ecially in large towns. In war times unskilled
laborers earned from twelve to fifteen shillings a week, and mechanics
twenty-five shillings; but in the stagnation of business which followed
peace, wages suffered a great reduction, and thousands could find no
work at all. The disbanding of the immense armies that had been
necessary to combat Napoleon threw out of employ perhaps half a million
of men, who became vagabonds, beggars, and paupers. The agricultural
classes did not suffer as much as operatives in mills, since they got a
high price for their grain; but the more remunerative agriculture became
to landlords, the more miserable were those laborers who paid all they
could earn to save themselves from absolute starvation. No foreign grain
could be imported until wheat had arisen to eighty shillings a
"quarter," [1]--which unjust law tended to the enrichment of
land-owners, and to a corresponding poverty among the laboring classes.
In addition to the high price which the people paid for bread, they were
taxed heavily upon everything imported, upon everything consumed, upon
the necessities and conveniences of life as well as its luxuries,--on
tea, on coffee, on sugar, on paper, on glass, on horses, on carriages,
on medicines,--since money had to be raised to pay the interest on the
national debt and to provide for the support of the government,
including pensions, sinecures, and general extravagance.

[Footnote 1: A quarter of a gross ton.]

In the poverty which enormous taxes and low wages together produced,
there were not only degradation and squalid misery in England at this
time, but violence and crime. And there was also great injustice in the
laws which punished crime. There were two hundred and twenty-three
offences punishable with death. If a starving peasant killed a hare, he
was summarily hanged. Catholics were persecuted for their opinions; Jews
were disqualified from holding office. Only men of comfortable means
were allowed to vote. The universities were closed against Dissenters.
No man stood any chance of political preferment unless he was rich or
was allied with the aristocracy, who controlled the House of Commons.
The nobles and squires not merely owned most of the landed property of
the realm, but by their "rotten boroughs" could send whom they pleased
to Parliament. In consequence the House of Commons did not represent the
nation, but only the privileged classes. It was as aristocratic as the
House