CHAPTER XLIX

ENGLAND AT THE EVE OF THE REFORM BILL

General Features. The period between the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the First Reform Bill was marked by many evidences of progress. Manners and morals improved steadily. There was a growing humanitarian spirit, and in spite of the prevalence of laissez-faire, the legislative stagnation during the French War and the greater part of the ensuing decade was followed by measures for bettering the condition of the subject, though little enough to improve the lot of the lesser folk who suffered so acutely both from the War and from the revolution in agriculture and industry. In literature the romantic revolt reached a glorious climax.

Manufactures. Some new methods in manufacturing were introduced; on the whole, however, this was an age of perfecting existing processes, of extending the factory system and organizing labor, rather than of new inventions in production. The increased cheapness of processes is striking, — for example, in 1815 it cost only eightpence to spin a pound of cotton of a much finer quality than had cost forty-two shillings in 1775,- while the amazing growth in production is evident from the fact that exports had increased from £8,197,788 in 1740 to £58,624,550 in 1815.

British Shipping. The tonnage of shipping of Great Britain was 619,000 in 1780; with that of Ireland added, it had gone up to 2,201,000 in 1830. The growing dependence on world markets naturally increased the instability of trade, accentuated by the American and French wars, which increased the uncertainty and risk of business, caused violent fluctuations in prices, encouraged speculation and led to unsteadiness of employment. The Continental System had the particular effect of cutting off some sources of food supply and giving an artificial stimulus to English tillage. But Great Britain, thanks to her command of the sea, and to her improved processes in textile and iron manufacture, was able to increase enormously her carrying trade, and to extend her markets. Napoleon himself was compelled

very reluctantly to buy her goods; while, to encourage French and Italian agriculture and to drain his rival of gold, he even allowed the export of foodstuffs to British ports in 1811. The most serious difficulties arose from the strained relations with the United States during the years preceding and including the War of 1812, when, for a time, an important market for manufactured goods, as well as a source for food and raw cotton, was almost wholly cut off. As has been seen, the end of the French War did not bring the prosperity which had been anticipated. Continental nations were too exhausted to buy much, and it was some years before the peace markets grew to equal those which the artificial demands of the War had created.

Road Building. This period marked an epoch in communication and transportation. Thomas Telford (1757-1834) did a notable work in road construction, in building canals and bridges, and in improving harbors, though much as Telford accomplished, the man with whom the modern road system is chiefly associated is John McAdam (1756– 1836) whose process, adopted throughout the civilized world, is known to-day as "macadamizing." The new roads supplemented the canals in facilitating transportation and gave a great impetus to traveling. The old cumbersome vehicles drawn by strong slow horses were replaced by a lighter type, and an average speed often to twelve miles an hour was attained. Remote, isolated towns awoke from their torpor and rubbed off their provincialism. Country gentlemen, who had hitherto traveled on horseback, commenced to make use of the public coaches, and, by mingling with men in other walks of life, began to discard their prejudices and self-sufficiency. But the real revolution in travel and transportation was wrought by steam.

The Steamboat and the Railroad. -- The idea of steam navigation was very old; but no practical results were obtained until after Watt's invention had proved workable. In 1807 Robert Fulton, provided with a Watt engine, successfully operated his Clermont on the Hudson. Henry Bell's Comet began to run on the Clyde in 1813, and very soon steamboat travel became general. The successful application of steam power to rail traction was due to George Stephenson (17811848), who began life as a herder of cows, turned collier, and rose to be engine wright at a colliery. His first locomotive, tried in 1814, ran at the rate of three miles an hour. Later he became engineer for the first steam railway- the Stockdale and Darlington - opened in 1825. When he was chosen to undertake the operation of a line from Manchester to Liverpool, he nearly wrecked the project by asserting that trains might be run at the rate of ten miles an hour. However, his Rocket, in competition for a prize which he won, attained a speed

of thirty-five. The opening of the road, in 1830, marked the beginning of a new era, not only in transportation, but in opportunities for indefinitely increasing the employment of labor and capital.

Agriculture. The revolution in agriculture, although it owed much to the factory system, was still further stimulated by the French wars. During the reign of George III between five and six millions of acres were enclosed, and more than half the total fell within the years between 1800 and 1820. Special Acts and agreements between parties were found too slow and cumbersome, so, beginning in 1801, a series of general Acts were passed to facilitate the work. While his predecessors had pointed the way, Arthur Young (1741-1820) did more than any other single man to complete the transformation of agricultural methods. In 1767 he began to make tours through Great Britain and France, and has left invaluable information in his graphic reports. Until 1810 he was constantly active, urging consolidation of holdings, reclamation of waste, granting long leases to large tenants and the investment of capital in land. He spread the results of the latest experiments in tillage and stock breeding, advocated the use of machinery for mowing, reaping and threshing, and fostered farmers' clubs and agricultural fairs. Aside from the extinction of the small cultivator, the only evil result of the new development was the fact that the war prices encouraged many to sink money in unproductive lands which could only be farmed at a loss when prices fell to their normal level.

Scientific Progress.

The modern era in science was heralded by the researches and discoveries of this period. Much of the notable work was done by Continental scholars; but Englishmen contributed their fair share. Henry Cavendish succeeded in converting hydrogen and oxygen into water and proved that it was a compound made up of these two gases. John Dalton was the first to show that chemical elements are composed of atoms or ultimate particles each of definite weight. This atomic theory placed the science on a new basis. Sir Humphrey Davy, in addition to contributions on the mechanical theory of heat and important electrochemical researches, conferred a priceless boon by his invention of the safety lamp (1815-1816) for miners; by covering the flame with gauze one of the most dangerous causes of explosions was practically eliminated. When Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875), in his Principles of Geology, showed that "the great geological changes of the past are not to be explained by catastrophes, followed by successive creations, but as the product of the continuous play of forces still at work," a long step was taken toward the evolutionary theory which was soon to be established by Darwin. Edward

Jenner made the momentous discovery, first published in 1798, that occasional vaccination with the virus of cow-pox rendered human beings practically immune from small-pox, and, in cases where it was contracted, greatly mitigated the disease, though not till 1853 did England take the step, already adopted by many Continental countries, of making vaccination compulsory.

Philosophical and Economic Thinking. While there was a vigorous reaction against the doctrine that external objects have no existence except in man's ideas of them, in general the period was more notable for its political and economic than for its purely philosophical thinking. The teachings of three men stand out preeminently. Adam Smith's free trade principles began to gain increasing currency. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a pioneer in the aim to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number by scientific legislation. Thomas Malthus, in his Essay on Population, 1798, argued that a chief source of misery was the natural tendency of population to increase more rapidly than means of subsistence, and advocated checking its growth. Yet at the same time, he admitted that disease and poverty operated to partially modify his law, nor was he a simply hardhearted theorist; for he enthusiastically supported the improvement of the lot of children by factory legislation.

Heralds of Romantic Revolt in Poetry. The decline in poetry during the second part of the eighteenth century has been attributed to the influence of Pope. A more important factor, however, was the essentially prosaic character of the age. Yet, as has been seen, there were evidences of tendencies to break away from convention, to search back into the romance and mystery of the past, to sound the depths of fundamental human problems and to appreciate the beauties of external nature. William Cowper (1731-1800) unconsciously revealed a new attitude in his charming descriptions of rural life, notably in The Task. He was a gentle soul in whom occasional fits of gayety were darkened by long periods of religious melancholia. John Gilpin's Ride, 1783, was a product of one of his rollicking moods. Robert Burns (1759-1796), a Scotch farmer boy, was a unique apparition in lyric poetry. During a stormy life, brought to a premature close by his own weakness and folly, he produced a body of verse, ranging from pathos to mirth, which touches the deepest springs of human experience and which has the spontaneous melody of the songbird.

The Romantic Revolt. The "Lake School." The really epochmaking event in the romantic reaction was the publication, in 1798, of the Lyrical Ballads, a little volume which was the joint work of William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772

1834). The collaboration was due to warm personal friendship and a common revulsion against the existing literary traditions. Yet the two were strikingly unlike, both as poets and men. Coleridge's mind was prone to soar away into the regions of the supernatural, of dreamland and mystery, though he never went to the lengths of inartistic unreality, and he clothed his weird fancies in exquisitely melodious verse. His finest achievements, the Ancient Mariner contributed. to the Lyrical Ballads - Kubla Khan, and Christabel were all written as early as 1801, though Christabel was not published till 1816. In his later life he shone chiefly as a talker, as a critic, and as an interpreter of German transcendentalist philosophy. Owing to a growing infirmity of will, of which addiction to opium was at once a symptom and a cause, his projects, after his early manhood, were greater than his achievements. As to Wordsworth, no poet has shown a greater love of nature, a more sensitive appreciation of her varied aspects and of her subtle influence on those who reverently contemplate her. Nor has any other nature poet reproduced with more fidelity what he has seen and felt. Yet, lacking in humor and desirous to avoid artificial pomp, he sometimes sank to dull and almost ludicrous commonplace. The Excursion, his longest, but not his best poem, shows him at his best and worst, for it contains long arid stretches relieved by oases of lofty beauty. Coleridge and Wordsworth are the leading representatives of the so-called "Lake School," a term, however, which is very misleading; since it meant no more than a group of writers of widely different traits who were drawn by the ties of friendship to take up their residence in the Cumberland Lake district.

Scott and Byron. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), by his antiquarain researches into the history and legends of Scotland, as well as by his astonishing productivity in romantic prose and poetry, did more than any other single man to foster the reviving interest in the past. In 1802-1803 appeared three volumes of Border Minstrelsy, a collection of Scotch ballads. Then came his splendid series of poems - the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake-between 1805 and 1815. Owing to the sudden vogue of a new figure in the poetic world - Lord Byron (1788–1824) — he turned to prose. Byron was destined to prove a tempestuous spirit in life and literature. Scott was a Tory by temperament and tradition, while Coleridge and Wordsworth, though they began as enthusiasts for the French Revolution, were driven into the conservative ranks by the excesses which followed. Byron, on the other hand, was a persistent revolutionist against existing institutions and met his death as a volunteer in the war for Greek Independence. He first manifested his fiery temper in English Bards