misfortunes of the times. The opposition members answered him with words of lamentation and foreboding; lamentation at the deteriorating condition of the working-classes, and forebodings that they would sink yet further, under the pressure of taxation. Superficial readers and hearers were amazed at so wide a difference of statement on what appeared to be a matter of figures. But figures have no more chance of being right than the merest conjectures, unless the premises on which they are to operate are well ascertained and agreed upon; and the chancellor of the exchequer and his critics proceeded from different premises, and resorted to different tests to discover the real condition of the country. Mr Robinson had taken off taxes: all agreed that this was well. He had found that the reduced taxes had yielded more revenue just in proportion to their reduction wise men agreed that this was natural and right. He gloried in the excess of revenue above his calculations, and proceeded to take off more taxes: wise men agreed to his proceeding, but questioned the grounds of his exultation. He argued, from the increase in the revenue, a vast improvement in the condition of the people-an improvement commensurate with the increase of revenue and here wise men thought him wrong. The difference was, that Mr Robinson compared the yield of the revenue merely with its yield in former years. His opponents considered also the great increase in the number of consumers. And a wide difference it was that there was room for here. All who took this element into their calculations, thought Mr Robinson wrong some believed that the condition of the people was, on the whole, actually deteriorating; some that it was only not improving; some that it was improving more slowly than it ought to do; and nowhere was any party found to sympathise fully in the exultation of the chancellor of the exchequer at this time. After the census of 1831, it was found that, taking the nation all round, each person consumed one-seventh more of the necessaries and comforts of life which come under the heads of taxation, than at the beginning of the century; this small improvement having taken place chiefly during the latter years of this period. Such a fact is full of promise and satisfaction in itself; but the proportion of it which was true in 1826 would have been grievously disappointing to the chancellor of the exchequer disappointing to his benevolence, even more than to his pride.

The reductions which the chancellor of the exchequer found himself enabled to propose in 1825 were on hemp, coffee, wine, spirits, and cider, and some of the assessed taxes which pressed on industry, and on the comfort of the working-classes; among which, the most important were the house-tax on inhabited houses under £10 rent, and the windowduty on houses not having more than seven windows. An effort was made by Mr Hobhouse to get the whole window-duty repealed; but this pernicious and most indefensible tax still subsists. These taxes together amounted to a little more than a million and a half. In 1826, March 13, when the country was in a very suffering state, and when parliament was about to be dissolved, the chancellor

of the exchequer passed in review our whole financial system for the preceding ten years, declaring that there had been a reduction of taxation to the amount of twenty-seven millions and a half since the peace. Some opposition members—Mr Maberley, Mr Hume, and Mr Hobhouse the foremost-protested against the statement that there had been any reduction at all; the increase in the number of tax-payers so far exceeding the relief, as that multitudes had been deprived of the use of articles of comfort and luxury who had formerly enjoyed them. Thus, though the yield of the duties on comforts and luxuries had so increased as to occasion the reduction of some of them, the enjoyment of these comforts by individuals had considerably lessened; and the country was therefore, if judged of by its consumption, in a declining state. The object of this opposition was to obtain a revision of government expenditure, and a reduction in many national establishments. The object was not obtained; the House of Commons throwing out by a large majority the forty-seven resolutions offered by Mr Hume, and the motion founded upon them. The sum of the resolutions was: That the continued pressure of taxation has greatly increased the privations and distress of the productive, industrious, and labouring classes of the community;' and the resulting motion was for an address to the crown, praying that his majesty 'would be graciously pleased to take into his consideration the present alarming state of the country, and to direct an immediate inquiry to be made into the causes of the existing distress, and the adoption of measures calculated to bring it to as speedy a termination as possible, and to prevent its further spreading.' The motion was lost by a majority of 152 to 51, on the 4th of May, within a month of the dissolution of parliament. A more curious instance can scarcely be found than in the addresses of Prosperity Robinson and Adversity Hume, of the opposite conclusions which may be drawn from a view of a statistical subject, where the figures were indisputable on both sides-as far as they went. The discrepancy lay in the want of a common ground on which to base their calculations. The existing parliament, it is clear, thought the chancellor of the exchequer altogether in the right. In the poor-law inquiry of subsequent years, it came out that all who had congratulated the nation on a pervading spread and increase of material prosperity had been widely mistaken.

On the 31st of May, the session was closed by commission, the speech declaring that, the state of the public business enabling his majesty to close the session at a period of the year the most convenient for a general election, it is his majesty's intention to dissolve, without delay, the present parliament, and to direct the issue of writs for the calling of a new one.' The speech announced peace with the Burmese; declared that every endeavour had been used to preserve peace among the nations in both hemispheres; and expressed deep concern at the distresses of the manufacturing classes at home, admiration at the patience with which those distresses had been generally borne, and a hope that the pressure was gradually giving way.

Thus was dismissed the seventh parliament of the United Kingdom, after a duration of six sessions. It had done some great things. The Commons had not had the opportunity of protecting the queen, further than by announcing that they were ready to protect her, for her case had never reached them; but such indications as they had been able to give were on the right side. The great work of parliamentary reform had begun with the enlargement of the representation of Yorkshire; and that of the abolition of slavery with the issue of the celebrated circular to the West India colonies. Our country had been ennobled in the eyes of the world by the foreign policy of Mr Canning, enthusiastically sanctioned by parliament; and broad foundations had been laid for friendship with mankind at large, and prosperity at home, by a practical admission of the principles of free-trade. There had been a reduction of taxation, considerable, though less than men of a later time would have achieved during ten years of peace. These were things actually done. A considerable, but indefinite progress had been made towards other great achievements, which were sure to be effected in time. Nothing was done for national education, for Catholic emancipation, for emigration, for Chancery reform, for the repeal of the corn-laws, or for general parliamentary reform; but these great topics had been discussed, and some of them diligently studied; and all clear-sighted men knew that they were ripening for fruition, through all the gales of passion and frosts of indifference which retarded their growth. There could be no doubt that the country was in an advancing state, however severe the visitations of distress under which it was labouring at the end of the six years' term; and however fearful the turbulence of some districts and classes from the withholding of political rights on the ground of religion. Much as there was yet to be done and undone, the improvement in our political state since 1820 was very striking. The cabinet was liberalised, and still liberalising; and, in the train of the cabinet, the king. The House of Commons had grown wiser by its six years' experience, and under the influence of the genius of Mr Canning-imperfect as was that statesman's fidelity to his own genius in some points of high importance. And now, there was every reason to hope that the new parliament would be an improvement upon its predecessor; and that the light which had been shed abroad in the diffusion of improved principles of policy would appear with some effectual concentration in the people's House, arranging their present affairs, and decreeing their future destiny, with a clearer and more comprehensive knowledge than hitherto.

The principal topics set up for tests at the elections were the corn-laws and Catholic emancipation; and, more partially, the abolition of slavery. The anti-Catholic strength rather gained than lost by the perturbation of the time. The uncompromised candidates said, with regard to the corn-laws, what was usually said in those days-that they would agree to what should be best for both grower and consumer; and the anti-slavery test did not obtain much support. There was an opposition talked of to Mr Huskisson at Liverpool; but the enemies of free

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trade could not find a candidate. Lord Howick and Mr Beaumont failed in Northumberland; and Mr Brougham in Westmoreland, where the Lowther interest put forth its strength. Some of the Radical demagogues tried their chance; or rather, as Cobbett avowed, did their best to empty the purses of certain of the aristocracy. Cobbett himself stood for Preston, and polled nearly 1000 votes; and Hunt opposed Sir Thomas Lethbridge in Somersetshire; of course, unsuccessfully. Lord John Russell failed in Huntingdonshire; and the Bedford interest altogether succumbed for the time to the anti-Catholic spirit. As has been mentioned, the priests were active in Ireland, and wrought wonders-overpowering the Beresford interest in Waterford.

One circumstance which makes the elections of 1826 memorable to those engaged in them was the excessive heat of the season. Deaths from sun-stroke were not confined to labourers in the field and on the road, but extended to persons engaged in the elections. There was difficulty in obtaining grass for horses, and even water for thirsty agents and electors. The effect of the drought upon the crops and the markets has been mentioned; and the consequent early summoning of the new parliament, in order to confirm the necessary alteration in the duties, and to grant an indemnity to ministers for that alteration. As there was an average crop of wheat, and a very abundant one of potatoes, the alarm and inconvenience caused by the drought of the summer were not of long duration.

CHAPTER XII.

N casting the eye over the chronicles of these years, nothing is so painfully impressive as the frequent records of capital punishments. Even in these recent days, men were brought out upon the scaffold in batches, and hanged in rows. Boys of seventeen, hired for the adventure of stealing sheep, or to pass forged notes, were hanged with the strong-bodied burglar, and the hoary old coiner. The day before an execution, the jail was crowded with the families of the doomed men, come to bid them farewell. Six or eight wives together, who are to be widows to-morrow; fifteen or twenty children, who are to be orphans to-morrow; these were the moaning and weeping reprovers of our law, so barbarous at so late a day! Some ameliorations in the law had, as we know, taken place; but still, men were brought out in batches, and hanged in rows. The number of executions was fearfully on the increase; and yet it was universally known that so much impunity was allowed, on account of the severity of the law, as materially to weaken the authority of law, and encourage crime.

In 1826, a discovery was made of a gang of banditti who led a romantic life in Gloucestershire. In the neighbourhood of Wickwar, the inhabitants had suffered cruelly for seven years under incessant

depredations, and the consequent pains of insecurity. The thefts were so various and vast as to indicate the co-operation of a large number of persons; but none of the stolen property was ever traced, nor any thief ever recognised. The police at last were set to arrest, almost at a venture, a family of the name of Mills-an old man and his wife, and their four sons; and the confession of these people revealed the whole. The gang consisted of forty or fifty thieves, of whom thirty-one were immediately arrested. They had found or made a subterranean cavern of some extent, which was entered by a hole behind the fireplace in Mills's cottage-the large pot concealing the aperture. Nearly fifty pounds' worth of half-crowns was found there; no less than twenty flitches of bacon, and furniture, cloth, and farm produce in plenty.

The romance of smuggling was expiring at the close of the period we have traversed. From the date of Mr Huskisson's measures coming into operation, such tales of adventure began to decline. The plain prose of the matter is, that smuggling does not answer when duties are reduced to 30 per cent. ad valorem; and the poetry of the case was henceforth to be found in fictions of a preceding time, and in the traditionary tales which haunt the Christmas hearth. The mournful romance of the game-laws remained, however. In that direction, men might still look for midnight murder, the raging of base passions, the filling of the jails, and the corruption. of the peasant's home.

Within this period, the last remaining stocks in London-those belonging to St Clement Danes in Portugal Street-were removed. This ancient instrument of punishment was henceforth to be looked for only in the by-places of England-in some nook of a village, or under some old park-paling-green with lichens, and splintering away under rain and wind, or the pranks of children, playing with the boards and the holes which were once so awful. A new instrument of punishment had been previously introduced in jails-the tread-wheel, the very name of which was presently rendered detestable by the abuse of the invention. New inventions are usually stretched beyond due bounds; and this was the case with the tread-wheel. Not only men who had been unaccustomed to such muscular exertion as is necessary for ascending an interminable flight of stairswhich the work of the tread-wheel in fact is-were condemned to the same amount of treading as the most hardy, but women were put upon the wheel, long after the time which afforded ample proof that this was work totally unfit for women. It might appear to a stranger from another hemisphere a strange thing that we should boast of our Christian civilisation, while we had such a spectacle to shew as was seen even at a later time than this. elderly lady, of good station and fortune, might be seen on the tread-wheel in Coldbath Fields prison, in the jail-dress, and with her hair cut close-for the offence of shoplifting. It is difficult to write this fact; and it must be painful to read it; but the truths of the time must be told. During this period, the tread-wheel was in high repute; and the punishment might be applied at the discretion of the justices

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of the peace connected with each prison; and it was some time before many of them had the discretion to see and admit the gross inequality of the punishment, and therefore its essential badness when applied indiscriminately. It was employed chiefly for raising water and grinding corn; and sometimes the convicts were punished over and above their sentence, by the mockery of being compelled to turn the wheel, to no purpose whatever.

In Ireland, the crimes of the early part of this period were as savage and atrocious as in any portion of the history of that unhappy country. It was in 1821 that the murder of the Shea family took place, on the borders of Tipperary, when the whole farmhouse and offices were burned, and seventeen persons thrust back into the flames, as often as they attempted to escape. The seventeen were the farmer himself and his wife, seven children, three female servants, and five labourers. The only other offence alleged was, that Shea had brought labourers from a neighbouring village to dig his potatoes, when his own tenants would neither pay their rent nor work it out. After the formation of the Catholic Association, there was a rapid diminution of crimes of outrage; and the leaders of the association were no doubt justified in claiming the credit of the improvement. There is no ground for disputing their claim to have pacified the Catholic peasant population of Ireland for the time.

In England, evidences of popular ignorance abound during this period. In one place or another, from time to time, there was a demolition of machinery; sometimes power-looms, and sometimes thrashingmachines; and we meet with one or two instances of the stack-burning which became a rage some years afterwards. Instances of fanaticism abound: the Holy-Land Pilgrims-a sect of men who gave up their industry, and sold their property, to go to Jerusalem to meet the Lord; the followers of Joanna Southcote; the flying serpent of Dorsetshire and' Devonshire, which, in the shape of a black blight, poisoned the air; the sorcerer, Isaac Stebbings, who was ducked in a Suffolk village, in the presence of thousands; the drowning of children, 'to put the fairy out of them;' and the desertion of Carmarthen fair, on the ground of the ancient prophecy of Merlin, that the town should be destroyed on the 12th of August 1824; the cutting and carving of a witch at Taunton; and, above all, the sensation about the miracles of Prince Hohenlohe. It is observable, however, that a large proportion of such popular delusion lies at the door of scientific and professional men, who ignore class of facts which demand their serious attention; which stand out clearly as facts under the cognizance of society; and which, till scientifically investigated, will continue to afford material for popular fanaticism. The sympathies and operations of Prince Hohenlohe have never been explained away, to the satisfaction of philosophical minds, by the common talk of imposture and the influence of imagination; and they never can be, any more than the phenomena of somnambulism, second-sight, prevision, and presentiments, which are found in all ages of the world, and all states of society. One of the greatest of physical inquirers, who died soon

regular subscribers was 1185. In this year, there was a meeting of 120 gentlemen, who desired the formation of a university in London, to meet the wants of students who were precluded, either by religious opinion or mediocrity of fortune, from attending the existing universities. The object of the institution is,' said the prospectus, 'to bring the means of a complete scientific and literary education home to the doors of the inhabitants of the metropolis, so that they may be enabled to educate their sons at a very moderate expense, and under their

own immediate and constant superintendence.' There are no incidents of the period under notice more cheering than these. It is true, neither of these institutions meets the great want of all-the education of the absolutely ignorant, who form the largest proportion of society in England; but both aid in preparing the way to this all-important object. The London University educates a host of young men of the middle class, who, from generation to generation, must exalt the standard of education among the great body of Dissenters, hitherto but half educated

at the best; and who become the moving spirits of large classes which had hitherto lain below the surface of the prevalent learning of the time. And the value of mechanics' institutes in exciting and training the intellects of the fathers of the next generation of artisans and operatives can hardly be overestimated. It is impossible but that the members of these institutes must be more anxious to procure education for their children, than if the advantages and charms of museums, libraries, lectures, and reading-rooms had not been opened to themselves. At the time of the establishment of these institutes, the chief

advantage contemplated was the most obvious oneof opening means of knowledge to working-men who desired it; but we, of a somewhat later time, see a yet more important result accruing, in the exaltation of the idea of education in the popular mind, and the quickening of parental as well as personal desires for knowledge. The honour of originating these institutions belongs to Dr Birkbeck more than to any other man; and to Mr Brougham also great gratitude was throughout felt to be due. Dr Birkbeck had been preparing for the great event of 1823 from the beginning of the century, by