Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCXXV. MARCH, 1851. VOL. LXIX.

CONTENTS.

THE DANGERS OF THE COUNTRY, 257

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART VII., 282

LEGENDS OF THE MONASTIC ORDERS, AS REPRESENTED IN THE
FINE ARTS, 305

LAVENGRO, 322

THE ARTS IN PORTUGAL, 338

SOUTHEY, 349

THE MINISTRY AND THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST, 368

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET;

AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCXXV. MARCH, 1851. VOL. LXIX.

THE DANGERS OF THE COUNTRY.

NO. II.--OUR INTERNAL DANGERS.

"The apparent contradiction," says the _Edinburgh Review_, "between the vast amount of unrelieved misery in the country, and the vast amount of energetic benevolence now existing in this country, which strikes so many with despair, inspires us, on the contrary, with the most sanguine hopes; because, in that benevolence, we see ample means of remedying nearly all our social evils,--means heretofore impotent solely because misapplied. We agree with the Socialists in holding that the world can never have been intended to be, and will not long remain, what it is. It cannot be that the same intellect which has wrung from nature her most hidden secrets, which has triumphed over the most gigantic material obstructions, which has 'exhausted worlds and then imagined new;' which has discovered and described laws operating in regions of space separate from us by a distance so vast that human imagination cannot figure it and arithmetical language can hardly express it, should not, when fairly applied to social and administrative science, be competent to rectify our errors and to smoothe our path--unless, indeed, society take refuge in the dreary creed, which shall never be ours, that the problem before us is insoluble, and the wretchedness around us inherent and incurable."[1]

[1] _Edinburgh Review_, January 1851, p. 23.

We entirely concur in these eloquent and just observations, though the honest and candid admissions they contain sound rather strange when coming from a journal which has, for nearly half-a-century, been the most strenuous, and not the least able, supporter of the system which has terminated in these woful results. We concur with this author in thinking, that it never was intended by Providence that things in this country should be as they now are; and that it is impossible they can long continue so. Sooner or later, if the premonitory symptoms of our diseased state continue to be disregarded by our rulers, and the influential part of the nation who now determine our policy, as they have been for a great number of years back, some terrible catastrophe will arise, like that in Ireland by the failure of the potato crop in 1846, which, amidst an appalling and perhaps unprecedented amount of human suffering, is in course of rectifying many of the social evils under which that ill-starred country has so long laboured. We narrowly escaped such a catastrophe on occasion of the great monetary crisis of October 1847, by far the most serious and widespread which Great Britain has ever known; and so much was the nation in its vital resources weakened by that calamity, and so wearing-out and grievous are the causes of evil still operating amongst us, that it is much to be feared that the catastrophe we anticipate will not be deferred beyond the next of the periodical monetary crises with which the country is now so regularly afflicted.

What renders our present social condition so alarming and depressing to the contemplative mind is, that the evils which are so widespread through society have only increased with the advance of the nation in general industry, accumulated capital, and mechanical power; and at a time when universal and unprecedented exertions have been made both for the religious and moral education of the working-classes, the improvement of their habits, and the extension of their information. The most superficial observer must be aware what astonishing progress we have made since 1815. Our exports and imports have tripled--our shipping doubled[2]--our population advanced fully 50 per cent. Our agriculture has kept pace with this astonishing increase, insomuch that, down to the commencement of five bad years in succession, in 1836, followed by Free Trade in 1842 and 1846, our imports of wheat and flour had sunk to a _hundredth-part_ of the food of our people. At no former period, in England's or the world's history, were such efforts made by energetic and philanthropic individuals to stem the progress of public and private disaster, or such noble and even heroic sacrifices made by the State to assuage, where it was most aggravated, the intensity of private suffering. At one period Government gave £20,000,000 to compensate the planters in the West Indies for Negro Emancipation; at another £10,000,000, to relieve the effects of famine and Irish improvidence. The efforts made in the cause of education, religious instruction, church accommodation, the relief of pauperism, the elevation of the standard of comfort, and the improvement of the habits of the poor, have been innumerable, systematic, and unwearied.

[2]
| | EXPORTS. | IMPORTS. | SHIPPING. |
|Years.| Official Value. | Official Value.| Tons inwards.|
|------| | | |
| 1822 | 42,236,533 | 29,432,376 | 2,519,044 |
| 1823 | 43,803,472 | 34,591,260 | 2,506,760 |
| 1824 | 48,785,551 | 36,056,551 | 2,559,587 |
| | | | |
| 1836 | 65,926,702 | 44,586,741 | 3,002,875 |
| 1837 | 69,939,389 | 45,952,551 | 3,149,152 |
| 1838 | 73,831,550 | 49,362,811 | 3,149,168 |
| | | | |
| 1846 | 132,286,345 | 75,953,875 | 6,091,052 |
| 1847 | 126,157,919 | 90,921,866 | 7,196,033 |
| 1848 | 132,904,407 | 93,547,134 | 5,579,461 |
| 1849 | 164,539,504 | 105,874,607 | 6,071,269 |

--_Parliamentary Tables._

In Scotland, a new great sect of Presbyterians has grown up more suited than the Establishment to the inclinations of a large part of the people, and they have, in three years, built and provided for _eight hundred_ new places of worship, at a cost of above £1,500,000. In Glasgow alone, _thirty-two_ have been erected, at a cost of £107,000! besides _fifteen_, erected a few years before, by subscription of persons connected with the Establishment. The prodigious efforts made by the dignitaries and pastors of the Church of England, to extend the sphere and increase the utility of their Establishment, are known to all the world, and have extorted the reluctant applause even of the most inveterate of their opponents. All other religious persuasions have done the same: Roman Catholics, Methodists, Wesleyans, Dissenters of all sorts, have vied with each other in zeal and efforts to extend their respective adherents, and augment the number and respectability of their places of worship. Education has shared in the general movement; and although Government has yet done little, the number of voluntary schools established in most parts of the country almost exceeds belief. At the same time, the average poor-rates of England have for the last ten years been about £6,000,000. Scotland has got a more efficient one than the cautious administration of the old law had permitted, which already expends about £500,000 yearly on the relief of indigence: and Ireland has got a new one, which at its greatest distress expended above £2,000,000 in a year, and still dispenses upwards of £1,500,000 annually. Yet, in the midst of all this prodigious increase of national industry, religious zeal, and philanthropic activity, the condition of the greater part of our working classes has been daily getting worse, and was never perhaps, as a whole, so bad as in this year, when, in consequence of Continental pacification, Bank discounts at 2½ per cent, and a great influx of Californian gold, prices of manufactured articles have risen 20 per cent, and the great manufacturing towns are in a state of general prosperity. Ample evidence of all this will be brought forward in the sequel of this essay.

Notwithstanding all this, we do not despair either of the human race or of the fortunes and social condition of this country. We are firm believers in the doctrine, derived equally from natural and revealed religion, that the greater part of the evils, individual and social, of this life are derived from the effects of human selfishness, folly, or wickedness, and that it is sin which has brought death to nations not less than individuals. Barring some calamities which are obviously beyond the reach of human remedy--such as sickness, the death of relations or friends, and external disasters, as famine or pestilence--there is scarcely an ill which now afflicts mankind which may not be distinctly traced to human selfishness or folly in the present or some preceding generation. That God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children is indeed as loudly proclaimed in the history of man as ever it was among the thunders of Mount Sinai. But, assuming this to be the principle of the Divine government of mankind, we are confident we are within bounds when we say that four-fifths, perhaps nine-tenths, of the social and private evils which now afflict humanity, are the direct consequences of selfishness or folly in this or some recently preceding generation. Every attentive observer of the fate of individuals or families around him must see that this is the case in private life; and a very little attention alone is required to convince one that to the same cause is to be ascribed four-fifths of the social evils, great as they are, which all feel to be now so overwhelming.

We propose, first, to establish the fact that, amidst all the boasted and really astonishing increase of our national industry, the suffering and misery of the working-classes has constantly, on an average of years, gone on increasing; and then to consider to what causes this most alarming and disheartening state of things is to be ascribed. To prove the first, it is sufficient to refer to three authentic sources of information--the records of emigration, of crime, and of pauperism, for the last twenty-eight years.

From the table given below, it appears that while, in the year 1826, immediately following the dreadful monetary crisis of December 1825,--by far the severest which had _then_ been felt--the total emigration from the British Islands was under twenty-one thousand; in the year 1849, being the fourth year of Free Trade, and in its last six months one of great commercial activity, it had reached _the enormous and unprecedented amount of_ THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND! In twenty-five years of almost ceaseless Liberal government, and carrying out the principles, social and political, of the Political Economists, the number of persons driven into exile had increased _fifteen-fold_. So extraordinary and decisive a proof of the progressive increase of suffering in a people is perhaps not to be found in the whole annals of mankind. The emigration-returns for 1850 have not yet been made up, but that they will exhibit a result not less striking and woful than the preceding years may be judged of by the facts, that the emigration from Liverpool, which in 1849 was 154,400, had risen in 1850 to 174,260; and that the emigrants who landed at New York alone, in 1850, were 212,796--of whom 116,552 were Irish, and 28,125 English subjects, the remainder being chiefly Scotch and Germans.[3]

[3] _Times_, Jan. 21, 1851.

We say, and say advisedly, that this prodigious flood of emigrants were, for the most part, _driven into exile_ by suffering, not tempted into it by hope, and that its progressive increase is the most decisive proof of the enhanced misery and suffering of the working classes. The slightest consideration of the last column of the table below[4] must demonstrate this. Every known and deplored year of suffering has been immediately followed by a great increase in the number of emigrants in the next, or some subsequent years. Thus, in the year 1825, the total emigration was only 14,891; but the monetary crisis of December in that year raised it to 20,900 in the next year. In the year 1830, the last of the Duke of Wellington's administration, the emigration was 56,907; but in the two next years, being those of Reform agitation and consequent penury, these numbers were almost doubled: they rose to 83,160 in 1831, and to 103,140 in 1832. With the fine harvests and consequent prosperity of 1833 and 1834, they sank to 44,478; but the bad seasons of 1838, 1839, and 1840 made them rapidly rise again, until they became,

1840, 90,743
1841, 118,592
1842, 128,342

[4] EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM DURING THE TWENTY-FIVE YEARS FROM 1825 TO 1849.

| | North | | Australian | All | |
| | American | United |Colonies and | other | |
|Years | Colonies | States | New Zealand | places | TOTAL |
|------+------------| |-------------+--------+----------|
| 1825 | 8,741 | 5,551 | 485 | 114 | 14,891 |
| 1826 | 12,818 | 7,063 | 903 | 116 | 20,900 |
| 1827 | 12,648 | 14,526 | 715 | 114 | 28,003 |
| 1828 | 12,084 | 12,817 | 1,056 | 135 | 26,092 |
| 1829 | 13,307 | 15,678 | 2,016 | 197 | 31,198 |
| 1830 | 30,574 | 24,887 | 1,242 | 204 | 56,907 |
| 1831 | 58,067 | 23,418 | 1,561 | 114 | 83,160 |
| 1832 | 66,339 | 32,872 | 3,733 | 196 | 103,140 |
| 1833 | 28,808 | 29,109 | 4,093 | 517 | 62,527 |
| 1834 | 40,060 | 33,074 | 2,800 | 288 | 76,222 |
| 1835 | 15,573 | 26,720 | 1,860 | 325 | 44,478 |
| 1836 | 34,226 | 37,774 | 3,124 | 293 | 75,417 |
| 1837 | 29,884 | 36,770 | 5,054 | 326 | 72,034 |
| 1838 | 4,577 | 14,332 | 14,021 | 292 | 33,222 |
| 1839 | 12,658 | 33,536 | 15,786 | 227 | 62,207 |
| 1840 | 32,293 | 40,642 | 15,850 | 1,958 | 90,743 |
| 1841 | 38,164 | 45,017 | 32,626 | 2,786 | 118,592 |
| 1842 | 54,123 | 63,852 | 8,534 | 1,835 | 128,344 |
| 1843 | 23,518 | 28,335 | 3,478 | 1,881 | 57,212 |
| 1844 | 22,924 | 43,660 | 2,229 | 1,873 | 70,686 |
| 1845 | 31,803 | 58,538 | 830 | 2,330 | 93,501 |
| 1846 | 43,439 | 82,239 | 2,347 | 1,826 | 129,851 |
| 1847 | 109,680 | 142,154 | 4,949 | 1,487 | 258,270 |
| 1848 | 31,065 | 188,233 | 23,904 | 4,887 | 248,089 |
| 1849 | 41,367 | 219,450 | 32,091 | 6,590 | 299,498 |
|------+------------| |-------------+--------+----------|
| | 808,740 | 1,260,247 | 185,286 | 30,911 |2,285,184 |

Average annual emigration from the United Kingdom for the last twenty-five years, 91,407.

The Railway Mania and artificial excitement of 1843 and 1844 brought down these numbers to _one half_--they were 57,212 and 70,686 in these two years successively. But the Currency Laws of 1844 and 1845, and Free Trade of 1846, soon more than _quadrupled_ these numbers; and they have _never since receded_, but, on the contrary, rapidly increased ever since. The numbers were:--

Currency Acts, 1845, 93,501
Free Trade, 1846, 129,851
Irish Famine, 1847, 258,270
Free Trade, 1848, 248,089
Free Trade, 1849, 299,498

More convincing proof that emigration is, for the most part, the result of general distress, and that the intensity and wide spread of that distress is to be measured by its increase, cannot possibly be imagined.

In the next place, the criminal records for the same period, since 1822, demonstrate, in a manner equally decisive, that amidst all our advances in civilisation, wealth, and productive industry, the causes producing an increase of crime have been equally active; and that, abreast of the distress which drove such prodigious and increasing multitudes into exile, have advanced the social evils which have, in an equal ratio, multiplied the criminals among those who remain at home.

From the table quoted below, it appears that, since the year 1822, serious crime, over the whole empire, has advanced fully 300 per cent; while the numbers of the people, during the same period, have not increased more than 30 per cent, which of itself is a very great and most surprising increase for an old state. It has advanced from 27,000 to 75,000. In other words, serious crime, during the last twenty-five years, has advanced TEN TIMES as fast as the numbers of the people.[5]

[5] TABLE showing the commitments for Serious Crime in England, Scotland, and Ireland, from 1822 to 1849, both inclusive:--

+------+---------+---------+---------+--------+
|Years | England |Scotland | Ireland | TOTAL |
|------+---------+---------+---------+--------|
| 1822 | 12,241 | 1,691 | 13,251 | 27,183 |
| 1823 | 12,263 | 1,733 | 14,632 | 28,628 |
| 1824 | 13,698 | 1,802 | 15,258 | 30,748 |
| 1825 | 14,437 | 1,876 | 15,515 | 31,828 |
| 1826 | 16,164 | 1,999 | 16,318 | 34,481 |
| 1827 | 17,924 | 2,116 | 18,031 | 30,071 |
| 1828 | 16,564 | 2,024 | 14,683 | 33,273 |
| 1829 | 18,675 | 2,063 | 15,271 | 36,009 |
| 1830 | 18,107 | 2,329 | 15,794 | 36,230 |
| 1831 | 19,647 | 2,451 | 16,192 | 38,290 |
| 1832 | 20,829 | 2,431 | 16,056 | 39,316 |
| 1833 | 20,072 | 2,564 | 17,819 | 40,453 |
| 1834 | 22,451 | 2,691 | 24,381 | 49,523 |
| 1835 | 20,731 | 2,867 | 21,205 | 44,803 |
| 1836 | 20,984 | 2,922 | 23,891 | 47,797 |
| 1837 | 23,612 | 3,126 | 14,804 | 41,452 |
| 1838 | 23,094 | 3,418 | 15,723 | 42,635 |
| 1839 | 24,443 | 3,409 | 26,392 | 54,244 |
| 1840 | 27,187 | 3,872 | 23,883 | 54,892 |
| 1841 | 27,760 | 3,562 | 20,796 | 52,118 |
| 1842 | 31,389 | 4,189 | 21,186 | 56,684 |
| 1843 | 29,591 | 3,615 | 20,126 | 53,332 |
| 1844 | 26,542 | 3,575 | 19,448 | 49,565 |
| 1845 | 24,303 | 3,537 | 16,696 | 44,536 |
| 1846 | 25,107 | 4,069 | 18,492 | 47,668 |
| 1847 | 28,883 | 4,635 | 31,209 | 64,677 |
| 1848 | 30,349 | 4,909 | 38,522 | 73,780 |
| 1849 | 27,806 | 4,357 | 41,982 | 74,162 |

The same table is equally valuable in another point of view, as demonstrating, that it is to a general and progressive increase of _distress_ that this deplorable result is to be ascribed. Every year of great and general suffering has been immediately followed in the next and the succeeding ones by a sudden start in crime, which has again as regularly receded, when a returning gleam of prosperity has for a time illuminated the prospects of the working-classes in the community. Thus, the dreadful monetary crisis of December 1825 was followed next year by a considerable increase of commitments: they rose from 31,828 to 38,071. The numbers again fell to 33,273 and 36,009 in 1829 and 1830, which were years of comparative comfort. The Reform agitation, and consequent distress of 1831 and 1832, raised them again to 49,523 in 1834; while the Joint-stock mania and fine harvests of 1835 lowered it to 44,803. The bad harvests, great importation, and consequent monetary crisis of 1839 and 1840 raised them most materially; they amounted to 54,244 and 54,892 in those years respectively. The fine harvests and Railway mania of 1844 and 1845 lowered them to 49,565 and 44,536; but the Irish famine and Free-trade measures of 1846, followed, as they necessarily were, by the dreadful monetary crisis of October 1847, raised them again to an unprecedented amount, from which they have never since receded. In 1848, they were 73,780; in 1849, 74,162; of which, last year, no less than 41,980 were in Ireland, being nearly 4000 more than 1848--albeit the harvest of 1849 was very fine, and the preceding year had been the year of the Irish rebellion, and when that country might be presumed to be still labouring under the effects of the famine of autumn 1846.

The poor's rate from 1822 to 1849[6] affords an equally conclusive proof of the steady increase of pauperism--varying, of course, like the crime and emigration, with the prosperity and suffering of particular years, but exhibiting on the whole a great and most portentous increase. This appears even when it is measured in money; but still more strikingly and convincingly when measured in grain--the true test both of its amount and its weight, as by far the greatest part of it is laid out in the purchase of food for the paupers, and the price of that food is an index to the ability of the land to bear it. It is to be recollected that the new Poor Law, which was introduced to check the rapid and alarming increase in the poor's rates of England and Wales, was passed in 1834, and came into full operation in 1835, and has since continued unaltered. It certainly effected a great reduction at first; but that it was not lasting, and was speedily altered by the Free-Trade measures, is decisively proved by the following table, furnished by Mr Porter. The in-door and out-door paupers of England since 1840 have stood thus to 1848:--

1840, 1,199,529
1841, 1,299,048
1842, 1,427,187
1843, 1,539,490
1844, 1,477,561
1845, 1,470,970
1846, 1,332,089
1847, 1,720,350
1848, 1,626,201

--_Progress of the Nation_, 3d Ed. p. 94.

[6] TABLE showing the Poor's Rates of England and Wales, with their Population, and the amount in Quarters of Grain in every year, from 1822 to 1849, both inclusive:--

| | | | | Amount in |
| | | Population | Prices of | Quarters of |
| Years | Poor's Rates | | Wheat | Wheat |
|-------+--------------| |-----------+-------------|
| | | | _s._ _d._ | |
|1822 | £6,358,702 | 12,318,310 | 43 3 | 2,940,440 |
|1823 | 5,772,958 | 12,508,956 | 51 9 | 2,231,091 |
|1824 | 5,736,898 | 12,699,098 | 62 0 | 1,850,612 |
|1825 | 5,786,989 | 12,881,906 | 66 6 | 1,740,447 |
|1826 | 5,928,501 | 13,056,931 | 55 11 | 2,983,221 |
|1827 | 6,441,088 | 13,242,019 | 56 9 | 2,269,987 |
|1828 | 6,298,000 | 13,441,913 | 60 5 | 2,084,855 |
|1829 | 6,332,410 | 13,620,701 | 66 3 | 1,911,671 |
|1830 | 6,829,042 | 13,811,467 | 64 3 | 2,125,772 |
|1831 | 6,798,888 | 13,897,187 | 66 4 | 2,049,916 |
|1832 | 7,036,968 | 14,105,645 | 58 8 | 2,398,966 |
|1833 | 6,790,799 | 14,317,229 | 52 11 | 2,566,601 |
|1834 | 6,317,255 | 14,531,957 | 46 2 | 2,736,717 |
|1835[7]| 5,526,418 | 14,703,002 | 44 2 | 2,502,528 |
|1836 | 4,717,630 | 14,904,456 | 39 5 | 2,393,723 |
|1837 | 4,044,741 | 15,105,909 | 52 6 | 1,540,853 |
|1838 | 4,123,604 | 15,307,363 | 55 3 | 1,492,684 |
|1839 | 4,421,712 | 15,508,816 | 69 4 | 1,275,494 |
|1840 | 4,576,965 | 15,710,270 | 68 5 | 1,336,340 |
|1841 | 4,760,929 | 15,911,725 | 65 3 | 1,459,288 |
|1842 | 4,911,498 | 16,141,808 | 64 0 | 1,534,843 |
|1843 | 5,208,027 | 16,371,892 | 54 4 | 1,917,665 |
|1844 | 4,976,093 | 16,601,975 | 51 5 | 1,935,595 |
|1845 | 5,039,708 | 16,824,341 | 50 10 | 1,976,354 |
|1846 | 4,954,204 | 17,032,471 | 54 8 | 1,801,528 |
|1847 | 5,298,787 | 17,426,321 | 69 9 | 1,513,939 |
|1848 | 6,180,764 | 17,649,622 | 50 6 | 2,423,436 |
|1849 | 5,792,963 | 17,862,431 | 44 3 | 2,633,166 |
|1850 | | | 40 2 | |

_Poor's-Rate Report_, 1849; and PORTER, 90, 3d ed.--The five last years' prices are not from Mr Porter's work, where they are obviously wrong, but from _Parl. Pap._ 1850, No. 460.

[7] New Poor-Law came into operation.

These are the results exhibited in England and Wales. The poor's rates since 1837 have doubled in real weight, and we need not say that they are calculated to awaken the most alarming reflections; the more especially when it is recollected that the year 1849 was one of reviving, and, during its last six months, of boasted commercial prosperity. But the matter becomes much more serious, and the picture of the social condition of the island much more correct and striking, when the simultaneous measures, adopted during the last five years in Scotland and Ireland, are taken into consideration.

We need not tell our readers that, prior to 1844, Ireland had no poor law at all; and that although Scotland had a most humane and admirable poor law on its statute-book, yet its operation had been so much frittered away and nullified, by the unhappy decision of the Court of Session, which gave no control to the _local_ courts over the decisions of the heritors and kirk-sessions (church-wardens of parishes), thereby in effect rendering them judges without control in their own cause, that it, practically speaking, amounted to almost nothing. But as the evils of that state of things had become apparent, and had been demonstrated _luce meridianâ clarius_, by Dr Alison and other distinguished philanthropists, an efficient statute was passed in 1845, which corrected this evil, and has since produced the following results, which may well attract the notice of the most inconsiderate, from the rapid increase which pauperism exhibits, and the extraordinary magnitude it has already attained in Scotland--

| | | Number of Poor, | |
|Years | Sums raised | fixed and casual | Registered Paupers |
|------+-------------+----------------------+--------------------|
|1840 | £202,812 | | |
|1841 | 218,481 | | |
|1844 | 258,814 | | |
|1845 | 306,044 | 63,070 or 1 in 42 | 62,070 or 1 in 42 |
|1846 | 435,367 | 69,432 -- 1 -- 38 | 69,432 -- 1 -- 38 |
|1847 | 533,073 | 146,370 -- 1 -- 17.8 | 74,161 -- 1 -- 35.3|
|1848 | 583,613 | 227,647 -- 1 -- 11.5 | 77,732 -- 1 -- 33.7|
|1849 | | 202,120 -- 1 -- 12.96| 82,357 -- 1 -- 31.8|

--_Poor-Law Report, Scotland_, Aug. 1849.

In the year 1850, a year of unusual commercial prosperity, the sums assessed for the relief of the poor in Glasgow alone, irrespective of buildings and other expenses connected with them, was £87,637, and with these expenses £121,000.[8]

[8] DR YOUNG'S _Report_, Jan. 1851

In Ireland, the growth of the Poor Law, from its first introduction, has been still more rapid and alarming, as might have been anticipated from the greater mass of indigence and destitution with which it there had to contend. The sums raised for relief of the poor in that country, the _nominal_ rental of which is £13,000,000, has stood thus for the last three years--

| Year | | | | |
| ending | | |Indoor Paupers,| Outdoor |
|Sept. 29| Collected | Expended | August | Paupers |
|--------+-----------+-----------+---------------+---------|
| 1846 | £359,870 | £350,667 | | |
| 1847 | 585,507 | 717,713 | 75,376 | |
| 1848 | 1,559,248 | 1,732,597 | 150,000 | 833,889 |
| 1849 | 1,648,337 | 2,177,651 | 203,199 | 666,224 |
| 1850 | 1,561,846 | 1,274,125 | 264,048[9] | 141,077 |

--_Third Annual Report, Ireland_, p. 7.

[9] On 22d June, 1850.

On 3d July 1847, no less than _3,020,712 persons were fed by the public in Ireland_, being about 40 per cent on the whole population--certainly, at that date, under 8,000,000. Well may the _Edinburgh Review_ say, in reference to this astonishing subject--

"The collection in the year 1847-8 is remarkable: three times
the amount of the collections of 1846-7, five times the amount
of the collections of 1845-6. A tax unknown in Ireland ten
years before was levied in the Year 1848 to the extent of
_one-ninth_ of the rateable property of the country, and that
in a period of unprecedented depression and embarrassment. In
the same year the expenditure had risen _150 per cent_ above
that of 1847, _and 500 per cent above the expenditure of 1846_.
The expenditure in 1848-9 exceeds that of 1847 by the large sum
of £445,054."[10]

[10] _Edinburgh Review_, Jan. 1851.

The diminished expenditure of 1850 is mainly owing to the reduction in the price of provisions in that year, which has caused the cost of an in-door pauper to decline from 2s. 2d., which it was in April 1847, to 1s. 2d., _or nearly a half_, to which it fell in autumn 1849, which it has never since exceeded. Measured by quarters of grain, the poor's-rate of Ireland, in 1850, was fully twice as heavy as it was in 1848, when the effects of the disastrous famine of 1846 were still felt.

After these broad and decisive facts, drawn from so many official sources, and all conspiring to one result, it may seem unnecessary to go further, or load these pages, for which matter abundant to overflowing still remains, with any farther proof or illustration of a thing unhappily too apparent. But as our present system is mainly calculated for the interests of our great manufacturing cities, and, at all events, has been brought about by their influence, and is strictly in conformity with their demands, we cannot resist the insertion of an extract from an eloquent speech of a most able, humane, and zealous minister of the Free Church in Glasgow on the moral and religious state of the working-classes in that vast and rapidly-increasing city, which now has little short of 400,000 inhabitants within its bounds.

"I know," said Dr Paterson, "that many congregations, not
of the Free Church, both feel and manifest an anxious and
enlightened concern in this cause. I do not attempt to describe
their efforts, simply because I am not in a position to do them
justice. I hail them, however, as fellow-labourers. I rejoice
to know that they are in the field to some extent already, and
I shall rejoice still more to see their exertions multiplying
side by side with our own. Certain I am that nothing short _of
a levy en masse of whatever there is of living Christianity in
the city_, in all the branches of the Church of Christ which
it contains, will suffice to make head against the _augmenting
ignorance and ungodliness, and Popery and infidelity, with
which we have to deal_. My other observation is for the members
of our own church. Some of them will, perhaps, be startled
by this movement, simply because it in adding another to our
already numerous schemes--and because it may aggravate the
difficulty we already feel of carrying them on. Here, they
may say, is the beginning of new demands upon both our money
and our time. To such a complaint I have no other answer to
make but one--but it is one that seems to me to be decisive.
My answer is, that this movement, whatever it may cost, is a
matter of life and death. If we _do not destroy this evil, it
will destroy us_."

These are certainly strong expressions, but they come from one well acquainted, from personal visitation in his parish, which is one of the most densely peopled in Glasgow, and second to none in zeal and ability to combat the enormous mass of destitution, crime, sensuality, and civilised heathenism with which he has to deal. And that he does not exaggerate the evil, and speaks from accurate information, not vague imagination, is evident from the details which he gives.

"I begin with the Old Wynd, which is the western boundary of
the parish, and of which only the one side, therefore, is
in the Tron parish. That one side contains 102 families and
504 individuals. Among that population there are possessed
in all only 11 church sittings, or little more than 2 to the
100. Of the 102 families, only 14 profess to be in the habit
of going to any place of worship. In the New Wynd, there
are 350 families and 1976 individuals, possessing in all 66
church sittings, or little more than 3 to the 100. Of the 350
families, only 67 profess to be in the habit of attending any
place of worship. Lastly, the Back Wynd contains 137 families
and 752 individuals, who possess in all only 6 church sittings,
or less than 1 to the 100! Of these 137 families, only 13
profess to attend any place of worship. Here, then, in these
three Wynds, constituting but a section of the parish, we
have a population of 3232 individuals, with only 83 church
sittings, or little more than an average of 2½ to the 100.
Of the 589 families of which that population consists, the
enormous number of _495 families, by their own confession, are
living in habitual and total estrangement from the house of
God_. In these appalling circumstances, it will not surprise
the presbytery to learn, that in the whole of the three Wynds
there were found no more than 117 Bibles--in other words, that
scarcely _one_ family in _five_ were possessed of a copy of the
Word of God."

Again he says--

"During the first ten of the last thirty years--that is, from
1821 to 1831--the population increased at the rate of about
5000 a-year. During the second ten of these years--that is,
from 1831 to 1841--it increased at the rate of 8000 a-year.
During the third ten of these years--that is, from 1841 to
1851--it is believed, on good grounds, that the increase will
average 12,000 a-year. Let any man consider these facts, and
then, if he has courage to look forward at all, let him try _to
picture to himself the state of Glasgow when another thirty
years shall have run their course_. If the same ratio of
increase holds on--and I know of no good reason for doubting
that it will--we shall have in thirty years a population nearly
equal in numbers to that of Paris; and most assuredly, if the
Christian churches do not speedily arouse themselves, it will
be by that time like Paris in more respects than one. We may
have the numbers of the French capital, but we shall have
_their infidelity, their Popery, their licentiousness, and
their lawlessness too_. If our efforts did not keep pace with
a population growing at the rate of 5000 a-year, how are such
efforts to do alongside of a population growing at the rate of
from 12,000 to 15,000 a-year? If in the race of the last thirty
years we fell at least twenty years behind, how tremendously
and how ruinously shall we be distanced in the next thirty
years to come! 'If thou hast run with the footmen, and they
have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses! And
if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied
thee, then how wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan!'"

We select this as a picture of our great manufacturing towns, in which the greatest and most unbounded prosperity, so far as mere production goes, has prevailed, generally speaking, for the last thirty years; in which the custom-house duties have increased, since 1812, from £3000 a-year to £660,000, and the river dues from £4500 to £66,000 in the same period; but in which the sums expended in poor-rates and pauper burials were, in round numbers,--

Poor Rates. Pauper Burials.
1848 £180,000 4042
1849 132,000 3577
1850 120,000[11] 2381

Indicating the deplorable destitution of multitudes in the midst of this growing wealth and unparalleled increase of manufacturing and commercial greatness. In the last year, out of 10,461 burials, no less than 2381, or nearly _a fourth_, were at the public expense.[12]

[11] Including buildings £87,000; for poor alone.

[12] Dr STRANG'S _Report_, 1851.

Of the wretched condition of a large class of the operatives of Glasgow--that employed in making clothes for the rest of the community--the following striking account has been given in a recent interesting publication on the "Sweating System," by a merchant tailor of the city:--

"The _out-door_ or sweating system, by which the great
proportion of their work is produced, has had a fearful
debasing effect on journeymen tailors. Work is given out to a
person denominated a "middle-man." He alone comes into contact
with the employer. He employs others to work under him, in his
own house. The workmen have no respect for him, as they have
for an ordinary employer; nor has he the slightest influence
over them, in enforcing proper conduct or prudent habits. On
the contrary, his influence tends only to their hurt. _He
engages them to work at the lowest possible prices_--making
all the profit he can out of them. He ordinarily sets them
down to work in a small, dirty room, in some unhealthy part of
the city. They are allowed to work at irregular hours. Sunday,
in innumerable instances brings no rest to the tailor under
the sweating system; he must serve his slave-driver on that
day too, even if he should go idle on the other days of the
week. _No use of churches or ministers to him; his calling is
to produce so-called cheap clothes for the million_--Sunday
or Monday being alike necessary for such a laudable pursuit,
though his soul should perish. Small matter that: only let
_the cheap system flourish, and thereby increase the riches of
the people_, and then full compensation has been made, though
moral degradation, loss of all self-respect, and tattered rags,
be the lot of the unhappy victim, sunk by it to the lowest
possible degree."[13]

[13] _Modern System of Low-priced Goods_, p. 2, 3.

Such is the effect of the cheapening and competition system, in one of our greatest manufacturing towns, in a year of great and unusual commercial prosperity. That the condition of the vast multitude engaged in the making of clothes in the metropolis is not better, may be judged of by the fact that there are in London 20,000 journeymen tailors, of whom 14,000 can barely earn a miserable subsistence by working fourteen hours a-day, Sunday included; and that Mr Sidney Herbert himself, a great Free-Trader, has been lately endeavouring to get subscriptions for the needlewomen of London, on the statement that there are there 33,000 females of that class, who only earn on an average 4½d. a day, by working fourteen hours. And the writer of this Essay has ascertained, by going over the returns of the census of 1841 for Glasgow, (Occupations of the People,) that there were in Glasgow in that year above 50,000 women engaged in factories or needle-work, and whose average earnings certainly do not, even in this year of boasted commercial prosperity, exceed 7s. or 8s. a week. _Their number is now, beyond all question, above 60,000_, and their wages not higher. Such is the cheapening and competition system in the greatest marts of manufacturing industry, and in a year when provisions were cheap, exports great, and the system devised for its special encouragement in full and unrestrained activity.

Facts of this kind give too much reason to believe that the picture drawn in a late work of romance, but evidently taken by a well-informed observer in London, is too well founded in fact:--

"Every working tailor must come to this at last, on the present
system; and we are lucky in having been spared so long. You
all know where this will end--in the same misery as 15,000 out
of 20,000 of our class are enduring now. We shall become the
slaves, often the bodily prisoners, of Jews, middle-men, and
sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our starvation. We
shall have to fare as the rest have--ever decreasing prices of
labour, ever increasing profits, made out of that labour by
the contractors who will employ us--arbitrary fines, inflicted
at the caprice of hirelings--the competition of women, and
children, and starving Irish--our hours of work will increase
one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half. And
in all this we shall have no hope, no chance of improvement
in wages, but even more penury, slavery, misery, as we are
pressed on by those who are sucked by fifties--almost by
hundreds--yearly out of the honourable trade in which we were
brought up, into the infernal system of contract work, which is
devouring our trade, and many others, body and soul. Our wives
will be forced to sit up night and day to help us--our children
must labour from the cradle, without chance of going to school,
hardly of breathing the fresh air of heaven--our boys, as
they grow up, must turn beggars or paupers--our daughters,
as thousands do, must eke out their miserable earnings by
prostitution. And after all, a whole family will not gain what
one of us had been doing, as yet, single-handed. You know there
will be no hope for us. There is no use appealing to Government
or Parliament."[14]

[14] _Alton Locke_, vol. i. p. 149-50.

We shall only add to these copious extracts and documents one illustrative of the state to which the West Highlands of Scotland have been brought by Free Trade in black cattle and barilla, the staple of their industry:--

Price of the Estate, £163,779.

| | Expenditure on
Years.| Receipts. | Estate.
1847 |£4,134 0 0 |£7,305 0 0
1848 | 1,781 0 0 | 4,253 0 0
1849 | 1,109 0 0 | 1,294 0 0
1850 | 1,345 0 0 | 1,126 0 0

--_Inverness Courier._

Couple this with the facts that, in 1850, in the face of average prices of wheat at about 40s. a quarter, the importation of all sorts of grain into Great Britain and Ireland was about 9,500,000 quarters--of course displacing domestic industry employed previous to 1846 in this production; so that the acres under wheat cultivation in Ireland have sunk from 1,048,000 in 1847, to 664,000 in 1849; and there will be no difficulty in explaining the immense influx of the destitute from the country into the great towns--augmenting thus the enormous mass of destitution, pauperism, and wretchedness, with which they are already overwhelmed.

* * * * *

Such is a picture, however brief and imperfect, of the social condition of our population, after twenty years of Liberal government, self-direction, and increasing popularisation, enhanced, during the last five years, by the blessings of Free Trade and a restricted and fluctuating currency. The question remains the most momentous on which public attention can now be engaged. Is this state of things _unavoidable_, or are there any means by which, under Providence, it may be removed or alleviated? Part of it is unavoidable, and by no human wisdom could be averted. But by far the greater part is directly owing to the selfish and shortsighted legislation of man, and might at once be removed by a wise, just, and equal system of government.

There is an unavoidable tendency, in all old and wealthy states, for riches to concentrate in the highest ranks, and numbers to become excessive in the lowest. This arises from the different set of principles which, at the opposite ends of the chain of society, regulate human conduct in the direction of life. Prudence, and the desire of elevation, are predominant at the one extremity; recklessness, and the thirst for gratification, at the other. Life is spent in the one in striving to gain, and endeavouring to rise; in the other, in seeking indulgence, and struggling with its consequences. Marriage is contracted in the former, generally speaking, from prudential or ambitious motives; in the latter, from the influence of passion, or the necessity of a home. In the former, fortune marries fortune, or rank is allied to rank; in the latter, poverty is linked to poverty, and destitution engenders destitution. These opposite set of principles come, in the progress of time, to exercise a great and decisive influence on the comparative numbers and circumstances of the affluent and the destitute classes. The former can rarely, if ever, maintain their own numbers; the latter are constantly increasing in numbers, with scarcely any other limit on their multiplication but the experienced impossibility of rearing a family. Fortunes run into fortunes by intermarriage, the effects of continued saving, and the dying out of the direct line of descendants among the rich. Poverty is allied to poverty by the recklessness invariably produced by destitution among the poor. Hence the rich, in an old and wealthy community, have a tendency to get richer, and the poor poorer; and the increase of wealth only increases this tendency, and renders it more decided with every addition made to the national fortunes. This tendency is altogether irrespective of primogeniture, entails, or any other device to retain property in a particular class of society. It exists as strongly in the mercantile class, whose fortunes are for the most part equally divided, as in the landed, where the estate descends in general to the eldest son; and was as conspicuous in former days in Imperial Rome, when primogeniture was unknown, and is now complained of as as great a grievance in Republican France, where the portions of children are fixed by law, as it is in Great Britain, where the feudal institutions still prevail among those connected with real estates.

In the next place, this tendency in old and opulent communities has been much enhanced, in the case of Great Britain, by the extraordinary combination of circumstances--some natural, some political--which have, in a very great degree, augmented its manufacturing and commercial industry. It would appear to be a general law of nature, in the application of which the progress of society makes no or very little change--that machinery and the division of labour can add scarcely anything to the powers of human industry in the cultivation of the soil--but that they can work prodigies in the manufactories or trades which minister to human luxury or enjoyment. The proof of this is decisive. England, grey in years, and overloaded with debt, can undersell the inhabitants of Hindostan in cotton manufactures, formed in Manchester out of cotton grown on the banks of the Ganges or the Mississippi; but she is undersold in grain, and to a ruinous extent, by the Polish or American cultivators, with grain raised on the banks of the Vistula or the Ohio. It is the steam-engine and the division of labour which have worked this prodigy. They enable a girl or a child, with the aid of machinery, to do the work of a hundred men. They substitute the inanimate spindle for human hands. But there is no steam-engine in agriculture. The spade and the hoe are its spindles, and they must be worked by human hands. Garden cultivation, exclusively done by man, is the perfection of husbandry. By a lasting law of nature, the first and best employment of man is reserved, and for ever reserved, for the human race. Thus it could not be avoided that in Great Britain, so advantageously situated for foreign commerce, possessing the elements of great naval strength in its forests, and the materials in the bowels of the earth from which manufacturing greatness was to arise, should come, in process of time, to find its manufacturing bear an extraordinary and scarce paralleled proportion to its agricultural population.

Consequent on this was another circumstance, scarcely less important in its effects than the former, which materially enhanced the tendency to excess of numbers in the manufacturing portions of the community. This was the encouragement given to the employment of _women and children in preference to men_ in most manufacturing establishments--partly from the greater cheapness of their labour, partly from their being better adapted than the latter for many of the operations connected with machines, and partly from their being more manageable, and less addicted to strikes and other violent insurrections, for the purpose of forcing up wages. Great is the effect of this tendency, which daily becomes more marked as prices decline, competition increases, and political associations among workmen become more frequent and formidable by the general popularising of institutions. The steam-engine thus is generally found to be the sole moving power in factories; spindles and spinning-jennies the hands by which their work is performed; women and children the attendants on their labour. There is no doubt that this precocious forcing of youth, and general employment of young women in factories, is often a great resource to families in indigent circumstances, and enables the children and young women of the poor to bring in, early in life, as much as enables their parents, without privation, often to live in idleness. But what effect _must_ it have upon the principle of population, and the vital point for the welfare of the working-classes--the proportion between the demand for and the supply of labour? When young children of either sex are sure, in ordinary circumstances, of finding employment in factories, what an extraordinary impulse is given to population around them, under circumstances when the lasting demand for labour in society cannot find them employment! The boys and girls find employment in the factories for six or eight years; so far all is well: but what comes of these boys and girls when they become men and women, fathers and mothers of children, legitimate and illegitimate, and their place in the factories is filled by a new race of infants and girls, destined in a few years more to be supplanted, in their turn, by a similar inroad of juvenile and precocious labour? It is evident that this is an important and alarming feature in manufacturing communities; and, where they have existed long, and are widely extended, it has a tendency to induce, after a time, an alarming disproportion between the demand for, and the supply of _full-grown labour_ over the entire community. And to this we are in a great degree to ascribe the singular fact, so well and painfully known to all persons practically acquainted with such localities, that while manufacturing towns are the places where the greatest market exists for juvenile or infant labour--to obtain which the poor flock from all quarters with ceaseless alacrity--they are at the same time the places where destitution in general prevails to the greatest and most distressing extent, and it is most difficult for full-grown men and women to obtain permanent situations or wages, on which they can maintain themselves in comfort. Their only resource, often, is to trust, in their turn, to the employment of their children for the wages necessary to support the family. Juvenile labour becomes profitable--a family is not felt as a burden, but rather as an advantage _at first_; and a forced and unnatural impulse is given to population by the very circumstances, in the community, which are abridging the means of desirable subsistence to the persons brought into existence.

Lastly the close proximity of Ireland, and the improvident habits and rapid increase of its inhabitants, has for above half a century had a most important effect in augmenting, in a degree altogether disproportioned to the extension in the demand for labour, the numbers of the working classes in the community in Great Britain. Without stopping to inquire into the causes of the calamity, it may be sufficient to refer to the fact, unhappily too well and generally known to require any illustration, that the numbers of labourers of the very humblest class in Ireland has been long excessive; and that any accidental failure in the usual means of subsistence never fails to impel multitudes in quest of work or charity, upon the more industrious and consequently opulent realm of Britain. Great as has been the emigration, varying from 200,000 to 250,000 a-year from Ireland, during the last two years to Transatlantic regions, it has certainly been equalled, if not exceeded, by the simultaneous influx of Irish hordes into the western provinces of Britain. It is well known[15] that, during the whole of 1848, the inundation into Glasgow was at the rate of above 1000 a-week on an average; and into Liverpool generally above double the number. The census now in course of preparation will furnish many most valuable returns on this subject, and prove to what extent English has suffered by the competition of Irish labour. In the mean time, it seems sufficient to refer to this well-known social evil, as one of the causes which has powerfully contributed to increase the competition among the working-classes, and enhance the disproportion between the demand for, and the supply of, labour, which with few and brief exceptions has been felt as so distressing in Great Britain for the last thirty years.

[15] It was ascertained, from an accurate return obtained by the Magistrates of Glasgow, that the number of persons who arrived at that city by the Clyde, or the Ayrshire railway, in four months preceding 10th April 1848, was 42,860.