TO 1837.] INCREASE IN FIRE AND LIFE INSURANCE. 110,000 lbs. No excise duty having ever been charged on candles in Ireland, the quantity consumed in that country cannot be ascertained. England paid duty for tallow candles one penny per pound, and for spermaceti threepence-halfpenny per pound. The amount of revenue from this source in 1821 was £396,000, and in 1830 it rose to upwards of £480,000. The duty was taken off in 1832. The effect of the duty on candles was that no improvement was ever made in their quality; but the moment the manufacturers got free, they began to use their skill to good purpose, and gave a better article at a lower price, greatly to the advantage of the public. 331 and continued to flourish. Mr. Porter estimates that the sums accumulated in the hands of various life insurance offices in the kingdom, which formed part of the savings of the insured, amounted, in 1850, to at least £40,000,000an amount which would not be considered extravagant when the assets in one office, the Equitable Assurance Company, formed one-fourth of that sum. The legacy duty, also, has afforded evidence of the rapid accumulation of wealth in this country during the last two reigns. The number of persons who died in 1841, and whose property was subjected to legacy and probate duties, was only about 23,000. The sum on which legacy duty was paid In 1801 property to the value of nearly £200,000,000 in 1819 was £1,300,000,000; in 1824, £1,500,000,000: was insured against fire; in Ireland, nearly £9,000,000; in 1829, £1,700,000,000; and in 1841 it reached and in Scotland about half that amount. In 1821 Scot- | two billions. "The addition of £1,000,000,000 to the land had insured £1,000,000 more than Ireland, and continued thenceforth to leave the latter country far behind in this matter a fact which is to be mainly ascribed to the progress of manufactures in North Britain. In 1841 England had insured nearly £606,000,000; Scotland, nearly £45,000,000; and Ireland, only £31,000,000. The vast difference here between England and the other parts of the United Kingdom is remarkable. Comparing 1801 with 1841, the amount insured in the three kingdoms had increased at the rate of 193 per cent. The policy duty on life insurances not being paid annually does not afford the same means of ascertaining the amount insured on lives; but there is no doubt that it was very large, considering the number of life insurance offices that were established, value of property during thirty-one years of peace," says Mr. Porter, "will not appear improbable if we recall to mind the fact that during the last ten years of the war the public expenditure exceeded on an average £83,000,000 a year, while the average in the following twenty-four years did not exceed £50,000,000. The difference between these two sums would alone suffice in that period to make up the sum of £1,000,000,000. In the year 1838 £790,000 was paid as probate duty in Great Britain, upon about 17,000 wills, bequeathing property to the amount of nearly £46,000,000, of which £2,500,000 only belonged to Scotland. In the same year the amount of duty paid upon letters of administration was £137,000, upon 6,000 estates, value nearly £5,000,000. The duty on probates was £790,000, on nearly £46,000,000 of capital; the total being for administrations and probates duty £927,000, on capital amounting to £50,500,000, of which about £3,000,000 belonged to Scotland. No mortality tables had been published for Ireland, but it was ascertained that probate and administration duties in that country in 1838 were paid upon 2,196 estates, representing a capital of about £4,500,000. Assuming the same rate of mortality that existed in England and Wales, it would appear that the personal property in Ireland which in succession contributes to this branch of the revenue is about £168,000,000. In the half century ending with the accession of Victoria, the capital on which legacy duty had been paid in Great Britain was £1,470,000,000. The legacy duty in the same period amounted to £43,500,000, and the duty on probates and administrations to £35,000,000. The average receipts from probate duty generally have been steadily increasing with the progressive prosperity of the country. The proofs of this prosperity have been exhibited in various other ways. In 1815 the yearly value of dwelling-houses in England and Wales was £14,000,000 for nearly 10,000,000 of people; in 1841 the yearly rental was £23,000,000 for under 16,000,000 of people; which, reckoning the rental at twenty years' purchase, shows an investment in houses of capital amounting to £180,000,000 in twenty-six years. Counting since the peace in 1815, it has been estimated that the real property of England and Wales in the form of additional dwellings must have absorbed £240,000,000 of capital. Sir Robert Peel, in bringing forward his proposal for an income tax in 1842, assumed the value of real property in Great Britain to be as follows:-Rent of land, £39,400,000; rent of houses, £25,000,000; tithes, mines, &c., £8,400,000: total, £72,800,000, which, at twenty-five years' purchase, would be equal to a capital of £1,820,000,000. The annual value of real property actually assessed to the property and income tax in 1843, turned out to be much more than Sir Robert Peel estimated, amounting to more than £95,000,000 a year. sources of the Religious Bodies in Popular Education: the Church of England; the Independents; the Wesleyans; the Baptists; the Roman Catholics-Evening Schools-Literary and Scientific Institutions-The Social Influence of Sunday Schools-Progress of Education in Scotland and in Ireland-Evils of Popular Ignorance-Effects of Popular Education on Crime-Mitigation of the Criminal Code-Paucity of Educated Criminals-Educated Females. IN pursuance of the plan we have sketched, we now proceed to notice the intellectual, moral, and religious agencies by which the higher life of British society has been sustained. The basis of our social system is the family, the household, the domestic constitution-the little community that exists in the Englishman's home. This is not be considered merely as comprising the children of one parent, but the persons under one head, who is the occupier of the house, the householder, master, husband, or father; while the other members of the family are the wife, children, servants, relatives, visitors, and persons constantly or accidentally in the house. The head of the family "occupies" the house, supports and rules its inmates. "Family," in the sense which it has acquired in England, may be considered the social unit of which parishes, towns, counties, and the nation are composed. In the Act for taking the census of 1851, "occupier" is substituted for "family," and is described as a resident owner, or person who paid rent, whether as a tenant for the whole of the house, or as a lodger for any distinct floor or apartment. In Great Britain the number of families in 1801 was 2,260,802. At the close of the half-century, it had increased to 4,312,388; so that the number was nearly doubled in that time. In England and Wales it was still higher; the increase being from 1,896,723 to 3,712,290: consequently, 1,815,567 new lines of English families had been established in the country in fifty years. The increase in Scotland, too, has been very large-from 364,000 to 600,000, notwithstanding the alleged proneness of the Scotch to wander from the land of their birth, and to settle in southern latitudes. In the year 1844, Dr. Carus, the physician of the king of Saxony, in describing his master's journey through England and Scotland, makes the following remarks upon English dwellings, and the social effects of our domestic isolation:-"I cannot take leave of this subject without a remark on English dwelling-houses, which stand in close connection with that long-cherished principle of separation and retirement lying at the very foundation of the national character, It appears to me to be this principle which has given to the people that fixity of national character, and strict adherence to the historical usages of their country, by which they are so much distinguished; and up to the present moment, the Englishman still perseveres in striving after a certain individuality and personal independence-a certain separation of himself from others, which constitutes the foundation of his freedom. This, too, was completely an ancient German tendency, which led our remote ancestors to prefer the rudest and most inconvenient, but isolated homesteads, to the more convenient and refined method of Auxiliary Action of the Government-Committee of the Privy Council life in aggregation; it is this that gives the Englishman on Education-Parliamentary Grants-Proportion of the Population that proud feeling of personal independence, which is at School-The Improvement of Teachers-Training Colleges: their stereotyped in the phrase, Every man's house is his Cost-Endowed Schools and their Funds-The Enterprise and Re- castle.' This is a feeling which cannot be entertained, Savings-banks afford a very good index to the improved condition of the working classes. In 1830 the total number of depositors in the United Kingdom was 412,000; and the amount deposited, £13,500,000. In 1840 the number of depositors had increased to nearly 800,000, and the amount to £23,500,000. The total number of depositors in 1845 was 1,000,000, and the amount of investments nearly £33,000,000. Of this sum, domestic servants, nearly all females, deposited £80,000. CHAPTER XXXVI. Social Progress (continued)-The Family-German View of the English Home -Houseless Population-Division of Population in Town and Country Progress of Popular Education-The Agency of the Religious Bodies attending School-Number of Children not at School-Average Time TO 1837.] PRIVACY OF ENGLISH DWELLINGS. and an expression which cannot be used, in Germany or France, where ten or fifteen families often live together in the same large house. The expression, however, receives a true value when, by the mere closing of the house-door, the family is able, to a certain extent, to cut itself off from all communication with the outward world, even in the midst of great cities. In English towns or villages, therefore, one always meets either with small detached houses, merely suited to one family, or apparently large buildings, extending to the length of half a street, sometimes adorned like palaces on the exterior, but separated by partition walls internally, and thus divided into a great number of small, high houses, for the most part three windows broad, within which, and on the various storeys, the rooms are divided according to the wants or convenience of the family; in short, therefore, it may be properly said, that the English divide their edifices perpendicularly into houses, whilst we Germans divide them horizontally into floors. In England every man is master of his hall, stairs, and chambers; whilst we are obliged to use the two first in common with others, and are scarcely able to secure ourselves the privacy of our own chambers, if we are not fortunate enough to be able to obtain a secure and convenient house for ourselves alone." 333 83,000 persons not living in houses, of whom about 8,000 were females. At the census of 1851, the most complete ever taken, it was found that the number of towns in England and Wales was 580, with a population, including London, of nearly 9,000,000, while the population of villages and detached dwellings in the country was about the same amount. Scotland had 225 towns, which contained considerably more than half her population-that is, 1,497,000. The average population to each town in England was 15,500; and in Scotland, 6,600. London extends over an area of 78,029 acres on the sides of the Thames, into Kent, Surrey, and Middlesex; and the number of its inhabitants, continually increasing, was 2,362,236. The collection of so large a portion of the population in towns, combined with facility of communication, while it has its disadvantages, no doubt, in point of health and morals, greatly favours social progress and civilisation, by enabling the people to take advantage of various institutions for their education and improvement. It is owing to the peculiar advantages of urban life, that the increase of population in the half of this century nearly equalled the increase in all preceding ages, and that the increase in the ten years of 1841 to 1851 exceeded the increase of the last fifty years of the eighteenth century, notwithstanding the constant On this the editor of the census returns for 1851 makes flow of contemporaneous emigration. The poet speaks the following remarks:-"The possession of an entire house regretfully of the time when population was so dense that is, it is true, strongly desired by every Englishman; for it "every rood maintained its man;" but that is a poetical throws a sharp, well-defined circle round his family and fiction. Instead of diminishing in proportion to the hearth-the shrine of his sorrows, joys, and meditations. territory, the population has been gaining; so that in the This feeling, as it is natural, is universal; but it is stronger last half-century the number of acres to each person living in England than it is on the Continent; for although there has fallen from about five to two in Great Britain, and in the great bulk of the population in the country is in sepa- England and Wales from four to two. But it has been rate dwellings, while in many English towns several justly remarked by the editor of the census returns, that families are in the same house, the crowding to which Dr. there are countervailing advantages in this diminution Carus refers, of the middle and higher classes, who sleep on of territory, in the facts that the people have been brought flats, stratum over stratum, is carried to an inconceivably into each other's neighbourhood, their average distance greater excess in capitals and the other cities of the Con- from each other has been reduced in the ratio of three to tinent than it is in England. The department of the two, labour has been divided, industry has been organised Seine, for instance, in 1835-6, contained 50,467 houses, in towns, and the quantity of produce, either consisting of, and 1,106,891 persons, or twenty-two persons to a house; or exchangeable for, the conveniences, elegancies, and so that there must be four or five families in Paris to a necessaries of life, has in the mass largely increased, and is house; whilst London, in 1851, contained 2,362,236 increasing at a more rapid rate than the population. The persons, 533,580 occupiers, in 305,933 houses; and conse-effects of association and collision in town populations are quently, nearly eight persons to one house; or, more increased mental activity, intelligence, and refinement. exactly, seventy-seven persons, forming seventeen families, to ten houses. It will be shown that, in a certain number of English towns, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-four families are in ten houses on an average; but these cases are exceptional, and the general rule is, that each family in England has a house." But there was a population sleeping in barns, in tents, and in the open air, comprising, with some honest but unfortunate people out of employment, or temporarily employed, gipsies, beggars, strollers, vagabonds, vagrants, outcasts, and criminals. The actual number of houseless population was estimated in 1841 at more than 22,000, of whom about half slept in barns. If we include the occupants of barges, vessels in the ports engaged in inland navigation, and sea-going vessels in port, we shall have This improved state of things reacts upon the country; for the walls, gates, and castles which were destroyed in the civil wars have never been rebuilt, and the population has outgrown the ancient limits, while stone lines of demarcation have not been drawn round the new centres. Our people have never been pestered with the continental system of octroi, involving the examination by customs' officers of every article entering the town. By the Municipal Reform Act, all exclusive privileges were abolished, and every town was thrown open to settlers from every quarter. Whilst the respective populations of the town and country have been equally balanced-ten millions against ten millions-the predominance of the civilising urban influences has been maintained by the innumerable relationships of commerce, by constant intercourse, and by a thousand ties of kindred and affection, arising chiefly from tute of the prudence, steadiness, business habits, and the fact that a large proportion of the population in the administrative ability necessary for the management of market towns, the county towns, the manufacturing towns, and the metropolis, were born in the country. The town and country populations are now so intimately commingled, that the same administrative arrangements are easily applied to the whole kingdom. The activity, the intelligence, and the growing religious feeling of the people has led to an increased demand for instruction, both secular and religious, and we now proceed to show how far this demand has been met in the United Kingdom. Popular education may be said to be almost entirely the work of the present century; and the transformation it has effected in society is so great, that if we could behold it in contrast with the state of things at the close of the last century, it would appear little short of miraculous. "Comparison is scarcely possible between the groups of gambling, swearing children (no unfavourable example of young England then), when Raikes, of Gloucester, in 1781, with difficulty collected the first Sunday school,' and any single class of the 2,400,000 scholars who now gather with alacrity, and even with affection, round their 318,000 teachers. In contemplating the various agencies by which, throughout the intervening period, the habits of the people have been so conspicuously improved, it is of course impossible to assign to each its positive share of influence in accomplishing this change; but it may very safely be affirmed that no small portion of the happy transformation is attributable to the vast accession which has been effected in the number of our daily and Sunday schools." 11 # an established system. He accordingly became embarrassed, and was "tossed about through varied troubles, passing from a prison to prosperity, and then again to bankruptcy, until, in 1818, he departed for America, where, after twenty years of suffering, brightened by some intervals of popularity, but none of prudence, his life was terminated by an accident, in 1838, in the streets of New York." A society was formed in 1808, called "The Royal Lancasterian Institution, for Promoting the Education of the Children of the Poor." A few years after the name was altered, and it was called "The British and Foreign School Society." It has been a matter of dispute whether Lancaster invented the monitorial system, or borrowed it from Dr. Bell, who had made an experiment in the employment of juvenile instructors six years before, in the military orphan school at Madras. Bell, the son of a Scotchman, a barber, of St. Andrew's, was as remarkable for prudence as Lancaster was for improvidence. Having returned from India, he became successively rector of Swanage, master of Sherborne Hospital, and prebendary of Hereford and Westminster. He died in 1832, bequeathing his large fortune of £120,000 principally to the educational institutions of his native country. His name as an educationist has always been associated with the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the principles of the Established Church, which was founded in 1811. From that time the work of popular education made considerable progress, chiefly through the agency of these two societies; several liberal statesmen, among whom the name of Henry Brougham always shone conspicuous, lending their zealous advocacy to the support of the cause. The earliest statistics by which the progress of popular education may be measured are contained in the parliamentary returns of 1813, when there were in England and Wales nearly 20,000 day schools, with about 675,000 scholars, which were in the proportion of 1 in 17 of the population. There were also 5,463 Sunday schools, with 477,000 scholars, or 1 in 24 of the population. Lord Kerry's parliamentary returns for 1833 showed the number of day schools and scholars to be nearly doubled, and the proportion to be 1 in 11 of the population. The Sunday schools, during the same period, were trebled in number, and also in the aggregate of children attending; while their proportion to the population was 1 in 9-the population having in the interval increased 24 per cent., the day scholars 89 per cent., and the Sunday scholars 225 per cent. Sunday schools were first in the educational race. The work which the Gloucester publisher originated rapidly advanced; religious bodies, more especially Dissenters, heartily embraced the plan; and the present century has seen the principle so extended, that scarcely any regular place of worship now existing is without its Sunday school. "The same awakened sense of neighbourly responsibility, which thus produced the Sunday school, soon after gave a mighty impulse to the work of daily education." The founder of the popular day school system was a youthful Quaker, Joseph Lancaster, who opened a school in his father's house, in Southwark, to instruct the children of the poor, in the year 1796. He made but a small charge, which he remitted to those who were unable to pay, and often furnished food to the most destitute. His pupils numbered ninety before he was eighteen years old, and afterwards they came pouring in upon him "like flocks of sheep," till in two years they reached 1,000. In order to meet the difficulty about teachers for so many, he divided them into classes, and adopted the monitorial system, which succeeded so well that he went through the country lecturing on the subject, establishing schools for the poor, raising funds for their support, and ultimately obtaining the patronage of royalty. But he was not the man to guide the movement he had so successfully originated. Ardent, enthusiastic, visionary-possessing the most need-ties, who then commenced a strife that has not yet ended. ful qualities for a pioneer and a missionary-he was desti "The Census of Education," by Horace Mann, from whose report we have derived much information. Up to this time (1833), the work of education was conducted by private liberality, incited mainly by religious zeal, and acting through the agencies of the two great societies, the British and the National. In that year the government came to their aid, and a grant of £20,000 a year continued to be made till 1839, which was shared between the two societies, representing two educational par The principle of the British and Foreign School Society, be read without note or comment in the schools, and that chiefly supported by Dissenters, was, that the Bible should TO 1837.] PROGRESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 335 there should be no catechism admitted, or special religious 1841 to 1851 no less than 22,214. There were added instruction of any kind. The schools of the National Society, on the other hand, were strictly Church schools, in which the Church Catechism must be taught. In 1839 and 1843 two measures were proposed, by which it was intended to provide for a more immediate influence of the state in connection with the popular education it supported, by the establishment of a government normal school and the education of children in factories. But the first of these was defeated by the opposition of the Church, and the second by the hostility of the Dissenters. "It was thus made manifest," says Mr. Horace Mann, "that the decisive tendency of fifty years of private educational enterprise had been to bring the education of the people into such a close connection with religious bodies, that for any prudent government it was impracticable either, on the one hand, to ignore the agency of such communities, or, on the other, in applying to educational purposes funds raised by general taxation, to recognise the predominance of any particular section. Consequently, the action of the government has ever since been limited to a co-operation with religious bodies, so far as the latter have been willing to accept its aid, each grant being made conditional upon a previous voluntary contribution in a specified proportion to the grant. In 1839 the duty of administering these parliamentary funds was transferred from the treasury to the committee of privy council on education-not, however, without considerable opposition, on the ground of the supposed unconstitutional and irresponsible character of the suggested board." besides, at dates not specified, upwards of 6,000: the total number in 1841 being 46,000, of which 30,000 were private. These statistics indicate an immense amount of private energy and enterprise, the more gratifying from the fact that the greater portion of the progress was due to the working classes themselves. It was estimated by Mr. Edward Baines in 1846 that one-ninth of the population is as large a proportion as we ought to expect to be attending school; and the public generally concurred in the correctness of his calculations in his letters to Lord John Russell. Other writers considered one-eighth, allowing an average of five years and a half school instruction for all children between five and fifteen years of age. According to these data, the number who ought to be at school, if not prevented by various causes-such as the demand for juvenile labour is nearly 5,000,000 in England and Wales. But the demand for juvenile labour is very great, and it was found that in 1851 about 600,000 children were engaged in remunerative work. After allowing for illness, and other unpreventable causes, it was ascertained that there should be 3,000,000 children at school in England and Wales; but the actual number in attendance in 1851 fell short of that estimate by 968,000 healthy, unemployed children, between the ages of five and twelve, who were not at school at all. This arose partly from their parents being unable to pay the fees, but chiefly from their culpable indifference and neglect, many of the unfortunate beings allowed to grow up in heathenish ignorance being the children of the criminal classes; for which state of things the most effective remedy would be the elevation of the working classes, and next, the establishment of ragged schools. After all deductions are made for employment, illness, and home education, and supposing parents to be universally willing to have their children educated, the total that could have been at school in England and Wales twelve years ago was 3,663,000. It was found that the average school time of all children in England and Wales, between the third and fifteenth years, was about five years. Simultaneously, the amount of the annual sum assigned for education was increased. From 1839 till 1841 inclusive it was fixed at £30,000; £40,000 was allowed for 1842-3-4; and the augmentations subsequently raised it up to £75,000 in 1845, £100,000 in 1846-7, £125,000 in 1848-9-50, £150,000 in 1851-2, and £260,000 in 1853. The total amount of public money granted from 1833 to the end of 1850 was as nearly as possible £1,000,000; and the portion expended in that interval was about £750,000. None of this was given towards the expense of maintaining schools, but either towards the cost of buildings, for the Great improvements had been effected in the art of purchase of school apparatus, or in aid of the salaries of teaching. Both the British and the National Societies efficient masters, mistresses, and teachers. Prior to 1847, from the beginning devoted much attention to the trainhowever, no grants were made for any purposes except in ing of efficient teachers. In 1828 the former sent out 87 aid of building schools, and in aid of normal schools. Part trained teachers; in 1838 as many as 183. The National was appropriated to Scotland. Of the £500,000 spent Society commenced a training institution in 1811, and between 1839 and 1850 upon English schools, £405,000 was after forty years' progress it had five training colleges, contributed to schools connected with the Established sending out 270 teachers every year. This department of Church, the other denominations receiving-Wesleyans, progress has been greatly indebted to one of the most £8,000, and Roman Catholics, £1,049. The British and enlightened and zealous of our educational reformers, Sir Foreign School Society received £51,000, and the work-James Kay Shuttleworth. At the census of 1851 there house schools, £37,000. were about forty training colleges in England and Wales, sustained at an annual cost of about £90,000. Of these, thirty-four were connected with the Church of England, one belonged to the British and Foreign School Society, one to the Congregationalists, one to the Wesleyan Methodists, one to the Roman Catholics, and one to the Voluntary School Association. The last, as its name imports, is conducted on the voluntary principle, and the Congregationalists also decline state support for their training The following statement will show the number of existing schools at different periods, and mark more distinctly the progress of popular education. Before the beginning of the present century there were in England and Wales only 3,363 schools, public and private. In the first ten years of the century more than 1,000 new ones were founded; in the second ten years, 2,200; in the third ten years, 3,482; in the fourth, 7,467; and from |