186 KOOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



Let US for a moment take a glimpse into past history, as 

 revealed to us in the pages of Hallam, the historian. Passing 

 over the Dark Ages, when the husbandman was either degraded 

 to menial slavery by brutal predatory lords, or, what was little 

 better, was afforded such miserable tenure of villenage as tbe 

 feudal lords were pleased to allow, we find the ruling classes 

 themselves brutal, poor, and ignorant. Thus Hallam writes 

 of the fif teentli century : — ^ " It is an error to suppose that the 

 English gentry were lodged in stately or even in well-sized, 

 houses. ... A gentleman's house, containing three or 

 four beds, was extraoi'dinarily well provided ; few, probably, 

 had. more than two. The walls were commonly bare, without 

 wainscot or even plaster. It is unnecessary to add that 

 neither libraries of books nor pictures could have found a 

 place among furniture. . . . Wo mention is made in 

 inventories of such conveniences as chairs or looking glasses. 

 Cottages in England at this time seem to have generally 

 consisted of a single room without division of stories. 

 Chimneys were unknown." 



Even at the close of the seventeenth century the progress 

 made was comparatively small. Draper states : — ^ " For a long 

 time London had been the most populous capital in Europe ; 

 yet it was dirty, ill-built, without sanitary provision. The 

 deaths were one in twenty-three each year -^ now, in a much 

 more crowded population, they are not one in forty " (one in 

 fifty in the year 1886). 



Much of the country was still heath, swamp, and warren. 

 Nothing more strikingly shows the social condition than the 

 provisions for locomotion. In the rainy season the roads were 

 all but impassable. Through such gullies, half filled with 

 mud, carriages were dragged often by oxen. ... If the 

 country was open the track of the road was easily mistaken. 

 It was no uncommon thing for persons to lose their way and 

 to spend the night out in the air. Between places of con- 

 siderable importance the roads were sometimes very little 

 known, and such was the difl&culty for four-wheeled carriages 

 that a principal mode of transport was by pack horses, of 

 which passengers took advantage by stowing themselves away 

 between the packs. The usual charge for freight was 15d. 

 per ton per mile. The country beyond the Trent was still in a 

 state of barbarism, and near the source of the Tyne there were 

 people scarcely less savage than American Indians, their "half- 

 naked women chanting a wild measure, while the men with 



1. " Hallam's View of the State of Europe During the Middle Ages," (Murray 

 and Son, London, pp. 779, 781). 



2. " Draper's Intellectual History of Europe," vol. ii., pp. 238, 239. 



3. i.e., 43'48 per 1,000, or higher than the birth rate. ^ 



