THE PROGRESS OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 35 



This wonderful table may speak for itself. It is an obvious criti- 

 cism that many of the articles are also articles of home production, so 

 that the increase does not show the real increase of the consumption 

 of the whole population per head. Assuming a stationary production 

 at home, the increased consumption per head can not be so much as is 

 here stated for the imported article only. There are other articles, 

 however, such as rice, tea, sugar, coffee, tobacco, spirits, wine, and 

 malt, which are either wholly imported, or where we have the excis- 

 able figures as Avell, and they all — with the one exception of coffee — 

 tell a clear tale. The increase in tea and sugar appears especially 

 significant, the consumption per head now being four times in round 

 figures what it was forty years ago. There could be no better evi- 

 dence of diffused material well-being among the masses. The articles 

 are not such that the increased consumption by the rich could have 

 made much difference. It is the consumption emphatically of the 

 mass which is here in question. 



As regards the articles imported, which are also articles of home 

 production, it has, moreover, to be noted that in several of them, 

 bacon and hams, cheese and butter, the increase is practically from 

 nothing to a very respectable figure. The import of bacon and hams 

 alone is itself nearly equal to the estimated consumption among the 

 working-classes fifty years ago, who consumed no other meat. 



The only other figures I shall mention are those relating to edu- 

 cation, pauperism, crime, and savings-banks. But I need not detain 

 you here. The figures are so well known that I must almost apologize 

 for repeating them. I only insert them to round off the statement. 



As to education, we have pi-actically only figures going back thirty 

 years. In 18.51, in England, the children in average attendance at 

 schools aided by parliamentary grants numbered 239,000, and in Scot- 

 land 32,000 ; in 1881 the figures were 2,863,000 and 410,000. If any- 

 thing is to be allowed at all in fav'or of parliamentary grants as raising 

 the character of education, such a change of numbers is most signifi- 

 cant. The children of the masses are, in fact, now obtaining a good 

 education all round, while fifty years ago the masses had either no 

 education at all or a comparatively poor one. Dropping statistics for 

 the moment, I should like to give my own testimony to an observed 

 fact of social life — that there is nothing so striking or so satisfactory 

 to those who can carry their memories back nearly forty years, as to 

 observe the superiority of the education of the masses at the present 

 time to what it was then. I suppose the most advanced common 

 education forty or fifty years ago was in Scotland, but the superiority 

 of the common-school system there at the present day to what it was 

 forty years ago is immense. If Scotland has gained so much, what 

 must it have been in England where there was no national svstera 

 fifty years ago at all ? Thus at the present day not only do we get all 

 children into schools, or nearly all, but the education for the increased 



