THE FRONTISPIECE represents an outline map of England and Wales;
there sits untaxed Johnny Bull, upon "Ægir, the Sea Demon," with his
favorite tankard of ale, and his son of Wales clinging to his back, por-
traying a jocose symbol of "merrye Englande." He seems to be saying
to his laughing boy-

"Thou mak'st me merry, I am fond of pleasure,

Let us be jocund-will you troule the catch? '-Shakspeare.
The youth sings the sixth verse of a very old song:
"Every island is a prison,

Strongly guarded by the sea;

Kings and Princes, for that reason,

Prisoners are as well as we!"-Ritson's Songs.

The compass is formed by a spit passed through a bullock's heart, with
a knife and fork pointing far east and far west; emblematic of his hearty
delight in regaling himself on roast beef, which, in the language of Swift
one of his most jocose and favorite writers, "is the king of meat; beef
comprehends in it the quintessence of partridge, and quail, and venison,
and pheasant, and plum-pudding, and custard."

Such being easy John's jocund humor in those days of full feasting,
we need not wonder at his capricios.

"The tumbler's gambols some delight afford,

No less the nimble caperer on the cord,

But these are still insipid stuff, to see

Coup'd" on a fish, "toss'd upon the sea."-Dryden.

"Therefore he would have his way; and our friend is to drink till he
be carbuncled and tun-bellied; after which, we will send him down to
smoke, and to be buried with his ancestors in Derbyshire."-Tatler.

THE

SOCIAL HISTORY

OF

GREAT BRITAIN.

POPULATION.

"Increase and multiply."

On this subject it is impossible to come to an accurate conclusion, there being no actual account taken until the beginning of the present (nineteenth) century. App. iii.

In the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1753, on a debate in the house of commons on a "bill for numbering the people," which did not pass even that house, it was stated that "it could not be carried into effect; for, in taking the country all over, it would be found that out of every six of the church wardens, and there were two church wardens in every parish, one-third of them were illiterate."

What a picture does this circumstance exhibit of their ignorant state only about one hundred years past! It also shows how small the amount of the poor rates were; otherwise regular accounts of the receipts and expenditure would have been found needful. It has been found that the increase of the poor rates has progressed regularly with the increase of the taxes.

The writer of this work has been much in each of the three kingdoms, and for many years has had his eye upon various objects which now remain, and which strongly proclaim them to have been the remains of a formerly great rural population. He is also aware of many great and populous towns and

great

cities having, within the last 150 years, risen up from very insignificant places. But in general it has only been a change from the mass of the rural districts to the coal districts. A few

changes have arisen, but from a different cause than from this important one of fuel, viz.: London from the taxing system; Brighton, Leamington, Cheltenham, &c., from becoming fashionable watering-places.

The large manufacturing towns are all situated in the coal basins, and have been concentrated there by the all-powerful, grasping, grabbing agency of steam.

Let any one take an agricultural survey of the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk,* Surry, Sussex, Hants, Wilts, Dorset, Oxford, Northampton, and great part of Wales, and they will perceive, in the great size of the churches, old mill seats, and traces of the plough, evident marks of a former great village population. They will also find numerous decayed cities and towns nearly dwindled away. Winchester was the seat of government many years before London: many kings have been crowned, and buried there. Lincoln once had fifty churches, as well as its noble cathedral. Several places once sent members to parliament, which are now almost entirely depopulated. Some places now small, were once the seat of a bishopric.

As, however, we are without any actual account, this important subject will ever remain a matter of conjecture.

The Edwards and the Henrys could take into France armies of about 40,000 men; and at the battle of Waterloo "gentleman" George IV. could send no more!

The population of Great Britain at the period of James I. coming to the crown, was generally estimated at only nine millions. If my own opinion is of any weight, I hesitate not in saying it was full fifteen. But the actual number is not of much consequence, but how they were employed. Of that, the most important consideration to the statesman, we shall never know: indeed, until 1833, none of their returns were worth a straw; but in that year came forth "Marshall's Digest," and the following extract is the "analysis of occupations :""

"There

* Mr. Cobbett, in speaking of this "county," (Suffolk,) says: is a parish church in every three square miles or less; and it is thus divided into parishes so numerous, as for the people everywhere to be almost immediately and constantly under the eye of a resident parochial minister." He also says it "is the crack county of England: it is the best cultivated, most ably, most carefully, most skilfully, of any piece of land of the same size in the whole world. Its labourers are the most active and most clever; its farmers' wives, and women employed in agriculture, the most frugal, adroit, and cleanly of any in the whole world: it is a country of most frank, industrious, and virtuous people; its towns are all cleanliness, neatness, and good order."

12,920,3843,303,504 16,977,398

Of the above analysis we may say, in the language of its own motto, "Every line a lesson, every page a history."

About forty years past began some uneasiness about an increasing population. Why there should have been any more cause for alarm then than in former periods, the writer is at a loss to conjecture; seeing that the children were born with legs and arms, and capacities to labour, as usual.

In the year 1834 a calculation was made from the returns, and it appears that, out of 15,535 parishes in England and Wales, including under that name townships which maintained their own poor, there were 737 in which the population did not exceed fifty persons; there were 1907 in which the number did not exceed 100 persons; and 6681 in which the number did not exceed 300 persons. Yet in some of these villages the church-porch alone would hold all those who were able to go to worship at any one time.

At the period those fine old churches were built there must have evidently been many more inhabitants.

Many intelligent men have investigated this subject, and, as far as the writer has read their investigations, he sees no ground of alarm; and, therefore, he cannot help but reiterate the advice of Sir Richard Phillips, who says, " In short, I always advise those who think mankind too numerous, to hang themselves out of the way for the public good, and make room for others more worthy of life and enjoyment!"—who

"Exult in joys to grosser minds unknown,

A wealth exhaustless, and a world their own."

PROVISIONS AND LABOUR.

"Moreover, the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.-Eccles. 5: 9."

FROM the account of the purveyors of Prince Henry's household about 1610, it appears that the price of beef was then about 33d. per lb., mutton about 33d. The prices of many articles were fixed by a proclamation in 1633, (there having been a scarcity;) a fat cygnet is to be sold at from 7s. to 9s.; a cock pheasant 6s.; a hen 5s.; a male turkey, best sort, 4s.; hen, 3s.; a duck, 8d.; a goose, 2s.; a capon, fat and crammed, 2s. 6d.; a pullet, 1s. 6d. ; a hen, 1s.; a rabbit, 7d.; twelve tame pigeons, 6s. ; three eggs, 1d.; a pound of best salt butter, 41d.; fresh, from 5d. to 6d.; tallow candles, 31d. ; with cotton wick, 4d.; a sack (or four bushels) of charcoals, d.; a sack of the best and largest coals, 6d. ; 1000 Kentish billets, 168. Among other miscellaneous articles, we find two cauliflowers, 3s.; sixteen artichokes, 3s. 4d.; a few potatoes for James's queen, 2s. per pound. At this time, and for a considerable time later, the usual bread corn was barley for the poor people. According to the household book of Sir Edward Coke, who was attorney-general at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the servants of great families commonly ate rye bread, and large quantities of oat meal. Above twenty-one stone (or 168lbs.) of beef, besides other meats, was consumed in his family while he lived in London; and yet at that time considerable more than a third of the whole year consisted of fish days, which were strictly observed.

Phillip Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses, published 1595, says: "The meanest shirt cost 2s. 6d., and some as much as £10. The price of wool was high; but James issued a proclamation in 1622 prohibiting its importation, which brought it down from 33s. to 18s. the tod of 28lbs., or from 1s. 2d. to about Sd. per pound. Some years afterward the price again rose, being 24s. in 1641, 37s. 6d. in 1648, 40s. in 1649, and, between 1650 and 1660, ranging from 22s. 6d. to 60s."*

Judge Hale, who was a Gloucestershire man, in his "Discourse touching Provisions for the Poor," written in 1659, says: "The common coarse medley cloth of that county, thirtytwo yards long, costs, for 90lbs. of wool, at 1s. per pound; for cards and oil, £1; and for the wages of three weavers and spoolers, two breakers, six spinners, one fuller and burler, one sheerman, and one paster and picker, fourteen persons in all, £6 5s." He calculates that sixteen pieces might be made in a * See Smith's "Memoirs of Wool."