supervision, dwelling in cottages built upon the waste, for which in many cases they paid no rent. Each cottage had its plot of ground where fruit or vegetables could be grown, and beyond the hedge which bounded it lay the common where a cow, a pig, or a few fowls could feed at will. Frequently, too, the labourer lodged at the farmhouse, and among the numerous class of small farmers it was customary for the servant to eat at his master's table, and to live more or less as a member of the family. At the commencement of the eighteenth century agricultural wages were both absolutely and relatively much higher than they had been previously. Wheaten bread was in general use amongst the peasantry, and cheese, and even meat, formed part of their diet. It was their golden age. We shall see that during the years immediately preceding 1800, and the forty years which followed it, the condition of the peasant changed perceptibly for the worse. At the same time it must be borne in mind that the terrible suffering revealed by the inquiries held during that period was in no sense the legacy of a bygone system of oppression : it was an immediate result of the agrarian revolution which was brought about in the eighteenth century. To put the case shortly. In 1700, rural England still formed almost the whole of England. It surpassed the commercial and manufacturing classes in numbers, wealth, and in the importance of its public services; it over-shadowed them through the moral authority and the dominant position of its leaders. Those leaders, that is, the country gentlemen, possessed none of the characteristics of feudalism; the very opposite was the case: they formed a class essentially modern in its nature. It was at that time the fundamental peculiarity of the English people that the various grades of the social hierarchy were divided by no wide intervals; different classes approached so nearly that they seemed sometimes to overlap. In the fifteenth century the country gentlemen invaded and absorbed the peerage; the country gentlemen themselves were in their turn recruited by the addition of wealthy merchants, borough magistrates, and the more eminent lawyers, and thus attracted to their own ranks the leading representatives of the urban communities and of the commercial and industrial interests. A step lower and the yeomanry followed in continuous sequence. The first conspicuous break occurs at the point where below the humblest yeoman the inferior and, so to speak, inorganic sections of the community began; yet even there the dividing line was less marked than it is in the present day. If the more considerable of the small freeholders bordered on the gentry, the more humble remained, to a certain extent, in touch with the paid labourer. They treated him as a rule like one of their own family; the shepherd or the ploughman lived at the farm; artisans dwelt under the eye of their master in cottages built upon the waste. In a progressive community the upper classes are strengthened in their authority and power, and fortified against destructive influences in proportion as the separation between class and class is made slighter and more liable to be overstepped by those sections that press on either side of the border lines. The vague limitation of classes acts as a check upon the growth of class feeling; each rank is prevented from forming a distinct conception of its own interests, and shows no tendency to stand aloof or to regard all other ranks with a feeling of distant hostility. Homogeneousness and coherence, continuity and gradation, these, at the period to which I am referring, were the clearly marked characteristics of English society. No surer guarantees of social harmony exist; and I have shown that, as a matter of fact, this harmony was never seriously shaken by the most violent political or religious disturbances. This is what the eighteenth century destroyed; towards the end of that century all had changed. Throughout the social scale deeply seated class divisions and interests in burning rivalry split up the surface of society, silently undermined its tranquility, and hastened the day when, if peril was to be avoided, the problem of a wholesale reconstruction would have to be faced. We have next to investigate the causes of this phenomenon, and to note the various stages in the work of dissolution and ruin. |