SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS.
(1760-1801.)
The first forty-one years of the reign are marked by important social
and economic changes, some of which began earlier, and some were not
fully carried out till later. Though the cursory review of them
attempted in this chapter will extend beyond the date which we have
already reached, it seems time to say something of such matters, and a
look ahead will make the later narrative more complete and intelligible.
With the painful exception of a deterioration in the condition of the
poor, these changes were for the better. Manners became more decent,
pity was more easily evoked by human suffering, and culture more widely
diffused. Moral improvement may be traced to a revival of practical
religion and to a general reaction from the artificial cast of thought
of earlier days, while as forces on the same side may be reckoned the
influence of the king and, in a greater degree, that exercised by a
number of distinguished men such as Johnson and Burke. Ideas elaborated
and propounded by French philosophers shook the smug satisfaction of the
world in what was hard, shallow, and insincere, and combined with the
stress of a great war to complete the slow progress of a change in
English taste. After long hesitation literature and art finally turned
from unreality and convention, and drew inspiration direct from nature.
As regards material progress, manufactures and commerce were enormously
increased by the use of mechanical inventions, and the productive power
of the soil by improvements in agriculture. The conditions of industry
changed and, as must ever be the case, industrial revolution brought
suffering on the poor.
The highest class still formed a small and close society; there was no
doubt as to who belonged to it and no chance for an outsider to push his
way into it. The members of it were so thoroughly acquainted with one
another's doings that invitations to dinner were often given only two
days beforehand, and with even shorter notice. They had enormous
authority, both political and social. Entirely independent of public
opinion, those of them who loved vice or frivolity indulged their tastes
without shame or measure. Gambling, the fashionable folly, was carried
to an extraordinary height, especially between 1772 and 1776. At
Brooks's the stakes at quinze were not less than L50, and there was
often L10,000 on the table. Gamesters exchanged their rich clothes for
frieze coats, covered their lace ruffles with leather cuffs, and
shielded their eyes by high-crowned hats with broad brims. Fox
squandered L140,000, chiefly at play, by the time he was twenty-five,
and his brother Stephen lost L20,000 at a sitting. Among the older
gamesters were Lord Masham, too poor for such folly, the wicked Lowther,
witty George Selwyn, and his associate, Lord March, afterwards Duke of
Queensberry, Fox's instructor in vice, the "old Q." who in the next
century as he sat in his favourite place above the porch of his house in
Piccadilly presented to the passers-by the embodiment of the iniquities
of an older generation. Ladies were not less given to play than men.
Duchesses at Bath, the "paradise of doctors and gamesters," set an
example which the vice-regal court at Dublin professed to imitate by
spending whole nights at unlimited half-guinea loo.
There was no redeeming side to this gambling; it was a sordid struggle
for money. At Brooks's in 1781 Fox, in partnership with some allies,
kept the bank at faro as a regular business, one partner relieving
another, and play going on continuously night and day. As the dealer and
the partners could be seen at work through the open windows of the club,
one can scarcely wonder that Fox's faro-bank was a sore point with the
opposition. He won largely, then lost, and finally was L30,000 "worse
than nothing". Idlers in St. James's street were amused by watching the
Jews as they packed his clothes and books and carted them off from his
lodgings. The next year the king was forced to make him a secretary of
state. Though gambling continued common, it became less extravagant and
was more widely condemned. In 1796, when the war with France was
sobering people, some ladies of rank created a scandal by keeping a
faro-bank at their houses. Chief-justice Kenyon threatened the pillory,
and Gillray expressed and stimulated public opinion by a caricature
representing two of "Faro's daughters" in that position. One of them,
Lady Buckinghamshire, and two of her associates, were fined the next
year for unlawful gaming. Fox and other gamesters of the wild time
supplemented the faro-bank by betting at Newmarket. It was a notable
period in the history of the turf, for many great men, specially of the
whig party, were eager and judicious breeders. Such were the king's
uncle, Cumberland, the breeder of Eclipse, Grafton, Rockingham,
Egremont, Richmond, and Sir Charles Bunbury, whose horse Diomed won the
first Derby race in 1780. The professional bookmaker was not yet, and
racing, though used for betting purposes, was free from some evils which
grew up later. The sport was popular, and in 1784 as many as 500 plates
were raced for annually.
[Sidenote: _EXCESSIVE DRINKING._]
Excessive drinking was common in society. Since the Methuen treaty of
1703 port was the wine most drunk. A genuine port cost about two
shillings a bottle, but the wine was largely adulterated on importation,
and one stingy lord is said to have recommended his guests to drink his
port instead of a more expensive wine by assuring them that he knew that
it was good as he made it himself.[178] Men would constantly drink two
bottles of port apiece at a sitting, and sometimes three and even more,
and would appear in parliament, in the theatre, or in a drawing-room in
a state of drunkenness. A treaty with France in 1786 largely increased
the consumption of French wines, but this change, which favoured
sobriety, was ended by the war. Nevertheless, drunkenness was less
general than earlier in the century, and, except in the Prince of
Wales's set, seems to have decreased during the war with France. Duels
were frequent, and, though towards the end of our period they were
increasingly condemned by religious people, they were approved of by
society at large. For some time men of fashion dressed in velvets and
silks of various hues, but during the American war Fox, once the most
extravagant of "macaronis," and his friends showed their political
sympathies by carelessness in dress, and their example was largely
followed. Men's dress, however, did not decline until about 1793 when
the whigs imitated the severity affected by the French republicans. Wigs
were discarded early in the reign, except by professional men, and
hair-powder began to fall out of fashion by the end of the century.
Then, too, ladies' dress became more simple, chiefly because
improvements in the textile manufactures provided them with materials at
once simple and pleasing.
Besides the ordinary amusements of society, fashionable people
frequented public assemblies, of which those at Ranelagh were longest in
vogue. The company at Vauxhall was more mixed. People of the
shop-keeping and lower classes enjoyed themselves in the numerous
pleasure resorts about London, such as Mary-le-bone gardens, Islington,
and Sadler's Wells. Theatres were well attended and the increase of
public decency is illustrated by the disappearance from the stage of the
coarseness of earlier times. It was the golden age of the drama; for it
saw the acting of Macklin and Garrick, of Mrs. Siddons, "the tragic
muse," and her brother John Kemble, of Mrs. Abington, Miss Farren, "the
comic muse," afterwards Countess of Derby, and Mrs. Jordan. As
dramatists Home, Foote, Colman, and Cumberland deserve to be mentioned;
and Goldsmith and Sheridan wrote comedies which, while belonging to
acting drama, adorn English literature. Among less respectable
amusements bull-baiting was confined to the lowest class. An attempt to
render it illegal was defeated in parliament in 1800, chiefly through
the opposition of Windham. Cock-fighting, though widely condemned, was
practised even by gentlemen, chiefly as a means of betting. Exhibitions
of combats with swords became extinct, and made way for the scarcely
less dangerous prize-fights of bruisers which from about 1788 became
extremely popular.
Foreign travel, which earlier was almost confined to the "grand tour"
made by rich young men as part of their education, increased greatly
before the revolutionary war, and travelling in England became more
general as the means of communication were improved. In 1760 English
roads were little better than they were a century before, mere
trackways, which in parts were sloughs in winter and scored with deep
ruts in summer. Travelling over them was slow and often dangerous. The
"flying-machine," or coach, between London and Sheffield was fully three
days on its journey. During the first fourteen years of the reign 452
acts were passed for repairing roads, but for some time little progress
was made. Many and bitter are the complaints made by Arthur Young, the
eminent agriculturist, of the roads on which he travelled in 1769-70.
One turnpike road was a bog with a few flints scattered on top, another
full of holes and deep ruts, while "of all the cursed roads which ever
disgraced this kingdom" that between Tilbury and Billericay was, he
says, the worst, and so narrow that when he met a waggon, the waggoner
had to crawl between the wheels to come to help him lift his chaise over
a hedge. During the last quarter of the century a vast change was
effected; good roads became general, and coaches with springs and
otherwise well appointed ran between London and most considerable towns,
and between one large town and another. From 1784 many of these coaches
carried the mails, and letters posted in Bath were delivered in London
seventeen hours later.
[Sidenote: _POETRY._]
The wider outlook acquired by travel contributed to an increase of
intellectual activity, and improved means of internal communication
assisted the dissemination of books. People read more; many instructive
books met with a large sale, and circulating libraries were established
in the larger towns. In literature the period is marked by an advance in
the transition from artificiality of thought, and still more of
expression, to what was natural and spontaneous. Antiquity began to
attract, and romanticism gradually gained ground. Thomson, who led the
flight of poetry from the gilded house of bondage, wrote at an earlier
time than ours. For us the new feeling is illustrated by the popularity
of _Ossian_, Bishop Percy's _Reliques_, Gray's romantic lyrics, and the
pseudo-antique poems of Chatterton, a Bristol lad who killed himself in
1770. Goldsmith's poetry belongs to the old school, for he was a
follower of Johnson, a strenuous opponent of the new romanticism. The
poetry of Cowper, an ardent lover of nature, whose first volume appeared
in 1781, though usually conventional in expression, is always sincere
and sometimes exquisite. Crabbe, a story-teller and preacher, wrote some
true poetry, along with much that is prosaic: rarely moved by an
inspiration drawn from nature to desert the conventional couplet, he
nevertheless had something of the spirit of the new movement. In 1783
the artist-poet Blake began to write verse which is absolutely
untrammelled by convention, mystical, strange, and unequal. Three years
later a volume by Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland, contained
the outpouring of a passionate soul in musical verse, and in 1798, two
years after his death, the victory of the romantic school was secured by
the publication of the _Lyrical Ballads_ of Wordsworth and Coleridge,
though its triumph was not confirmed until a few years later.
By 1760 Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett had established the English
novel, though Smollett's master-piece, _Humphrey Clinker_, did not
appear until 1771, the year of his death. Fiction developed in various
directions. In _The Vicar of Wakefield_ Goldsmith, in spite of his
literary conservatism, portrayed manners and character with a perfectly
natural grace, and with a delightful delicacy of touch. Laurence Sterne,
the humorous and indecent prebendary of York, illustrates the prevalence
of sensibility in contemporary society in his _Tristram Shandy_ and the
_Sentimental Journey_. It is a curious characteristic of the time that
displays of emotion by men and women alike were reckoned as proofs of
genuine fineness of feeling. Sterne's sentiment and discursiveness found
several feeble imitators. The taste for antiquity was strong in Horace
Walpole, and his admiration for "the gothick," expressed in the pointed
windows and sham battlements of his house at Strawberry hill, inspired
his romance, _The Castle of Otranto_ (1764), which began the romantic
movement in fiction. To this movement, destined to be adorned by the
genius of Scott, belong Beckford's _Vathek_, Clara Reeve's _Old English
Baron_, and the once widely popular tales of mystery of Mrs. Radcliffe
and "Monk" Lewis, as he was called after his best-known romance (1795).
The novel of manners was developed by Fanny Burney's (Madame d'Arblay)
_Evelina_ (1778), founded on acute observation, dealing almost wholly
with every-day life, replete with satire, and written with extraordinary
freshness and vivacity. _Castle Rackrent_, the first of Maria
Edgeworth's Irish tales, appeared in the last year of the century.
Before its close, too, Jane Austen was writing novels which as yet could
find no publisher, though in their faultless execution, their delicate
humour, and their life-like representation of the society with which
their author was familiar they remain unrivalled.
[Sidenote: _SERIOUS PROSE WORKS._]
Of the writers of serious prose works, Johnson, as critic, moralist and
author, enjoyed until his death in 1784 a kind of literary dictatorship.
His greatest achievement, _The Lives of the English Poets_, belongs to
his later days. This delightful work pronounces with unfaltering
dogmatism judgments founded on canons of criticism which were accepted
in the then expiring age of Augustan literature. His _Life_ by his
satellite Boswell holds the first place among biographies as a triumph
of portraiture. The new interest in antiquity was fostered by the rise
of English historical writing. In the earliest years of the reign Hume
completed his _History of England_, which, though no longer regarded as
of scientific importance, is a fine example of literary treatment as
applied to history. A little later came Robertson's works, more
scholarly in their design, and written in a philosophic spirit and in
highly polished language. The work of one historian of the time is great
alike as a monument of learning and of literary faculty. The first
instalment of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ appeared
in 1766, the last in 1788. The grandeur of its conception, the orderly
method of its construction, the learning it displays, and the unflagging
pomp with which the historian presents his narrative, invest this book
with a pre-eminence in English historical literature which remains
beyond dispute. Other famous books of the time are Paley's theological
works, Sir William Blackstone's _Commentaries on the Laws of England_,
and Adam Smith's _Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ (1776).
Smith, while laying the foundations of political economy as a distinct
science, treated theories in relation to actual facts; his book was at
once accepted as a guide by statesmen, and largely inspired Pitt's
economic policy. As a political writer Burke carried rhetoric to the
sublimest heights in his _Reflections on the French Revolution_ and some
later works. Lord Chesterfield's _Letters_, many of them belonging to
the early years of the reign, are admirable for their wit and elegance,
but lack the special quality of the inimitable _Letters_ of Horace
Walpole, written on a countless number of topics, and treating them in a
manner which, though somewhat affected, is easy and singularly
appropriate to the writer's cast of mind. Of the Junius _Letters_
enough has been said; they are political articles, not parts of a
correspondence. Lastly, it would be unbecoming to omit here a notice,
however cursory, of Walpole's valuable though not always trustworthy
historical _Memoirs_.
The ecclesiastical architecture of the time was deplorable. Towards the
end of the century it was affected by the revolt from classicism in
literature; and a desire was manifested to desert the corrupt following
of classical models for Gothic art, but it was unaccompanied by taste or
knowledge, and the elder Wyatt's sins of destruction at Salisbury and
elsewhere have made his name a by-word. In secular architecture things
were better; Chambers, the architect of Somerset House, Robert Adam and
his brothers, architects of the Adelphi buildings, and the younger Wood
at Bath have left us works of considerable merit. In art, however, our
period is chiefly memorable as that of the development of the English
school of painting. Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of the great portrait
painters of the world, was in high repute in 1760, was the first
president of the Royal Academy, founded in 1768, and independently of
his work did much to raise the appreciation of art, for he was
universally respected. He started the famous literary club of which his
friends, Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, and other distinguished men, were
members. Scarcely inferior to Reynolds as a portrait-painter,
Gainsborough invested his subjects with wonderful grace, and Romney,
though not attaining to the height of these two, may be reckoned with
them as a master of his art. Before the end of our period Hoppner and
Lawrence were working in London and Raeburn in Edinburgh. The heavy debt
which English landscape painting owes to Wilson, who lived neglected,
has been acknowledged since his death. In that line Gainsborough was
unsurpassed; he was wholly free from classical tradition and, as in his
portrait work, interpreted nature as it presented itself to his own
artistic sense. By 1800 Girtin had laid the foundation of genuine
painting in water-colours, and Turner was entering on his earlier style,
working under the influence of old masters. Humble life and animals were
depicted by Morland, who was true to nature and a fine colourist. In the
treatment of historical subjects classical tradition long held an
undisputed sway; and the chief claim of West, once a fashionable artist,
on our remembrance is that he broke away from it in his best picture,
"The Death of Wolfe," painted in 1771, which represents his figures in
the uniforms they wore instead of dressed as Romans, a revolt which
caused no small stir.
Engraving on copper flourished, aided by the enterprise of Boydell, and
wood-engraving was brought to perfection by the brothers Bewick. In
sculpture, Flaxman, Nollekens, and Bacon did first-rate work. Music
alone of the arts really interested the king. The public taste was
stimulated by the establishment of Handel commemoration concerts; the
opera was well attended, and church music was enriched by some
distinguished composers. People of the upper and middle classes cared
far more for art of all kinds than in the earlier half of the century:
the rich bought the works of old Italian and French masters; exhibitions
of art were thronged, and articles of _virtu_ found a ready sale.
[Sidenote: _VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY._]
During the earlier years of the reign much interest in natural science
was aroused, probably through French influence. England soon came to the
front in scientific investigation. Among the principal contributors to
this movement were Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, and Black, of
latent heat; Cavendish, the investigator of air and water; Sir William
Herschel, the astronomer, who spent most of his life in England; Hutton,
the father of British geological science; Sir Joseph Banks, the
naturalist; Hunter, the "founder of scientific surgery"; and Jenner, who
in 1798 announced the protective power of vaccination against small-pox.
Science was aided by voyages of discovery, some of them of the highest
future importance in the history of the world, and in the extension of
the British empire. Between 1764 and 1768 come Commodore Byron's
fruitless voyage round the world, and the discovery of a large number of
islands in the South Pacific by Captains Wallis and Carteret. Cook's
three great voyages were made between 1768 and 1779. In the course of
them he sailed round New Zealand, explored the east coast of Australia
and the new Hebrides, discovered New Caledonia and the Sandwich islands,
and attempted to find a passage from the North Pacific round the north
of the American continent. In 1780 an expedition under Captain Bligh,
sent to transport bread-fruit trees from Otaheite to the West Indies for
acclimatisation, ended in the famous mutiny on board his ship, the
_Bounty_. To the last years of the century belong the voyages of Bass
and Flinders in Australian waters. Meanwhile Mackenzie descended the
river which bears his name to the Arctic ocean, and in 1770 Bruce, the
Abyssinian traveller, reached the sources of the Blue Nile.
Between 1760 and 1801 the national Church, the proper instrument of
national reformation, was passing through a period of transition. Its
vitality was somewhat injured by its controversy with the deists, and
still more by the action of the state. It was a powerful political
engine and as such it was used by statesmen. Convocations remained
silenced, and Church preferments were made to serve political ends and
were regarded both by clergy and laity as little more than desirable
offices. Clergymen begged bishoprics and deaneries of Newcastle with
unblushing importunity, sometimes even before the men they aspired to
succeed had breathed their last. Neither they, nor the ministers who
treated Church patronage as a means of strengthening their party, were
necessarily careless about religion. Newcastle and Hardwicke, for
example, were religious men, and the personal piety of some
preferment-seeking bishops is unquestioned. It was a matter in which the
Church was neither better nor worse than the age. The ecclesiastical
system was disorganised by plurality and non-residence; the dignified
clergy as a whole were worldly minded, and the greater number of the
rest were wretchedly poor. The Church was roused to a sense of its duty
to society by methodism and evangelicalism, two movements for a time
closely connected, though after 1784 methodism became a force outside
the church. By 1760 the persecution to which John Wesley and his
fellow-workers had sometimes been exposed was over, and methodism was
gaining ground. It very slightly touched aristocratic society, chiefly
through the efforts of the Countess of Huntingdon, who, in spite of her
quarrel with Wesley's party, must be regarded as one of the leaders of
the movement; its influence on the labouring class, specially in large
towns and in the mining districts, was strong, and it gained a
considerable hold on people of the middle class.
[Sidenote: _THE EVANGELICALS._]
Within the Church rapid progress was made by the evangelical movement.
Many of the earlier evangelical clergy were methodists, some workers
with Wesley, others preachers of Lady Huntingdon's "connexion" before
her secession in 1781. During the last two decades of the century the
evangelicals became distinct from the methodists and formed an
increasing body inside the Church. Among its clerical chiefs were
Romaine, Venn, Cecil, and Newton of Olney, the spiritual guide of many
of its leading adherents; it owed much to Lord Dartmouth's patronage,
Cowper's poetry presented its doctrine in a pleasing form, Hannah More
furthered its cause by her writings, and Wilberforce brought it into
connexion with political life. Only one of the avowed evangelical
clergy, Isaac Milner, Dean of Carlisle, received dignified preferment
before 1800, for the king was averse from "enthusiasm," and though
Pitt's Church appointments were eminently respectable, he does not seem
to have been guided in making them by any exalted consideration.
Whatever the failings of the evangelical party may have been, it
certainly exercised a strong and wholesome influence on the national
life, which was aided by the effects of the war with France. Not only
did the discipline of war sober the nation, but it also extended the
revolt against unreality which took place in the domains of literature
and art, to that of religion, and brought people to accept a teaching
which appealed more strongly to the heart than that of the older school
of clergy. While most of the work of the evangelicals lies outside our
subject, the character of its influence on society may be gathered from
their efforts for the suppression of the slave trade; from the stricter
observance of Sunday which became general towards the end of our period;
from their plans for bettering the condition, and their care for the
education of the poor. The institution of Sunday schools was largely due
to Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, who began his work in 1780. Six years
later some 200,000 children attended these schools, and in many cases
gained in them their only education. The work was encouraged by the king
and queen, and along with other efforts for the education of the poor
was helped forward by Hannah More, Wilberforce, and other evangelicals.
Apart from any religious movement, many laymen, among whom Burke holds a
high place, strove to soften the hardness and cruelty of the age. There
was need of their efforts. The criminal law was fearfully severe. Early
in the reign as many as 160 crimes were capital felonies, and the number
was constantly augmented. A theft of more than the value of twelve
pence by picking a pocket was punishable by death. This severity led to
an increase of crime. The injured would not prosecute, juries would not
convict on clear evidence, judges recommended to mercy, and criminals
were emboldened by the chances of escape. The heavy punishments attached
to light offences tended to multiply serious crimes; for a thief who
knew that he might be hanged was tempted to commit murder rather than be
caught. Though only about a fifth of the capital sentences were carried
out, executions were terribly numerous, especially between 1781 and
1787. In 1783, at two consecutive executions, twenty persons were hanged
together. Ninety-six were hanged at the Old Bailey in ten months in
1785, and at the Lent assizes of that year there were twenty-one capital
sentences at Kingston, twelve at Lincoln and sixteen at Gloucester, and
in each town nine persons were hanged. Executions were popular
spectacles; 80,000 persons are said to have been present at one at
Moorfields in 1767, and over 20,000 assembled at Tyburn in 1773 to see a
woman burnt--she was previously strangled at the stake--for the murder
of her husband. The ghastly procession to Tyburn was stopped in 1783,
and executions were ordered to be carried out in front of the prison;
and in 1790 the burning of women was abolished. Otherwise, in spite of
Burke's efforts, the criminal law was not materially ameliorated till
the next century. The punishment of the pillory was one of its worst
abuses. When inflicted for some popular act, such as libelling a
minister, the offender was treated as a hero, but if a man's crime
outraged the moral sense of the mob, he was exposed to horrible
barbarity. Two men were pelted to death, in 1763 and 1780, on the
pillory in London. After the second of these murders Burke brought the
matter before parliament; he was supported by Sir Charles Bunbury, who
quoted a similar case at Bury, but the punishment was not abolished.
Whipping was constantly inflicted, not merely on men but on women, and
in public as well as privately. The poor were brutalised by cruel and
indecent punishments, and were far too much under the power of
magistrates, some of them vicious and ignorant men, who had summary
jurisdiction in a large number of criminal cases.
[Sidenote: _PRISONS AND POLICE._]
The prisons were horrible dens in which felons and debtors, men and
women, old and young, were crowded together. Many of them had no
water-supply and very little air; some had no sewers, and where sewers
existed they were generally choked up. Great numbers died of gaol-fever
and small-pox. In about half the county gaols debtors had no allowance
of bread. Everywhere prisoners were exposed to extortion, and were
sometimes detained in gaol after acquittal for non-payment of the
gaolers' fees. Such was the state of things in 1773 when John Howard
began to inquire into the condition of the prisons. He roused the
attention of parliament and of the public to these abuses, and by 1779
some of the more flagrant of them were removed. He spent the remainder
of his life in efforts to reform the prisons, and accomplished much,
though much still remained to be done. After 1776 convicts could no more
be transported to America, and male convicts were kept in hulks on the
Thames and elsewhere. These hulks soon became overcrowded, and in 1784
the old system of assigning convicts to employers in different parts of
the British dominions oversea was again adopted. The evils of this
system were recognised, and it was decided to send criminals sentenced
to transportation to New South Wales. A government was established;
Captain Phillip, of the navy, was appointed governor, and in 1787 took
out the "first fleet" with convicts. He established a settlement at Port
Jackson, and founded a city which he called Sydney, after the then
secretary for home affairs. Such was the unworthy beginning of the
present magnificent colony of New South Wales.
The population outgrew the police system. Riots were frequent in times
of scarcity or popular excitement, and often could only be quelled by
soldiers. Throughout the whole of our period highwaymen infested the
roads; in 1774 Horace Walpole at Twickenham declared that it was
scarcely safe to venture out by day; Lady Hertford had been attacked on
Hounslow Heath at three in the afternoon. Some daring robberies, two of
them of mails, were effected in 1791. In the earlier years of the reign
smuggling was carried on with amazing audacity, specially on the south
and east coasts. It was calculated that 40,000 persons were engaged in
it by sea and land, and that two-thirds of the tea and half the brandy
consumed in England paid no duty. Bands of armed smugglers rode up to
London with their goods, and attempts to interfere with their trade were
fiercely and often successfully resisted. Smuggling, however, was
checked, as we shall see, by the wise policy of Pitt. The weakness of
the police caused an alarming increase of crimes against property;
footpads stopped carriages even in Grosvenor Square and Piccadilly, and
in 1792 the streets are said on good authority to have been unsafe by
night. With the exception of a few Bow street officers and some mounted
patrols, the only police in London were parish constables and the
watchmen, many of them old and decrepit. The magistracy of Middlesex had
largely fallen into the hands of men described by Burke as "the scum of
the earth," who used their office as a means of getting gain, and
frightful abuses were common.[179] In 1792 parliament established
stipendiary magistrates appointed by the crown for the London police
courts, and a few police officers were attached to each court. This
important reform would have been more effective if a larger number of
police had been placed under the orders of the new magistrates, for
after that date the police of London and its immediate neighbourhood
consisted of not more than 2,044 watchmen and patrols and 1,000
constables and other officers, of whom only 147 received pay and gave
their whole time to police work.[180]
The general belief that the trade of Great Britain would be ruined by
the loss of the American colonies was not justified. Between 1783 and
1800 her foreign trade and manufactures were developed at an
extraordinary rate. The official value of English exports in 1760 was
L14,694,970, and of imports L9,832,802; in 1783, of exports L13,896,415,
and of imports L11,651,281; in 1800 the exports of Great Britain were
officially valued at L34,381,617, and the imports at L28,257,781.[181]
Her foreign trade, which provided her with an extended market, was
maintained through her naval supremacy. Before 1780 the war with the
colonies had little effect on her trade; the declaration of the armed
neutrality decreased its profits by increasing risks and raising the
rate of insurance, but does not appear to have inflicted special injury
on any particular branch of it. The American shipping was destroyed and
Dutch commerce suffered severely. At the end of the war England was far
stronger by sea than she was before it began; her manufactures,
specially of iron and cotton, began to develop rapidly, and she kept the
American trade. During the revolutionary war the French believed that
they could reduce England to impotence by ruining her commerce. They
failed to understand the consequences of her power at sea and the
firmness of the foundation on which her wealth rested. The ports of
France and her allies were blockaded; England may be said to have
carried the greatest part of the trade of Europe, her manufactures
flourished exceedingly, and foreign nations could not afford to abstain
from purchasing them.
[Sidenote: _LAISSEZ-FAIRE._]
Before entering on the expansion of manufactures and the industrial
revolution which accompanied it, a word may be said as to the attitude
of the state towards these changes. For some two centuries it had been
held that it was the duty of the state to order trade with the object of
increasing the wealth and power of the nation, and a policy was followed
of interference with trade and its conditions by regulations, bounties,
and restrictions, which is called the mercantile system. To this policy
belong the navigation acts and the regulation of colonial trade and
manufactures for the benefit of the mother-country. The American
revolution dealt it a mortal blow. About the same time Adam Smith's work
led to the idea that national wealth would increase if men were left to
seek their own wealth without interference. While trade outgrew the old
regulations which ordered its conditions, the system of state
interference became discredited, a new economic policy of
non-interference, called _laissez-faire_, took its place, and questions
of trade, manufacture, wages, and other conditions of labour were
increasingly left to settle themselves. This reversed the policy long
and successfully pursued by the whigs, who fostered trade as the basis
of national prosperity. The tories on the other hand held that national
prosperity was based on land, and desired to lighten its burdens by
taxing personal property, and we shall find Pitt distributing his
taxation widely and so as to fall mainly on the moneyed class.[182]
_Laissez-faire_ reached its full development in the establishment of
free trade; it has already been modified in many respects, and may
hereafter be subjected to further modification to suit altered
circumstances.
The expansion of trade during our period was due to improved processes
of manufacture and increased facilities of transport, and in a far
higher degree to the substitution of machinery moved by the power of
water or steam for manual labour. The north, hitherto the most backward
part of England, became the chief seat of industrial life and commercial
enterprise. Wealth was increased, industry became more dependent on
capital, and changes were effected in its conditions which for a time
pressed heavily on the poor. In 1760 there was no Black Country.
Charcoal was employed in the manufacture of hardware, and the Sussex
iron works produced a small quantity of pig-iron at a great cost. Fuel
was giving out, and England, rich in iron, imported over 49,000 tons of
iron a year from Russia and Sweden. The discovery that coal and coke
could be used for smelting was made about 1750, and in 1760 a new era in
the manufacture was ushered in by the foundation of the Carron
ironworks, which had blast furnaces for coal. The improvements in
Newcomen's steam engine, effected by Watt between 1765 and 1782,
facilitated smelting by coal by providing the furnaces with a stronger
blast. In 1783-4 Cort of Gosport invented processes for converting
pig-iron into malleable by the use of coal, and for converting malleable
iron into bars by rollers, instead of sledge-hammers. Iron became cheap
and was used for purposes never dreamt of a few years before; the first
iron bridge crossed the Severn at Coalbrookdale in 1779. By 1796 the use
of charcoal had almost ceased, and the produce of blast furnaces had
risen from 68,300 tons in 1788 to over 125,000 tons. Vast iron works
were established in the coal districts, which soon ceased to be
agricultural. Among the many other manufactures expanded by new
processes was that of pottery. In 1760 Staffordshire stoneware was rough
and badly glazed, and much ware was imported from France. A few years
later Wedgwood succeeded in producing a ware at his works at Etruria
which was superior to any brought from abroad; it was largely used in
England, and five-sixths of the produce of his works was exported.
[Sidenote: _THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION._]
The increasing call for coal both for manufacture and for fuel and the
needs consequent on the growth of trade and the expansion of agriculture
were met by greater facilities of transport. Roads, though they were
gradually improved, could not have answered the demands for the
conveyance of the ever-increasing bulk of heavy goods. A better method
was found in the introduction of canals by the third Duke of
Bridgewater. The canal between Worsley and Manchester, made by him and
his engineer, Brindley, and opened in 1761, enabled the Manchester
people to buy the duke's coal at 3-1/2d. instead of 7d. a cwt.; its
extension to Runcorn reduced the cost of carriage by water between
Liverpool and Manchester from 12s. to 6s. a ton, while by road it was
40s.; and the Grand Trunk canal from Runcorn to the Trent brought the
pottery of Etruria to Liverpool and carried other goods at a quarter of
the old cost of transport. The success of these undertakings was so
great that people went wild about canal-making, and between 1790 and
1794 eighty-one canal acts were obtained, many of them, of course, for
superfluous projects.
The principal factor in the industrial revolution which began during the
period under review was the substitution of machinery for hand labour in
textile manufactures. In 1760 spinning and weaving were domestic
industries, carried on, that is, in the homes of the workers. The women
and children in farm-houses and cottages spent their spare time in
spinning. The implements used in the cotton manufacture remained nearly
as simple as those of the Homeric age, save that weaving had been
facilitated by the use of the fly-shuttle. Since that invention the
weaver found it difficult to obtain enough yarn for his loom, until,
about 1767, a weaver named Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny by
which a child could work many spindles at once. Two years later
Arkwright, who introduced many inventions into the textile manufacture,
brought out a spinning machine worked by water-power. His water-frame
spun automatically and produced a yarn strong enough for warp, so that
for the first time pure cotton goods were manufactured in England, for
until then the cotton weft was woven on a warp of linen. This machine
was improved on by Crompton's mule, a cross between the jenny and the
water-frame, which spun a finer yarn, and so started the manufacture of
muslin in England; it was invented in 1775 and came into general use
about ten years later. The supply of cotton from India, the Bahamas,
and later from the southern states of America, was large, and the effect
of the new machinery on the manufacture can be gauged by the increase in
the import of cotton-wool from an average of 4,764,589 lbs. between 1771
and 1775 to 56,010,732 lbs. in 1800. The new labour-saving inventions
were at first regarded with jealousy by the workmen. Hargreaves had his
house gutted and his loom destroyed, and in 1799 a violent riot broke
out about Blackburn; Arkwright's works were burnt, and many machines in
the neighbourhood were broken to pieces. In and around Lancashire, where
the manufacture was chiefly carried on, the carding and spinning of wool
ceased to be domestic industries. Capitalists set up factories where
water-power was available, in which children were largely employed, and
factory villages grew up round them. From about 1790 steam-power began
gradually to take the place of water-power; the change was slow, and as
it went on the manufacture became increasingly centred in populous
towns.
Cotton weaving remained a domestic industry, for Cartwright's power-loom
did not come into general use until after 1800. The output of yarn was
enormous, and for a time the weavers' earnings were very large, but the
money which could be earned at the loom and the failure of domestic
spinning caused so many to take to weaving that by 1800 wages had begun
to decline, and gradually a period of distress set in. A machine for
calico-printing further increased the profits of the capitalist and had
a bad effect on labour, for it threw the calico-printer out of
employment. Wool spinning was far more generally carried on in rural
districts than cotton spinning, and more widely spread misery was caused
by changes in the manufacture. It came under the dominion of machinery
somewhat later. Machines for carding and combing took the place of
manual labour after 1790, and enabled one man and a few children to do
the work of many men. Spinning with the wheel lasted longer than in the
cotton manufacture. From 1785 jennies were used, and wool spinning was
gradually transferred to factories and became a separate business,
instead of a by-employment which helped the small farmer to pay his rent
and eked out the scanty wages of the labourer. The change was
accelerated by the scarcity of wool during the revolutionary war, for
by that time the trade had become largely dependent on importation from
Spain, and it was not until about 1800 that sheep began to be bred for
their wool in Australia. As in the cotton trade, the wages of weavers
were high during the war, but the scarcity of material prevented all but
the best workmen from finding employment and there was much distress
among the rest. The failure of domestic spinning deeply affected all the
rural districts of England.
[Sidenote: _AGRICULTURAL WAGES._]
It was specially disastrous because it was accompanied by times of
scarceness and by changes connected with a revolution in agriculture
which pressed heavily on many of the poorer classes. A rapid increase in
population during the latter part of the century was consequent on the
stimulus given to manufacture; in 1760 the population of England and
Wales is estimated at 6,479,700, and of Scotland in 1755 at about
1,265,300; in 1800 the estimate for England and Wales is 9,187,176, and
for Scotland about 1,599,000. This increase implies a demand for a
larger supply of food. Early in the reign wages were low except near
great towns, and the law of settlement prevented the labourer from
moving freely from one parish to another in order to better himself.
While in 1769-70 labourers in Surrey earned on an average from 8s. to
10s. a week, in Wiltshire they received only 6s. 2d. to 5s. 3d., and in
one district in Lancashire as little as 4s. 11d.[183] Wages, however,
were then eked out by home industries and commonable rights. Yet the
margin between income and expenditure was so small that a rise in the
price of bread soon caused distress, and was often followed by riots.
Bread made from rye or barley was still eaten in poor districts, but
wheaten bread was more generally used than earlier in the century, which
proves that the condition of the poor was bettered. In 1769 it cost 2d.
a pound near London, and at a distance of 150 miles 1-1/2d. Meat was
about 3d. to 4d. a pound, rent and clothing were cheap, firing and
candles very dear.
In 1760 England was still a corn-exporting country; importation was
restrained, exportation encouraged by a bounty, and in times of scarcity
the trade was regulated by temporary enactments. After some bad harvests
an act was made in 1773 with the object of keeping the price steady at
about 48s. the quarter; virtually free importation was allowed when it
reached that limit, and exportation was forbidden when it reached 44s.
Landowners and farmers were dissatisfied, and a general fear lest the
country should become dependent on foreign corn led parliament in 1791
to adopt a policy of encouraging home production; it was enacted that
for the future a bounty should be paid on exportation when the price was
at 44s., that prohibitive duties should be placed on importation when it
was below 50s., and virtually free importation only allowed above 54s.
Nevertheless from about that date England definitely ceased to be able
to feed her own people, except in good seasons. Her naval superiority
during the revolutionary war prevented a stoppage in the supply of wheat
from abroad; but it became uncertain, prices fluctuated violently with
good or bad harvests; war acted as a protection to the corn-grower and
bad harvests were followed by famine prices; in 1795 wheat averaged 81s.
6d. in Windsor market, and in 1800 reached 127s. Wages rose with the
expansion of manufactures, but not in anything like proportion to the
rise in prices.
[Sidenote: _THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION._]
Meanwhile efforts were made to meet the increased demand for food by
improved agriculture. In 1760 about half the parishes in England were
still in open fields; and the primitive two-field and three-field
systems by which land was refreshed by lying fallow were, with some
modifications, still in vogue. A new husbandry, however, had begun, and
soon made rapid progress; it was promoted by many large landowners, such
as Lord Townshend, the Dukes of Bedford and Grafton, and Lord
Rockingham, and the king took a lively and practical interest in the
movement. Its advantages were urged by Arthur Young, who did most
valuable work as its apostle. Its leading feature was the introduction
of a scientific rotation of crops founded on the use of clover and
rye-grass and the more careful cultivation of turnips, which kept the
land at once employed and in good heart, and afforded a supply of
excellent fodder. Farmers, too, began to learn the profit to be derived
from marling, manuring, and subsoil drainage, and to use better
implements which did their work more thoroughly and with less labour of
man and beast. The increased demand for meat caused sheep no longer to
be valued chiefly for their wool, or oxen as beasts of draught.
Improvements in the breeding and rearing of sheep and cattle were
introduced by Bakewell, a Lincolnshire grazier, and carried on by
others. The scraggy animals of earlier days disappeared; the average
weight of beeves sold at Smithfield in 1710 was 370 lbs., in 1795 it was
800 lbs., and that of sheep had risen from 28 lbs. to 80 lbs. Capital
was freely invested in land; open fields were increasingly enclosed, and
commons and wastes along with them, and land until then beyond the
margin of cultivation was taken in and ploughed. From 1760 to 1797 as
many as 1,539 private enclosure acts were passed, and a general act was
passed in 1801.
The new agriculture vastly increased the produce of the land. During the
first half of our period rents were low, and the farmers who carried out
the new system as a rule made enormous profits. Arthur Young tells us of
one Norfolk farmer who, on a farm of 1,500 acres, made enough in thirty
years to buy an estate of L1,700 a year. The improved agriculture,
however, could not be carried out without enclosure and, unless an award
was made by agreement, that meant a large initial expense, which was
followed by the expense of actually enclosing the land. These expenses
were often borne by the landlords. The small squires and yeomen who
farmed their own land had neither the intelligence of the large farmers
nor the money to spend on improvements, and both classes virtually
disappeared. Nor could the small farmer either keep his place or take
advantage of the new system. If his holding was unaffected by enclosure,
the loss of domestic industries rendered him less able to pay his rent:
if it was to be enclosed, he found himself with a diminished income at
the very time when he most needed money; and if he managed to keep his
land for a while, he was ruined by some violent fluctuation in the price
of corn. Sooner or later he sank into the labouring class. The enormous
profits of the large farmers did not continue, for about 1780 rents
began to rise. Still the cultivation of good arable land remained highly
profitable, if the farmer had capital enough to meet fluctuations of
price. But war prices and parliamentary encouragement led farmers to
cultivate inferior land; their profits diminished in proportion to the
cost of cultivation, and though the supply of food was increased, its
price was kept up. A sudden fall in prices would send the land back to
its original wild state and was likely enough to ruin the farmer.
Although enclosure was encouraged by parliament with the view of
benefiting the mass of the people by making bread cheaper, it was far
more often than not injurious to the labourer. In many cases commons
were enclosed without adequate compensation to the poorer commoners, who
were deprived of the means of keeping a cow or geese or of the right of
cutting turf for fuel. Some received no allotment because they failed to
prove their claims, and others sold their allotments to wealthy farmers,
either because they were too small to keep a cow or because they could
not enclose them. Young, who strongly advocated enclosure, says that out
of thirty-seven parishes he found only twelve in which the position of
the poor had not been injured by the enclosure of commons, and laments
the disastrous effect of the change on the general condition of the
labouring class. The change was coincident with the decay not only of
domestic spinning, but also of other industries practised in villages,
for the large new-fashioned farmers had their implements, harness, and
household utensils made and mended in towns rather than by rural
workmen. Deprived of the profits of by-employments, and in many cases of
their accustomed rights of common, labourers became solely dependent on
farm wages at a time when prices were enormously high and a living-wage
was not to be gained by agricultural work. They either migrated to seek
work in a factory or came on the rates. In many districts villages
presented a picture of desolation. Wiston and Foston in Leicestershire
each before enclosure contained some thirty-five houses; in Wiston every
house disappeared except that of the squire, and Foston was reduced to
the parsonage and two herdsmen's cottages.[184]
[Sidenote: _COMBINATIONS OF WORKMEN._]
The old system of regulating wages by statute was not wholly extinct in
1760. A few years later a statute made in the masters' interests fixed
the maximum for the wages of the London journeymen tailors at 2s.
7-1/2d. a day, except at a time of general mourning. On the other hand
parliament, in 1773, under the pressure of a riot, passed an act
empowering justices to fix the wages of the Spitalfields silk weavers
and to enforce their ordinance. By 1776, however, Adam Smith declared
that the custom of fixing wages "had gone entirely into disuse". England
was adopting _laissez-faire_. The change of policy is illustrated by
the case of the framework knitters of Nottinghamshire. The employment of
children and apprentices enabled the masters to oppress them; they were
unable to earn more than 8s. to 9s. a week and their wages were
diminished by shameful exactions. They formed a combination, petitioned
the house of commons to regulate their wages in 1778, and were heard
before a committee. A bill was brought in the next year to regulate the
trade and prevent abuses, but was thrown out on the third reading. Wages
were to be settled between the master and the men. Some rioting followed
on the rejection of the bill, and the masters promised redress, but soon
broke their word. Combinations of workmen to set aside statutory
arrangements of wages were of course illegal, but when formed to secure
their fulfilment do not seem to have been so regarded.[185] In 1799,
however, when parliament was anxious to prevent seditious assemblies, a
statute, amended in 1800, rendered it unlawful for workmen to combine
for the purpose of obtaining higher wages. This grossly unjust law made
the workmen powerless to protect themselves against the oppression of
the capitalist employer. Parliament was more than once pressed to meet
the high price of bread and the distress of the agricultural poor by
fixing a minimum for wages. Pitt, a disciple of Adam Smith, would not
consent to such a measure, and his opposition was fatal to it. He was
deeply sensible of the distress of the poor, and, in 1795, brought in a
bill for the amendment of the poor law. It contained some startling
provisions of a socialistic character, was adversely criticised by
Bentham and others, and was quietly dropped.
In 1760 the law of 1723, empowering overseers of the poor to refuse
relief to those who would not enter the workhouse, was still in force.
It seems to have been administered strictly, and it kept down the rates.
As society became more humane, it revolted against so harsh a method of
dealing with distress. A permissive act of 1783, called after its
promoter, Gilbert's act, contained along with some wholesome provisions
others that were foolish and harmful; it enabled parishes to form unions
and adopt a system under which able-bodied men were not allowed to enter
the workhouse; they were to work in the district and have their wages
supplemented from the rates. The administration of the act was committed
to the magistrates and guardians in place of the overseers. A
considerable relaxation of the law of settlement in 1795 was just and
beneficial. In the same year the pernicious principle of supplementing
wages from the rates was carried to its full extent. By that time the
decay of domestic spinning and the rise in the price of food were
causing much distress in Berkshire. At a meeting of justices at
Speenhamland in that county it was resolved to grant allowances to all
poor men and their families--so much a head according to the price of
the gallon loaf. This system was generally adopted, and was strengthened
by an act of 1795 abolishing the workhouse test. As a means of tiding
over a merely temporary crisis, as indeed it was intended by its authors
to be, it would have done no harm. Unfortunately, it lasted for many
years and had disastrous consequences; it rapidly raised the rates, and
helped to crush the small farmers who, though they employed no labour,
were forced to pay towards the maintenance of the labourers employed by
their richer neighbours; it kept wages from rising, encouraged
thriftless marriages and dissolute living, discouraged industry and
efficient work, destroyed self-respect, and pauperised the poor.
[Sidenote: _FACTORY CHILDREN._]
While then the last sixteen years of the century, of which the political
history still lies before us, were, except at certain crises to be noted
hereafter, marked by a rapid expansion of commerce and trade, and an
increase in the wealth of the richer landowners, manufacturers, and
merchants, they were, as we have seen, a period of change in the
conditions of labour and, as such, brought much distress on the working
class, which was aggravated by the high prices consequent on bad seasons
and the risks of war. Of all the sufferings of the poor during this
period none are so painful to remember as those of the children employed
in factories, the helpless victims of _laissez-faire_ for whose relief
the state did nothing until a later date. The greater number of them
were pauper apprentices bound by parochial authorities to mill-owners,
others the children of very poor or callous parents. From little more
than infancy, sometimes under seven years old, children were condemned
to labour for long hours, thirteen or more in a day, at tasks which
required unremitting attention, and in rooms badly ventilated and
otherwise injurious to health; they were half-starved and cruelly
punished when their wearied little arms failed to keep up with the
demands of the machinery. The smaller mills were the worst in this
respect, and as the supply of water-power was not constant, the children
in mills worked by water were often forced to labour far beyond their
strength to make up for lost time. Such of them as survived the
prolonged misery and torture of their early years often grew up more or
less stunted and deformed men and women, physically unfit for parentage,
morally debased, ignorant, and brutalised by ill-treatment.
FOOTNOTES:
[178] Walpole to Mann, April 29, 1784, _Letters_, viii., 473; _Parl.
Hist._, xxv., 1434.
[179] _Parl. Hist._, xxi., 592; xxix., 1034.
[180] Colquhoun, _Treatise on the Police_, pp. 108, 110, 228, 364, 2nd
edit., 1796.
[181] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern
Times_, pt. ii., 931.
[182] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern
Times_, pt. i., 583-608.
[183] Young, _Southern Counties_, p. 325; _Northern Counties_, iv., 453.
[184] Howlett, _Enquiry into the Influence which Enclosure has had on
Population_, p. 10.
[185] Webb, _History of Trade Unionism_, p. 55.