French copies were re-copied, our workmen being | scroll-backed chairs, with cane bottoms, fitted, also at that time notoriously inferior in point of taste to their Gallic brethren. About the commencement of the nineteenth century a rival material jostled the lately admired mahogany completely out of our English drawing-rooms. Chairs, tables, sofas, piano-fortes, commodes,-all were to be of rosewood; and mahogany was voted vulgar, except for the dining-parlour or the bed-chamber. In France this distinction does not appear to have been introduced, and, therefore, mirabile dictu, it must have been a fashion invented in England, and we can only account for such a curiosity by her isolated position during the long struggle against Napoleon, which threw her completely on her own resources, and produced, amongst other monstrosities, the long-waisted spencers and little straw bonnets immortalised by Brunet and Vernet in "Les Anglaises pour rire." The same period has to answer for the introduction of slender-legged The piano-forte, though a musical instrument, has surely a right to take rank as a piece of furniture, considering how prominent a feature it has lately become in almost every drawing room. Indeed, we ought to have mentioned its venerable predecessors, the harpsi chord and the spinet, in their proper places, and beg to apologise for the omission. we will for courtesy's sake term it, with th cushions covered with cloth, merino, or calico, and tied to the seat by tapes passing round the slender legs aforesaid. Also for stuffed horse-hair sofas, with scroll ends and hard round bolsters, and chairs to match, bound with brass mouldings or filles, specimens of which are still to be found in second rate lodging-houses and commercial hotels. If to these we add Pembroke tables, register stoves, Argand lamps, the modern-shaped sideboard with its cellaret or sarcophagus, some varieties in the way of ladies' work-tables, canterburies, what-nots, Venetian and spring blinds, muslin curtains, &c, we shall complete, we believe, the list of articles, useful and ornamental, which were generally to be seen in "genteelly furnished apartments" during the latter years of the reign of George III Thanks to the throwing open of the Continent, taste and art have lately made rapid strides in England. Another "renaissance "has occurred, and elegance and comfort were perhaps never more happily blended than they may be seen at present in the mansion of almost every English gente man. CHAPTER VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. of N the period of about eighteen years that elapsed between the peace of Amiens (27 March, 1802) and the end of the reign of George III. (29 January, 1820), there occurred at least three seasons of great suffering among the working classes; namely, the years 1811-12, 1816 17, and 1819. The year 1812 was distinguished by the outrages of the Luddites, or destroyers of machinery, which began at Nottingham in November, 1811, and, extending through Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Leicestershire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, and Yorkshire, were continued throughout the following spring and summer. A scarcity of employment, and consequent fall of wages, erroneously attributed to machinery, but really the consequence of the commercial stagnation and discredit of the two preceding years," conspiring with an extraordinary rise in the price of food,† produced the general distress among the manufacturing population of which these disturbances were the symptom or natural expression. Again, in 1816, similar causes, which this time, however, involved the agricultural as well as the manufacturing and commercial classes, inflicting the severest privations upon the working people in almost all parts of the kingdom, gave rise to the spread of Hampden and Union clubs, Spencean societies, and other revolutionary combinations throughout Lancashire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Lanarkshire, and at last, in December, resulted in the great riots at Spafields, London, and other excesses, which were followed in the beginning of the next year by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and other measures of coercion. Lastly, in 1819, another season of manufacturing and commercial depression, occasioned by extensive failures among the importers of cotton and other speculators in foreign trade,§ by throwing great numbers of workmen out of employment, although unaccompanied by any * rise in the prices of the necessaries of life, but rather the contrary, produced similar effects, the wide-spread cry for radical reform, the tumultuous meetings at Manchester and elsewhere, the suppression of disorder by military force, and the famous Six Acts. In reviewing the economical history of the period, these three portions of it may therefore be considered as of a distinct and exceptional character. Of the general movement of the circumstances affecting the condition of the great body of the people throughout the rest of the period, the subjoined notices will afford us the clearest views: 1. WAGES.-It was stated in the last Book that an advance of wages took place in most departments of industry in 1795 and 1796, and a further advance in 1800 and 1801.* A third movement in the same direction began in 1804, and continued to the close of 1808, by which time, according to Mr. Tooke, the price of labour, more especially of artizan labour, had attained nearly its maximum height,† though in some occupations this had scarcely happened till about 1812 indeed, the most considerable rise in the wages of manufacturing industry did not take place till 1813 and 1814. According to the Greenwich Hospital accounts of the weekly wages of the various descriptions of operatives employed by that establishment, those paid to carpenters were 18s. in 1800, 27s. in 1805, 34s. in 1810, 33s. in 1815, 31s. in 1816, 31s. 6d. in 1819; those of bricklayers were also 18. in 1800, and rose to 29s. in 1805, to 31s. in 1810, and to 32s. 6d. in 1811, and were still 30s. 6d. in 1819; those of masons were 17s. in 1800, 30s. in 1805, 34s. 6d. in 1811, and 31s. 6d. from 1816 to 1820; those of plumbers were 19s. 6d. in 1800, 27s. in 1805, 34s. 6d. in 1810, and were still the same in 1819, having only in 1816 fallen to 32s. 6d. These are almost the only departments of labour in which we have any complete account of the progress or fluctuation of wages during this period, if we except that of hand-loom weaving, where of course the competition of machinery had a decidedly depressing effect, reducing the weekly amount of wages at Glasgow, for example, from 13s. 1d. in 1800, and 17s. 8d. in 1806, to 7s. 6d. in 1811, and then, after an advance which reached the height of 13s. in 1814, to 5s. 6d. in 1816, and to 5s. in 1819. || With this * See ante, vol. iii. pp. 769, 770. Hist. of Prices, i. 288. Id. p. 329. Id. vol. ii. pp. 5, 6. See Table of the weekly wages of artizans, &c., in Mr. Porter' Progress of the Nation, vol. ii. pp. 251-254. It is somewhat remark exception, the rise of wages, and the same thing is true of salaries and professional fees, generally maintained throughout the remainder of the period, and indeed has done so ever since, very nearly the maximum which it had reached about 1810 or 1812. We have already had occasion to notice this tendency of a rise of wages to maintain itself after the partialor entire removal of the cause by which it had been originally produced.* 2. PRICES.-The main, if not the exclusive, cause, undoubtedly, of the advance of wages which took place in all departments of industry, where it was not counteracted by peculiar circumstances, between 1794 and 1814, was the still greater rise which took place in the same period in the prices of provisions and of the necessaries of life. The mean price for the year of the Winchester quarter of wheat, which (according to the audit books of Eton College) was only 54s. in 1794, and had very seldom before been higher or so high, was 81s. 6d. in 1795, 127s. in 1800, 88s. in 1805, 106s. in 1809, 112s. in 1810, 118s. in 1812, 120s. in 1813, 116s. in 1817, and 78s. in 1819; ever since which time prices have been confined within a much lower range. Generally, therefore, it may be said that both prices and wages (which are the price of labour) continued to rise down to 1814, but prices at a greater rate than wages; and that during the remainder of the period wages maintained the elevation they had gained, while prices rather receded than advanced; so that, on the whole, the relation of wages to the prices of food was probably restored by 1820 to nearly what it had been in 1793. than two were kept. The number of two-wheeled 3. CONSUMPTION.-The fullest accounts that have been laid before the public of the consumption of various articles of necessity and luxury by the inhabitants of the United Kingdom during the period now under consideration are those collected by Mr. Porter in his valuable work entitled The Progress of the Nation.' + The following are some of the most important results which Mr. Porter's statements and calculations present. The average number of inhabitauts to a house in Eng-priced sorts. Of malt, the quantity consumed by land appears to have increased from 5.67 in 1801 to 5.68 in 1811, and to 576 in 1821. The total number of male domestic servants kept in Great Britain was 86,093 in 1812, and only 85,757 in 1821 (when, if it had kept pace with the increase of the population, it ought to have been 96,966): there was a very slight increase in the number kept by persons keeping only one or two, but a diminution in the numbers of those belonging to all larger establishments. The increase in the number of four-wheeled carriages between 1812 and 1821, was only from 16,596 to 17,555, or 5.77 per cent.; while the increase of the population was 13 per cent.; and here, too, there was an actual falling off in the number of those kept where more able, however, that, while the wages of hand-loom weavers according to this table were in 1816 only 5s. 6d. at Glasgow, they were 13s. 2d. at Manchester, and 12s. at Arbroath. In 1819 they are represented as being still 9s. 6d. at Manchester, and 12s. at Arbroath, while they were only 5s. at Glasgow. • See ante, vol. iii. p. 770. † Vol. iii. Lon. 1843; sect. v. pp. 1-116. each individual in the United Kingdom rose from 1.20 bushels in 1801 to 1·60 in 1811, and fell, notwithstanding a diminution of the duty, to 1.38 bushels in 1821: in England, where the consumption has always been much more considerable than in Scotland or Ireland, it rose, in the face of nearly a quadrupling of the duty, from 1.92 bushels in 1801 to 2.40 bushels in 1811, and fell, notwithstanding a diminution of the duty by nearly one-fourth, to 2-12 bushels in 1821. The contribution, per head, to the revenue by the consumers of malt in England appears in fact to have been 2s. 7d. in 1801, 10s. 9d. in 1811, and 7s. 8d. in 1821. The consumption of spirits did not fall off to the same extent: it was, in the United Kingdom, at the rate of 0.56 gallon for each individual in 1802, 0.49 in 1812, and 0:46 in 1821; in England it was 0.36 gallon in 1802, 0.33 in 1812, and the same in 1821; in Scotland • Progress of the Nation, iii. 32. |