han
many heavy users of the roads got off almost scot free of contributing
to their maintenance, and the town tradesman could afford to send his
carts round and compete with, and, as a natural consequence, to
annihilate many small village shop-keepers who had flourished under the
old _regime_.

CHAPTER XV.

NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES.--A PAROCHIAL REVOLUTION.--THE OLD POOR-HOUSE
AND THE NEW "BASTILLE."

Over the dark night of the 18th and the dull grey morning of the 19th
century there was this remarkable feature, that while the local records
show how deplorable was the condition of the people, there was at the
head of the affairs of the nation a perfect galaxy of great men, such
as the public life of this nation had perhaps never known. There were
Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, Wellington, Wilberforce, Nelson, Canning,
Brougham, Lord Chancellor Eldon--whose greatness was only tempered by
the fear that the sun of Great Britain would set if a Catholic was
allowed to sit in the House of Peers,--the Duke of York--whose speech
against Catholic emancipation was printed in letters of gold and sold
by our local stationers,--the great Lyndhurst (four times Lord
Chancellor) Palmerston, Lord Derby, who, from a maiden speech about
lighting Manchester with gas, rose to be "the Rupert of Debate,"
Macaulay--the brilliant Buntingford school boy who went stamping
through the fields of literature with an _eclat_ which made him one of
the giants of the coming century,--O'Connell, the Liberator; and
Grattan, of Irish {156} Parliament fame. All these great names made up
a reflection of the glories of Ancient Greece and Rome in the arena of
debate. They shone like stars in the firmament, helping to make the
common people content to dwell in the night by the glittering panoply
they threw over the public life of the nation. Men and women forgot
their grievances in the contemplation of great names whose owners did
not then, like the statesmen of to-day, come down to the level of the
common life to be jostled on railway platforms.

It is only when one looks into the details of local life that it is
possible to realize the sharp contrast of great men and little
happiness for the people, or how terrible must have been the strain for
the whole nation to have existed under such conditions without a
revolution.

The marvel is that Parliament with so much talent in its foremost men
should have been powerless to deal with the weakness outs