“But how do they show themselves?”
“In many circumstances, which concern many classes; but I speak of those which touch my own order; and therefore I say at once—in the degradation of the people.”
“But are the people so degraded?”
“There is more serfdom in England now than at any time since the Conquest. I speak of what passes under my daily eyes when I say that those who labour can as little choose or change their masters now, as when they were born thralls. There are great bodies of the working classes of this country nearer the condition of brutes, than they have been at any time since the Conquest. Indeed I see nothing to distinguish them from brutes, except that their morals are inferior. Incest and infanticide are as common among them as among the lower animals. The domestic principle waxes weaker and weaker every year in England: nor can we wonder at it, when there is no comfort to cheer and no sentiment to hallow the Home.”
“I was reading a work the other day,” said Egremont, “that statistically proved that the general condition of the people was much better at this moment than it had been at any known period of history.”
“Ah! yes, I know that style of speculation,” said Gerard; “your gentleman who reminds you that a working man now has a pair of cotton stockings, and that Harry the Eighth himself was not as well off. At any rate, the condition of classes must be judged of by the age, and by their relation with each other. One need not dwell on that. I deny the premises. I deny that the condition of the main body is better now than at any other period of our history; that it is as good as it has been at several. I say, for instance, the people were better clothed, better lodged, and better fed just before the war of the Roses than they are at this moment. We know how an English peasant lived in those times: he eat flesh every day, he never drank water, was well housed, and clothed in stout woollens. Nor are the Chronicles necessary to tell us this. The acts of Parliament from the Plantagenets to the Tudors teach us alike the price of provisions and the rate of wages; and we see in a moment that the wages of those days brought as much sustenance and comfort as a reasonable man could desire.”
“I know how deeply you feel upon this subject,” said Egremont turning to Sybil.
“Indeed it is the only subject that ever engages my thought,” she replied, “except one.”
“And that one?”
“Is to see the people once more kneel before our blessed Lady,” replied Sybil.