The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

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constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental;

but in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the

inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and

perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists

even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects

ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit

of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right direction to

his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the spirit

of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though splendid, was only

dawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that

work which effected a revolution in the most important provinces

of natural philosophy, had been completed, but was not yet

published, and was just about to be submitted to the

consideration of the Royal Society.


It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far

before its neighbours in science should in art have been far

behind them. Yet such was the fact. It is true that in

architecture, an art which is half a science, an art in which

none but a geometrician can excel, an art which has no standard

of grace but what is directly or indirectly dependent on utility,

an art of which the creations derive a part, at least, of their

majesty from mere bulk, our country could boast of one truly

great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London in

ruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern

history, of displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the

Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he

was like almost all his contemporaries, incapable of emulating,

and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our

side of the Alps, has imitated with so much success the

magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb

Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison

with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles the

Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose

name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious;

for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill

paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at

present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the nation

and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intellectual

labour, were even larger than at present. Indeed the munificent

patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores

in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us the rich curls, the

full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail beauties

celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680,

having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of

knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the

fruits of his skill. His noble collection of drawings and

pictures was, after his decease, exhibited by the royal

permission in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by

auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-six thousand

pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes of

the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds would

bear to the fortunes of the rich men of our time.190 Lely was

succeeded by his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a

knight and then a baronet, and who, after keeping up a sumptuous

establishment, and after losing much money by unlucky

speculations, was still able to bequeath a large fortune to his

family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had been tempted

by English liberality to settle here, and had produced for the

King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the world.

Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and

tulips for prices such as had never before been known. Verrio, a

Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and

Muses, Nymphs and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing

nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph. The income which

he derived from his performances enabled him to keep one of the

most expensive tables in England. For his pieces at Windsor alone

he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make

a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum

greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of

forty years, obtained from the booksellers.191 Verrio's assistant

and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most

celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber,

whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam,

was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch

many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest

decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designs for the coin were

made by French artists. Indeed, it was not till the reign of

George the Second that our country could glory in a great

painter; and George the Third was on the throne before she had

reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.


It is time that this description of the England which Charles the

Second governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the

highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said

of the great body of the people, of those who held the ploughs,

who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and

squared the Portland stone for Saint Paul's. Nor can very much be

said. The most numerous class is precisely the class respecting

which we have the most meagre information. In those times

philanthropists did not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor had

demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write

about the distress of the labourer. History was too much occupied

with courts and camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant

or the garret of the mechanic. The press now often sends forth in

a day a greater quantity of discussion and declamation about the

condition of the working man than was published during the

twenty-eight years which elapsed between the Restoration and the

Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer from the

increase of complaint that there has been any increase of misery.


The great criterion of the state of the common people is the

amount of their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people

were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is

especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of

agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of

arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact for our purpose.


Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight,

informs us that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state

who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence

without food. Four shillings a week therefore were, according to

Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.192


That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have

abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices

of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by

an Act of Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of

wages for the county, and notified that every employer who gave

more than the authorised sum, and every working man who received

more, would be liable to punishment. The wages of the common

agricultural labourer, from March to September, were fixed at the

precise amount mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week

without food. From September to March the wages were to be only

three and sixpence a week.193


But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were

very different in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of

Warwickshire were probably about the average, and those of the

counties near the Scottish border below it: but there were more

favoured districts. In the same year, 1685, a gentleman of

Devonshire, named Richard Dunning, published a small tract, in

which he described the condition of the poor of that county. That

he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a

few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the

magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly

recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According

to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food,

about five shillings a week.194


Still better was the condition of the labourer in the

neighbourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk

met there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and

resolved that, where the labourer was not boarded, he should have

five shillings a week in winter, and six in summer.195


In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the

Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in winter

and seven in summer. This seems to have been the highest

remuneration given in the kingdom for agricultural labour between

the Restoration and the Revolution; and it is to be observed

that, in the year in which this order was made, the necessaries

of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy shillings

the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a

famine price.196


These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which

seems to deserve consideration. It is evident that, in a country

where no man can be compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of

an army cannot be filled if the government offers much less than

the wages of common rustic labour. At present the pay and beer

money of a private in a regiment of the line amount to seven

shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend, coupled with the

hope of a pension, does not attract the English youth in

sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supply the

deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population

of Munster and Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in

1685 was only four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it is

certain that the government in that year found no difficulty in

obtaining many thousands of English recruits at very short

notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the army of the

Commonwealth had been seven shillings a week, that is to say, as

much as a corporal received under Charles the Second;197 and

seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill the

ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the

people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude

that, in the reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of

the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week; but that, in

some parts of the kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and,

during the summer months, even seven shillings