The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental;
but in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the
inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and
perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists
even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects
ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit
of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right direction to
his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the spirit
of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though splendid, was only
dawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that
work which effected a revolution in the most important provinces
of natural philosophy, had been completed, but was not yet
published, and was just about to be submitted to the
consideration of the Royal Society.
It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far
before its neighbours in science should in art have been far
behind them. Yet such was the fact. It is true that in
architecture, an art which is half a science, an art in which
none but a geometrician can excel, an art which has no standard
of grace but what is directly or indirectly dependent on utility,
an art of which the creations derive a part, at least, of their
majesty from mere bulk, our country could boast of one truly
great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London in
ruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern
history, of displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the
Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he
was like almost all his contemporaries, incapable of emulating,
and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our
side of the Alps, has imitated with so much success the
magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb
Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison
with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles the
Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose
name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious;
for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill
paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at
present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the nation
and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intellectual
labour, were even larger than at present. Indeed the munificent
patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores
in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us the rich curls, the
full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail beauties
celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680,
having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of
knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the
fruits of his skill. His noble collection of drawings and
pictures was, after his decease, exhibited by the royal
permission in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by
auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-six thousand
pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes of
the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds would
bear to the fortunes of the rich men of our time.190 Lely was
succeeded by his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a
knight and then a baronet, and who, after keeping up a sumptuous
establishment, and after losing much money by unlucky
speculations, was still able to bequeath a large fortune to his
family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had been tempted
by English liberality to settle here, and had produced for the
King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the world.
Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and
tulips for prices such as had never before been known. Verrio, a
Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and
Muses, Nymphs and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing
nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph. The income which
he derived from his performances enabled him to keep one of the
most expensive tables in England. For his pieces at Windsor alone
he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make
a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum
greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of
forty years, obtained from the booksellers.191 Verrio's assistant
and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most
celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber,
whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam,
was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch
many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest
decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designs for the coin were
made by French artists. Indeed, it was not till the reign of
George the Second that our country could glory in a great
painter; and George the Third was on the throne before she had
reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.
It is time that this description of the England which Charles the
Second governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the
highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said
of the great body of the people, of those who held the ploughs,
who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and
squared the Portland stone for Saint Paul's. Nor can very much be
said. The most numerous class is precisely the class respecting
which we have the most meagre information. In those times
philanthropists did not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor had
demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write
about the distress of the labourer. History was too much occupied
with courts and camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant
or the garret of the mechanic. The press now often sends forth in
a day a greater quantity of discussion and declamation about the
condition of the working man than was published during the
twenty-eight years which elapsed between the Restoration and the
Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer from the
increase of complaint that there has been any increase of misery.
The great criterion of the state of the common people is the
amount of their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people
were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is
especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of
agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of
arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact for our purpose.
Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight,
informs us that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state
who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence
without food. Four shillings a week therefore were, according to
Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.192
That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have
abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices
of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by
an Act of Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of
wages for the county, and notified that every employer who gave
more than the authorised sum, and every working man who received
more, would be liable to punishment. The wages of the common
agricultural labourer, from March to September, were fixed at the
precise amount mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week
without food. From September to March the wages were to be only
three and sixpence a week.193
But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were
very different in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of
Warwickshire were probably about the average, and those of the
counties near the Scottish border below it: but there were more
favoured districts. In the same year, 1685, a gentleman of
Devonshire, named Richard Dunning, published a small tract, in
which he described the condition of the poor of that county. That
he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a
few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the
magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly
recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According
to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food,
about five shillings a week.194
Still better was the condition of the labourer in the
neighbourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk
met there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and
resolved that, where the labourer was not boarded, he should have
five shillings a week in winter, and six in summer.195
In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the
Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in winter
and seven in summer. This seems to have been the highest
remuneration given in the kingdom for agricultural labour between
the Restoration and the Revolution; and it is to be observed
that, in the year in which this order was made, the necessaries
of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy shillings
the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a
famine price.196
These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which
seems to deserve consideration. It is evident that, in a country
where no man can be compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of
an army cannot be filled if the government offers much less than
the wages of common rustic labour. At present the pay and beer
money of a private in a regiment of the line amount to seven
shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend, coupled with the
hope of a pension, does not attract the English youth in
sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supply the
deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population
of Munster and Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in
1685 was only four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it is
certain that the government in that year found no difficulty in
obtaining many thousands of English recruits at very short
notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the army of the
Commonwealth had been seven shillings a week, that is to say, as
much as a corporal received under Charles the Second;197 and
seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill the
ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the
people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude
that, in the reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of
the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week; but that, in
some parts of the kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and,
during the summer months, even seven shillings
constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental;
but in no other mind have the demonstrative faculty and the
inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and
perfect harmony. Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists
even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects
ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit
of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right direction to
his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the spirit
of the age. In the year 1685 his fame, though splendid, was only
dawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that
work which effected a revolution in the most important provinces
of natural philosophy, had been completed, but was not yet
published, and was just about to be submitted to the
consideration of the Royal Society.
It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far
before its neighbours in science should in art have been far
behind them. Yet such was the fact. It is true that in
architecture, an art which is half a science, an art in which
none but a geometrician can excel, an art which has no standard
of grace but what is directly or indirectly dependent on utility,
an art of which the creations derive a part, at least, of their
majesty from mere bulk, our country could boast of one truly
great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London in
ruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern
history, of displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the
Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he
was like almost all his contemporaries, incapable of emulating,
and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our
side of the Alps, has imitated with so much success the
magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the superb
Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison
with Saint Paul's. But at the close of the reign of Charles the
Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose
name is now remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious;
for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised or an ill
paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at
present. Their gains, when compared with the wealth of the nation
and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intellectual
labour, were even larger than at present. Indeed the munificent
patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores
in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us the rich curls, the
full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail beauties
celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680,
having long lived splendidly, having received the honour of
knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the
fruits of his skill. His noble collection of drawings and
pictures was, after his decease, exhibited by the royal
permission in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by
auction for the almost incredible sum of twenty-six thousand
pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes of
the rich men of that day than a hundred thousand pounds would
bear to the fortunes of the rich men of our time.190 Lely was
succeeded by his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a
knight and then a baronet, and who, after keeping up a sumptuous
establishment, and after losing much money by unlucky
speculations, was still able to bequeath a large fortune to his
family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had been tempted
by English liberality to settle here, and had produced for the
King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the world.
Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and
tulips for prices such as had never before been known. Verrio, a
Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and
Muses, Nymphs and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing
nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph. The income which
he derived from his performances enabled him to keep one of the
most expensive tables in England. For his pieces at Windsor alone
he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make
a gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum
greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a literary life of
forty years, obtained from the booksellers.191 Verrio's assistant
and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most
celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber,
whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam,
was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch
many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest
decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designs for the coin were
made by French artists. Indeed, it was not till the reign of
George the Second that our country could glory in a great
painter; and George the Third was on the throne before she had
reason to be proud of any of her sculptors.
It is time that this description of the England which Charles the
Second governed should draw to a close. Yet one subject of the
highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said
of the great body of the people, of those who held the ploughs,
who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and
squared the Portland stone for Saint Paul's. Nor can very much be
said. The most numerous class is precisely the class respecting
which we have the most meagre information. In those times
philanthropists did not yet regard it as a sacred duty, nor had
demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write
about the distress of the labourer. History was too much occupied
with courts and camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant
or the garret of the mechanic. The press now often sends forth in
a day a greater quantity of discussion and declamation about the
condition of the working man than was published during the
twenty-eight years which elapsed between the Restoration and the
Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer from the
increase of complaint that there has been any increase of misery.
The great criterion of the state of the common people is the
amount of their wages; and as four-fifths of the common people
were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is
especially important to ascertain what were then the wages of
agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of
arriving at conclusions sufficiently exact for our purpose.
Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight,
informs us that a labourer was by no means in the lowest state
who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence
without food. Four shillings a week therefore were, according to
Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.192
That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have
abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685 the justices
of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by
an Act of Elizabeth, fixed, at their quarter sessions, a scale of
wages for the county, and notified that every employer who gave
more than the authorised sum, and every working man who received
more, would be liable to punishment. The wages of the common
agricultural labourer, from March to September, were fixed at the
precise amount mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week
without food. From September to March the wages were to be only
three and sixpence a week.193
But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were
very different in different parts of the kingdom. The wages of
Warwickshire were probably about the average, and those of the
counties near the Scottish border below it: but there were more
favoured districts. In the same year, 1685, a gentleman of
Devonshire, named Richard Dunning, published a small tract, in
which he described the condition of the poor of that county. That
he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a
few months later his work was reprinted, and was, by the
magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly
recommended to the attention of all parochial officers. According
to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food,
about five shillings a week.194
Still better was the condition of the labourer in the
neighbourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates of Suffolk
met there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and
resolved that, where the labourer was not boarded, he should have
five shillings a week in winter, and six in summer.195
In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the
Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six shillings in winter
and seven in summer. This seems to have been the highest
remuneration given in the kingdom for agricultural labour between
the Restoration and the Revolution; and it is to be observed
that, in the year in which this order was made, the necessaries
of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy shillings
the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a
famine price.196
These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which
seems to deserve consideration. It is evident that, in a country
where no man can be compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of
an army cannot be filled if the government offers much less than
the wages of common rustic labour. At present the pay and beer
money of a private in a regiment of the line amount to seven
shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend, coupled with the
hope of a pension, does not attract the English youth in
sufficient numbers; and it is found necessary to supply the
deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population
of Munster and Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in
1685 was only four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it is
certain that the government in that year found no difficulty in
obtaining many thousands of English recruits at very short
notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the army of the
Commonwealth had been seven shillings a week, that is to say, as
much as a corporal received under Charles the Second;197 and
seven shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill the
ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of the
people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude
that, in the reign of Charles the Second, the ordinary wages of
the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week; but that, in
some parts of the kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and,
during the summer months, even seven shillings
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