general purposes of the trade. In both instances the object of the co-operation was the same. It was held that, in order to open up a trade with a strange and distant country, the power of contracting treaties and the use of such apparatus as is usually employed by Government-soldiers, consuls and diplomatic agents-was a necessity. As Government was disinclined to meet this expense, the companies undertook to bear it: in the case of the chartered and joint-stock companies, they received in exchange the monopoly of the trade; in the case of the regulated companies, where competition was not limited, the work which was done in common was carried out for the sake of the direct advantage derived from it.

and Liverpool.

The population and wealth of London was even then probably London, Bristol greater than that of any other capital in Europe, and no other town in England at all approached it. The second trading city was Bristol, numbering rather less than 30,000 inhabitants, and growing wealthy by the trade with the Western colonies, and the commercial enterprise of its inhabitants, of whom it is remarked that even small shopkeepers were not content without some venture to the West Indies. This trade brought with it the not very honourable occupation of trading in slaves, and still worse, in English criminals and kidnapped vagrants, who were exported and apprenticed to the planters. Liverpool was in existence and thriving, but as yet there was no dock; the goods were landed in the open river, and carried by pack-horses through England, for the Lancashire roads were notoriously bad, and of water communication there was none.

The mercantile system.

All the trade of the country, such as it was, was organized in accordance with that view of political economy known as the mercantile system, under the restrictions of the Navigation Act, and of those arrrangements which limited the intercourse of the mother country with her colonies. The mercantile system was a further development of the same theory that had regulated the trade of the Plantagenets. It was still the universal belief that money alone was wealth; but the severe measures which had restricted commerce in earlier times, when bargains were so arranged that each should produce an immediate influx of the precious metals, had been found inapplicable to extensive and distant trades; and writers, especially Thomas Mun, whose first work reached a second edition in 1621, but whose second and more important work was published soon after the Restoration, had begun to point out that some relaxations were necessary. It was chiefly in the interests of

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the East India Company that the change of system was introduced. The natives of India, always a hoarding people, demanded payment for their goods in silver. The Indian trade therefore required a constant export of the precious metals, but it was pointed out by Mun, and those who thought with him, that eventually, if not immediately, the money would come back to England with a considerable increase, and that, if that was the case, it was foolish to check the export of silver because in each particular bargain there was no immediate return. It was urged that a more general view of the question was necessary, that the real way of estimating the increase of wealth was by observing what was called the balance of trade. If England exported to any country more than it imported from it, the balance must have been made up in money payments, and the transactions of that particular branch of its commerce was advantageous to the country by the amount of this balance. Commercial wisdom was thus supposed to consist in checking importation, in fostering exportation, and in preventing as far as possible trade with any country where the balance was unfavourable to England. It was held to be impossible that mutual advantage should arise from commerce; what one country gained the other must of necessity lose. From these principles an incessant jealousy sprang into existence, together with the system of fostering domestic manufactures, however little adapted for them the country might be, the imposition of heavy and often prohibitive customs on the importation of goods, and the bestowal of bounties upon exportation. Thus the trade with France, whence much more wine and silk was imported than counterbalanced the cloth exported, was regarded with extreme jealousy as tending to the ruin of the country, the balance of trade being all against England. The war with France after the Revolution enabled the upholders of this theory to give effect to their jealousy; the trade with France was stopped, and the little ports on the south coast reduced to ruin. The Navigation Act passed in 1651, in the time of Cromwell, and renewed in 1672 in Charles II.'s reign, is an example of a similar jealous and selfish view of commerce. In both cases the Act was directed against the Dutch, and-by compelling goods to be imported either in English vessels or in the vessels of the country in which the imported articles were manufactured-aimed at destroying, as far as England was concerned, the carrying trade, which was the great source of the wealth of Holland. The same selfish character is again visible in the legislation with regard to the colonial trade. Colonies

were regarded as valuable, solely in so far as they afforded markets for the English merchants. This view of the colonies was not the original one, but an Act of 1650, passed by the Republican Government, confined both the import and export trade exclusively to British or colonial ships. The Navigation Act of 1651 enacted further, that a great number of articles, known as enumerated" articles, should not be exported directly from the colonies to any foreign country, but should be first sent to England. This Act was followed, in 1663, by one which practically excluded the colonists from every market for European goods except that of England. The effect of this legislalation was to force the industry of England into the production of articles for which it was unfitted, and to encourage a great amount of smuggling.

Character of the people.

Condition of
London.

The character of the inhabitants of the country of which the material condition has been sketched was much influenced by two points already mentioned-the pre-eminent greatness of London, and the difficulty of locomotion. The distinction between the courtiers and the whole body of the nation, and the great influence exercised by the country gentry, are two of the features which seem most peculiar in the state of classes at the time. London was in fact a wholly different place from the rest of England. Scarcely lighted at all, ill paved, swarming at night with riotous young men of birth, called by various nicknames, such as Tityre Tus, Muns, and Scourers, who rendered traffic in the dark dangerous, it was yet the abode of the chief wealth and the chief culture of the nation. That culture was by no means wholly good. The reaction from the Puritan times, the preeminence of France, and the introduction of French manners, in all their wickedness, without their refinement, had produced a state of licentiousness among the courtiers which we can now scarcely conceive. It was visible on all sides; the statesmen who ruled England did not think it beneath them to be guilty of such scandals that the very people of London were with difficulty restrained from taking the law into their own hands to punish them. As an instance of the temper of the time, it may be mentioned that Buckingham killed in a duel the Earl of Shrewsbury, whose runaway wife, dressed as his page, was standing beside her paramour at the moment. Literature did not escape the taint. At the playhouses might be nightly seen acted in public, comedies of a grossness of language and action which could not now be whispered, and this language now put for the first time into the mouths of women. But in spite of this external licen

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tiousness, it was in London almost exclusively that elegant manners and refined learning were to be met with. It was there alone that Churchmen of eminence were to be found, of a wholly different race from the impoverished and dependent country rector: and it was there that the commercial world was rapidly acquiring that consideration, wealth and capital, which render it so important an element in society after the Revolution.

But into this strange world the country gentlemen seldom entered. Though there was an increasing disposition to gather round the Court, the country towns were still centres of a fashion of their own. The great country families still retained their houses there, where they passed some portion of the year. The ordinary squire was not likely to find a visit to the capital very agreeable; his rustic manners, speech and dress laid him constantly open to ridicule, and his homely morality was shocked by the open profligacy The country he saw around him. The gentry thus resided for the gentlemen. most part upon their own estates. As a class they were extremely ignorant, in manners little better than a small farmer of the present day. Seldom opening a book, unless it were a work on heraldry, they spent their time in the management of their estates and in hunting. Yet ignorant and boorish as they were, their position was one of great importance: nearly the whole of the justice of the country was gratuitously performed by them. In a rough way they were to those around them the representatives of law and government. In their hands was the only army which England possessed. There were indeed a few regiments of regular troops, the Life Guards, the Blues, a regiment or two of dragoons, and some regiments of infantry, such as Monk's Coldstream Guards and the garrison of Tangier (which was kept on foot when that dependency was abandoned), but on the whole not much more than 6000 troops were permanently embodied. The military force of England was the militia, under the command of the Lord-Lieutenant, and officered by the country gentlemen. They thus in their own districts exercised an influence far greater than their cultivation seemed to justify. Rivals they had none, for the clergy, whose income is estimated to average between £40 and £80 a year, in many cases eked out this pittance by holding the position of domestic chaplain in some neighbouring gentleman's house, where they ranked as little better than servants. Such influence as they had—and it would be wrong to underrate the power vested in the hands of a body who had the whole spiritual guidance of the conntry-was employed for the same objects as that

The clergy.

of the country gentlemen. Both classes were bigoted upholders of the national Church. Below the gentry we find menThe freeholders. tioned a very large class of small freeholders, who must have formed the really independent power of the country, with incomes varying from £40 to £90 a year.

It is difficult to arrive at any conclusion as to the condition of the labourer and artisan. Their wages at first sight appear

The labourers.

the

very low. It was the habit to engage farm labourers by the year, and to keep them in the farm-buildings themselves. When hired in this manner, a thoroughly good servant was paid about £5 a year; when working as a day labourer, such a man was paid about sixpence a day with his food, or a shilling without it. A master artisan received the same wages. But, no doubt, at times higher wages were given. Sir Edward Hales speaks of ten shillings a week, and De Foe mentions the refusal of his offer of nine shillings. The wages of the country were generally settled by the justices in their sessions, and it was then a punishable offence to receive more than the sum fixed. The usual amount of wages paid does not however give any very certain knowledge of the condition of the labourer unless the current prices of the time are also known. It seems probable that, although meat was considerably cheaper than it is now, condition of the peasantry was not on the whole so good as at present. Clothing was comparatively more expensive, and wheat, the price of which fluctuated much, was quite as dear. It averaged during Charles II.'s reign nearly fifty shillings the quarter, and the change in the habit of the people which induced them to eat wheaten bread in the place of rye, is mentioned as one of the causes of the prevailing distress. Ordinary vegetables also were then rarities and fetched proportionately high prices. For instance, cauliflowers cost as much as 1s. 6d. a piece, while potatoes were but little grown. In other respects the position of the poor was much to be pitied. The inconvenience of the poor man's lot was considerable. The poor law of Elizabeth had compelled parishes to undertake the maintenance of their own poor; and, naturally desirous to prevent the increase of the poor rate, each parish looked with jealousy upon any stranger who arrived within its borders, regarding him as a possible pauper. But up till 1662, the labourer had been allowed to change his residence as he pleased. In that year the Law of Settlement was passed, to determine what was meant by the poor of a parish. In order to obtain a settlement, that is, a claim upon the poor rate, a man must either have been born in the parish or have resided in it forty days. On his