it is a substitute. A large portion of our daily food is used up in
supporting that internal fire by which the heat of the human body in
every climate, and under every variety of external temperature, is
maintained at the 98th degree of Fahrenheit. The greater the loss of
heat by cooling, the greater the amount of heat which the body itself
must generate to maintain its temperature at this elevated point. This
demand for additional heat cannot be supplied without additional
quantities of food, and unless these supplies are afforded, the
substance of the body itself, its very tissues and organs, are consumed;
a process which cannot be continued long without exhaustion, disease,
and death. The phrase “starved by cold” expresses a more literal fact
than is commonly understood. Unhappily the circumstances which deprive a
population of the means of counteracting cold limit also the supplies of
food at their command, and the pressure of the twofold privation, want
of food and want of fuel, commonly occurs at the very season when both
these indispensable supports of life are most needed. Some conception
may be formed of the suffering to which our ancestors were exposed from
this cause, from the fact that their prejudice against the use of coal
as an article of fuel was such that a law was passed rendering it a
capital offence to burn it within the City, and there is a record in the
Tower importing that a person was tried, convicted, and executed for
this offence in the reign of Edward the First. It was not until the
reign of Charles the First that there was a regular supply of coals to
London.
The habits of the people increased the force of these privations.
Intemperance was a national vice. Excessive carousing at home, or days
and nights spent in taverns, was the usual practice among all classes,
and the physical and moral evils resulting from the custom were neither
redeemed nor lessened by the epithet which these habitual convivialities
appear to have conferred upon the nation of “Merrie England.” Caius,
indeed, one of the most celebrated physicians of the sixteenth century,
couples Germany and the Netherlands with England in this common
reproach. “These three nations,” he says, “destroy more meats and
drynkes without all order, convenient time, reason, and necessitie, than
all other countries under the son, to the great annoyance of their
bodies and wittes.”
This condition of the country and this mode of life themselves
constitute the most powerful causes of epidemics; and an extraordinary
concurrence and concentration of these causes are manifested in the
combination of the circumstances which have been enumerated, namely, in
the malarious state of the greater part of the kingdom, in the confined
space of the towns, in the deficiency and putrescency of the food, in
the inadequacy of the means of protection from cold, and in the
intemperance of the people. These were the true sources of the malignity
and mortality of the pestilences of that age.
We have no reliable evidence of the actual mortality produced by these
terrible diseases; for no physician has left such an account of the
epidemics of which he was an eye-witness as enables us to determine it,
and there was no Registrar-General to fill up the momentous columns
included in his death-roll. We can therefore only take the statements of
the time as we find them.
According to the accounts of contemporary writers, the Black Death swept
away, within the space of four years, a fourth part of the population of
Europe. Some towns in England are stated to have lost two-thirds of
their inhabitants, and it is computed that one-half of the entire
population of the country perished.
Of the Sweating Sickness, Bacon says it “destroyed infinite persons;”
Stowe “a wonderful number;” and other writers reckon the deaths in the
places attacked by thousands.
Similar representations are given of the ravages of the Plague, of the
Petechial Fever, and even occasionally of Intermittent Fever; and the
substantial correctness of these statements is confirmed by entries in
parish registers still extant, which tell the story of the local
outbreaks of those days with graphic and touching simplicity.
During some of the worst of these visitations, contemporary writers
concur in stating that the living were insufficient to bury the dead;
business was suspended; the courts of law were closed; the churches were
deserted for want of a sufficient number of clergy to perform the
service; and ships were seen driving about on the ocean and drifting on
shore, whose crews had perished to the last man.
We can form no adequate conception of the terror inspired by these
events. We have seen alarm in our own day, but then it bordered on
maniacal despair. It seemed as if the last judgment had come upon the
world, and men abandoned alike their possessions and their friends. The
rich gave up their treasures and laid them at the foot of the altars;
neighbour abandoned neighbour; parents their offspring, and brothers
their sisters. “If” says one of the chroniclers, “in a circle of friends
any one only by a single word happened to bring the plague to mind,
first one and then another of the company was seized with a tormenting
anguish; certain that they were attacked with a mortal sickness, they
slunk away home, and there soon yielded up the ghost.”
These fearful forms of pestilence were accompanied by moral epidemics
more appalling than the physical. Of these the two following may serve
as examples:—
Vast assemblages of men and women formed circles hand in hand, dancing,
leaping, shouting, insensible to external impressions; some seeing
visions and spirits whose names they shrieked out; others in epileptic
convulsions with foaming at the mouth; all continuing to make the most
violent muscular exertions for hours together, until they fell to the
ground in a state of exhaustion. Lookers-on were seized with an
uncontrollable impulse to join in these wild revels. Peasants left their
ploughs, mechanics their workshops, servants their masters, boys and
girls their parents, women their domestic duties, and men their
business, thus to spend days and nights; these infatuated crowds passing
furiously through streets, along highways, over fields, and from town to
town. This madness pervaded the least barbarous countries of Europe for
upwards of two centuries, under the name of the “Dancing Mania.” It was
universally attributed to demoniacal possession, and its cure was
attempted by exorcism. It was one expression and outlet of the violent
passions of that time, imposture and profligacy playing principal parts
in this strange drama.
More pernicious than this madness was the mania of cruelty, an especial
manifestation of which was the ferocious persecution of the Jews, who
were put to death by hundreds and thousands, under the accusation that
they had poisoned the wells. At Basle a number of this nation, whose
European history proves them to have been everywhere amongst the most
inoffensive of the people, were enclosed in a wooden building and burnt
with it. At Strasburg two thousand were burnt alive. Whoever showed them
compassion and endeavoured to protect them were put upon the rack and
burnt with them. In numerous instances these unhappy people, driven to
despair, assembled in their own habitations, to which they set fire and
consumed themselves with their families. The noble and the mean bound
themselves by an oath to extirpate them from the face of the earth by
fire and sword.
In England this relentless cruelty took particularly the shape of
burning innocent people under the name of witches; an infatuation which
pervaded all classes from the highest to the lowest, affording a
melancholy exemplification of the close alliance between credulity and
cruelty.[13]
Footnote 13:
The number of wretched beings condemned and executed for this
imaginary crime at the Assizes of Suffolk and Essex alone, in the year
1646, amounted to two hundred. Dr Zachary Gray affirms that he had
seen an authentic account of persons who had so suffered in the whole
of England, amounting to from three to four thousand. So late as the
year 1697 seven persons, three men and four women, were burnt at
Paisley for this alleged crime. We seldom sufficiently consider how
near we are to those times of dreadful superstition and cruelty! How
short a period it is since the light of a brighter day dawned upon us!
But in the midst of these terrible disorders, changes which had been in
silent operation during several centuries began to produce visible
results. The independent power of the nobles had been suppressed; the
feuds that raged between them, filling the country with disorder and
bloodshed, had been put down; the supremacy of the law had been
established; property and life had become more secure; industry had
taken a surprising start; the practical abolition of serfdom had been to
a large extent effected; and at last came the final breaking up of the
feudal system in the reign of Henry VII. by the passing of the law
authorizing the alienation of land.
About the middle of the fifteenth century improvements in the condition
of the people, which had been gradually effected by these changes, were
accelerated by a succession of events that gave an extraordinary impulse
to the human mind, just aroused from the long and deep sleep of the
middle ages—that dark night which was now passing away.
Among the most memorable of these was the invention of printing, which
the three immortal masters of the art had now completed (1436–1442),
giving untiring and undying wings to thought;—
The diffusion over the West of Europe of the remains of a former
civilization, by the dispersion of the treasures of classical art,
literature, and science, which before Constantinople fell into the hands
of barbarians (1453) had been confined within the walls of that city;—
The cessation of the long and disastrous struggle between the East and
the West, by the expulsion of the Moors from Spain (1492);—
The discovery of the New World;—
And lastly, the Reformation, that stupendous work which with giant
strength burst asunder the chain which consummate skill and supreme
power had spent ages in forging and riveting: that stupendous work,
which was not merely emancipation from spiritual bondage, but the
re-communication of the long-lost spirit of religion; the noble men who
achieved it being ever, even in their day of triumph, less intent on
demolishing the gorgeous edifice that had held the mind enthralled, than
on erecting a pure temple in which it might worship with sincerity and
freedom.
The time when the foundation was laid for this intellectual and
spiritual renovation was also that of the commencement of physical
improvement. The towns being no longer fortresses, it became unnecessary
to maintain their fortifications. Walls were thrown down; stagnant moats
were filled up; broader streets were opened; more convenient houses were
erected. Forests were cleared; marshes and swamps were drained; more
land was brought under cultivation; more vegetable matter was produced;
the art of collecting, storing, and preserving fodder was discovered.
Fresh meat became the food of the people during a longer period of the
year; in the course of two centuries the length of that period had
doubled, and at last such food was in use the whole winter. The products
of growing art and manufacture superseded the beds of straw and
displaced the floors of rushes. Famines ceased. There has been no
recurrence of famine in England since the middle of the 15th century
(1448). The proportion of people in the enjoyment of moderate competence
rapidly increased. It is computed that in the 16th century the number of
small freeholders realizing a clear income of between £60 and £70 a-year
amounted with their families to one-seventh of the whole population, and
that the number of persons who tilled their own land was greater than
the number of those who farmed the land of others.[14]
Footnote 14:
Macaulay’s History, Vol. I. Chap. III.
In the next century the care of the Public Health became a recognized
and direct object of the Legislature and the Magistracy. Better
regulations were enforced in the metropolis for the removal of filth,
for the construction and extension of sewers, and for widening, paving,
and lighting the streets. In the middle of this century the Great Fire
(1666) consumed 13,000 houses and left an open space of upwards of a
square mile. This opportunity of improvement was not lost. Though in
rebuilding the city the same lines of streets were preserved, and the
streets were still kept much too narrow, yet there was some improvement
in the general plan, while the houses were built of better materials;
brick was substituted for wood and plaster, and the buildings were less
crowded and less projecting.
The spirit of improvement thus awakened exerted itself with increased
effect during the whole of the eighteenth century. Agriculture, which
was now rapidly advancing, had created a demand for town refuse, the
fertilizing property of which began to be perceived; so that all manner
of offensive substances were regularly carried away to the fields, to
the great increase of the cleanliness of the streets. At the same time
many of the narrower streets were widened, the houses were entirely
taken down and rebuilt, and in this operation slate was universally
substituted for thatch, and brick for timber. The pavement also, which
had long been the reproach of London, was improved. Population in the
mean time rapidly increased, less by the relative increase of the number
of births than by the proportionate decrease of the deaths, and this
notwithstanding the occasional occurrence of severe pestilence. The
result of the whole was an increase in the length of life.
An increase in the length of life is an expression and a measure of the
sum of comfort experienced from the whole collective circumstances that
make up national prosperity. In the interval between the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries that sum grew into a highly important one. Of this
the proof is positive.
It happened that in the year 1693 a loan was raised for the service of
the State by the method of Tontine, and that another was contracted by
the same method in the year 1790; the interval being almost exactly a
century.
The term Tontine is derived from the name of the originator of this
scheme of life annuity, the principle of which is this. The person who
advances £100 is at liberty to name any life he pleases, during the
existence of which he draws a certain annuity; and as the shares of the
dead nominees are distributed among the living ones, the annuity
continually increases till the last survivor gets the whole income.
A comparison of the experience between two Tontines gives the exact
measure of the effect produced on the duration of life, by such changes
in the social condition of the people as may have occurred in the
interval between them.
A person of the male sex (for there is a considerable difference in the
results in the two sexes), living in 1793, compared with a male living
in 1690, at fifteen years of age, had gained an expectation of life of
nearly ten years; at twenty years of age, nine years and a half; at
twenty-five years of age, upwards of eight years; at thirty years of
age, upwards of seven years, and so on.
Or the gain in the expectation of life may be stated more correctly in
years, thus: Take for example a man at the age of 30, in 1693 his
expectation of life would have been 26.665; in 1790 it would have been
33.775 years.
On this evidence Mr Finlaison justly observes that civilization could
not have increased by a single leap in the time of Mr Pitt, but must
have been slowly on the increase at least since the days of Queen Anne.
We may then fairly conclude, that in the interval between the close of
the 17th and 18th centuries human life gained an addition equivalent to
a fourth part of its whole term. What has it gained in the succeeding
century? What has been the increase in the value of life in this first
half of the century in which we ourselves have lived? Though
unfortunately we can appeal to the results of no renewed tontine to
enable us to answer this question with exactness,[15] yet there are not
wanting evidences that the value of life continues progressively to
increase. It must necessarily continue to increase, because the main
conditions on which life and health depend have experienced, during the
whole of the present century, an expansion and improvement, on which no
former age presents a parallel. It will be sufficient to establish this
fact, to glance at what has been effected within this period in the
multiplication and diffusion of the three primary necessaries of
existence—food, clothing, and fuel.
Such has been the increased production of food during the present
century, that the quantity now raised maintains ten millions more human
beings than existed at its commencement; for on the first enumeration of
the people in 1801 the population of Great Britain was eleven millions;
in 1851, it was twenty-one millions.[16]
Footnote 15:
Considering that there appears to be no objection in principle to the
method of raising a loan by Tontine, and that the scheme is a popular
one, it seems highly desirable that we should continue this means of
measuring with positive exactness the results of our advancing
civilization.
Footnote 16:
According to Mr Rickman, from the best information that can be
obtained from Doomsday Book, the population of England in the time of
William the Conqueror was 1½ millions.
In the reign of Edward the Third (1377), when a poll-tax was imposed
on all persons of both sexes above fourteen, it was 2½ millions.
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, at the period of the Spanish Armada,
it was 4 millions.
According to Mr Finlaison, at the close of the 16th century it was
somewhat under 5 millions two hundred thousand.
According to Mr Rickman, on a computation founded on the return of
Baptisms, as stated in the Abstract of Parish Registers, it was in
1700, 5½ millions; in 1750, 6½ millions; and in 1770, 7½ millions.
The first actual enumeration was made in 1801. The following table
exhibits the rate of increase in the population of Great Britain from
that time up to the enumeration in 1851:
┌──────┬────────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ │ │ INCREASE │ ANNUAL │
│YEARS.│POPULATION. │ Each │ RATE │
│ │ │Decennial │ of │
│ │ │ Period. │ Increase │
│ │ │ │per cent. │
├──────┼────────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
│ 1801 │ 10,917,433 │ │ │
│ 1811 │ 12,424,120 │1,506,687 │ 1.274 │
│ 1821 │ 14,402,643 │1,978,523 │ 1.489 │
│ 1831 │ 16,564,138 │2,161,495 │ 1.408 │
│ 1841 │ 18,813,786 │2,249,648 │ 1.279 │
│ 1851 │ 21,121,967 │2,308,181 │ 1.186 │
└──────┴────────────┴──────────┴──────────┘
This increased production of food consists chiefly of grain, green
crops, and garden vegetables, countless in variety, and highly
nutritious and grateful, completely reversing the nature of the national
subsistence compared with that of former times, and giving to the masses
of the people a constant and unfailing supply, winter and summer, of
fresh vegetable nutriment.
This increased production of food is mainly of home growth, for the
supply of wheat from foreign sources would scarcely suffice to afford to
each person two gallons of flour annually.
This increased production has been obtained partly by a progressive
increase in the quantity of land brought under cultivation, which now
amounts for the United Kingdom to upwards of 40,000,000 of acres, by far
the greater part of which is employed in the production of human food;
and partly by the employment of capital in the improvement of the soil,
by which large tracts that a few years ago were wholly sterile, or
deemed incapable of producing wheat, now yield some of the finest grain
in England.[17]
Footnote 17:
“In 1821 almost the only grain produced in the Fens of
Cambridgeshire consisted of oats; since then, by draining and
manuring, the capability of the soil has been so changed that these
fens now produce some of the finest wheat that is grown in England;
and this more costly grain now constitutes the main dependence of
the farmers in a district where 14 years ago its produce was
scarcely attempted.”—_Porter’s Progress of the Nation._
This increased fertility of the soil renders it more healthy by
diminishing its moisture and raising its temperature. One cubic foot of
water in the process of evaporation deprives three millions of cubic
feet of air of one degree of temperature. An undrained field growing
rushes has a permanent temperature from four to six degrees lower than
an adjoining field drained and growing wheat. By draining and manuring,
by throwing down fences, by removing trees, by clearing underwood, and
by promoting the free aëration of the soil, the temperature of large
tracts of land in the north of England has been permanently raised three
degrees. Thus that very culture of the earth, by which it is made to
yield the largest amount of food, increases its salubrity as an abode
for man, and lessens at their source the main causes of epidemics.
This increased production has been obtained by a proportionally small
addition to labour; for while the quantity of land brought under
cultivation, and its produce, have been increasing at a rate of which
there is no similar example in any age or country, the relative number
of persons employed in agriculture has been as steadily decreasing. As
long as the labour of a man applied to the cultivation of the soil is
capable of producing only a bare subsistence for himself, there can be
no advance in civilization. But when two men can produce subsistence for
three, the labour of the third can be set free for the production of
surplus articles, which add to the sum of the general convenience, and
from that moment the community takes a start in the career of
improvement. From a comparison of occupations taken in 1831, it appears
that, at that time, the division of labour among the people was such
that one person raised nearly all the food of home production consumed
by four persons.[18]
Footnote 18:
Porter’s Progress of the Nation, Chap. III.
Were the remaining three idle? Mediately or immediately they were
engaged in producing clothing, or fuel, or machinery, economizing the
production of both; and busily and well they worked.
In number they exceed one million and a half. Taking into account the
accessory occupations, indeed, no fewer than one million two hundred
thousand are employed on one single material alone, namely cotton. For
these workers, at the beginning of the century, there were imported
yearly 56 millions of pounds of cotton: at present the annual
importation of it exceeds 550 millions of pounds. These workers in 1820
were assisted in their operations by fourteen thousand power-looms; at
present they are assisted by three hundred thousand power-looms, besides
twenty-five millions of spindles;[19] while each power-loom,
superintended by an adult assisted by a child, completes weekly twenty
times the amount of work which the hand-loom is capable of producing.
The increase of production is of course enormous, and the effect is a
progressive cheapening of the articles manufactured, reducing the price
of some of them tenfold, and placing them within the reach of the
poorest classes:[20] articles of clothing not only conducive to health
through warmth, but almost equally so through cleanliness; for they are
almost all composed of such tissues and textures as favour and compel
frequent washing.
Footnote 19:
Return to the House of Commons by the Factory Inspectors, of the
Number of Cotton, Woollen, Worsted, Flax, and Silk Factories subject
to the Factories Acts in the United Kingdom, page 21.
Footnote 20:
The cheapness of some of these ornamental as well as useful fabrics is
calculated to excite astonishment. A yard of platt net is worth from
20s. to £5; a yard of plain net may be bought for one shilling.