Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/217

Rh of population, and the rapid rise of several places formerly of inconsiderable magnitude to the rank of great towns. In London no fewer than eight new parishes were erected between the Revolution and the end of the reign of George II.:—in 1694 that of St. John, in Wapping; in 1729 that of Christ Church, Spitalfields, and that of St. George in the East; in 1730 that of St. George, Bloomsbury, and that of St. Anne, Limehouse; in 1732 that of St. John, Southwark, and that of St. Luke, in Old-street; and in 1743 that of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green. The act for the building of fifty new churches passed in 1710, the establishment of the Chelsea Water Company in 1721, and the building of Westminster Bridge, begun in 1739, and finished in 1750, are all further indications of the expansion of this mighty heart of our social system. Bristol, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Frome, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin, had also each derived a large accession of population, some of them to the extent of several times the numbers they contained at the commencement of the period, either from the increase of trade and manufactures, or from that diffusion of luxury which is one of the common and natural consequences of commercial prosperity. Yet the spirit of improvement was still in a great measure confined to our cities and towns. In the country even the basis and first essential of a good economical system was still very deficient or altogether wanting; although turnpikes had been introduced soon after the Restoration, and in the reign of George II. it was made a felony to pull them down, our highways still continued to be generally kept in repair merely by the compulsory labour of the parish paupers, and even so late as 1754 we are told the traveller seldom saw a turnpike for two hundred miles after leaving the vicinity of London. Most of our great roads consequently still remained nearly in then ancient condition to the end of the present period.

We must not close the commercial history of this period without adverting for a moment to the progress of