[50] Estimate from incomplete census.
[51] First complete census.
[52] The official value was established long ago; it represents a price put upon merchandise or commodities; it is in reality a fixed value, and serves to indicate the relative extent of imports and exports in different years. The declared value is simply the market price.
[53] The official returns as to the number of paupers are most incomplete and unsatisfactory. In the 10th annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, p. 480 (1844), a table is printed which is said to give the returns from the earliest period for which authentic Parliamentary documents have been received, and this sets forth the number of paupers in England and Wales, for the entire twelve months in the years 1803, 1813, 1814, and 1815; then comes a long interval of “no returns,” and after 1839 we have the numbers for only three months in each year, from 1840 up to 1843; in the first annual Report (1848) these returns for one quarter in each year are continued up to 1848; and then we get the returns for only two days in each year, the 1st of July and the 1st of January, so that to come to any conclusion amid so much inconsistency is utterly impossible. The numbers above given would have been continued to the present period, could any comparison have been instituted. The numbers for the periods (not above given) are—
| 1803 | 1,040,716 | Number of paupers for the entire twelve months. |
| 1813 | 1,426,065 | |
| 1814 | 1,402,576 | |
| 1815 | 1,319,851 | |
| 1849 (1st Jan.) | 940,851 | Number of paupers for two separate days in each year. |
| „ (1st July) | 846,988 | |
| 1850 (1st Jan.) | 889,830 | |
| „ (1st July) | 796,318 | |
| 1851 (1st Jan.) | 829,440 |
[54] It might at first appear that, when the work is shifted to the Continent, there would be a proportionate decrease of the aggregate quantity at home, but a little reflection will teach us that the foreigners must take something from us in exchange for their work, and so increase the quantity of our work in certain respects as much as they depress it in others.
[55] The Great Exhibition, I am informed, produced a very small effect on the consumption of porter; and, according to the official returns, 160,000 gallons less spirits were consumed in the first nine months of the present year, than in the corresponding months of the last: thus showing that any occupation of mind or body is incompatible with intemperate habits, for drunkenness is essentially the vice of idleness, or want of something better to do.
[56] The term sanc in “sanc-work” is the Norman word for blood (Latin, sanguis; French, sang), so that “sanc-work” means, literally, bloody work, this called either from the sanguinary trade of the soldier, or from the blood-red colour of the cloth.
[57] “Reredos, dossel (retable, Fr.; postergule, Ital.),” according to Parker’s Glossary of Architecture, was “the wall or screen at the back of an altar, seat, &c.; it was usually ornamented with panelling, &c., especially behind an altar, and sometimes was enriched with a profusion of niches, buttresses, pinnacles, statues, and other decorations, which were often painted with brilliant colours.
“The open fire-hearth, frequently used in ancient domestic halls, was likewise called a reredos.