Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/445

Rh social disturbance occurred in England during the war, notwithstanding the provocation offered by the measures of statesmen, who in the teeth of their own previous professions, confounded Reform with Revolution and progress with anarchy.

The justification for the Seditious Meetings Bill was that on the 29th October 1795, three days after a great meeting held in St. George's Fields by the London Corresponding Society, at a time when great scarcity prevailed, the window of the Royal carriage was broken by a stone or by a shot from an air-gun. Addresses on the subject were voted by Parliament. Upon these Lord Lansdowne animadverted with great severity. He said he believed that the attack on the King was no more than an alarm-bell to terrify the people into weak compliances, and a scheme planned and executed by the Ministers themselves for the purpose of continuing their power: language, which, however exaggerated the terms of the Address in the House of Lords might be considered, was, it must be admitted, itself as exaggerated on the other side; for the attack, though not revealing any deep-laid conspiracy to overthrow the Government, might none the less have had the most serious consequences, if only from the contagion of example, at a time when misery and hunger, those fruitful mothers of Revolution, stalked in the streets.

If measured indeed merely by the rise in the number of Inclosure Bills, by the sums borrowed for navigation and canals, or invested in industrial enterprises, then the condition of the people of England at this period was remarkably prosperous. But there is another side to the picture. Notwithstanding the Inclosure Bills the price of bread owing to the Corn Laws went on steadily rising, while the Inclosure Bills themselves were steadily divorcing the people from the land. Population increased more rapidly than the means of subsistence, and wages did not rise in proportion to the increase of invested capital. Combination laws prevented the work-