22 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
life were heavily taxed, even light, fresh air, bread, and salt; 
locomotion was painfully difficult and expensive ; roads bad ; 
postal communication very costly, a letter to London costing 
thirteen pence, where now a halfpenny would pay ; education 
administered in homoeopathic doses to the upper classes, rather as 
a tonic than as a necessary, a bread of life carefully protected 
from the communion of the lower classes, for fear of enabling them 
to rise above their state of slavish subjection. ' This "Good Old 
Time " when men were strung up to the gallows for infringing the 
privileges of property by stealing to the value of five shillings ; 
aye, and women too, even for stealing bread for the starving chil- 
dren left destitute by the abduction of the father by the legalized 
press-gang. It was not until 1820 that the intelligent legislature 
discovered the value of life to be more than five shillings per head. 
It was not until 1836 that they gained sufficient intelligence to 
allow prisoners in criminal cases to have the assistance of counsel. 
The public press was subject to all sorts of careful provisions 
against being rendered useful and efficient. Men and gentlemen 
were regarded with admiration and applause according to their 
brute courage and powers of drinking. In the midst of such society 
our early members must have been men of mark to stand up to 
•their work, to turn away from the allurements of the " Society" of 
the day, and devote themselves to the cultivation of their intellect 
and to the spread of knowledge, not only amongst themselves, but 
amongst their towns-fellows. And did they succeed % Have they 
done anything in the helping forward of the great work that has 
already been accomplished 1 that has converted the United King- 
dom of 1812 into the United Kingdom and Colonies of Canada, 
British Columbia, Australia, New Zealand, &c, &c, of the Greater 
Britain of to-day 1 ? 
We cannot possibly attempt anything like a full exposition of 
what they did, and probably, even if we worked hours at the in- 
vestigation, we should not be able to worthily demonstrate the 
efficiency of their labours. Take then only a few of the instances 
that are close at hand. 
In 1812 certainly not, and I believe that even in 1819 our 
members did not, enjoy in this room the comfort of gas ; and much 
less still did they do so in their own homes. Indeed, although gas 
had been used for street lighting, and for the illumination of shops 
and public buildings, it was not much before 1850 that it came 
