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Gregory King's Scheme of the Income of the several families in England-Degrees of SocietyTown and Country Populations-London-Its Population-Commerce-Trading Companies-Banking-Unemployed Capital-Projects for New Companies-Lotteries-Tradesmen-Their character and habits-Extent of London-Progress of Fashion WestwardStreet Economy, and Police-Robberies and Outrages.

IN 1688, "A Scheme of the Income and Expense of the several Families in England" was calculated by Gregory King. He gives the number of families in each degree, and the number of persons. Of course there can be

no absolute dependence upon such a document; although other political arithmeticians gave it their approval. In 1851, the Census of that year included a minute return of the infinitely varied Occupations of the People. The Census of 1841 exhibits a general Classification, which is more available for some points of comparison with the "Scheme" of 1688. The changes in the component parts of Society in about a century and a half are very strikingly brought out by this comparison.

I. The "Scheme," in the first place, gives us, of persons of independent means, 160 temporal lords, 800 baronets, 600 knights, 3000 esquires, 12,000 gentlemen. The income of an esquire is taken at £450, and that of a gentleman at £280. There were, moreover, 40,000 "Freeholders of the better

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DEGREES OF SOCIETY.

[1689-1714. sort," whose incomes are taken at £91 each. There were also 120,000 Freeholders of the lesser sort, each with an income of £55. These constituted the class of yeomen, and many, no doubt, farmed their own land. The Census of 1841 shows upwards of five hundred thousand persons returned as independent; but three fourths of these are females. The more minute return of 1851 shows a large number of annuitants, chiefly females. This class has been created by those facilities of investment in the Government Funds and other Stock, which scarcely existed in 1688.

II. We have next, in the "Scheme," 10,000 persons in the Civil Service of the country ;-5000 being in the greater offices and places, and 5000 in the lesser. The class of placemen was very numerous at a period when places were openly sold, and were regarded as amongst the best of investments, for persons who desired the happy lot of sinecurists. The Civil offices of our time are filled by about 16,000 persons of whom the greater number are amongst the hardest workers of the community. The offices now connected with local administration, and the servants of the dock-yards, are not included in this comparison.

III. The mercantile class in 1688 was estimated at 2000 eminent merchants and traders by sea-each with the modest income of £400: and 8000 lesser merchants, each with an income of £200. The shopkeepers and tradesmen were taken at 50,000, each with an income of £45. The artisans and handicraftsmen at 60,000, each earning £38 by the year. The adult males engaged in Commerce, Trade, and Manufacture, in 1841, exceeded two millions. The miners and other labourers were more than half a million.

IV. In 1688, there were, as we have mentioned, 160,000 Freeholders. There were also 150,000 Farmers, each with an income of £42 10s. We may conclude that the greater number of the small owners, as well as the renters of land, were engaged in agricultural occupations. The Farmers and Graziers in 1841 were 309,000. Gregory King's estimate gives 364,000 labouring people and out-servants, and 400,000 cottagers and paupers. At a period when there was necessarily a great mixture of occupations, it is impossible to say that these heads of families, amounting to more than three-quarters of a million, were for the most part agriculturists. But we apprehend that a large portion were chiefly engaged in occupations of a rural character. In 1841, the number of agricultural labourers and gardeners, amounted to about twelve hundred thousand.

V. The naval officers of 1688 were estimated at 5000; the common seamen at 50,000. The navy of the queen's and merchant service in 1841 was returned as comprising 220,000 men and boys. The officers of the army in 1688 were reckoned as 4000; the common soldiers as 35,000. In 1841 the army comprised 131,000 officers and men. In 1851 the numbers were largely increased.

VI. The clergy were estimated in 1688 to consist of 2000 "eminent clergymen," each with an income of £72; and of 8000 "lesser clergymen," each with an income of £50. In 1851 there were 18,587 ministers of the established Church; 8521 Protestant dissenting ministers; and 1093 Roman Catholic priests. The "persons in liberal arts and sciences" in 1688 were reckoned as 15,000, each with an income of £60. In 1841 the legal profes

1689-1714.]

TOWN AND COUNTRY POPULATION.

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sion comprised 17,454 persons; and the medical 22,187. Other educated persons following miscellaneous pursuits were 143,836, of whom 34,618 were females.

In looking at the amount of country and town population in Gregory King's estimate, we may take the number of persons to be as follows, in each of the preceding general divisions:

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As nearly as we can judge from these imperfect data, the country population in 1688 comprised five-sevenths of the entire number of the people; the town population comprised only two-sevenths. In 1851, the town population slightly exceeded the population of the country; that of the towns being 8,990,809; that of villages and detached dwellings in the country being 8,936,800.

Of the town populations, that of London probably comprised one-third of the aggregate number. Three years before the Revolution, the inhabitants of the metropolis were estimated by King at five hundred and thirty thousand. This was about one-tenth of the whole population of the kingdom. Sir William Petty estimated the inhabitants of London at a million of persons. This calculation was founded upon very loose data; and still looser were the assertions derived from the increase of houses, that in the reign of George I. the City, with Southwark and Westminster, contained a million and a half of people. Under the precise enumeration of the census of 1801 London contained less than a million inhabitants. The entire population of England and Wales was then under nine millions. Compared with other large towns at the end of the seventeenth century, London was considered able to bear an assessment in Aid that indicated her superiority in wealth as much as in population. In 1693 she was called upon to pay a monthly tax six times as great as the united assessments of Bristol, Norwich, Exeter, Worcester, Chester, and Gloucester. In 1702, there belonged to the port of London 560 vessels, averaging 151 tons each, giving an aggregate

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LONDON-POPULATION-COMMERCE.

[1689-1714. of 84,560 tons. The number of merchant vessels of all the ports of England was 3281, with an average of nearly 80 tons, and an aggregate of 261,222 tons. London thus engrossed about one third of the entire trade of the

kingdom.

The commerce of the port of London, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, inconsiderable as it was when compared with the gigantic operations of our own time, must have been sufficiently imposing to the foreigner, and even to those who habitually looked upon it. The magnificent docks of the Thames belong to the present century; one small dock belonged to the earlier period of which we write. But the Pool was crowded in the reigns of William III. and Anne with colliers and coal-barges, waiting to deliver their cargoes at numerous private wharfs. Billingsgate, in 1699, was made a free market for the sale of fish; and the fishermen of little vessels that now came with every tide laden with mackerel and soles, with lobsters and oysters, were no longer compelled to sell exclusively to the fishmongers, but were free to supply the street-hawkers. At three o'clock in summer, and at five in winter, this famous market was opened. The disputes of fishers and costermongers produced that variety of our language which was once termed " Billingsgate;" but which is known by more general names since the great fish market has become refined. But more speculative commercial operations were going forward in the port of London than those connected with the supply of grain, or coal, or fish. During the quarter of a century from the accession of William and Mary to the death of Anne, there had been only four years and a half of peace. To the ordinary sea risks, at a time when marine insurance was little resorted to, was added the risk of capture by a foreign enemy, in distant seas, and not unfrequently in the Channel. Nevertheless,-although during the eight years and a half of war in the reign of William, the tonnage of English shipping declined by more than a half its previous amount,— immediately after the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, the commerce of the country took a sudden spring; and although the war was renewed in 1702, it went on increasing during the reign of Anne. Two East India Companies had been quarrelling for the twelve years succeeding the Revolution; but at length their differences were composed; they established a common stock; and the Old Company which was formed at the beginning of the seventeenth century was incorporated into the New Company at the beginning of the eighteenth. The anxiety of the merchants of London to overthrow the monopoly of the India Trade, which was in the hands of a few individuals of enormous wealth, was at last successful. The silks and painted calicoes of India were prohibited; but the use of tea was spreading amongst the higher and middle ranks, and a new source of profitable commerce was opened by the change of habits in the people. Even whilst tea and coffee were taxed in their liquid state, and families sent to the coffee-house for a quart of the precious infusions, it was observed that excess in drinking, especially about London, was somewhat lessened through their use. Immediately after the Revolution, tea and coffee were made subject to the Customs' duties. The shops of London then retailed the new luxuries, but at a price which must have forbidden their general use. In 1710, Bohea is advertised at twelve, sixteen, twenty,

* Chamberlayne's "Present State," 1687, p. 41.

1689-1714.]

TRADING COMPANIES.

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and twenty-four shillings per lb.; the lowest green at twelve shillings.* Eighteen years afterwards, it is complained that "tea and wine are all we seem anxious for."+ There was another change in the habits of the people produced by political causes operating upon the accustomed course of trade. The war with France was accompanied by a prohibition of French wines and brandy, of which the previous returns showed an annual consumption of twenty-two thousand tuns of wine, and eleven thousand tuns of brandy. The Methuen treaty of 1703, under which the wines of Portugal were put upon the most favoured footing, sent the wine consumers from Claret to Port, of which twenty-thousand pipes were imported into London in 1721. The loss of brandy was supplied by the consumption of home made spirits; and in a very few years "the distillers found out a way to hit the palate of the poor, by their new-fashioned compound water, called Geneva."‡

Several of the old trading Companies of London were at this period carrying on their adventures with success. The Russia Company, established in 1553, had certain privileges; but each member of the Company traded on his own account. The Turkey Company was formed in 1579; and two hundred years later was denounced by Adam Smith as "a strict and oppressive monopoly." This was also what was called "a regulated Company," or a monopoly for individual traders. The African Company, which began its operations in 1530, was, on the contrary, a joint stock Company; its constitution being such as that which the East India Company set forth as their own great claim to support, in which "noblemen, gentlemen, shopkeepers, widows, orphans, and all other subjects may be traders, and employ their capital in a joint-stock." The Hudson's Bay Company was chartered in 1670, for the purpose of opening a trade for furs and minerals. For nearly two centuries the trade in furs, conducted by this Company and the North West Company, who were once rival but were at last united, was held to be the sole use to which a region some forty times larger than England could be applied. The minerals which prince Rupert sent out a ship to search for, in the time of king Charles II., have been discovered in the time of queen Victoria. The reign of the Hudson's Bay Company has suddenly passed away, upon the discovery of gold. A new Colony has been added to the British Crown, in the same year which has also seen the transfer of the sovereignty of India from a joint-stock Company to the Imperial government. It is impossible to look upon such mighty changes without a conviction that events which may change the destinies of millions of Asiatics, and fill another American region of boundless swamps and forests with the greatest civilising race of the European family, are amongst the most wonderful of the Special Providences of the Almighty.

The system of Banking, which had been slowly growing up in London from the time of Charles II., when the goldsmiths kept the cash of the merchants, and large business transactions were arranged by the payment of bills, or what we now call cheques, was not followed at all, or at least very imperfectly, in the country districts. Remittances to London, even of the taxes collected for the government, were made in specie. In 1692 the

Advertisement in "Tatler," No. 157, original edition.

"Augusta Triumphans," by Defoe, p. 311.

"Complete Tradesman," vol. ii. p. 220.

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