59 



As a consequence of this change in public sentiment, we find there 

 is no class now that is left ab3.ndoned to vagabondage or vice. 

 Drunkenness, as an openly practised vice, is now rare, and if a person 

 is found committing it two or three times, he is very properly put 

 under lengthened restraint. Twenty-five years ago there was no such 

 provision. The same person might be convicted more than twenty 

 times of drunkenness, and all that the law allowed was to fine the 

 offender, or send him to prison again for a short term. You will not 

 be surprised to hear that very often half-a-dozen men and women ap- 

 peared in the dock morning after morning on the charge of being drunk 

 and disorderly. Most of what are now our Industrial Schools were 

 then prisons, in which hardened offenders were employed for hours 

 every day, in turning a crank which ground nothing, being all the time 

 maintained at vast expense to the public, who were crushed with rates 

 and taxes. Our army was then an institution in which the standard of 

 conduct was popularly considered much lower than that of ordinary 

 civil occupations ; now, as you know, it is as moral and well-conducted 

 a body of men as any in England. The theatres were then very 

 different from what they are now. I can remember when many clergy- 

 men thought it sinful to go to them ; and there is no doubt that, 

 although they invited the presence of the higher classes, and were con- 

 siderably patronised by persons of enlightenment and culture, you would 

 often hear and see things that would have been simply intolerable in 

 society. This was supposed to be done to please the gallery. Now 

 that the spirits of brutality and coarseness are exorcised from all ranks 

 of society, there is no excuse for such things, and they have conse- 

 quently disappeared, and, as you know by your own daily experience, 

 the stage may be as pure as the drawing-room, or, perhaps, the pulpit, 

 and I dare say many of you think, much more amusing. 



With the general spread of refinement downwards, or rather 

 anticipating and in great degree causing it, has come a general 

 shortening of the hours of labour — of course, as workmen have become 

 more efficient and reliable, the amount of labour necessary to main- 

 tain the population has been much reduced. The navvy and the 

 agricultural labourer, who generally spent ten or twelve hours a day in 

 exhausting labour, and too often had no pleasure to look forward to but 

 a bout of into.xication at the end of the week, now finishes at so early 

 an hour that his evening can be devoted to recreation, or, if he prefer 

 it, to study ; and that he does this to a great extent, you know by the 



