THREE:The growth of material wealth during this reign had in no degree improved the condition of the working class in any proportion to that of other classes. Landlords had greatly raised their rents, and farmers, by the high price of corn and other provisions, had grown comparatively rich, many very rich. The merchants and master manufacturers had shared liberally in the benefits of a vastly increased commerce, and the wonderful spread of manufactures; but the working manufacturers, between the high price of corn and meat, and the lowness of their wages, were in a miserable condition, and frequently, as we have seen, were driven to riot and insurrection. The handloom weavers were swamped by machinery, and those working the machinery were living in wretched houses, and in a most neglected and insanitary condition. Before the first Sir Robert Peel introduced his Bill for reforming the hours and other regulations of cotton mills, many of these worked night and day, one gang, as it was called, succeeding another at the spinning-jenny, in hot, ill-ventilated rooms. Apprentices were purchased of parishes, either children of paupers, or orphans of such, and these were kept by mill-owners, and worked long hours, one gang having to quit their beds in the morning for another gang of these poor unfortunates to turn into them. The agricultural labourers were little better off. Their habitations were of the worst description, though squires' kennels on the same estates were equal, in all sanitary conditions, to tolerable mansions. Their wages remained only some eight or ten shillings a weekwhen the wheat which they had raised was one hundred and thirty shillings per quarter, and a stone of flour of fourteen pounds cost a gold seven-shilling piece. This drove them in shoals to the workhouse, and produced a state of things that is hardly credible. Their mental and moral condition was equally deplorable. Education, either in town or country, was scarcely known. There was not a school in all the swarming region[158] of Whitechapel, and many another equally poor and populous region of London, much less in country towns and agricultural parishes. It was a settled maxim amongst the landed gentry, that education, even of the most elementary kind, would totally destroy the supply of servants; and it was gravely stated in Parliament that the plot of Thistlewood was owing to the working classes being able to read.In the comments with which he concluded his speech there were some signs of progress in the development of Free Trade ideas in the mind of the perplexed and trammelled Minister, which are interesting to read by the light of his later career. He still maintained, in deference to the views of those who surrounded him, that it was the duty of the Legislature to take precautions to ensure that the main source of our supply of food should be derived from domestic agriculture; but he admitted that any protection, beyond what would compensate for the alleged special burdens upon agriculture, could only be vindicated on the ground that it was for the interest of all classes of the community. Mr. Cobden, who in the autumn of the previous year had been returned for Stockport, said a few words after the speech. He declared himself not surprised at the position, constituted as the Government was; for he had not, he said, expected to gather grapes of thistles; but he denounced the sliding scale as an insult to a suffering people. Following him, Lord John Russell gave notice that he should move a resolution to the effect that it was not advisable in any alteration of the Corn Laws to adopt the principle of a graduated sliding scale; and Mr. Villiers gave notice that, on going into committee, he should take the sense of the House on the policy of imposing any duty whatever on the foreign corn or food imported into the country. The debate on Sir Robert Peel's proposition began on Monday, the 14th of February, and reached the close of its first stage on Wednesday, when Lord John Russell's motion was negatived by a majority of 123, in a House of 575. Mr. Villiers's motion was debated for five nights more, and finally negatived by a majority of 393 to 90. The Whigs now gave the people to understand that the eight shilling duty of the year before was abandoned, and that if they were again in power they would propose a lower sum. In Parliament the position of the Minister was by no means an enviable one. The Free Traders pressed him closely with questions which must have made him feel still more strongly the embarrassing part which he was compelled to play. In the House of Lords the Corn Importation Bill was passed with slight opposition. Lord Brougham proposed a resolution in favour of a perfectly free trade in corn, which was negatived. A resolution, moved by Lord Melbourne, in favour of a fixed duty, was also negatived by a majority of 117 to 49.
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THREE:It was not to be wondered at that when, on the 24th of January, the preliminaries of peace were laid on the tables of the two Houses, there should be a violent denunciation of the large concessions made by Ministers. Spain had been granted better terms than in any treaty since that of St. Quentin. She had obtained the most desirable island of Minorca, with the finest port on the Mediterranean. She had got the Floridas, and had given up scarcely anything, whilst, had the British, now freed from the dead weight of America, pursued the war against her, she must soon have lost most of her valuable insular colonies. France had given up more, but she recovered very important territories which she had lost, and especially her settlements of Pondicherry and Chandernagore, in the East Indies; but America had conceded nothing, and yet had been allowed to determine her own frontier, and to share the benefits of the fishing all round our own Transatlantic coasts.
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