CHAP. VII.]

calamity-if he asked something to prevent him selling his bed-he was insulted. The agonised tear of wounded pride might start from the eye, and perhaps the groan of suppressed indignation escape from the lips. If the groan was heard, that man's 'character' was gone for ever. The pretence to discriminate between the good and the evil, did much worse for the community than occasional injustice. It led away parish functionaries from the real object of their appointment-to administer relief to the indigent-into the belief that they were the great patrons of the whole labouring population, who could never go alone without their aid. They almost forced the condition of pauperism upon the entire working community, by their beautiful system of rewards and punishments. They forgot that it was their business to give relief to destitution, and to destitution only; and so they established every sort of false test of relief.

The old workhouse system was as productive of evil in principle, though not in amount, as the allowance system. The wretchedness of the parish workhouse, in consequence of bad management, and the want of order and classification, had become a prominent feature in pictures of English society. Seldom under any control, the workhouses afforded abundant proofs of neglect and want of feeling on the part of those who had the management of them. The workhouse master, who, probably, contracted for the paupers at a certain rate per head, endeavoured to remunerate himself for the hardness of his bargain by disposing of the services of the inmates to the neighbouring farmers. Abuses had so long existed, that they excited no remark. No means were taken to educate the children; no classification took place between the able-bodied; but persons of both sexes, the aged and the young, the sick and the lunatic, were huddled promiscuously together. Such was the state of most workhouses in the rural districts. Many of the London parishes farmed their poorthat is, they contracted with individuals to maintain them at a certain rate per head. They were wretchedly lodged, without comfort or decency; ill-fed; allowed the use of ardent spirits, and encouraged to obtain them, by being suffered to wander abroad without restraint, to swell the numbers of metropolitan mendicants. In the parish workhouses the consequences of want of classification and bad management operated with the greatest hardship upon children. Habits were formed in the workhouse which rendered the path to respectability almost inaccessible. These children were disposed of under the apprenticing system, and were doomed to a dreary period of servitude, under some needy master, who had been tempted in the first instance to take them by the offer of a small premium. The parochial plan of putting out children, with its attendant evils, was a necessary consequence of the want of training while in the workhouse. If these children had received useful instruction, and been brought up in habits of order and industry, their compulsory distribution among the different ratepayers would have been unnecessary, as each child would have been as valuable to its master as the children taken from the independent cottager. Even

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in those workhouses where attempts were made to conduct them according to the statute (43d of Elizabeth), directing that the fund for the relief of the poor should be employed in setting them to work in the poorhouse or workhouse, there were necessarily the grossest mistakes and mismanagement. In some of these houses manufacturing operations were carried on; and in others land was rented, and the inmates were employed in agricultural labour. Interests which never prosper but in the hands of private individuals, were expected to become productive; notwithstanding the great majority of persons concerned were necessarily impelled to foster abuses out of which they could advance their own personal profit. The trades usually pursued were sack, linen, or cloth factories, or the manufacture of nets. The profits of the private dealer and the wages of the independent workmen were liable to unjust depreciation, for the operations of the houses of industry were not regulated by the extent of the demand, but would be most active when the markets were glutted. Workmen left the private factory because there was a superabundant supply of the article which they were engaged in producing, and they entered into the house of industry to add still further to the overstocking of the market. The balance by which the healthy state of the demand and supply could be regulated was destroyed. There is no balance which can be held between the funds for the maintenance of labour and the number of the labourers, but through the uncontrolled exchange of capital and labour, each operating with perfect freedom and perfect security. Whenever the scales are held by any other power than the natural power of exchange-whenever there is a forced demand for labour produced by a forced supply of capital-the natural proportions of capital and labour are destroyed by a forced addition to the number of labourers. All schemes for 'setting the poor to work' by unnatural encouragements to labour, assume that the poor' is a constant quantity; the unnatural encouragement produces more poor, and the funds that have been diverted from the regular labour-market are devoured in an accelerated ratio.

The poor-law, as it existed in full vigour at the close of the war, went further than any other human device for diminishing the funds for the maintenance of labour, and at the same time increasing the number of labourers. Rewards for illegitimate children, rewards for children under improvident marriages, sustenance for the pauper child from the hour he was born, increased sustenance as he grew, a large and liberal allowance for him when he prematurely married another pauper; and the same round again, till the next pauper generation was quadrupled in number. If these laws, intrusted as they were in their application to narrow-minded, short-sighted, and selfish individuals, had been imposed upon us by some dominant enemy, for the destruction of our best interests, they could not have more effectually answered such an end. They did two things which must produce misery and crime, and would have produced eventual anarchy, unless their progress had been arrested-they destroyed the labour-fund, and they increased the number of the labourers. They

bestowed on unproductive consumers the bread which they took out of the mouths of the profitable labourers; and they, one by one, ground down the profitable labourers to the grade of unproductive consumers. Under these laws, no one was secure, and no one was happy. The labourers, for whose especial benefit they were alleged to be upheld, were the most insecure and the most unhappy. The dream of Pharaoh, that 'seven lean and ill-favoured kine did eat up seven fat kine; and when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them, but they were still ill-favoured as at the beginning,' was realised by the labourers of England under the old poor-laws.

In 1807 Mr Whitbread proposed to the House of Commons a very large and comprehensive measure of poor-law reform. The principles which he advocated were those of real statesmanship. To arrest the constant progress of pauperism, he desired to raise the character of the labouring-classes. He called upon the country to support a plan of general national education; he proposed a method under which the savings of the poor might be properly invested in a great national bank. The last object has been fully accomplished. How little has the government done for the other object during forty years! At the period when Mr Whitbread brought forward his plan of poor-law reform, the system of mutual instruction, introduced by Lancaster and Bell, was attracting great attention. Too much importance was perhaps at first attached to the mechanical means of education then recently developed; but the influence was favourable to the establishment of schools by societies and individuals. The government left the instruction of the people to go on as it might, without a single grant for more than a quarter of a century. It was in vain that, in 1807, Whitbread proclaimed the important truth, that nothing can possibly afford greater stability to a popular government than the education of its people. 'Contemplate ignorance in the hand of craft-what a desperate weapon does it afford! How impotent does craft become before an instructed and enlightened multitude!' Again: 'In the adoption of the system of education, I foresee an enlightened peasantry, frugal, industrious, sober, orderly, and contented; because they are acquainted with the true value of frugality, sobriety, industry, and order. Crimes diminishing, because the enlightened understanding abhors crime. The practice of Christianity prevailing, because the mass of your population ca read, comprehend, and feel its divine origin, and the beauty of the doctrines which it inculcates. Your kingdom safe from the insults of the enemy, because every man knows the worth of that which he is called upon to defend.' Did Whitbread take one legislative step in advance by the enunciation of these truths? He was treated as a benevolent visionary; and every particle of his poor-law reform, and especially his plans for instruction and the investment of savings, were sneered away, whilst ministers and magistrates went on in the usual course of keeping the great body of the people ignorant, dependent, and wretched. A man of talent, Mr Windham, put himself at the head of the advocates

for keeping the people from the perils of instruction: 'His friend, Dr Johnson, was of opinion that it was not right to teach reading beyond a certain extent in society. The danger was, that if the teachers of the good and the propagators of bad principles were to be candidates for the control of mankind, the latter would be likely to be too successful. . . The increase of this sort of introduction to knowledge would only tend to make the people study politics, and lay them open to the arts of designing men.' This miserable logic answered its end for a season. Education was held to be dangerous-at least in England. In Ireland, the government encouraged education. In 1816, Mr Peel, as secretary for Ireland, maintained that it was the peculiar duty of a government that felt the inconvenience that arose from the ignorance of the present generation, to sow the seeds of knowledge in the generation that was to succeed.' The natural connection between ignorance and poverty was never more clearly put, at a very early period of discussing such questions, than by the present excellent Bishop of Chester: 'Ignorance is not the inevitable lot of the majority of our community; and with ignorance a host of evils disappear. Of all obstacles to improvement, ignorance is the most formidable, because the only true secret of assisting the poor is to make them agents in bettering their own condition, and to supply them, not with a temporary stimulus, but with a permanent energy. As fast as the standard of intelligence is raised, the poor become more and more able to co-operate in any plan proposed for their advantage, more likely to listen to any reasonable suggestion, more able to understand, and therefore more willing to pursue it. Hence it follows, that when gross ignorance is once removed, and right principles are introduced, a great advantage has been already gained against squalid poverty. Many avenues to an improved condition are opened to one whose faculties are enlarged and exercised; he sees his own interest more clearly, he pursues it more steadily; he does not study immediate gratification at the expense of bitter and late repentance, or mortgage the labour of his future life without an adequate return. Indigence, therefore, will rarely be found in company with good education.'

From 1807 to the close of the war, the legislature heard no word on the education of the people. On the 21st May 1816, Mr Brougham moved for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the state of the education of the lower orders of the people in London, Westminster, and Southwark. The motion, which was brought forward with great caution by the mover, was unopposed. The committee made its first report on the 20th June, having conducted its inquiries with more than usual activity. The energy of Mr Brougham, who acted as chairman, gave a remarkable impulse to this important investigation. It was found that in the metropolis there were a hundred and twenty thousand children without the means of education. On presenting this report, Mr Brougham informed the House that the committee had comprehended in their objects inquiries concerning the management of the higher schools, such as the Charter House, Christ's Hospital,

and Westminster; the funds of such schools being originally destined for the use of the poor. The principal labours of the committee had, however, consisted in their examination of evidence as to the number and condition of the charity and parish schools destined for the education of the lower orders. The number of such institutions exceeded anything that could have been previously believed; but the expenditure of the funds was, in many cases, neither pure nor judicious. A few were educated and brought up-the many were neglected. In the country he had heard of instances of flagrant abuses. Mr Brougham's report produced no hostile feelings on this occasion. Lord Castlereagh acknowledged that abuses existed in many charities for the purposes of education, and recommended the exercise of a vigilant superintendence of their administration. In 1817 the committee was revived, but was adjourned in consequence of the illness of the chairman; but in 1818 it was again appointed, with powers of inquiry no longer confined to the metropolis. Then the larger question of the extension of education was merged in a furious controversy as to the amount of abuses in endowed charities, and the propriety of subjecting the higher schools, such as Eton and Winchester, and also colleges in the universities, to a searching inquiry into the nature of their statutes, and their adherence to the objects of their foundation. An act was subsequently passed, in consequence of the labours of the committee, to appoint commissioners to inquire concerning the abuse of charities connected with education; and by a second act the right of inquiry was extended to all charities, the universities and certain great foundation schools excepted. The education commission was thus merged in the charity commission. Of the great national benefits that resulted from that commission no one can doubt. But it may be doubted whether the controversial shape which the question of education thus assumed, in 1818, did much to advance the disposition to provide a general system of popular instruction which prevailed in 1816. When Mr Brougham first obtained his committee, he said, 'his proposition was, that a measure for the education of the poor under parliamentary sanction, and on parliamentary aid, should be tried in London; for without a previous experiment he should not deem it proper to bring forward any general measure. But if the experiment should be found to succeed in London, he would then recommend the extension of the plan to other great towns.' This plan was never carried out, or further proposed. When Mr Brougham presented his first report, there was unanimity and even cordiality in its reception by the House of Commons. Mr Canning declared that 'he should contribute all his assistance to the object of the report, satisfied that the foundation of good order in society was good morals, and that the foundation of good morals was education.'

What was the temper of the House and of the country in 1818 is strikingly exhibited in a speech of Mr Brougham's in 1835: 'In the year 1818 the labours of the education committee of the House of Commons-labours to which no man can attach too high a value-were made the subject of great

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controversy; a controversy as fierce and uncompromising as almost any that ever raged, and to which I only refer as affording another reason for the hope I so fondly cherish, that though now, perhaps, in a minority upon this, as upon many other questions here debated, I yet may ultimately find myself with scarcely an antagonist. That bitter controversy is at an end-the heats which it kindled are extinguished-the matter that engendered those heats finds equal acceptance with all parties. Those are now still, or assenting, or even supporting me, who then thought that I was sowing broadcast the seeds of revolution, and who scrupled not to accuse me as aiming at the "dictatorship," by undermining the foundations of all property. Those who once held that the education committee was pulling down the church, by pulling down the universities and the great schools-that my only design could be to raise some strange edifice of power upon the ruins of all our institutions, ecclesiastical and civil-have long ceased to utter even a whisper against whatever was then accomplished, and have become my active coadjutors ever since. Nay, the very history of that fierce contention is forgotten. There are few now aware of a controversy having ever existed, which, a few years back, agitated all men all over the country; and the measures I then propounded among revilings and execrations, have long since become the law of the land. I doubt whether, at this moment, there are above some half-dozen of your lordships who recollect anything about a warfare which for months raged with unabated fury, both within the walls of the universities and without —which seemed to absorb all men's attention, and to make one class apprehend the utter destruction of our political system, while it filled others with alarm lest a stop should be put to the advancement of the human mind. That all those violent animosities should have passed away, and that all those alarms be now sunk in oblivion, affords a memorable instance of the strange aberrations-I will not say of public opinion, but-of party feeling, in which the history of controversy so largely abounds. I have chiefly dwelt upon it to shew why I again trust that I may outlive the storms which still are gathering round those who devote themselves rather to the improvement of their fellow-creatures than the service of a faction.' From some unhappy prejudice, from apathy, or from cowardice, the education of the people made small legislative progress for twenty years. Perhaps the old fable of the sun and the wind, experimenting upon the removal of the traveller's cloak, may afford us some solution of this problem. But the reports of the education committee were of the highest value in shewing us the extent of instruction at the time of its labours. There were 18,500 schools, educating 644,000 children; of this number 166,000 were educated at endowed schools, and 478,000 at unendowed schools, during six days of the week. This number was independent of Sunday-schools, of which there were 5100, attended by 452,000 children; but, of course, many of these Sunday-scholars were included in the returns of other schools.

In the plan of poor-law reform brought forward

by Mr Whitbread in 1807, he earnestly advocated the consideration of a mode by which the savings of the poor might be safely and profitably invested: 'I would propose the establishment of one great national institution, in the nature of a bank, for the use and advantage of the labouring-classes alone; that it should be placed in the metropolis, and be under the control and management of proper persons, to be appointed according to the provisions contained in the bill I shall move for leave to introduce; that every man who shall be certified by one justice, to his own knowledge, or on proof, to subsist principally or alone by the wages of his labour, shall be at liberty to remit to the accountant of the poor's fund-as I would designate it-in notes or cash, any sum from 208. upwards; but not exceeding £20 in any one year, nor more in the whole than £200. That once in every week the remittances of the preceding week be laid out in the 3 per cent. consolidated bank annuities, or in some other of the government stocks, in the name of commissioners to be appointed; to avoid all minute payments, no dividend to be remitted till it shall amount to 108.; and that all fractional sums under 10s. be from time to time reinvested, in order to be rendered productive towards the expenses of the office.' Three or four years previous, Mr Malthus, in his Essay on Population, had argued that it might be extremely useful to have county-banks, where the smallest sums would be received, and a fair interest granted for them.' Mr George Rose had, as early as 1793, legislated for the encouragement of friendly societies. In 1798 a bank for the earnings of poor children was established at Tottenham; and this was found so successful, that a bank for the safe deposit of the savings of servants, labourers, and others, was opened at the same place in 1804. Interest was here allowed to the depositors. A similar institution was founded at Bath in 1808. But the greatest experiment upon the possibility of the labouring poor making considerable savings was tried in Scotland. The Parish Bank Friendly Society of Ruthwell' was established by the Rev. Henry Duncan in 1810. The first London savingsbank did not commence its operations till January 1816. In the parliamentary session of 1816, Mr Rose brought in a bill for the regulation of savingsbanks, which was subsequently withdrawn for revision. Of the possible benefits of these institutions there could be no doubt in the minds of all men who were anxious to improve the condition of the people. Writers of opposite parties agreed in this matter: 'Savings-banks are spreading rapidly through Scotland; and we expect soon to hear the like good tidings from England, where such an institution is of still greater importance. It would be difficult, we fear, to convince either the people or their rulers that such an event is of far more importance, and far more likely to increase the happiness, and even the greatness of the nation, than the most brilliant success of its arms, or the most stupendous improvements of its trade or its agriculture. And yet we are persuaded that it is so.' Again: 'They to whom this subject is indifferent may censure our minuteness; but those who, like us, regard it as

marking an era in political economy, and as intimately connected with the external comfort and moral improvement of mankind, will be gratified to trace the rise and progress of one of the simplest and most efficient plans which has ever been devised for effecting these invaluable purposes.' The language of the real philanthropist, whatever be his party, may be easily distinguished from the language of the demagogue: 'What a bubble! At a time when it is notorious that one-half of the whole nation are in a state little short of starvation; when it is notorious that hundreds of thousands of families do not know, when they rise, where they are to find a meal during the day; when the far greater part of the whole people, much more than half of them, are paupers; at such a time to bring forth a project for collecting the savings of journeymen and labourers, in order to be lent to the government, and to form a fund for the support of the lenders in sickness and old age!' The most sanguine expectations of the promoters of savings-banks could scarcely have anticipated that, within less than thirty years, the number of institutions in existence would amount to 577 in the United Kingdom; that the total number of existing depositors would be 1,012,475; that they would possess an aggregate of property amounting to £31,275,636; and that the whole number of depositors would have received interest amounting to £16,254,109.*

There is one other measure of social improvement from which we cannot withhold a slight notice. In 1816 the House of Commons passed a vote for the purchase of the Elgin Marbles, for the sum of £35,000. This was the first step that the British legislature had made in the encouragement of the fine arts. It was a step in the education of the people. Mr Croker, who, as it appears to us, was far in advance of his time on this subject, truly and eloquently said what cannot be too often repeated in the consideration of such questions: 'The House had been warned, in the present circumstances of the country, not to incur a heavy expense merely to acquire works of ornament. But who was to pay this expense, and for whose use was the purchase intended? The bargain was for the benefit of the public, for the honour of the nation, for the promotion of national arts, for the use of the national artists, and even for the advantage of our manufactures; the excellence of which depended on the progress of the arts in the country. It was singular that when, two thousand five hundred years ago, Pericles was adorning Athens with those very works, some of which we are now about to acquire, the same cry of economy was raised against him, and the same answer that he then gave might be repeated now; that it was money spent for the use of the people, for the encouragement of arts, the increase of manufactures, the prosperity of trades, and the encouragement of industry; not merely to please the eye of the man of taste, but to create, to stimulate, to guide the exertions of the artist, the mechanic, and even the labourer, and to spread through all the branches of society a spirit of

*This return is from August 1817 to November 1844. The number of banks and depositors, and amount of deposits, have been much increased since the making up of the return.

CHAP. VIII.]

improvement, and the means of a sober and industrious affluence.' Slowly, indeed, have these great principles progressed-but they have progressed.

CHAPTER VIII.

BRIEF sketch must here be given of the Spanish colonies in South America-of their condition and prospects. If it is asked, why we must stop to review the colonial affairs of another kingdom?-the answer is, that England had, at this time, as much interest in the colonies of Spain, as Spain and France had, forty years before, in the condition and prospects of her North American colonies. The powers of Europe were to be coerced or supported, punished or aided, by action upon their possessions beyond the Atlantic. We find, accordingly, that through a long succession of administrations, the movements of Spanish America were watched and discussed, with deep interest, in the British cabinet.

The Spanish possessions in America were at first divided into two viceroyalties-that of Mexico in the northern, and that of Peru in the southern continent. In course of time, two more viceroyalties were detached from the southern portions-those of New Grenada and Rio de la Plata; and then again, five smaller provinces were parted off, under the name of captain-generalships. While Brazil, now belonging to Portugal, had once been jointly held by Spain; while some West India islands were changing hands, according to the chances of war; while the British colonies were establishing their own independence; and while Florida and Louisiana were transferred by purchase or negotiation from one crown to another, it was hardly possible that the Spanish colonies should not have ideas and feelings about their own position, and originate movements accordingly.

The first stir was in 1750, when Venezuela revolted against Spain. For the next forty years, risings became more frequent, and almost every province rebelled once or oftener. The inhabitants suffered under gross misgovernment. There were three classes of them the natives, the Spaniards, and the mixed race which always grows up under such circumstances. Those born in the colonies, even of European blood, were, though legally entitled to all the privileges of citizenship, depressed and insulted by the mothercountry, and the official persons she sent out. The European officials not only engrossed all the dignities and salaries of the colonies, but vexed and despoiled the inhabitants by oppressive customs, audacious selfseeking, and malpractices, against which no complaint was listened to. Though insulated colonial risings are of no immediate avail, a sufficient number of them is sure to suggest ideas of national independence. Such suggestions were spoken into the ear of Mr Pitt in 1790, by a man who had much to say of the natural advantages of his country beyond the Atlantic, and of the benefits to Great Britain, if the

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General Miranda, a native of Caracas, in Venezuela, was born about the time when the revolt, mentioned above, took place. His mind was early occupied with the ideas naturally generated by that revolt. He witnessed, in personal presence, a part of the war by which the British provinces became the United States; and he made it the aim of his life to obtain a similar emancipation for the Spanish colonies. He made no secret of his purpose. In the London Political Herald of 1785, there is a notice of Miranda being in town, in pursuit of his object-the deliverance of his country. In 1790, when there was a dispute between England and Spain about Nootka Sound, Miranda obtained access to Mr Pitt, and spread before him the picture of what the great continent was, and could do. It was larger than Europe: it was more fertile, naturally, than Europe: it possessed the little strait which, cut through, would open to the merchant-ships of Europe the vast regions of the Pacific, saving them the long sweep towards the South Pole, which they must make to round Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope: it was veined with vast navigable rivers, which would bring to the coast the produce of the plains; and the prodigious backbone of mountains enclosed treasures of ore. As for the people, they were ignorant, debased, quarrelsome, at present; but independence would ennoble them, and gratitude would bind them in eternal alliance with the country which should aid them to obtain independence. So said Miranda to Mr Pitt. Perhaps the minister saw more clearly than the applicant, that the popular faults he admitted, however corrigible by independence, were sadly in the way of obtaining it. England did not then undertake the business. Mr Pitt thought well of the project, and promised to proceed in it if Spain should be obstinate about Nootka Sound. Spain yielded; and Mr Pitt then told Miranda that his scheme should not be lost sight of. He added, what proved to be very true, that it would infallibly engage the attention of every minister of this country.'

In 1797, when England became possessed of Trinidad, Mr Pitt remembered Miranda and his measure. Our governor of Trinidad encouraged the inhabitants of the Spanish colonies to rise, relying on aid from Great Britain, to be given without any other aim than enabling the colonists to achieve their own independence. In the next year, Miranda came to London from France, to lay his plans before the British government. His plans were, that England, the United States, and the Spanish provincials, should form an alliance to rescue the colonies from Spain. Great Britain was to furnish money and ships, for which she was to be hereafter repaid in the sum of £30,000,000; and the United States were to supply 10,000 men. Mr Pitt agreed; and the plan waited only for the acquiescence of the United States. President Adams demurred and delayed: but the scheme was not given up; and we find it laid afresh before the Addington administration in 1801.