CHAP. I. but Scotland, it might almost have been said, had no roads. English agriculture was backward; but Scotland was uncultivated. English industry was unimportant; but Scotland had neither industries nor trade. A journey from London to Edinburgh was a more difficult and a more hazardous undertaking than a journey from London to New York is now; and the traveller, like Johnson or Wordsworth, who attempted a tour in the Highlands, was forced to ride, and to submit to more inconveniences than a tourist would meet with now in the wildest parts of Europe. Yet the development of Scotland was proceeding at least as rapidly as that of England and Wales. The events of 1745 taught the Government the necessity of military roads; and roads formed for military purposes materially promoted the prosperity of the kingdom. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Scotland made unexpected progress. Her lowlands were gradually converted from a barren waste into the garden of Great Britain. The Clyde, improved by Scotch enterprise, shared the trade of the Mersey; the manufactories of Dundee robbed Belfast of its supremacy in linen; and Edinburgh, deprived of the pomp which is usually associated with a capital, increased with a rapidity which, in former days, it had never known. In 1801 Scotland was found to contain 1,599,000 persons. The population rose in 1811 to 1,805,000; and exceeded in 1821 2,093,000. It may fairly be computed to have consisted in 1816 of 1,950,000 persons. No census was taken in Ireland till the year 1813. Nothing, therefore, is known exactly of the increase of the population of that unhappy country before that time. Ireland is said to have contained only 2,372,634 persons in 1754; Lord Colchester, who was chief secretary for Ireland in 1802, says that the population at that time was estimated by one leading Irishman at 3,000,000, and. I. by another at 4,000,000.1 The census of 1813 was in CHAP. many respects incomplete. The numbers were never made up for Louth, Westmeath, Wexford, Cavan, Donegal, and Sligo. There are fair grounds, however, for believing that the population at that time was not less than 5,400,000, and did not exceed 5,600,000. The number of the people in 1821 was found to have increased to 6,801,000; and it is, probably, therefore not very inaccurate to conclude that the population of Ireland in 1816 amounted to about 6,000,000 souls. At the conclusion of the great war, then, England and Wales had a population of about 11,000,000; Ireland of about 6,000,000; Scotland of about 1,950,000 persons. The entire population of the United Kingdom (including the smaller islands) must have exceeded 19,000,000. At the commencement of the war, England and Wales had not, probably, more than 8,500,000; Scotland had not more than 1,500,000; and Ireland had not more than 4,000,000 inhabitants. At the very highest estimate, therefore, the United Kingdom had commenced the struggle with only 14,000,000 of persons. At the very lowest estimate she retired from it with 19,000,000. The growth of the people, which had taken place in the interval, was the more remarkable when it was compared with that of our great rival. France had entered the revolutionary war with a population of 26,363,000. In 1817, when she had again been reduced to her ancient limits, the population returns gave a total of 29,217,465.'2 The United Kingdom, in the interval, had added 5,000,000 souls to its 14,000,000 inhabitants. France, on the contrary, had added only 1,500,000 to every 14,000,000 of her people. The disparity between the rival nations was being rapidly 1 Haydn's Dict. of Dates, sub verb. Population. Colchester, vol. i. P. 'Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 18. 273. CHAP. I. The Na tional Debt. removed; and the argument, on which Napoleon mainly relied, that his own superior numbers must ultimately assure him a victory, was becoming continually weaker. It was constantly becoming evident that the day would arrive when the great rivals would contend on equal terms. Fourteen millions of people, increasing in a quarter of a century to nineteen millions, had in less than a generation raised their country to the first place in the world. But the victory had been won at a tremendous cost. In the year 1792, the last complete year of peace, the debt of Great Britain had amounted to 237,400,000l.; the debt of Ireland to about 2,250,000l. The entire debt of the United Kingdom only slightly exceeded 239,650,000. In 1815, the last year of the war, the capital of the debt of Great Britain amounted to about 834,260,000l.; the capital of the Irish debt exceeded 26,770,000l. The entire debt of the United Kingdom reached 861,000,000l. The debt in 1792 imposed a charge of 9,301,000l. on Great Britain, and of 131,000l. on Ireland. The charge of the debt in 1815 had risen (without the sinking fund) to 32,645,618. The gigantic debt, which had thus been rapidly accumulated, was of very recent origin. The earlier kings of England had, indeed, like their later successors, frequent occasions for more money than their revenues afforded them. But the art of borrowing was in its infancy; the best security was bad. Money-lenders refused to advance their money on bad security, except at high rates of interest; and high rates of interest were illegal by the laws of man, and reprobated (so churchmen taught) by the laws of God. When one of the earlier kings of the country required money, he anticipated his revenue if he were an 1 See the important return, Session 1858, No. 443, pp. 78, 79. Porter gives the total at 885,000,000l., Progress of the Nation, p. 482; but he apparently includes in this sum the proximate value of the annuities which were never at that time officially calculated. I. honest man; or he raised a forced loan from the Jews if CHAP. he were a dishonest one. The creditor, in return for his loan, received a tally; and the loan was said to be borrowed on the security of the tally. It is probable that a good many people now are ignorant of the meaning of a word which a few centuries ago was in common use among their ancestors. 'Score' (which is the past participle of the old Saxon verb shear, and which is the same word as shore) when used for the number twenty, has been well and rationally accounted for by supposing that our unlearned ancestors, to avoid the embarrassment of large numbers, when they had made twice ten notches cut off the piece or tally (taglié) containing them, and afterwards counted the scores or pieces cut off, and reckoned by the number of separated pieces or by scores. This ancient manner of reckoning is humorously noted by Shakespeare: "Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas before our grandfathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used." Tallies were still in use in Ireland at the commencement of the present century. It's a tally, plase your honour,' says the Widow O'Neill, in the Absentee.' 'Oh, you're a foreigner: it's the way the labourers do keep the account of the day's work with the overseer, the bailiff; a notch for every day the bailiff makes on his stick, and the labourer the like on his stick, to tally: and when we come to make up the account it's by the notches we go.' The tally, then, was originally a rough piece of wood which our ancestors cut or notched to assist them to count. Just as the five-pound note exceeds in finish and perfection of workmanship the ordinary piece of paper on which this 2 vi. p. 175. A representation of a CHAP. I. sentence is printed, so the tally of loan surpassed the rude tally of the innkeeper or the tradesman. But just as the five-pound note is, after all, nothing but a bit of paper, so the tally of loan was nothing but a bit of wood.1 This rude system of borrowing money continued in force till a very recent period. Up to the reign of Henry VI. money was borrowed by the sovereign on his own security. In the reign of Henry VI., Parliament authorised the crown, on four separate occasions, to raise money by loan, and took the burden of the debt upon its own shoulders. Two more centuries elapsed before the legislature, in the reign of Charles II., formally authorised the crown to issue public negotiable securities bearing 6 per cent. interest. This issue marked the commencement of the modern National Debt of England. But it was attended with very unfortunate consequences. Within eight years, Charles, on the advice of Clifford, closed the exchequer. The unfortunate creditors received for a few years the interest of their debt, though this payment was at last suspended; and, after carrying a suit against the crown from the inferior courts to the Chancellor, and from the Chancellor to the House of Lords, the creditors of the State were compelled to forego their entire claim to interest, and accept as a full discharge one half of their original debt, or 664,2631. This 664,2637. is the oldest portion of the National Debt. The Revolution of 1688 succeeded. The hereditary revenues of the crown were obviously insufficient for the A flat piece of well-seasoned wood was selected. The sum of money which it bore was cut in notches by the cutter of the tallies, and likewise written upon two sides of it by the writer of the tallies. The tally was cleft in the middle by the deputy-chamberlain with a knife and a mallet through the shaft and the notches, whereby it made two halves, each half having a super scription and a half part of the notch or notches. It being thus divided or cleft, one part was called a tally, the other a counter-tally; and when these two parts came afterwards to be joined, if they were genuine they fitted so exactly that they appeared evidently to be parts the one of the other.'-Madox, Hist. of Exchequer, fol. ed., p. 709, and Return, Sess. 1858, p. 443. |