THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT AFTER HER CORONATION
Consider next the cheap post. The people have begun to write to each other. Formerly there was little or no communication by letter. It is true that a cheap and easy way was practised, by means of which a young man could communicate to his friends the simple fact of his safety. It was to address a letter to his mother; if she took that letter in it would cost her eightpence at least, but she knew there was nothing written within, therefore she refused to take the letter, which was undelivered, but she knew from the address outside that her son was safe. Now, however, letters pass freely into the village; they convey information, as to work and pay, that the newspapers have not yet learned to furnish; wherever workmen are wanted, thither sets in a stream in search of work. Some years ago a mischievous fund was raised, called the Lord Mayor’s Fund, for the unemployed. A rumour of this fund ran through the whole length and breadth of the land; all the unemployed came up to London from all parts to share in the money so raised; it was distributed chiefly in soup tickets; the men took the tickets, sold them, and drank the contents. The point, however, to notice is that the people, before the proposed fund was started, knew all about it, and had begun to come up in order to claim their share.
I have spoken of the rise in wages. To this I will return presently. Meantime observe that with the rise of wages there has also arrived an extraordinary cheapness in food. The price of wheat, between the years 1786 and 1837 was never lower than 39s. a quarter, and rose to 106s., 113s., 119s., and even 126s. a quarter. It was over 70s. a quarter for seventeen years of that time, and over 50s. for forty years; it is now about 20s. With the price of grain, other things have fallen; tea, which sixty years ago was five shillings a pound, can now be had for eighteenpence; sugar, of which the commonest kind formerly cost ninepence a pound, is now about twopence; cheese, butter, rice, and other products are now imported, and are sold at a half of their former price; meat comes over from New Zealand, frozen, in unknown quantities; clothing is half the price it was; the working-man’s wages, therefore, which have more than doubled, represent a much greater purchasing power. He stands, therefore, upon a higher level of comfort. Another thing—a very important thing—has been done for the rustic. By an Act passed quite recently village councils—parish councils—have been founded. To these councils, elected by the working-classes from themselves, are entrusted the governing of the parish: the lighting, paving, cleaning of the streets, the order and police, and all matters belonging to the daily life of the place. On these councils the squire and the parson may sit, if they are elected; but they have no more power than the others.
So far, it is reported that without the presence of the squire or parson the new councillors flounder. This, however, was to be expected.
Painting by Sir G. Hayter
PRINCESS VICTORIA, AGE 16
In the year 1837 any person who owed another any sum of money, however small, was liable to be arrested for debt, and if he would not pay he could be thrown into prison and kept there till he did pay. Thousands of unfortunate debtors were kept in prison for the whole of their lives on account of some miserable debt which, if they had been out of prison, they could have paid off in a short time. There was a devilish malignity about the law which enabled an attorney to roll up a bill of costs (which the prisoner had to pay), on this pretence and that, like a snowball increasing as it rolled; the warders of the prison demanded fees and “garnish,” in default of which the prisoner was turned into the “poor side,” where the privations and misery and enforced idleness were terrible. If a working-man got into prison, as was always happening, there was no hope for him: the costs went mounting up, he could do no work, he must sit down and starve. Outside the prison, what became of his wife and children? In the year ending 5th January 1830, 7114 persons were sent to the prisons of London for debt; in 1840 the number of prisoners for debt were 1732 in England; in Ireland, under 1000; in Scotland, under 100. By the Act of 1861 imprisonment for debt was forbidden, except in case of debt fraudulently contracted; in 1887, by the Bankruptcy Act imprisonment for debt was virtually abolished altogether. A terror was removed from life when the walls of the Fleet and the Queen’s Bench were taken down and the gates thrown open. The recovery of small debts is now entrusted to the County Court, where the Judge makes an order that so much should be paid weekly or monthly. If the debtor breaks that order, he is liable to imprisonment for contempt of Court.
The English working-man has been accused of servility. Such a charge could never be brought against the working-man of London, or of the North; that servility existed in some of the agricultural districts was undoubtedly true. How should it be otherwise when a man’s daily bread, his work, his home, his wage, depended wholly on one man—the squire? His village was his prison; he could go nowhere else; there was no work for him out of his village; the squire was his “overlord,” to use the old phrase; he was not legally, yet he was in reality, ascriptus glebæ, bound to the soil; he looked for help in sickness and in trouble to the great house whose ladies looked after the village, helping, feeding, clothing, and admonishing. The man was like a child in leading-strings, or at best like a schoolboy under rule and discipline. With the cause of that servility, the fact itself is vanishing.
The depression in agriculture seems also, on the whole, turning out favourably for the agricultural labourer; the farms are worked more economically and want fewer hands; but the superfluous hands have left the village—there are now no more than are wanted day by day; if an odd piece of work turns up it is difficult to find a man to do it. The men are therefore valued in proportion to their paucity of numbers; their wages, for the same reason, are going up; they live more comfortably, they have more money to spend, they are more independent.