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 £50, and there was often £10,000 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 £140,000, chiefly at play, by the time he was twenty-five, and his brother Stephen lost £20,000 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 £30,000 "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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 £14,694,970, and of imports £9,832,802; in 1783, of exports £13,896,415, and of imports £11,651,281; in 1800 the exports of Great Britain were officially valued at £34,381,617, and the imports at £28,257,781.[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.

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.

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 3½d. 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.

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 1½d. 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.

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 £1,700 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]

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. 7½d. 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.

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.

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