Fifty Years Ago. Walter Besant

      ARRIVAL OF THE CORONATION NUMBER OF ‘THE SUN’—ONE PAPER, AND ONE MAN WHO CAN READ IT IN THE TOWN

      In the year 1837—I shall repeat this remark several times, because I wish to impress the fact upon everybody—we were still, to all intents and purposes, in the eighteenth century. As yet the country was untouched by that American influence which is now filling all peoples with new ideas. Rank was still held in the ancient reverence; religion was still that of the eighteenth-century Church; the rights of labour were not yet recognised; there were no trades’ unions; there were no railways to speak of; nobody travelled except the rich; their own country was unknown to the people; the majority of country people could not read or write; the good old discipline of Father Stick and his children, Cat-o’-Nine-Tails, Rope’s-end, Strap, Birch, Ferule, and Cane, was wholesomely maintained; landlords, manufacturers, and employers of all kinds did what they pleased with their own; and the Blue Ribbon was unheard of. There were still some fiery spirits in whose breasts lingered the ideas of the French Revolution, and the Chartists were already beginning to run their course. Beneath the surface there was discontent, which sometimes bubbled up. But freedom of speech was limited, and if the Sovereign People had then ventured to hold a meeting in Trafalgar Square, that meeting would have been dispersed in a very swift and surprising manner. The Reform Act had been passed, it is true, but as yet had produced little effect. Elections were carried by open bribery; the Civil Service was full of great men’s nominees; the Church was devoured by pluralists; there were no competitive examinations; the perpetual pensions were many and fat; and for the younger sons and their progeny the State was provided with any number of sinecures. How men contrived to live and to be cheerful in this state of things one knows not. But really, I think it made very little apparent difference to their happiness that this country was crammed full of abuses, and that the Ship of State, to outsiders, seemed as if she were about to capsize and founder.

      This is to be a short chapter of figures. Figures mean very little unless they can be used for purposes of comparison. When, for instance, one reads that in the Census of 1831 the population of Great Britain was 16,539,318, the fact has little significance except when compared with the Census of 1881, which shows that the population of the country had increased in fifty years from sixteen millions to twenty-four millions. And, again, one knows not whether to rejoice or to weep over this fact until it has been ascertained how the condition of these millions has changed for better or for worse, and whether the outlook for the future, if, in the next fifty years, twenty-four become thirty-six, is hopeful or no. Next, when one reads that the population of Ireland was then seven millions and three-quarters, and is now less than five millions, and, further, that one Irishman in three was always next door to starving, and that the relative importance of Ireland to Great Britain was then as one to two, and is now as one to five, one naturally congratulates Ireland on getting more elbow-room and Great Britain on the relative decrease in Irish power to do the larger island an injury.