1700-1760 served seven years' training; and the devices of Guilds and Companies and City Freedoms, created a practical monopoly, which it was very difficult to overthrow. Defoe's objection, therefore, to the employment of able-bodied poor in workhouses loses a great part of its force, when we consider that for the reason just stated, labourers were unable to seek work where it was to be found.* The establishment of workhouses, and the maintenance of the poor by the contract system, led to a reduction in both the amount of the rates, and the number of paupers ; but the reduction was only temporary, and both rates and poor went on increasing throughout the reign of George II.+ exaggerated. 20. Immoral Character of the Age.-The general condition of society during the transition time between Anne and George III. has been pourtrayed in the novels of Defoe, Fielding and Smollett, but more vividly in the graphic pictures of Hogarth. Society in these pictures is a sort of chaos; in which filth and finery, grossness and drunken frenzy are jostled together. London streets, by day and night, are a perfect scene of wild disorder, and the anarchy therein is paralleled by the absence of all legal supervision Hogarth's in houses of public resort, and in places of amusement pictures of for high and low. The sleeping drayman, who is crushing life not the child beneath the wheels of his dray; the "Enraged Musician;" the "Midnight Conversation," in which the highest and the noblest are depicted in a state of brutal drunkenness in a low pot house, while their president, a clergyman, is concocting a fresh bowl of punch; the Cockpit, where the blind peer is betting with the blackguards around him; the terrible drama of the "Rake's Progress; "the horrors of "Gin Lane," and the humours of Electioneering are only a few of those "pictures of life and character," with which the great moralist has set forth the manners of his time. It has been well observed that although these representations of vice and folly do not place the whole truth before us, they are not to be regarded as exceptional pictures, since the wonder is that there were not more Gin Lanes and Blood-bowl houses. The intemperance of the age was awful; there was an utter absence of religious restraint; and societies, such as the Hell Fire Club, of which the Duke of Wharton and many other noblemen were members, were actually established for the encouragement of immorality and profaneness. The greater part of the statesmen of the time were infidels, and distinguished for the grossness and * Knight's Popular History, V., 48, 49. + Pictorial History, IV., 843-847. : Knight's Popular History, V., 473. CHAP. III. impurity of their lives. Walpole was notorious for his foul talk; the Duke of Grafton appeared openly at the play with his mistress; and Lord Chesterfield, in his famous "Letters," instructed his son in the art of seduction as a part of polite conversation.* Nor were these moral evils the only cancers that were Society corrupted by both moral and physical diseases. eating away the life of the nation. Disease committed its ravages, unchecked by an attempt to mitigate the evils of standing pools before the cottage door, and pestilent ditches in towns. The horrible state of the prisons was well known; the stench from the prisoners when they were placed in the dock, was so abominable, that the judges and jurymen were sometimes stricken with the "jail fever," and died. The great towns swarmed with destitute children, who slept in ash holes and at street doors, and were left to starve, or become thieves, and in due time be hanged.† No one took any public notice of these fearful evils except Defoe and the great essayists Addison and Steele. But they failed to reach the root of the evil, and the Church had apparently lost all power for good in the nation. In 1701 the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" was established, but the neglect of the heathen at their own doors gives to this event a tinge of the bitterest irony. 21. Apathy of the Church and Clergy.-The great body of the clergy were then in the lowest condition, and their character at its lowest ebb. They went from the Grammar School to the College upon an exhibition or sizarship, which had its own humiliations. If fortunate, they began their career as private chaplains, and were treated with less respect than the butler. If they obtained a benefice they had to plough their own fields, and feed their own hogs, while their wives spun the wool of their sheep and their daughters scoured the brick kitchen. Some, no doubt, felt an honest pride in these menial labours; but others, instead of taking rank as gentlemen, sought the society of the village ale-house.§ Eminent men there were among them, who were scholars and preachers; but these were few in number, and only to be found in London and some of the largest towns; or if possessing pluralities, were for the most part absentees from their parishes. In like manner the bishops were oftener to be found at the levée of a Minister than in their own dioceses. And Burnett in the "History of His Own Time," says of the clergy gene Knight's Popular History, V., 60. + Greene's Short History, 717. Vol. VI., page 183. 1700-1760 rally, that they were "the most remiss in their labours in private, and the least severe in their lives" of all the clergy he had ever seen, in the places through which he had travelled. The decay of the great dissenting bodies went hand in hand with this spiritual indolence in the Church, and during the early part of the eighteenth century the Nonconformists declined in number and in energy.* 22. The Great Methodist Revival.-Religious feeling, however, was not dead in England; the pious old Puritan spirit still survived among the middle classes, and about the middle of the century there burst forth a spiritual revival which ultimately changed the whole temper of English society. the Wesleys This revival arose among a small knot of Oxford students, who, feeling the necessity of a more earnest spiritual life, met together for weekly prayer and other devotional exercises. Whitfield and The chief of these young enthusiasts, whose strict attention at Oxford. to religious duties and regularity of life, acquired for them the name of " Methodists," were John and Charles Wesley, the sons of the rector of Epworth in Lincolnshire; Hervey, afterwards author of the well known" Meditations," and Whitfield, formerly a waiter in a country inn, but now a servitor of Pembroke College. Full of zeal for the conversion of the heathen, the two Wesleys embarked for the new settlement of Georgia in 1735. But the dissolute habits of the colonists deprived them of all success among the Indians, and they returned to England after an absence of two years, to find that their little society had struck root in London, where the eloquence, intense fervour, and extravagant style of Whitfield's preaching was causing great sensation and attracting crowded audiences. The religious views of the young enthusiasts were still very far from being matured; Wesley seems to have received his first impressions of the new gospel from the Moravians; while Whitfield, who also visited America, became tinged with Calvinism from the Puritans of New England. The fiery convictions and passionateness of expression of these two were modified by the gentleness of character of Charles Wesley. While Whitfield was the wild impulsive preacher, and John Wesley the organiser and director of the new movement, Charles was its "sweet singer," who gave to its followers those beautiful hymns, which converted their hysteric enthusiasm into a passion for sacred music, and gradually changed the whole aspect of public devotion in England.t As the revival grew more earnest it * Stanhope's England, II., 244. + Greene's Short History, 719. Whitfield's CHAP. III. was not viewed with favour by the apathetic clergy, and they closed their pulpits against the new apostles. Thus driven from the churches they had recourse to field preachPreaching. ing, the first instance of which occurred at Kingswood near Bristol in 1739, where Whitfield addressed twenty thousand colliers from the top of a green knoll, and drew from them, as he says, tears which made white gutters down their blackened cheeks.* Wesley observes that he could not at first reconcile himself to this novel proceeding; for both he and his brother had at this time a horror of schism, and earnestly wished to adhere to the Differences between Whitfield and Wesley. Church. Indeed, they clung passionately to the Establishment to the end of their lives, and regarded the body which they founded as a lay society in connection with it. It was this strong anti-revolutionary feeling and dread of innovation, together with their diverse views on predestination, which in the end separated the Wesleys from Whitfield, and led to the distinct establishment of Wesleyanism, by the former; and by the latter of that peculiar body which received its name and chief support from Lady Huntingdon, one of Whitfield's earliest converts. Effects of their mission These differences, however, did not show themselves for some time, and in the meanwhile the revivalists and those lay helpers whom they admitted to the ministry, traversed the three kingdoms, and roused the rough and ignorant masses to a terrible sense of sin, and a passionate hope for a better life. But their preaching also stirred a hatred in their opponents, who often ary labours. mobbed and otherwise ill-treated them, sometimes to the jeopardy of their lives. In spite of all dangers and insults, however, the labours of these brave missionaries produced a marked change in the country, of which the formation of the Methodist body was probably the smallest part. The Church was at length roused from its lethargy, and the Evangelical movement began, which in later days converted a fox-hunting and absentee clergy into a body of ministers unsurpassed for piety and philanthropical energy. The profligacy and immorality of the Restoration period were shamed. out of existence, and instead thereof there arose that great moral and religious movement which produced those numerous schemes for the amelioration of the wretched, the ignorant, the criminal and the slave, that have rendered illustrious the names of Raikes, More, Howard, Fry, Clarkson, and Wilberforce.f Wesley's life extended to the year 1791, Whitfield's not beyond 1770. At the time of Wesley's * Stanhope's England, II.,237; quoted from Whitfield's Journal, 25th March, 1739. + Stanhope's England, II. chap. XIX; Pictorial History, IV., Book IX, chap. II. 1700-1760 death his flock exceeded 71,000 in England and 48,000 in America, and there were under his direction in both countries five hundred travelling preachers. SECTION III-LITERATURE, LEARNING, AND EDUCATION. 23. Political Patronage of Literature.-The period comprehended by the reigns of William the Third, Anne, and part of George the First, has been sometimes styled the Augustan Age, in consequence of the patronage which was then so largely extended to men of letters by the wealthy and the great. To write a flattering poem or a telling political pamphlet was almost a sure passport to favour and office; and it was by such means that Prior and Gay became foreign ambassadors, Addison an Under Secretary of State, and Swift a dean; and that Steele, Congreve, Rowe and other writers of less note obtained lucrative appointments.* The encouragement which was bestowed upon these men was due among other reasons to the fact, that political writing, freed from legal censorship, now obtained for the first time, an immediate influence over political events. The time had not yet come when parliamentary proceedings were freely reported. Literary talents, therefore, were of more importance to a public man than oratorical talents, and the pen was a more powerful political engine than the tongue. The best speech could then produce no effect except on those who heard it; it was by means of the press alone that public opinion could be directed; and in a country governed by parliaments which were renewed every three years, the tone of public opinion was of the highest importance. Hence the Tory leaders, Harley and Bolingbroke in particular, vied with the chiefs of the Whig party in their zeal for the encouragement of letters, t and the promotion of authors who had served their cause by the publication of powerful tracts on current topics, or stinging satires on public men. The system of Ministerial patronage ceased with the Accession of the House of Hanover, and the supreme power passed under to Walpole, who despised literature and regarded books No patronage as only fit for the idle and the useless. The House of Walpole. Commons was now daily growing in importance; the * Macaulay's Essay on "Boswell's Life of Johnson;" Stanhope's England, II., 221 Macaulay's Addison. |