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able to realize without difficulty the political situation of the time.

But in spite of this modern character, the condition of England was very different to what it now is. The population was Condition of the not accurately numbered, but a fair estimate can be population. arrived at by a comparison of the number of houses assessed a few years after the Revolution in the last collection of the hearth-tax, and the report drawn up for ecclesiastical purposes about the same time. From these it has been calculated that the inhabitants of England were between five and six millions in number. This population was much more generally distributed than at present; while the inhabitants of towns numbered about 1,600,000, nearly 4,000,000 lived in the country.

The relative importance of land, whether as a source of wealth or of political influence, was therefore far greater than it is Agriculture. at present. But important though it was, the management and cultivation of land would have seemed to us extraordinarily backward. The agriculture was of the rudest description, half of the country was still unreclaimed waste; it was not for another half century that enclosure bills became numerous. Though the principle of the rotation of crops was already known, it was little applied. There was great difficulty in preserving the cattle through the winter, and it was customary to kill a great quantity about October, and salt them down for winter use. Even the households of the nobility tasted no fresh meat during the winter months. The appliances of farming were very primitive, the ploughs and harrows so inefficient that the clods left by them had to be broken up with a heavy beetle before the land could be sown. The yearly harvest of all sorts amounted to little more than ten millions of quarters, of which the wheat crop is estimated at not more than a fifth. Wheaten bread was consequently an article of luxury, and the ordinary food of the peasant was rye bread or oat cake. Although flocks and herds were abundant, the cattle were diminutive and of poor quality. It must be taken into consideration, when we hear of the price of sheep and oxen, that the average weight of a sheep did not exceed 28 lbs., that of an ox 370 lbs. At present the former would weigh nearer 100 lbs., the latter 1000 lbs. The horses of England had not yet attained the celebrity they now enjoy; they were so bad that good judges held that the meanest hack from Arabia or Africa was better than the best English horse, and Flemish horses were habitually imported for purposes of show. Races, which had become fashionable, had already been the cause of the intro

duction of Eastern blood, but the present English horses, from the race-horse to the huge London draught-horse, were the creations of the next century.

Employments of the rural population.

But although the land and agriculture, such as it was, formed the main occupation of Englishmen, it is not fair to regard the whole rural population as exclusively agricultural. Already most of the great industries of England, which a century later gave their character to English civilization, were in existence; but the period is an intermediate one, during which manufactures were local and domestic, carried on in the midst of the agricultural population, and locally distributed in accordance with the opportunities afforded for them by the various advantages of different districts, and not yet brought to great centres by the unlimited power of steam. Consequently the geographical arrangement of the population was also very different from what it now is. The South and West of England were then much more populous than the great Northern counties, which were in part still suffering from years of wasting war with the Scotch, in part regarded as uninhabitable on account of their rough and mountainous character. It was not till machinery was largely employed, and the water power supplied by the rills of the mountainous districts became a matter of prime necessity, that the change in the balance of population took place. The chief manufacture of England was woollen cloth of various sorts, and the Cotswold Hills and Wiltshire and Hampfactures. shire Downs afforded the chief grazing ground for sheep; moreover, the waters of the Avon and the Stroud were regarded as particularly good for fulling and dyeing. Frome, Bradford, Trowbridge, Devizes and Stroud were the chief towns in which the manufacture was carried on. But both the spinning and the greater part of the weaving was pursued chiefly in the houses of the workmen, who occupied villages lying round the manufacturing centres, where the factors, who collected the cloth, and the fullers and dyers, who completed it for the market, lived. The trade extended far into Devonshire, where Exeter was famous for its market of serge; but it was not confined to the Western counties. In Yorkshire the same causes apparently that had been at work in the West had established a large clothing trade. Bradford, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, and Leeds were already important centres of this manufacture. Here again the trade took much the same form, the workers inhabited scattered villages, and the water of the neighbouring rills, supplied to every house, afforded the means of dyeing. Here, however, inanufacture

Woollen manu

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seems to have been separated from agriculture,-neighbouring counties furnished the corn, and well-supplied markets the meat for the clothing districts. The Bridge of Leeds was the great cloth market; the streets in the neighbourhood were lined with open counters, to which each man brought his modicum of cloth, which was there purchased by the great factors. There was one great instance of a manufacturing town, and that was Norwich. Thither, centuries before, the art of cloth-making had been brought from Flanders, and there it still flourished, rendering the town the third city in the country. The number of its inhabitants was about 28,000. So completely was the woollen manufacture regarded as the chief industry of England, that all others were sacrificed to it. The exportation of wool was strictly prohibited, though the Dutch offered higher prices for it than English purchasers. In the first year of William III. most stringent measures were taken for this purpose, and the woolgrowing counties were overrun by a swarm of customhouse officers, whose efforts to enforce the law not unfrequently gave rise to bloody encounters.

Cotton, linen,

factures.

Manufactures of other fabrics had begun, but were so completely in their infancy that they had to be sustained by strict protective laws, and when their interests inter- and silk manufered with those of the woollen trade, their destruction was regarded as good economy. Thus Manchester was already employed upon cotton brought from Smyrna and the Levant. But while, on the one hand, it was thought necessary, shortly after the Revolution, to foster this manufacture by the prohibition of the use of Indian calicoes, on the other hand, within a few years, for the sake of encouraging the use of the lighter woollen fabrics, the use of calico was entirely forbidden. Warrington manufactured linen, but every discouragment was given to the trade, which was regarded as the special occupation of Ireland. The manufacture of silk had been early introduced into England; in 1629 the silk throwsters of the metropolis had been formed into a company, and in 1666 the trade is said to have employed no less than 40,000 men. The influx of French refugees after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had still further increased the trade, of which Spitalfields, where they chiefly settled, became the centre. During the whole of the reign of Charles II. foreign silks were from time to time prohibited, but on the whole their importation was free. Yet, according to the perverse economical policy of the time, although in the midst of this importation, which amounted to nearly £700,000 worth annually, the English

trade was continually advancing, it was thought necessary shortly after the Revolution to bolster it up by a complete prohibition of the silks both of Europe and of Asia.

Iron, salt and coal.

The mineral wealth of England, on which it now so much relies, was but little developed, and, as in the case of wool, local circumstances determined the position of the works connected with it. Although the possibility of using pit coal for the smelting of iron had been discovered by Lord Dudley in 1619, it was not till the middle of the next century that the process was largely employed. The necessity of a supply of wood for charcoal had therefore rendered the Forest of Dean, in Monmouthshire, where the old workings of the Romans were continued, and the wellwooded counties of Surrey and Sussex, the chief centres of the trade; but the quantity of iron produced was little more than 12,000 tons a year, not the 200th part of the present produce. It was enough, however, to employ a certain number of furnaces and anvils at such towns as Stourbridge, Wolverhampton and Birmingham. The last-named town was sufficiently important to have been chosen by Cromwell to send a member to his Parliament. But the manufacture of iron rose little beyond smiths' work, and was chiefly confined to the production of rough agricultural implements. Sheffield, too, continued that manufacture of steel for which, as we learn from Chaucer, it was even in his age celebrated; but the greater part both of our iron and steel was imported. Salt, so important an element in many manufactures, and so necessary as an article of food, had been originally obtained from the sea by evaporation. In 1670, rock-salt was discovered at Nantwich in Cheshire, but the processes employed in procuring it and cleansing it were so bad that it was extremely unwholesome, and many of the prevalent diseases of the time were popularly traced to its use. It was early taken possession of by financiers as an article on which a tax might advantageously be laid, and it was not till the heavy duty, amounting to many times the value of the article itself, was removed, that its employment in the production of soda, and consequently in the manufacture of soap and other articles, became of much importance. Even coal was comparatively but little used. The Welsh pits gave fuel to the Western counties, and Northumberland supplied the capital; though the quantity required and the number of ships employed in its transport were the objects of wonder and admiration at the time, the whole quantity raised was infinitely small compared to what it now is. China and porcelain, the other great

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productions of England, may be said not to have been manufactured at all. There were indeed potteries where rough earthenware vessels were made, and at Burslem a few ovens for glazing with salt, but Holland supplied most of the earthenware used in wealthier houses, while all such finer porcelain as existed was brought from the East. It is perhaps worth observing with regard to machinery, that comparatively small as the manufactures were, the discoveries which subsequently changed the face of England had already been made, but were kept from development by false political economy, and by the extreme difficulty of movement caused by the absence of good roads. Thus Lea's stocking-frame was used in Nottingham; the Marquis of Worcester had, in 1663, discovered the motive power of steam; and rails, although only of wood, were already used in the collieries.

Domestic trade.

It will be plain from this summary of the manufactures of England that the exports of the country must have consisted chiefly of woollen fabrics, but that there must also have been a considerable domestic trade, by which the products of different parts of the country were exchanged against each other. Much of this domestic trade was carried on by pack-horses; the means of locomotion were very bad, the roads few and in wretched condition, wheeled vehicles were seldom employed. Inland water communication had not yet found its way into the country; the works of the French engineers were wondered at and admired but not yet copied. Naturally therefore, where possible, carriage by sea was employed. There was a considerable amount of small coasting trade, and a number of little ports, since wholly decayed, were at this time thriving places. Those on the South coast were still further enriched by the trade with France, and Topsham on the Exe, Weymouth and Lyme were places of some importance.

Foreign trade.

By far the larger part of the foreign trade was in the hands of the inhabitants of London; the tonnage of that port (84,000 tons) was more than a fifth of the tonnage of the country. There the great companies had their houses; for the trade with distant foreign nations was chiefly in the hands of companies, such as the Russian, the Turkey, and the East India Company. Some of these were on the exclusive joint-stock principle, trading in common, and enjoying a monopoly of the trade in which they were engaged; others were what is called open or regulated companies, in which each individual member traded with his own capital and at his own risk, but subscribcd something towards a common stock for the