ace in popular
imagination that is now assigned to the Alderman of London. Fielding
attributes to the Bristol Alderman that fine appreciation of the
qualities of turtle soup with which more modern humorists have endowed
his metropolitan fellow.

Liverpool was hardly thought of in the early Georgian days. It was
only made into a separate parish a few years before George came to the
throne, and its first dock was opened in 1709. Manchester was
comparatively obscure and unimportant, and had not yet made its first
export of cotton goods. At this time Norwich, famous for its worsted
and woollen works and its fuller's earth, surpassed it in business
importance. By the middle of the century the population of Bristol is
said to have exceeded ninety thousand; Norwich, to have had more than
fifty-six thousand; Manchester, about forty-five thousand; Newcastle,
forty thousand; and Birmingham, about thirty thousand; while Liverpool
had swelled to about thirty thousand, and ranked as the third port in
the country. York was the chief city of the Northern Counties; Exeter,
the capital of the West. Shrewsbury was of some account in the region
towards the Welsh frontier. Worcester, Derby, Nottingham, and
Canterbury were places of note. Bath had not come into its fashion and
its fame as yet. Its first pump-room had been built only a few years
before George entered England. The strength of England now, if we
leave London out of consideration, lies in the north, and goes no
farther southward than a line which would include Birmingham. In the
early days of the Georges this was just the part of England which was
of least importance, whether as regards manufacturing energy or
political power.

{80}

Ireland just then was quiet. It had sunk into a quietude something
like that of the grave. Civil war had swept over the country; a
succession of civil wars indeed had plagued it. There was a time just
before the outbreak of the parliamentary struggle against Charles the
First when, according to Clarendon, Ireland was becoming a highly
prosperous country, growing vigorously in trade, manufacture, letters,
and arts, and beginning to be, as he puts it, "a jewel of great lustre
in the royal diadem." But civil war and religious persecution had
blighted this rising prosperity, and for the evils coming from
political proscription and religious persecution the statesmen of the
time could think of no remedy but new proscription and fresh