Suggestions for its Improvement. 
3 
is now oh the whole actually better than it was thirty, fifty, or a 
hundred years ago. 
It is true that the extension of trade and manufactures, and the 
increase of wealth, have added greatly to the enjoyments of the 
middle and higher classes, and it may be doubled whether there 
has been a corresponding increase in the enjoyments of the 
working class. The social fabric has been enlarged ; it has 
more stories, more gradations, but the lowest still remains nearly 
at its former level. This may perhaps be in some measure un- 
avoidable, and so long as due harmony and coherence prevail 
throughout, the fabric will stand secure ; but it cannot be deemed 
secure if there be wide breaks in its gradations, or a want of 
proper sympathy among its several })arts. To perpetuate this 
harmony if it already exists, and to restore and establish it if it be 
wanting, constitute the high privilege of the statesman and the 
patriot. 
History affords no parallel to the rapid accumulation of wealth 
in this country within the last half-century, and the growth of our 
population has fully kept pace with it. By the census returns of 
1801 the population of Great Britain was then 10,942,646; 
whilst by the last census, that of 1841, it was 18,844,434; 
showing an increase of two-thirds, or nearly eight millions, in forty 
years. We have no means of ascertaining the increase of capital 
within the same period, but it may be pretty well inferred from 
the Property and Income Tax Returns. Those for 1815 give the 
amount assessed in England and Wales at 51,790,879/., and those 
for 1843 give the amount at 85,802,735/. ; and if we assume that 
the rate of increase was about the same throughout the whole 
period as we find it to have been between 181 5 and 1843, it 
would make the income liable to assessment in 1801 amount to 
about 41,000,000/., and show that it had more than doubled in 
the last forty years. This vast increase of wealth has no doubt 
chiefly arisen from the energy and enterprise of the commercial 
portion of the people, whom it has elevated to a position of great 
comparative importance ; but it has likewise been greatly aided 
by the improvements in agriculture, which have largely sympa- 
thised with, if they have not fully kept pace with our manufac- 
turing improvements. Each has acted and reacted on the other, 
each being in fact essential to the other. 
With more capital at command and more intelligence in its 
application, with improved methods of cultivation and better 
means of communicating with distant markets, the farmer was 
enabled and naturally wished to occupy more land ; and it was 
also natural that the landlord should be desirous of meeting his 
wishes in this respect. Hence the frequent consolidation of small 
farms into farms of larger extent, doubtless to the general benefit 
B 2 
