the prices of agricultural produce. This fall had produced a destruction of the country-bank paper to an extent which would not have been thought possible without more ruin than had ensued. The Bank of England had also reduced its issues, as appeared by the accounts recently presented. The average amount of their currency was not, during the last year, more than between twenty-five and twenty-six millions; while two years ago it had been nearer twentynine millions, and at one time even amounted to thirty-one millions. But without looking to the diminution of the Bank of England paper, the reduction of country paper was enough to account for the fall which had taken place. Another evil which had resulted from the state of the currency, which he had foreseen and predicted, but which had been deemed visionary, was, that during the war we had borrowed money, which was then of small value, and we were now obliged to pay it at a high value. This was the most formidable evil which threatened our finances; and, though he had too high an opinion of the resources of the country, and of the wisdom of the government, to despair, he was appalled when he considered the immense amount of the interest of the debt contracted in that artificial currency, compared with the produce of the taxes.... Looking forward to the operation of this restriction in time of peace, it would be found to leave us without any known or certain standard of money to regulate the transactions, not only between the public and its creditors, but between individuals. The currency which was to prevail was not only uncertain, but cruel and unjust in its operation-at one time upon those whose income was fixed in money, and to all creditors-at another time, when by some accident it was diminished in amount, to all debtors. Was not this an evil sufficient to attract the attention of a wise, a benevolent, and a prudent government? If they looked at the agricultural interest, was not a fluctuation of prices the greatest of evils to the farmer? For, supposing prices were fixed and steady, it was indifferent to him what was the standard. As long as we had no standard-no fixed value of money-but it was suffered to rise and fall like the quick-silver in the barometer, no man could conduct his property with any

security, or depend upon any sure and certain profit. Persons who were aware of the importance of this subject must be surely anxious to know whether there were any imperative reasons for continuing the present system; to know whether it was intended to revert to the old system; and if not now, when that system would be reverted to, and what would be the best means for bringing about that measure.'

Here, for the present, we leave this question of the

currency.

CHAPTER IV.

Labour-Coal Districts-Machine-Breaking-Private Benevolence. A FRENCH author, in one of those rapid generalisations which are characteristic of much of the modern historical writing of his country, and which, if not quite so far removed from truth as a positive falsification of facts, are as certainly deceptive-M. Capefigue-thus describes the condition of Great Britain after the peace: The Convention of 1815 had scarcely been signed before England saw a formidable conspiracy of radicalism spring up in her bosom. It was not confined to a few outbreaks easily repressed, but displayed itself in masses of a hundred thousand workmen, who destroyed factories and pillaged houses. It was as if the earth trembled, ready to swallow up the old aristocracy.' Let us endeavour to come somewhat nearer the truth, by tracing, through a multitude of details, the real dangers and the exaggerated alarms of this moral earthquake.

We have shown how the exhaustion of British capital, the unavoidable consequent weight of taxation, the depression of agricultural stock, the want of markets for native and colonial produce, had produced that paralysis of industry which marked the latter months of 1815 and the beginning of 1816. That these circumstances were most felt by those whose voices of complaint were least heard, by the working population, was soon made perfectly

manifest. There was a surplus of labour in every department of human exertion. Mr. Brand declared in parliament, at the end of March, speaking especially of the agricultural population, that the poor, in many cases, abandoned their own residences. Whole parishes had been deserted; and the crowd of paupers, increasing in numbers as they went from parish to parish, spread wider and wider this awful desolation." Discharged sailors and disbanded militia-men swelled the ranks of indigence. If the unhappy wanderers crowded to the cities, they encountered bodies of workmen equally wretched, wholly deprived of work, or working at short time upon insufficient wages. But another evil, of which we find no parliamentary record, amidst debates on the prevailing distress, had come upon the land to aggravate discontent into desperation. While the landowners were demanding more protection, and passing new laws for limiting the supply of food, the heavens lowered-intense frosts prevailed in February-the spring was inclement— the temperature of the advancing summer was unusually low-and in July incessant rains and cold stormy winds completed the most ungenial season that had occurred in this country since 1799. In January the average price of wheat was 52s. 6d. ; in May it was 768. 4d. The apprehensions of a deficient crop were universal, in Germany, in France, and in the south of Europe. The result of the harvest showed that these apprehensions were not idle. The prices of grain in England rapidly rose after July; and at the end of the year, rye, barley, and beans had more than doubled the average market-price of the beginning; wheat had risen from 52s. 6d. to 1038.

The matter of seditions is of two kinds,' says Lord Bacon-'much poverty and much discontentment.' Both causes were fully operating in Great Britain in 1816. The seditions of absolute poverty-the rebellions of the belly,' as the same great thinker writes-were the first to manifest themselves. Early in May, symptoms of insubordination and desperate violence were displayed amongst the agricultural population of the eastern counties. Legislators had been accustomed to look with alarm at the organised outbreaks of large bodies of workmen in the

a

manufacturing districts, as in 1812; but insurre movements of the peasantry, ignorant, scattered. tomed to the dole of forced benevolence, and th broken in spirit, were scarcely to be heeded. A these poor dumb mouths' made themselves They combined in the destruction of property v fierce recklessness that startled those who saw no d but in the violence of dense populations, and who constantly proclaiming that the nation which buil manufactures sleeps upon gunpowder. In Suffolk ni fires of incendiaries began to blaze in every dis thrashing-machines were broken or burnt in open mills were attacked. At Brandon, near Bury, bodies of labourers assembled to prescribe a maxi price of grain and meat, and to pull down the hous butchers and bakers. They bore flags, with the mo Bread or blood.' At Bury and at Norwich disturba of a similar nature were quickly repressed. But the n serious demonstration of the spirit of the peasantry a in what is called 'the Isle of Ely,' that isolated f country which is cultivated by a population of primit habits, a daring and active population, with much of t dogged reliance upon brute force which characterised the Saxon forefathers. Early in the session, Mr. Weste described the agricultural distress of this district as e ceeding that of most other parts of the kingdom. Exec tions upon the property of the cultivators, distresses fo rent, insolvencies, farms untenanted, were the symptoms o this remarkable depression. When we regard the peculia character of this portion of the country, we may easily understand how a great fall in the prices of grain had driven the land out of cultivation, and cast off the labour of the peasantry, to be as noxious in its stagnation as the overcharged waters of that artificially fertile region. That country was then very imperfectly drained; and the rates for the imperfect drainage being unpaid by many tenants, the destructive agencies of nature were more active than the healing and directing energies of man. It is well known, too, that in the fen-countries the temptation of immediate profit had more than commonly led the farmer to raise exhausting crops, and that the nature of the land

under such circumstances is such that a more provident tillage, and abundant manure, cannot for a long time restore it. The high prices of wheat from 1810 to 1814 had supplied this temptation. The Isle of Ely in 1816 had become somewhat like Prospero's isle, where there was 'everything advantageous to life,' save means to live. It was under such circumstances that, on the 22nd of May, a great body of insurgent fenmen assembled at Littleport, a small town on the river Lark. They commenced their riotous proceedings by a night-attack on the house of a magistrate. They broke into shops, emptied the cellars of public-houses, and finally marched to Ely, where they continued their lawless course of drunkenness and plunder. For two days and nights these scenes of violence did not cease; and the parish of Littleport was described as resembling a town sacked by a besieging army, the principal inhabitants having been compelled to abandon their houses, in terror for their lives, leaving their property to the fury of this fearful band of desperate men. There could, of necessity, be but one termination. The military were called in, and a sort of skirmish ensued, in which blood flowed on both sides. A large number of the rioters were finally lodged in Ely gaol. Then came the sure retribution of the offended laws. A special commission was issued for the trial of the culprits. Thirty-four persons were convicted and sentenced to death, on charges of burglary and robbery; of whom five were executed. In pronouncing sentence upon these unhappy men, Mr. Justice Abbot said: 'It was suggested abroad that you had been induced to perpetrate these violent outrages by hard necessity and want; but after attending closely and strictly to the whole tenor of the evidence, there has not appeared in the condition, circumstances, or behaviour of any one of you, any reason to suppose that you were instigated by distress.' And yet great distress might have existed in the general population, without the wretched leaders in these riots being especially distressed; for several of those who underwent the capital punishment were persons above the condition of labourers. It is difficult to believe that the distress of the landowners and tenants should have been greater in the Isle of Ely