Fragments of Two Centuries: Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King

by Alfred Kingston

FRAGMENTS OF TWO CENTURIES.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.—"THE GOOD OLD TIMES."

The Jubilee Monarch, King George III., and his last name-sake, had succeeded so much that was unsettled in the previous hundred years, that the last half of the 18th Century was a period almost of comparative quiet in home affairs. Abroad were stirring events in abundance in which England played its part, for the century gives, at a rough calculation, 56 years of war to 44 years of peace, while the reign of George III. had 37 years of war and 23 years of peace—the longest period of peace being 10 years, and of war 24 years (1793-1816). But in all these stirring events, there was, in the greater part of the reign, at least, and notwithstanding some murmurings, the appearance of a solidity in the Constitution which has somehow settled down into the tradition of "the good old times." A cynic might have described the Constitution as resting upon empty bottles and blunder-busses, for was it not the great "three-bottle period" of the British aristocracy? and as for the masses, the only national sentiment in common was that of military glory earned by British heroes in foreign wars. In more domestic affairs, it was a long hum-drum grind in settled grooves—deep ruts in fact—from which there seemed no escape. Yet it was a period in which great forces had their birth—forces which were destined to exercise the widest influence upon our national, social, and even domestic affairs. Adam Smith's great work on the causes of the wealth of nations planted a life-germ of progressive thought which was to direct men's minds into what, strange as it may seem, was almost a new field of research, viz., the relation of cause and effect, and was commercially almost as much a new birth and the opening of a flood gate of activity, as was that of the printing press at the close of the Middle Ages; and, this once set in motion, a good many other things seemed destined to follow.

What a host of things which now seem a necessary part of our daily lives were then in a chrysalis state! But the bandages were visibly cracking in all directions. Literature was beginning those desperate efforts to emerge from the miseries of Grub Street, to go in future direct to the public for its patrons and its market, and to bring into quiet old country towns like Royston at least a newspaper occasionally. In the political world Burke was writing his "Thoughts on the present Discontents," and Francis, or somebody else, the "Letters of Junius." Things were, in fact, showing signs of commencing to move, though slowly, in the direction of that track along which affairs have sometimes in these latter days moved with an ill-considered haste which savours almost as much of what is called political expediency as of the public good.

Have nations, like individuals, an intuitive sense or presentiment of something to come? If they have, then there has been perhaps no period in our history when that faculty was more keenly alive than towards the close of the last century. From the beginning of the French Revolution to the advent of the Victorian Era constitutes what may be called the great transition period in our domestic, social, and economic life and customs. Indeed, so far as the great mass of the people were concerned, it was really the dawn of social life in England; and, as the darkest hour is often just before the dawn, so were the earlier years of the above period to the people of these Realms. Before the people of England at the end of the 18th century, on the horizon which shut out the future, lay a great black bank of cloud, and our great grandfathers who gazed upon it, almost despairing whether it would ever lift, were really in the long shadows of great coming events.

Through the veil which was hiding the new order of things, occasionally, a sensitive far-seeing eye, here and there caught glimpses from the region beyond. The French, driven just then well-nigh to despair, caught the least glimmer of light and the whole nation was soon on fire! A few of the most highly strung minds caught the inspiration of an ideal dream of the regeneration of the world by some patent process of redistribution! All the ancient bundle of precedents, and the swaddling bands of restraints and customs in which men had been content to remain confined for thousands of years, were henceforth to be dissolved in that grandiose dream of a society in which each individual, left to follow his unrestrained will, was to be trusted to contribute to the happiness of all without that security from wrong which, often rude in its operation, had been the fundamental basis of social order for ages! The ideal was no doubt pure and noble, but unfortunately it only raised once more the old unsolved problem of the forum whether that which is theoretically right can ever be practically wrong. The French Revolution did not, as a matter of fact, rest with a mere revulsion of moral forces, but as the infection descended from moral heights into the grosser elements of the national life, men soon began to fight for the new life with the old weapons, until France found, and others looking on saw, the beautiful dream of liberty tightening down into that hideous nightmare, and saddest of all tyrannies, the tyranny of the multitude! Into the great bank of cloud which had gathered across the horizon of Europe, towards the close of the 18th century, some of the boldest spirits of France madly rushed with the energy of despair, seeking to carve their way through to the coming light, and fought in the names of "liberty, equality and fraternity," with apparent giants and demons in the mist who turned out to be their brother men!

It would be a total misapprehension of the great throbbing thought of better days to come which stirred the sluggish life of the expiring century, to assume, as we often do, that that cry of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," was merely the cry of the French, driven to desperation by the gulf between the nobility and the people. In truth, almost the whole Western world was eagerly looking on at the unfolding of a great drama, and the infection of it penetrated almost into every corner of England. No glimpses even of our local life at this period would be satisfactory which did not give a passing notice to an event which literally turned the heads of many of the most gifted young men in England.