“Auburn and Harlburn, two Yorkshire villages, once promised to develop into seaport towns of considerable importance; but, like the will of Canute, the will of the inhabitants of these villages was ignored by the rising sea, and Auburn and Harlburn now exist in mere names and sand-banks.
“Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, is gradually being swallowed up. Every now and then the inhabitants move a distance inland, rebuild their houses and shops and wait patiently and philosophically for the next “notice to quit” from the sea. Many other seaside places have suffered or are suffering a similar fate.
“It may be argued, on the other hand, that some seaside towns are gradually becoming inland towns by the failure of the sea to ‘come up to the mark,’ and running out only to run in for a shorter distance. Winchelsea, Sandwich, Rye, and Southport are all suffering in this way. Winchelsea and Rye were originally two of our cinque ports, but the sea has left them standing high and dry. Sandwich was once a highly important seaport town. It now stands two or three miles inland.
“The sea is leaving Southport quite in the lurch—so much so indeed that the inhabitants have had to sink extensive lakes down on the beach to keep the sea from running off altogether and leaving merely an ordinary inland town.
“But the extension of our island in this way is very much less than the encroachment of the sea at other points, and while our land is certainly becoming more extensive in one direction, it is contracting, and with much greater rapidity, in some other. And the ultimate effect may be that our mountain peaks may form small islands, and eventually be pointed out by posterity as ‘the position in which Great Britain is reputed to have stood.’”
The nineteenth has been the most remarkable century in the world’s history. It was the most destructive and wasteful of life and property in the early part of its career, and in the latter half has been the most constructive and uplifting to the human race of any of the past centuries. The population of all Europe at the beginning of the century numbered one hundred and seventy millions, of whom four millions were engaged in the murderous work of war. The demoralization of society and the miseries inflicted on the people by these wars are beyond the power of pen to describe. France had an absolute monarchy. “The King held in his hands the unquestioned right to dispose, at his will, of the lives and property of the people. He was the sole legislator. His own pleasure was his only rule. He levied taxes, asking no consent of those who had to pay. He sent to prison men with no crime laid to their charge, and kept them there, without trial, till they died.” Political corruption was rampant. For sixty years the court of Louis XV. had festered in the most filthy debauchery. Then followed the bloody Revolution, unparalleled in history. The guillotine, worn out with its butchery of more than a million lives stood idle, and peace—rather, the lull of an unfinished storm, for a time rested upon unhappy France. Then the tumultuous hurricane burst out anew in the wars of Napoleon, which terminated only at Waterloo in 1815.
“The influence which Napoleon exerted upon the course of human affairs,” says McKenzie, “is without a parallel in history. Never before had any man inflicted upon his fellows miseries so appalling; never before did one man’s hand scatter seeds destined to produce a harvest of change so vast and so beneficient. It was he who roused Italy from her sleep of centuries and led her towards that free and united life which she at length enjoys. It was he, who by destroying the innumerable petty states of Germany, inspired the dream of unity which it has required more than half a century to fulfil.” The progress made by these two countries during the century, in liberty, education, and all that conduces to the welfare of the individual and the strength of the nation, has been great beyond precedent.
England has perhaps outstripped all other nations in the advancement she has made during this period of the world’s greatest progress. Her long and terrible wars with France and her allies had wasted her people and depleted her treasury. Taxes were enormous, food was high, wages low, and work scarce. The introduction of machinery in some departments reduced hand-labor a hundred-fold. The power loom threw thousands of people out of employment. England was badly governed. The laws were all made in the interests of the rich. Multitudes of the poor were famine stricken, one in eight being fed on charity, and many died of starvation. Hunger maddens men, and hence crime abounded. Laws, numerous and terrible, were enacted for its prevention and punishment. Capital offences numbered two hundred and twenty-three. Some of the offences were ridiculous trifles. If a man appeared disguised in public, cut down young trees, shot rabbits, or stole property worth a dollar and a quarter, he was at once hanged. The treatment of prisoners was most barbarous. Young and old of both sexes were huddled together like cattle. Vermin, filth, and starvation were the common lot of all. John Howard and Elizabeth Fry inaugurated reforms in the interests of the prisoners that have since engaged the thought and effort of the best men and women of the nation.
War was carried on in the most cruel and brutal manner. Conscription and the press gang forced men from their families, and from peaceful occupation, and drove them to an unwilling military or naval, bloody field-servitude. Five hundred lashes was no uncommon punishment for some trifling offence. “The men who applied the torture were changed at short intervals, lest the punishment should be at all mitigated by their fatigue. The doctor stood by to say how much the victim could bear without dying. When that point was reached, he was taken down and carried to the hospital, to be brought back for the balance of his punishment when his wounds were healed. There is record of a soldier sentenced to one thousand lashes, seven hundred of which were actually inflicted. In the Crimean war two thousand six hundred British soldiers were killed, while eighteen thousand died in hospital of wounds and disease.”
Scientific skill directed by generous-hearted Christian philanthropy has now mitigated these horrors, reducing them almost to a minimum. The same may be said of the brutality endured by women and little children working in mines from twelve to sixteen hours a day.