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 had existed since the reign of Elizabeth, but had not increased much or been felt as a great burden until this period; now they began to increase enormously. There were also riots in every year of bad harvest, and many of these riots were directed against the new machinery, which foolish men said ‘took the bread out of their mouths’. In that belief the rioters made a point of breaking the machines. So, side by side with the enormous increase of the country’s wealth, there was often found increase of misery and discontent among the poor. Foolishly, but naturally, the poor used to blame the Government and the laws for their misery. But the condition of the lowest class of the people, both in the old and the new towns, had long been attracting the attention of serious people. In the reigns of George I and George Il, though many bishops and clergy did their duty earnestly, there were many who did not, and perhaps we may admit that the Church of England had, as a whole, rather ‘gone to sleep’. It was this which gave such effect to the preaching of the brothers John and Charles Wesley from about 1730. They went into the poorest slums and the most deserted parishes and preached, often in the open air, the need of repentance and the duty of listening to that message. The result was the foundation of the ‘Methodist’ and Wesleyan communities, which gradually grew into dissenting churches, separated, much against the original intentions of their founder, from the National Church. John Wesley lived to a great age and continued to preach till the day of his death in 1791.

It was during the long ministry of William Pitt the younger, the son of the man who won Canada for us