The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-10-23 00:00:00

SUPPLEMENT TO THE LIVERPOOL STAN

150

yet, Master James, though you look so shocked, it was
his honest business so to do, and a far less hateful
way of getting on in the world than is practised in
high places daily ; still, when he had found what he
wanted, and, laden with as many bags as he could
carry, was returning to the main-deck another way, it
seemed to him the worst job he had ever been set to
do---and, lo ! at the foot of the companion-ladder, he
met the man he knew so well, and parted within
wrath so lately, with one hand on the round, as if in
the act of flight. The look upon the drowned man's
face seemed to reproach him for his latest wish, so
that he dared not put him aside and pass by, but
he turned back and went upon deck by the road he
came ; nor ever after that dreadful sight could brother
Bill be brought to venture down into the sunk West
Indiaman.---Ilousehold Words.
CONDITION OF ENGLAND AT THE BEGINNING OF
THE CENTURY.—The first census was taken in 1801.
As the first, it was not so well managed as it might
have been ; but it so far affords guidance as that we
may venture to say that the population of England;
Wales, and Scotland, including the soldiers and sailors
serving abroad, was about eleven millions. The pro-
portion of this population employed in agriculture, in
comparison with that employed in manufacture and
commerce, was much greater than it is now. Since
1795 there had been a series of deficient harvests ; and
that of 1800 was so bad that the price of wheat rose
to 115 s. 1 ld. per quarter. To the middle classes em-
ployed in manufacture and commerce this was a cruel
aggravation of their hardships, while taxation was
becoming inordinately oppressive. The misery was
felt also by the poorest classes, as was shown by the
swelling of the poor-rate to the then enormous sum of
nearly four millions per annum, for the poor of England
and Wales, a sum truly enormous in the eye of all times,
for the relief of pauperism in a population of 9,000,000,
which was about that of England and Wales. But
the landowners were in a highly flourishing condition.
With wheat at 115 s. 11d. per quarter, they had no
great reason to care for the deficiency in the harvest,
in this last season of the century, and they
lived in a style which abundantly asserted their
prosperity. While the tradesman or manufacturer
came in from his daily business depressed and anxious,
unable to extend his market, on account of the war
or its consequences, pressed for poor-rate, threatened
with an increased property-tax, worried by the Excise
in his business, warned of bad debts in his trade, and
with bakers' and butchers' bills growing more for-
midable from week to week, the farmer was cheerful,
and his landlord growing grand. While the towns-
man was paying ls. 10d. for the quartern loaf, and
2s. per lb. for butter, and the children were told they
Must eat their bread dry, and there was a dinner of shell-
fish or other substitute for meat once or twice a week,
and hoUsewives were trying to make bread with pota-
toes, to save flour---the farmers kept open house, set
up gigs, sent their children to expensive schools, and
upheld Mr.-Pitt and the war, their king. and country.
The landlords obtained encloSure bills in great and
increasinc, number, and some of the more enTightened,
looking beyond the present privilege of high prices,
which so swelled their rents, began to attend to
suggestions for improving the soil. It was in 1800
that we meet with the first trial of bone manure.
The farmers laughed, and declared they would let
well alone, and not spend their money and trouble on
new devices which they did not need. But the philo-
sophers were at work---such a mau as Davy for one---
and the best order of landowners were willing to learn;
and thus provision was made for future agricultural
improvement, and some preparation for that scientific
practice of agriculture which was sure to be ren-
dered necessary, sooner or later, by the increasing
proportion of the more enlightened manufacturing
to the less enlightened agricultural population of the
country. It appears that, at the opening of the century,
10;000 acres of raw, newly-enclosed arable and pasture
land would support 4,27 persons ; while, thirty-five
years later, the same quantity of similar land would
maintain 5,555 ; and the fifteen years that have elapsed
since the latter date have witnessed a far more rapid
advance of improvement. It is a fact worth remember-
ing, that the first decided step in this direction, the
first recorded application of bone dust as an introduc-
tion to the use of artificial manures, was made in the
first year of our century, while the prices of agricultural
produce were such as were then called " unheard of."
There was less expenditure fox amusement in those

days. Travelling was seldom talked of by middle-
class people, except for purposes of business. Middle-
class families in the provincial towns and in the country
lived on for five or ten years together without a thought
of stirring. The number of that class out of London
who had ever seen London was very small. Few who
lived in the inland counties had ever seen the sea.
Mountains and lakes were read and talked of almost
as Rome and the Mediterranean. Little money was
spent in travelling. Scarcely any was spent on books,
music, or pictures. Children and young people had
cheaper schooling, and less of it, and fewer masters than
now. The business of living was done at home more
than now, especially the needlework, to the serious in-
jury of female health. The routine of living, in orderly
families, was so established that it did not vary 220 in
amount for a series of years. To householders of this
order, it was a bitter and exasperating thing to see
millions upon millions voted for carrying on the war,
and hundreds of thousands lavished in rewards to
military and naval officers ; the tone of government,
and of too large a proportion of parliament, being as
if money was inexhaustible. From these middle-classes,
taxed in property and income, taxed in bread and salt,
taxed in the house over their heads and in the shoes
on their feet, compelled to take their children from
school, and to lower the destination of their sons, pro-
ceeded those deputations, and petitions, and demands,
and outcries, in the closing days of the century, that
the king would " dismiss his weak and wicked minis-
ters." Such sufferers did not mince matters in those
days, nor choose their terms with over civility : and
certainly, the records of the time give a strong and
painful impression that the government regarded the
people with little other view than as a taxable and
soldier-yielding mass, troublesome at best, but a nui-
sance when it in any way moved or spoke. To states-
men, the state, as a unit, was all in all; and it is really
difficult to find any evidence that the people were
thought of at all, except in the relation of obedience.
—Miss Martineau' s History of the Peace from 1800
to 1815.