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GREAT SOCIAL EVILS-NEGLECT.

[1689-1714 they would soon find their own minds grow to be in a better temper, and their people would show more esteem and regard for them." We who have now the happiness to feel that the Clergy are the great civilisers, also know how slowly this sage advice was taken by them as a class.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, and long after, we see no struggle against great social evils, on the part of the clergy or the laity. Every attempt at social reform was left to the Legislature, which was utterly indifferent to those manifestations of wretchedness and crime that ought to have been dealt with by the strong hand. Education, in any large sense, there was none. Disease committed its ravages, unchecked by any attempt to mitigate the evils of standing pools before the cottage door, and pestilent ditches in the towns. These were not peculiar evils of the last century; they continued long beyond that century, because they were the results of social ignorance. But there were evils so abhorrent to humanity, that their endurance without the slightest endeavour to mitigate or remove them was. an opprobrium of that age. The horrible state of the prisons was well known. The nosegay laid on the desk of the judge at every assize proclaimed that starvation and filth were sweeping away far more than perished by the executioner, terrible as that number was. The judge's chaplain ate the sheriff's dinner; and all was well unless a few jurymen took the jail-fever. The justices never entered the jails. The vicar heeded not the Saviour's reproach, -"I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not." London, and all other great towns, were swarming with destitute children, who slept in ashholes and at street doors. They were left to starve, or to become thieves and in due course be hanged. The Church, in 1701, established "the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." The worse than heathen at home were left to swell the festering mass of sin and sorrow, until the whole fabric of society was in peril from its outcasts, and no man's life or property was safe. The only evidence that was listened to of something wrong in the entire social economy was this: one-fifth of the whole population were paupers. Locke attributed the rapid increase of the poor-rates to "the relaxation of discipline and the corruption of manners." Those who by their rank or their office were especially called to guide the ignorant, and to discourage the licentious, were certainly to be charged with some neglect of their great duties, if such were the causes of pauperism.

The evils of society, at the opening of the eighteenth century, were not laid bare by publicity, the one first step towards their remedy. There was only one popular writer who approached social questions with any practical knowledge joined to sound benevolence. He was Daniel Defoe. He looked for remedies, not in drivelling schemes for setting the poor to work under parochial superintendence, but he told the capitalist and the labourer how to raise their condition under the natural laws of demand and supply. His "Review was the first periodical work that sought readers amongst the people. Addison and Steele saw that a popular Literature was to be created; and from that time the lay preachers became effective. Newspapers multiplied. But even Addison could not see that they were capable of becoming great instruments of public good. It is remarkable that the man who did as much as any one to prove the efficiency of the Press, should have thus chosen to "hesitate dislike" against the humblest labourers in the same field. Per

1689-1714.]

THE PRESS.

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haps he had a foresight of the power that was to grow out of small beginnings. "Of all the ways and means by which this political humour hath been propagated among the People of Great Britain, I cannot single out any so prevalent and universal, as the late constant application of the Press to the publishing of State matters. We hear of several that are newly erected in the country, and set apart for this particular use. For, it seems the people of Exeter, Salisbury, and other large towns, are resolved to be as great politicians as the inhabitants of London and Westminster; and deal out such news of their own printing, as is best suited to the genius of the marketpeople, and the taste of the county. One cannot but be sorry, for the sake of these places, that such a pernicious machine is erected among them."*

We have left for the conclusion of this general view of the chief aspects of England's social condition about the beginning of the last century, a very brief allusion to those "liberal Arts and Sciences," which were slowly, but very surely, to change the half-developed industry of the time of Anne to the marvellous proportions of the commercial era of the first sovereign lady who came after that queen. In the fifteen thousand engaged in these liberal pursuits in 1688, we must include the medical profession. The study of facts had succeeded to the theories and empirical remedies of the school before Harvey and Sydenham. Botany had been systematised by Ray; and the medical student had the opportunity of becoming familiar

"Freeholder," No. 53, June 22, 1716.

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A Scheme of the Income and Expense of the several Families in England, Calculated for the Year 1688.

Number of Ranks, Degrees, Titles, and Quali-Heads per Number of

Yearly In

Families.

fications.

come

Family.

Persons.

Family

Yearly Income in General.

Note.-Mr. Gregory King, the author of this Scheme, considers that the 21 classes, whose families amount to 500,586, are accumulators, spending less than their income; and that the other classes require some support beyond their earnings-that they decrease the National Capital.

There are some few discrepancies between the items and the totals in the above Table, but they do not affect the conclusions to be derived from this "Scheme."