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 4, 1860.] Here, then, is the moment for looking back to former scarcity, in order to derive a lesson about that which is to come.

At the opening of this century there was a great scarcity. At that time, when the population of England and Wales was only three times as much as that of London is now, the labouring classes ate more meat in proportion to their numbers than our present labourers do, though the condition of the latter is, on the whole, much improved. In the scarcity of sixty years since the complaint was that beef and mutton were 9d. per pound, and butter 2s. These prices were supposed to put meat and butter beyond the reach of the poor; but they had not the resource of wholesome bread. The quartern loaf was 1s. 10d.; and the quality was bad. Agriculture was in such a backward state that the new proposal to manure the soil with dressings advised by Sir Humphry Davy and other competent judges was received with mockery and anger by the landed interest, and the crops were left to the caprice of the season. There are men living who remember the loaf of those times—the hard pinching of the poor to get a loaf at all; and then the look of it! When the outside crust was broken the inside poured out, looking like the contents of a cup of dirty paste. None but the starving could swallow it. In middle class families the bread was one-third potatoes; and the poor took to the nettles by the wayside—not as a delicate dish of greens, composed of young shoots, as Soyer’s cookery-book advises, but pulled up, or cut whole, as the only thing that could be got to eat. Salt would seem to be indispensable in such a case; but the salt tax was then 15s. per bushel. In comfortable houses where servants were kept, families dined two or three times a week on shell-fish or herrings, or some cheap substitute for meat, and eked out their home-made bread with any substance which would mix with flour, and fill the stomach without injury. Parliament tried its hand at mending matters, as it had often tried before. A law was made against the sale of bread less than twenty-four hours old: and a Committee reported against selling flour or bread cheap to the poor, and against all lavish and needless consumption of it at the tables of the rich; and in favour of giving charity, legal or private, in the form of soups, rice, and good vegetables. The Lords recommended associations of gentry, who should solemnly pledge themselves to abstain as far as possible, in their persons and their households, from the use of flour, carefully adopting such substitutes as they could hear of. The poor, meantime, were thrown upon the poor-rate, which increased to four millions sterling in a population of nine millions. The farmers took their rates easily, as they were getting from 112s. to 120s. per quarter for their corn; but the shopkeepers daily sank into ruin. The working-men of the towns made their own rule, which the bakers would violate at their peril, that flour should be 3s. a stone and no more. When the result was disappointment, the angry populace rioted, burned the militia rolls, broke to bits every implement which they fancied could supersede human labour, poached the game, mobbed the Irish who appeared at haymaking, harvest, or hop-gathering; skulked from the press-gang, or took the shilling from the recruiting-serjeant, leaving their families to the parish. Murders, thefts, coining, smuggling, poaching, rioting, became so frequent that prisoners were condemned to be hanged by the score in a day in a single court. When two-thirds were let off (to the weakening of the authority of the law), and the remaining third were strung up in a row on a market-day, the spirit of the populace became more and more brutalised. Wise men and good patriots said that the spirit of the English people seemed to have undergone some unaccountable and portentous change. Such was the operation of dearth from fifty to sixty years ago.

But we must remember that at that time we could not trade freely in food, corn or other. Our manufactures had not yet enabled us to trade abroad according to our needs. We lived under a much-abused poor-law, itself unsuited to modern times, by which virtuous industry and economy were ruined, and idleness and profligacy rewarded. All articles of food were kept at an arbitrary price by the privileges of the landed interest, among which was an atrocious system of game preservation. The production of food was an unskilled department of industry. The labouring-classes were then more ignorant, in proportion to the rest of society, than perhaps at any time before or since.

Now, again, Englishmen find themselves thinking about a scarcity; but under how much more hopeful circumstances!

The bad sign of the present occasion is, that there is still a notion abroad among some of the working-classes that the scarcity is artificial, and brought about by selfish traders for their own gain. It is true that, in all former times of difficulty, the populace showed the same tendency to ignorant suspicion and bad construction. They have fancied, at the time of an epidemic, that the wells were tampered with, and that the doctors poisoned the poor. When hungering they have hunted the authorities or hanged the bakers. But in our age and country it might have been supposed that such mistakes had been outgrown. It is not so yet. We may hope that the time for violence has gone by; but the mistake about the facts remains. Recent meetings at Bristol, Sheffield, and other places have shown us that much of the mischief of ignorance still exists to mar our efforts to repair our misfortunes. Some of the speakers at these meetings have uttered wild imaginations about provision dealers, jobbers, stock-owners, and others having put fancy prices upon cattle and sheep, and being enabled to do so by having “a monopoly.” All this is very sad. It is sad that any of our citizens should not know what is meant by “a monopoly.” They ought to be aware that the trade in cattle and provisions is open to everybody, and that foreign beasts and meat can be freely imported; so that there is no restriction at all in favour of the dealers, and to the disadvantage of the consumer. The dealers cannot put any price upon their articles greater than the public will give; and any one, or any dozen who tried it, would be immediately undersold