speakers of the League were obviously educating the farmers, and the garrison by which the citadel was defended was showing dangerous signs of division. The agriculturists were evidently in need of an earnest leader to rekindle their enthusiasm ; and the leaders, instead of conducting them to victory, seemed half inclined to surrender the citadel. The foremost free traders openly declared that Mr. Gladstone was on their side at heart. "If you want to know what the principles are that ought to guide our commercial policy," said one of them in 1843, "look at the right honourable gentleman's article in the Foreign and Colonial Review; but, if you wish to know how these great principles can be reduced to a question of miserable expediency, look at the right honourable gentleman's speech last night." Expediency still regulated Mr. Gladstone's utterances in 1844. He told the free traders then that the House had devoted eighteen nights to the discussion of the subject the year before, and could not renew the discussion every year. For himself he claimed something like stability for the decisions of Parliament. Language of this kind was sensible enough, but it had not the true ring of protectionist principles.2 The improvement of trade. From Mr. Gladstone's standpoint, however, a good deal could be urged for waiting quietly to test the results of the law of 1842. Misery rose to its highest level in the course of 1842, and the barometer which indicated its growth fell rapidly afterwards. The declared value of the exports rose from £47,284,988 in 1842, to £52,206,447 in 1843; to £58,534,705 in 1844, and to £60,111,082 in 1845. From 1835 to 1842 the foreign trade of the nation remained almost exactly stationary; from 1842 to 1845 an addition of 25 per cent. was made to it. The internal trade of the country increased during the same period with even greater activity. In 1842 the people had been unable to find employment. In 1845 the demand for labour exceeded the supply of it. It was stated in the House of 1 Hansard, vol. Ixix. p. 113. Cf. Croker Memoirs, vol. iii. p. II. Commons that 114,838 persons were employed in some Yorkshire factories in 1845 in which only 84,510 had been working seven years before. This vast addition to the demand for labour was accompanied by a steady decrease in the price of focd. The price of beef was reduced from 7d. to 51d. per lb., of mutton from 7d. to 6., of sugar from 7d. to 5d., of tea from 5s. to 45., of flour from 10. to 8. a quartern. The income of the working-classes increased, and the cost of their food diminished. In consequence, pauperism was gradually diminishing, and crime was decreasing even more rapidly. In 1842, 31,309 persons were committed for trial, and the committals declined to 29,591 in 1843, to 26,542 in 1844, and to 24,303 persons in 1845. In 1842 one person out of every 500 of the population, in 1845 one person out of every 750, was committed for trial. The mighty change in the condition of the people, which commenced in the ministry of Peel, and which has been. continued almost uninterruptedly ever since, was not solely due to the fall of one political party and to the rise of another to power. The contests, indeed, which men dignify with the name of History are only little bubbles floating on the surface which enable us to mark the movements of the tide. To ascertain the true causes of the prosperity, the inquirer must go beyond even the great Budget of 1842. What Peel reaily did in that year was to accelerate and accentuate an impulse which was already prepared. He found a country staggering under burdens which a mistaken policy had imposed, which made everything dear, and which did no good to any human. being. He saw the necessity of removing the load, and he removed it. And, by making England a cheap 3 country instead of a dear country, he gave enterprise an opportunity which it had never known before. The Budget of 1842, therefore, is a proof of Peel's knowledge, of his foresight, and of his skill. But the Budget of 1 Hansard, vol. lxxx. p. 907. ? These figures were cited by Graham, ibid., p. 910. 3 See a letter of Peel's in the Croker Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 385. 1842, unprecedentedly great as it was in its conception and completeness, was not the sole or even the chief cause of the subsequent improvement. This country owes probably more to Peel than to any other statesman who ever lived in England. But the true heroes of modern England are not her statesmen but her inventors and engineers. ment of railway In a former volume an account has been given of the origin of railways up to 1830. The success of the Liverpool and The developManchester Line gave an extraordinary stimulus to these undertakings. In the four years ending 1829, enterprise. only a little more than £800,000 a year was authorised to be spent on railways. Authority was given by Parliament for an average expenditure of more than £2,000,000 in each of the four years ending 1833; of nearly £11,000,000 in each of the four years ending 1837; and of nearly £21,000,000 in each of the four years ending 1845.1 The capital expended on railways, which amounted to £65,000,000 in 1843, exceeded £200,000,000 in 1848.2 Less than 2000 miles of railway had been constructed in 1843, and more than 5000 miles had been constructed in 1848. The pertinacity with which these projects were pushed forward compelled the ministry to deal with the whole subject of railways. In 1844 an Act was passed authorising the Government, in the case of any railway constructed after that year, in certain contingencies and after a certain interval, either to purchase the line or to revise the tolls; and provision was at the same time made for the carriage of poor persons at what were then thought to be low fares. The legislation, however, which Parliament provided 1 Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 332. The authorised expenditure after 1837 sank to £3,600,000 in the four years ending 1841. 2 Statistical Abstract, and number, p. 84. 3 7 & 8 Vict. c. 85. Provision for cheap fares had previously been made in an Act of 1838; the complaint was made in the House of Commons in 1844 that a third-class passenger going to Bath could not travel by day, and had to stand all the way. It was admitted that the carriages were without covering, though it was claimed that they had seats, and that a third-class passenger leaving London at 4.30 A. M. could reach Exeter at 9 P.M. Hansard, vol. lxxii. p. 245. on the occasion was not productive of much good, and is not worthy of much attention. The rapid development of railway enterprise was productive of two advantages. In the first place, at a time when capital was redundant and the labour market overstocked, Its conse it provided a new and almost illimitable field for the quences. investment of the one and the employment of the other. And, in the next place, it encouraged enterprise in another way. The production of the country was arrested from the difficulty or inability of distributing its produce. Years before, the invention of the spinning-jenny and the mule had led to the provision of more yarn than all the weavers in the kingdom could consume. The discovery of the power-loom had redressed the balance, and thenceforward there was no artificial limit to the use of yarn in weaving. But the horses in the country, whether they were employed on roads or on canals, could not possibly distribute, with reasonable economy, all the cloth which the manufacturers could produce. Production was, in other words, limited by the want of means of distribution; and, if no new locomotive power had been invented, the progress of industry must necessarily have been checked. Steam at sea. Just, then, as the greatest industrial fact in the eighteenth century was the application of steam to production, so the most important commercial circumstance in the nineteenth century is the application of steam to locomotion; and the invention and its consequences undoubtedly did more for the development of trade than even the great Budget of 1842. It is a remarkable circumstance that, while the steam-vessel preceded the locomotive, the use of steam to any great extent on land preceded its use to any large degree at sea. In 1841 the tonnage of the steam fleet in the commercial navy of the United Kingdom was only onethirtieth part of the tonnage of the sailing fleet. Twenty years after 1841, there were still eight tons moved by sails for every ton moved by steam. Four years afterwards, in 1865, when the sailing fleet attained its maximum tonnage, the tonnage of the steam fleet was one-sixth of the tonnage of the sailing fleet; in 1884 the tonnage of the steam fleet exceeded the aggregate tonnage of all the sailing vessels.1 This revolution-for it is a greater revolution than either a Reform Act or a change of dynasty-was characterised by opposite peculiarities. So far as railways are concerned, the actual speed of the locomotive has not been materially augmented by half a century of progress. The engine burns less fuel, it is worked more economically; but the fastest train that runs now does not travel at twice the speed at which the Rocket bore Huskisson to the house where he died. But, in the case of the steamer, the opposite has occurred. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that almost every year has added to the speed, the size, and power of the steam-vessel, and that the finest steamers are three times as fast and ten times as large as the finest vessels forty years ago. The toolmakers of the nineteenth century. It is worth observing, moreover, that the prodigious advance made during the last half century would have been impossible at any previous period of the world's history. If, at the beginning of the century, men could have designed the Alaska or the City of Rome, they could not have built them. In fact the progress of mankind may be traced in the history of its tools; and just as the Neolithic age superseded the Palæolithic age, the Bronze age the Stone age, and the Iron age the Bronze age, so, in our own time, the marvellous skill of the tool-maker and the application of steam to tool-making have enabled man to accomplish objects which would have been impracticable before. There is another circumstance connected with the application of steam to locomotion which has perhaps received insufficient notice. The railway, when it was first introduced, |