motive to enact, would
be repealed in favour of the trade of the nation, and of the liberty
of the subject, whenever that motive should be removed, as your
petitioners presume it effectually is, by an undisturbed
tranquillity at home, and a general peace so firmly established
abroad.
That, if this expectation be entirely taken away; if the Excise
laws, instead of being repealed, are extended to other species of
merchandizes not yet excised, and a door opened for extending them
to all; your petitioners cannot, in justice to themselves, to the
merchants, tradesmen, and manufacturers of the whole kingdom, and to
the general interest of their country, conceal their apprehensions,
that the most fatal blow which ever was given, will be given on this
occasion to the trade and navigation of Great Britain; that great
spring, from which the wealth and prosperity of the public flow,
will be obstructed; the mercantile part of the nation will become
not only less able to trade to advantage, but unwilling to trade at
all; for no person, who can enjoy all the privileges of a British
subject out of trade, even with a small fortune, will voluntarily
renounce some of the most valuable of those privileges, by
subjecting himself to the laws of excise.
That your petitioners are able to shew, that these their
apprehensions are founded both on experience and reason; and
therefore your petitioners most humbly pray, That this Honourable
House will be pleased to hear them by their Counsel against the said
bill.
LONDON STREETS (1741).
We have abundant evidence from many sources as to the deplorable
condition of the streets of London down to comparatively recent times.
It is somewhat surprising that this neglect should continue, while the
danger was thoroughly understood. In the days of the Plague, John Evelyn
was fully aware of the horrible conditions, and strongly inveighed
against the nuisances of smoke and dirt. It was recognised that the
existence of these filthy conditions had contributed to the spread of
the Plague, and that there was an ever-present danger so long as these
conditions remained; and yet, in spite of this knowledge, we find it
possible for an indictment such as this to be made as late as 1741:
=Source.=—Speech by Lord Tyrconnel, January 27, 1741, quoted
by Maitland, vol. i., p. 593.
The filth, Sir, of some parts of the town, and the inequality and
ruggedness of others, cannot but in the eyes of foreigners disgrace
our nation, and incline them to imagine us a people, not only
without delicacy, but without Government—a herd of barbarians, or a
colony of Hottentots. The most disgusting part of the character
given by travellers, of the most savage nations, is their neglect of
cleanliness, of which, perhaps, no part of the world affords more
proofs than the streets of London, a city famous for wealth,
commerce, and plenty, and for every other kind of civility and
politeness; but which abounds with such heaps of filth, as a savage
would look on with amazement. If that be allowed, which is generally
believed, that putrefaction and stench are causes of pestilential
distempers, the removal of this grievance may be pressed from
motives of far greater weight than those of delicacy and pleasure;
and I might solicit the timely care of this assembly, for the
preservation of innumerable multitudes; and intreat those who are
watching against slight misfortunes, to unite their endeavours with
mine, to avert the greatest and most dreadful calamities.
Not to dwell, Sir, upon dangers which may perhaps be thought only
imaginary, I hope that it will be at least considered how much the
present neglect of the pavement is detrimental to every carriage,
whether of trade or pleasure, or convenience; and that those who
have allowed so much of their attentions to petitions relating to
the roads of the kingdom, the repair of some of which is almost
every session thought of importance sufficient enough to produce
debates in this House, will not think the streets of the capital
alone unworthy of their regard. That the present neglect of
cleansing and paving the streets is such as ought not to be borne;
that the passenger is everywhere either surprised and endangered by
unexpected chasms, or offended and obstructed by mountains of filth,
is well known to everyone that has passed a single day in this great
City; and, that this great grievance is without a remedy, is a
sufficient proof that no magistrate has, at present, power to remove
it; for every man's private regard to his own ease and safety would
incite him to exert his authority on this occasion.
THE LOYALTY OF THE LONDON MERCHANTS
(1743).
The position of the mercantile interests on occasions of political or
dynastic complications is made quite clear by the following letter. The
merchants of London were in no way influenced by the sentimental or
other considerations which induced a number of Englishmen to support a
Stuart Pretender at a time when the country had experienced half a
century of steady and prosperous government, free from the difficulties
which had always been associated with the Stuart monarchs; and the
protestations of personal loyalty to George II. may be understood to
signify a determination to adhere to the established system of
aristocratic government, and to run no risk of a return to the
disturbances and distractions which marked the seventeenth century.
=Source.=—Document quoted by Maitland, vol. i., p. 634.
We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the merchants of
your City of London, having observed, by your Majesty's most
gracious message to your parliament, that designs are carrying on by
your Majesty's enemies, in favour of a popish pretender, to disturb
the peace and quiet of these your Majesty's kingdoms, think it our
indispensable duty, not to omit this opportunity of expressing our
just resentment and indignation at so rash an attempt.
We have too lively a sense of the happiness we enjoy in our religion
and liberties under your Majesty's mild and auspicious reign, and of
the flourishing condition of our trade and commerce, even in the
midst of war, under your paternal care and vigilance, not to give
your Majesty the strongest assurance of our highest gratitude for
such invaluable blessings; nor can we doubt, but by the blessing of
God upon your Majesty's arms, and the unanimous support of your
faithful subjects, the attempts of your enemies will recoil upon
themselves, and end in their own confusion.
We therefore humbly beg leave to declare to your Majesty our
unshaken resolution, that we will, on this critical conjuncture,
exert our utmost endeavours for the support of public credit, and at
all times hazard our lives and fortunes, in defence of your
Majesty's sacred person and government, and for the security of the
protestant succession in your Royal Family.
THE GORDON RIOTS (1780).
The Gordon Riots were the most formidable popular rising of the
eighteenth century. In 1778 a Bill, brought forward by Sir George
Savile, for the relaxation of some of the harsher penal laws against
Catholics, passed almost unanimously through both Houses. Protestant
associations were formed in Scotland; a leader was found in Lord George
Gordon, a silly young man of twenty-eight years of age, and the
agitation spread to England. Mobs collected in London, and interfered
with the House of Commons; as they realised their strength, they
proceeded to various excesses, destroying Catholic churches and the
houses of prominent Romanists. The original objects of the agitation
were entirely lost sight of in the disturbances, which were merely the
unreasoning ravages of a wild mob. For five days the City was terrorised
by the rioters, who were at length dispersed by the military
authorities.
=Source.=—Boswell's _Life of Johnson_.
While Johnson was thus engaged in preparing a delightful literary
entertainment for the world, the tranquillity of the metropolis of
Great Britain was unexpectedly disturbed by the most horrid series
of outrages that ever disgraced a civilised country. A relaxation of
some of the severe penal provisions against our fellow subjects of
the Catholic communion had been granted by the legislature, with an
opposition so inconsiderable, that the genuine mildness of
Christianity, united with liberal policy, seemed to have become
general in this island. But a dark and malignant spirit of
persecution soon showed itself, in an unworthy petition for the
repeal of the wise and humane statute. That petition was brought
forward by a mob, with the evident purpose of intimidation, and was
justly rejected. But the attempt was accompanied and followed by
such daring violence as is unexampled in history. Of this
extraordinary tumult, Dr. Johnson has given the following concise,
lively, and just account in his "Letter to Mrs. Thrale."
"On Friday, the good Protestants met in Saint George's-Fields, at
the summons of Lord George Gordon, and marching to Westminster,
insulted the Lords and Commons, who all bore it with great tameness.
At night the outrages began by the demolition of the Mass-house by
Lincoln's Inn. An exact journal of a week's defiance of government I
cannot give you. On Monday, Mr. Strahan, who had been insulted,
spoke to Lord Mansfield (who had, I think, been insulted too) of the
licentiousness of the populace; and his lordship treated it as a
very slight irregularity. On Tuesday night they pulled down
Fielding's house, and burnt his goods in the street. They had
gutted, on Monday, Sir George Savile's house, but the building was
saved. On Tuesday evening, leaving Fielding's ruins, they went to
Newgate to demand their companions, who had been seized demolishing
the chapel. The keeper could not release them but by the Mayor's
permission, which he went to ask; at his return he found all the
prisoners released, and Newgate in a blaze. They then went to
Bloomsbury, and fastened upon Lord Mansfield's house, which they
pulled down; and as for his goods, they totally burnt them. They
have since gone to Caenwood, but a guard was there before them. They
plundered some Papists, I think, and burnt a mass-house in
Moorfields the same night.
"On Wednesday I walked with Dr. Scot to look at Newgate, and found
it in ruins, with the fire yet glowing. As I went by, the
Protestants were plundering the Sessions House at the Old Bailey.
There were not, I believe, a hundred; but they did their work at
leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without trepidation,
as men lawfully employed in full day. Such is the cowardice of a
commercial place. On Wednesday they broke open the Fleet, and the
King's Bench, and the Marshalsea, and Wood St. Compter, and
Clerkenwell Bridewell, and released all the prisoners.
"At night they set fire to the Fleet, and to the King's Bench, and I
know not how many other places; and one might see the glare of
conflagration fill the sky from many parts. The sight was dreadful.
Some people were threatened. Mr. Strahan advised me to take care of
myself. Such a time of terror you have been happy in not seeing.
"The King said in Council 'that the magistrates had not done their
duty, but that he would do his own'; and a proclamation was
published directing us to keep our servants within doors, as the
peace was now to be preserved by force. The soldiers were sent out
to different parts, and the town is now (June 9) at quiet.
"The soldiers are stationed so as to be everywhere within call:
there is no longer any body of rioters, and the individuals are
hunted to their holes, and led to prison; Lord George was last night
sent to the Tower. Mr. John Wilkes was this day in my neighbourhood,
to seize the publisher of a seditious paper.
"Several chapels have been destroyed, and several inoffensive
Papists have been plundered, but the high sport was to burn the
gaols. This was a good rabble trick. The debtors and the criminals
were all set at liberty; but of the criminals, as has always
happened, many are already retaken; and two pirates have surrendered
themselves, and it is expected that they will be pardoned.
"Government now acts again with its proper force; and we are all
under the protection of the King, and the law. I thought that it
would be agreeable to you and my master to have my testimony to the
public security; and that you would sleep more quietly when I told
you that you were safe.
"There has, indeed, been a universal panic, from which the King was
the first that recovered. Without the concurrence of his ministers,
or the assistance of the civil magistrates, he put the soldiers in
motion, and saved the town from calamities, such as a rabble's
government must naturally produce.
"The public has escaped a very heavy calamity. The rioters attempted
the Bank on Wednesday night, but in no great number; and, like other
thieves, with no great resolution. Jack Wilkes headed the party that
drove them away. It is agreed that if they had seized the Bank on
Tuesday, at the height of the panic, when no resistance had been
prepared, they might have carried irrecoverably away whatever they
had found. Jack who was always zealous for order and decency,
declares that if he be trusted with power, he will not leave a
rioter alive. There is, however, now no longer any need of heroism
or bloodshed; no blue riband is any longer worn.
"Such was the end of this miserable sedition, from which London was
delivered by the magnanimity of the Sovereign himself. Whatever some
may maintain, I am satisfied that there was no combination or plan,
either domestic or foreign; but that the mischief spread by a
gradual contagion of frenzy, augmented by the quantities of
fermented liquors, of which the deluded populace possessed
themselves in the course of their depredations."
THE TRADE OF LONDON IN 1791.
The following account of London's trade at the end of the eighteenth
century is, of course, concerned with the manufacturing and commercial
activity of the whole country as well as with the particular work of
London; but the City was the chief port and centre of a trade which had
grown with marvellously rapid strides. The mechanical inventions in the
textile industries, the phenomenal growth of manufactures at this time,
the stimulus given to English trade by the disturbances on the
Continent, all assisted in an amazing development of commerce, of which
London was the centre.
=Source.=—_The British Directory_, 1791.
The commerce of the world being in perpetual fluctuation, we can
never be too watchful, not only for preserving what we are now in
possession of, but for availing ourselves of the mistakes or
negligences of other nations, in order to acquire new branches of
it. Who could have imagined, three hundred years ago, that those
ports of the Levant, from whence, by means of the Venetians,
England, and almost all the rest of Christendom, were supplied with
the spices, drugs, etc., of India and China, should one day come
themselves to be supplied with those very articles by the remote
countries of England and Holland, at an easier rate than they were
used to have them directly from the East; or that Venice should
afterwards lose to Lisbon the lucrative trade of supplying the rest
of Europe with them; or lastly, that Lisbon should afterwards lose
the same to Amsterdam; or that Amsterdam and Haerlem should
gradually lose, as in great part they have done, their famous and
fine linen manufactures to Ireland and Scotland? At present, our
woollen manufacture is the noblest in the universe; and second to it
is our metallic manufacture of iron, steel, tin, copper, lead, and
brass, which is supposed to employ upwards of half a million of
people. Our unmanufactured wool alone, of one year's produce or
growth, has been estimated to be worth two millions sterling; and,
when manufactured, it is valued at six millions more, and is thought
to employ upwards of a million of our people in its manufacture;
whereas in former times all our wool was exported unmanufactured,
and our own people remained unemployed. Even within the three last
centuries, the whole rental or value of all the lands and houses in
England did not exceed five millions; but by the spirited exertions
of the City of London, seconded by the merchants of the principal
trading towns in the country, the rental of England is now estimated
at twenty millions per annum, or more; of which vast benefit our
nobility, gentry, and landholders begin to be fully sensible, by the
immense increase in the value or fee-simple of their lands, which
has gradually kept pace with the increase and value of our
commercial intercourse with foreign nations, of which the following
are at present the most considerable:
To Turkey we export woollen cloths, tin, lead, and iron, solely in
our own shipping; and bring from thence raw silk, carpets, galls,
and other dyeing ingredients, cotton, fruits, medicinal drugs, etc.
To Italy we export woollen goods of various kinds, peltry, leather,
lead, tin, fish, and East India merchandise; and bring back raw and
thrown silk, wines, oil, soap, olives, oranges, lemons,
pomegranates, dried fruits, colours, anchovies, etc.
To Spain we send all kinds of woollen goods, leather, lead, tin,
fish, corn, iron and brass manufactures, haberdashery wares,
assortments of linen from Germany and elsewhere for her American
colonies; and receive in return wines, oils, dried fruits, oranges,
lemons, olives, wools, indigo, cochineal, and other dyeing drugs,
colours, gold and silver coins, etc.
To Portugal we mostly send the same kind of merchandise as to Spain;
and make returns in vast quantities of wines, oils, salt, dried and
moist fruits, dyer's ingredients, and gold coins.
To France we export tobacco, lead, tin, flannels, horns, hardware,
Manchester goods, etc., and sometimes great quantities of corn; and
make our returns in wines, brandies, linens, cambrics, lace,
velvets, brocades, etc. But as a commercial treaty has so lately
taken place with France, added to the attention of its people being
drawn off from trade, and almost wholly engrossed with the
establishment of its late wonderful revolution, it is impossible to
state the relative operations of this trade at present.
To Flanders we send serges, flannels, tin, lead, sugars, and
tobacco; and make returns in fine lace, linen, cambrics, etc.
To Germany we send cloth and stuffs, tin, pewter, sugars, tobacco,
and East India merchandise; and bring from thence linen, thread,
goatskins, tinned plates, timbers for all uses, wines, and many
other articles.
To Norway we send tobacco and wollen stuffs; and bring from thence
vast quantities of deals and other timber.
To Sweden we send most of our home manufactures; and return with
iron, timber, tar, copper, etc.
To Russia we send great quantities of woollen cloths and stuffs,
tin, lead, tobacco, diamonds, household furniture, etc.; and make
returns in hemp, flax, linen, thread, furs, potash, iron, wax,
tallow, etc.
To Holland we send an immense quantity of different sorts of
merchandise, such as all kinds of woollen goods, hides, corn, coals,
East India and Turkey articles imported by those respective
companies, tobacco, tar, sugar, rice, ginger, and other American
productions; and return with fine linen, lace, cambrics, thread,
tapes, madder, boards, drugs, whalebone, train-oil, toys, and
various other articles of that country.
To America we still send our home manufactures of almost every kind;
and make our returns in tobacco, sugars, rice, ginger, indigo,
drugs, logwood, timber, etc.
To the coast of Guinea we send various sorts of coarse woollen and
linen goods, iron, pewter, brass, and hardware manufactures,
lead-shot, swords, knives, firearms, gunpowder, glass manufactures,
etc.; and bring home vast numbers of negro slaves, and gold dust,
dyeing and medicinal drugs, redwood, Guinea grains, ivory, etc.
To Arabia, Persia, East Indies, and China we send much foreign
silver coin and bullion, manufactures of lead, iron, and brass,
woollen goods, etc.; and bring home muslins, and cottons of various
kinds, calicoes, raw and wrought silk, chintz, teas, porcelain,
coffee, gold-dust, saltpetre, and many drugs for dyer's and
medicinal uses. These are exclusive of our trade to Ireland,
Newfoundland, West Indies, and many other of our settlements and
factories in different parts of the world, which likewise contribute
an immense annual return.