The national debt was trebled in the space of twenty years, thus imposing heavy sacrifices on all. There was an income-tax of two shillings on a pound sterling; but the taxes which caused the most suffering to the poor were the indirect taxes on wheat, shoes, salt, etc. In 1815 a law was passed prohibiting the importation of wheat for less than eighty shillings the quarter.[20] No doubt the wealth of the country became very great through the development of new resources, but it was distributed among the few and gave no relief to the common people.
The poor laws were working astounding evils. With wheat at a given price, the minimum on which a man with wife and one child could subsist was settled; and whenever the family earnings fell below the estimated minimum, the deficiency was to be made up from the rates. In this way the path to pauperism was made so easy and agreeable that a large portion of the laboring classes drifted along it. This system set a premium on improvidence if not on vice. The inevitable effect was that wages fell as doles increased, that paupers so pensioned were preferred by the farmers to independent laborers, because their labor was cheaper, and that independent laborers, failing to get work except at wages forced down to a minimum, were constantly falling into the ranks of pauperism. It was not until 1834 that “a new poor law” was enacted which eliminated these evils.[21]
From one end of the kingdom to the other the prisons were a standing disgrace to civilization. Imprisonment from whatever cause it might be imposed meant consignment to a living tomb. Jails were pesthouses, in which a disease, akin to our modern typhus, flourished often in epidemic form. They were mostly private institutions leased out to ruthless, rapacious keepers who used every menace and extortion to wring money out of the wretched beings committed to their care. Prisons were dark because their managers objected to pay the window tax. Pauper prisoners were nearly starved, for there was no regular allowance of food. Howard’s crusade against prison mismanagement produced tangible results, but after his death the cause of prison reform soon dropped, the old evils revived, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century were everywhere visible.[22]
The Church of England, it appears, had become an object of contempt. No doubt Selwyn’s Dr. Warner is a distorted picture of the clergymen of the time; yet there is reason to believe that Anglican parsons were not very much concerned with the salvation of souls. “The Church had become a vast machine for the promotion of her own officers. How admirable an investment is Religion! Such is the burden of their pleading!”
Some of the conventionalities of the age were so absurd as to engender sooner or later a spirit of revolt. Servants said “your honor” and “your worship” at every moment: tradesmen stood hat in hand as the gentlemen passed by: chaplains said grace and retired before the pudding. “In the days when there were fine gentlemen, Mr. Secretary Pitt’s under-secretaries did not dare to sit down before him; but Mr. Pitt, in his turn, went down on his gouty knees to George II; and when George III spoke a few kind words to him, Lord Chatham burst into tears of reverential joy and gratitude; so awful was the idea of the monarch, and so great the distinction of rank.”[23] Not to use hair powder was an unpardonable offence. Southey and Savage Landor were among the first to appear with their hair in statu naturali and this action of theirs produced an extraordinary sensation.
Caleb Williams, written by William Godwin in 1793, is a severe indictment of the customs and institutions of England. “Things as they are,” is the subtitle of the work, and on that account an outline of the work will supplement the review of society already given. “Caleb Williams,” writes Professor Dowden, “is the one novel of the days of revolution embodying the new doctrine of the time which can be said to survive.”[24]
In the first preface to Caleb Williams Godwin says that the story is “a study and delineation of things passing in the moral world. Its object is to show that the spirit and character of the Government intrudes itself into every rank of society.” “Accordingly,” he writes, “it was proposed in the invention of the following work to comprehend, as far as the progressive nature of a single story would allow, a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man.”
Caleb Williams shortly after the death of his father, became secretary of Ferdinand Falkland, a country squire living in a remote county of England. Mr. Falkland’s mode of living was very recluse and solitary. He avoided men and did not seem to have any friends in whom he confided. He scarcely ever smiled, and his manners plainly showed that he was troubled and unhappy. He was considerate to others, but he never showed a disposition to lay aside the stateliness and reserve which he assumed. Sometimes he was hasty, peevish, and tyrannical, and would even lose entirely his self-possession.
Mr. Collins, Falkland’s steward, tells Williams that their master was not always thus, that he was once the gayest of the gay. In response to Caleb’s entreaties, Collins unfolds as much as he knows of their master’s history. He tells him that Mr. Falkland spent several years abroad and distinguished himself wherever he went by deeds of gallantry and virtue. At length he returned to England with the intention of spending the rest of his days on his estate. His nearest neighbor, Barnabas Tyrrel, was insupportably arrogant, tyrannical to his inferiors and insolent to his equals. On account of his wealth, strength, and copiousness of speech he was regarded with admiration by some, but with awe by all. The arrival of Mr. Falkland threatened to deprive Tyrrel of his authority and commanding position in the community. Tyrrel contemplated the progress of his rival with hatred and aversion. The dignity, affability, and kindness of Mr. Falkland were the subject of everybody’s praise, and all this was an insupportable torment to Tyrrel.
Emily Melville, Tyrrel’s cousin, who lived with him, falls in love with Falkland and consequently incurs her patron’s displeasure. He resolved to impose an uncouth, boorish youth on her as a husband. She is imprisoned in her room for refusing, and is saved from a diabolical plot to ruin her through the timely assistance of Falkland. While still delirious and suffering from the ill-treatment of her persecutor. Emily was arrested and cast into prison by Tyrrel for a debt contracted for board and lodging during the last fourteen years. Death liberated her soon afterwards from the persecutions of her cousin.