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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR 



If they who carry on agriculture can earn by their labour 

 more than is necessary for their subsistence, other people can 

 exist, either in idleness, or devote themselves to different kinds 

 of labour. These can increase the comforts of their fellow- 

 oountrymen by satisfying their wants, or can obtain the 

 products of foreign countries, by exchanging what they produce 

 with the merchant. In times of peace, English wool and 

 some few English manufactures were the means by which the 

 pieople of this country were supplied with the fine cloths and 

 fine linen of the Low Countries, the silks and velvets of Genoa 

 and Florence, and those precious spices which Venice procured 

 by the sea passage of the Red Sea and the Nile, or over the 

 plains of Central Asia. 



There were very few persons, however, who could afford to 

 live on their own resources, that is, upon the rents which their 

 tenants paid them. There was hardly an English nobleman 

 who did not farm his own land. Roger Bigod, the great Earl 

 of Norfolk, who at the close of the thirteenth century was the 

 richest subject in England, cultivated at least forty of his own 

 manors in the eastern counties and in Ireland by his own 

 bailiffs. The English monks worked in the main with their own 

 hands. All the labour which could easily be spared from the 

 cultivation of the soil (and it seldom could be spared all the 

 year round), or from the necessary manufactures of the towns, 

 waa given to architecture. It was at or about this period that 

 those magnificent cathedrals, abbeys, churches, and castles 

 were built, the ruins even of which are full of beauty, and 

 prove how general was the architectural genius of our fore- 

 fathers. 



During the three centuries which followed the date which 

 I have taken, two circumstances occurred which contributed 

 to raise the condition of the mass of the people i.e., the 

 agricultural population and two or three others which helped 

 to powerfully depress them. All these circumstances have a 

 purely economical interpretation, and their effects have an 

 easy explanation. 



The rate of wages (whether we take the money a man earns, 

 or the articles which he can purchase with what he earns) 

 depends on the proportion which there is between those who 

 seek for employment, and the employment which they can 

 obtain ; between labourers for hire, and the work to be done. 

 And generally the number of people living in a fully settled 

 country is equal to the amount of subsistence which the 

 country supplies in average years. The amount of subsistence 

 is determined by the average quantity of that particular food 

 on which the mass of the community lives, and which each 

 requires. Thus the English people, fortunately for them, have 

 generally lived on wheaten bread, the Hindoos on rice. Now, 

 if each Englishman, woman, and child consumes annually a 

 quarter of wheat, it will be found that the population of 

 England is proportionate to the average number of quarters 

 of wheat which the soil of England produces, or the labour 

 of Englishmen can purchase. Population, in short, grows 

 with the means of subsistence. I shall have occasion here- 

 after to point out the real significance of this law. 



Now, if the number of persons seeking employment is 

 suddenly diminished, they who remain can get better terms 

 from their employers, and may materially elevate their con- 

 dition. And this was what actually happened. In the middle 

 of the fourteenth century a deadly plague attacked this country, 

 the ravages of which have had no parallel before or .since. 

 Multitudes perished, but the survivors prospered. Their pros- 

 perity impelled them to attempt a political revolution. They 

 nearly succeeded, for the boors' war of 1381 was only just 

 unsuccessful. Though they were defeated, they were too strong 

 and too numerous to be punished. After the great plague the 

 wages of every kind of labour were nearly doubled. 



The other cause which assisted the progress of the people 

 during the period referred to was the civil wars. The English 

 nobility committed suicide, so to speak, during that long dynastic 

 quarrel, and the people succeeded to their inheritance. The 

 waste and cost of war brought many an ancient estate into 

 the market. The general abundance of the harvests during the 

 fifteenth century enriched the agriculturist; he became the 

 purchaser of land, and that race of yeomen arose whose opulence 

 ia commented on by writers of the day, and especially by Chief- 

 Justice Fortescue. In the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign 

 England was rich and powerful. 



Towards the close, however, of this monarch's reign, this 

 prosperity was suddenly arrested, and England sank rapidly in 

 material wealth. The destruction of the monasteries removed a 

 race of easy landlords ; the appropriation of the abbey lands by 

 Henry's courtiers, who were needy, led to extensive sheep-farm- 

 ing, and the abandonment of arable cultivation. The price of 

 food rose, that of labour remained stationary. Thousands were 

 thrown out of employment, and became banditti or beggars. 

 After the severest measures of repression were attempted in 

 vain, the establishment of a poor law became inevitable. 



A far more potent cause of the misery of the sixteenth century 

 is, however, to be found in the fact that Henry and the Pro- 

 tector Somerset issued base money in vast quantities. It is 

 impossible for us to estimate the evils which such an expe- 

 dient induces : all confidence is destroyed, trade is rendered 

 almost impossible, and the weight of the suffering invariably 

 falls on the wage-earning classes. The effect of a debased 

 currency by which I mean a coinage of metal which falls 

 markedly below the standard of fineness is as fatal a blow to 

 credit and security as the occupation of a country by an 

 invading army. 



I have spoken at length on the social state of England during 

 this period, because a clear comprehension of it renders the 

 account of its revival and progress intelligible. At the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century, English farmers com- 

 menced the introduction of winter roots. The turnip and 

 carrot two plants which have been improved by assiduous 

 labour from valueless weeds into invaluable articles of food 

 were first cultivated by the Dutch. During the seventeenth 

 century, in the course of which their use became general, the 

 population of England was certainly doubled. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century agriculture made 

 still more rapid progress. The London Gazette, almost the only 

 newspaper of that time, frequently contains advertisements of 

 new grasses. Hoots and grasses together made a rotation of 

 crops possible. The effect was speedily seen, for favoured, no 

 doubt, by a succession of abundant harvests, the population of 

 England was again nearly doubled between the beginning of 

 that century and the sixty years at the conclusion of which 

 George III. began his reign. 



The next fifty years, however, were a period of retrogression. 

 The nation was engaged in costly and disastrous wars, and the 

 seasons wore unfavourable. But at the conclusion of the great 

 Continental war England again made progress, and during the 

 seventy years of the present century her population has again 

 been doubled, improvements in agriculture having permitted 

 fifty per cent, of this increase. The remainder is supported by 

 foreign corn, imported in exchange for British manufactures. 



I must conclude my lesson with a short sketch of British 

 commerce and manufactures, and point out how they have 

 aided the acquisition of wealth. 



Foreign trade is the means by which the labour of man is 

 rendered as effectual as possible. At great cost and labour, 

 wine could be produced in England. Perhaps at still greater 

 cost we might supply ourselves with tea. At a still heavier 

 charge we might grow cotton. Increase the cost, and we 

 might obtain tropical produee under glass and by great 

 artificial heat. By foreign trade we obtain all, or nearly all, 

 which these expensive processes could supply us with at the 

 least possible outlay. We need not be told that everything 

 which diminishes labour and increases harmless enjoyment is 

 an addition to human happiness. 



A nation whose commerce supplies not only its own peoplo 

 but other nations with these conveniences, adds to its wealth as 

 well as to its enjoyment. As in the case of other kinds of 

 outlay and labour, it gets a profit on the transaction, and so 

 increases its power of purchasing. The growth of English 

 trade has been effected by the nearly continuous progress of two 

 centuries and a half. 



It was more than a hundred years after the discovery of 

 the New World, and the passage to India round the Cape of 

 Good Hope, that England attempted to appropriate any of tho 

 benefits of trade by long sea voyages. I nave already indicated 

 the cause of this delay in the mischief caused by the financial 

 expedients of Henry VIII. and his son's guardians. When the 

 trade to the East was entered on, it took, after the fashion 

 of the- time, the form of a chartered company, and the English 

 nation gained very little by this branch of its commerce. la 



