Part 11

More pernicious than this madness was the mania of cruelty, an especial manifestation of which was the ferocious persecution of the Jews, who were put to death by hundreds and thousands, under the accusation that they had poisoned the wells. At Basle a number of this nation, whose European history proves them to have been everywhere amongst the most inoffensive of the people, were enclosed in a wooden building and burnt with it. At Strasburg two thousand were burnt alive. Whoever showed them compassion and endeavoured to protect them were put upon the rack and burnt with them. In numerous instances these unhappy people, driven to despair, assembled in their own habitations, to which they set fire and consumed themselves with their families. The noble and the mean bound themselves by an oath to extirpate them from the face of the earth by fire and sword.

In England this relentless cruelty took particularly the shape of burning innocent people under the name of witches; an infatuation which pervaded all classes from the highest to the lowest, affording a melancholy exemplification of the close alliance between credulity and cruelty.

Footnote 13:

The number of wretched beings condemned and executed for this imaginary crime at the Assizes of Suffolk and Essex alone, in the year 1646, amounted to two hundred. Dr Zachary Gray affirms that he had seen an authentic account of persons who had so suffered in the whole of England, amounting to from three to four thousand. So late as the year 1697 seven persons, three men and four women, were burnt at Paisley for this alleged crime. We seldom sufficiently consider how near we are to those times of dreadful superstition and cruelty! How short a period it is since the light of a brighter day dawned upon us!

But in the midst of these terrible disorders, changes which had been in silent operation during several centuries began to produce visible results. The independent power of the nobles had been suppressed; the feuds that raged between them, filling the country with disorder and bloodshed, had been put down; the supremacy of the law had been established; property and life had become more secure; industry had taken a surprising start; the practical abolition of serfdom had been to a large extent effected; and at last came the final breaking up of the feudal system in the reign of Henry VII. by the passing of the law authorizing the alienation of land.

About the middle of the fifteenth century improvements in the condition of the people, which had been gradually effected by these changes, were accelerated by a succession of events that gave an extraordinary impulse to the human mind, just aroused from the long and deep sleep of the middle ages—that dark night which was now passing away.

Among the most memorable of these was the invention of printing, which the three immortal masters of the art had now completed (1436–1442), giving untiring and undying wings to thought;—

The diffusion over the West of Europe of the remains of a former civilization, by the dispersion of the treasures of classical art, literature, and science, which before Constantinople fell into the hands of barbarians (1453) had been confined within the walls of that city;—

The cessation of the long and disastrous struggle between the East and the West, by the expulsion of the Moors from Spain (1492);—

The discovery of the New World;—

And lastly, the Reformation, that stupendous work which with giant strength burst asunder the chain which consummate skill and supreme power had spent ages in forging and riveting: that stupendous work, which was not merely emancipation from spiritual bondage, but the re-communication of the long-lost spirit of religion; the noble men who achieved it being ever, even in their day of triumph, less intent on demolishing the gorgeous edifice that had held the mind enthralled, than on erecting a pure temple in which it might worship with sincerity and freedom.

The time when the foundation was laid for this intellectual and spiritual renovation was also that of the commencement of physical improvement. The towns being no longer fortresses, it became unnecessary to maintain their fortifications. Walls were thrown down; stagnant moats were filled up; broader streets were opened; more convenient houses were erected. Forests were cleared; marshes and swamps were drained; more land was brought under cultivation; more vegetable matter was produced; the art of collecting, storing, and preserving fodder was discovered. Fresh meat became the food of the people during a longer period of the year; in the course of two centuries the length of that period had doubled, and at last such food was in use the whole winter. The products of growing art and manufacture superseded the beds of straw and displaced the floors of rushes. Famines ceased. There has been no recurrence of famine in England since the middle of the 15th century (1448). The proportion of people in the enjoyment of moderate competence rapidly increased. It is computed that in the 16th century the number of small freeholders realizing a clear income of between £60 and £70 a-year amounted with their families to one-seventh of the whole population, and that the number of persons who tilled their own land was greater than the number of those who farmed the land of others.

Footnote 14:

Macaulay’s History, Vol. I. Chap. III.

In the next century the care of the Public Health became a recognized and direct object of the Legislature and the Magistracy. Better regulations were enforced in the metropolis for the removal of filth, for the construction and extension of sewers, and for widening, paving, and lighting the streets. In the middle of this century the Great Fire (1666) consumed 13,000 houses and left an open space of upwards of a square mile. This opportunity of improvement was not lost. Though in rebuilding the city the same lines of streets were preserved, and the streets were still kept much too narrow, yet there was some improvement in the general plan, while the houses were built of better materials; brick was substituted for wood and plaster, and the buildings were less crowded and less projecting.

The spirit of improvement thus awakened exerted itself with increased effect during the whole of the eighteenth century. Agriculture, which was now rapidly advancing, had created a demand for town refuse, the fertilizing property of which began to be perceived; so that all manner of offensive substances were regularly carried away to the fields, to the great increase of the cleanliness of the streets. At the same time many of the narrower streets were widened, the houses were entirely taken down and rebuilt, and in this operation slate was universally substituted for thatch, and brick for timber. The pavement also, which had long been the reproach of London, was improved. Population in the mean time rapidly increased, less by the relative increase of the number of births than by the proportionate decrease of the deaths, and this notwithstanding the occasional occurrence of severe pestilence. The result of the whole was an increase in the length of life.

An increase in the length of life is an expression and a measure of the sum of comfort experienced from the whole collective circumstances that make up national prosperity. In the interval between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that sum grew into a highly important one. Of this the proof is positive.

It happened that in the year 1693 a loan was raised for the service of the State by the method of Tontine, and that another was contracted by the same method in the year 1790; the interval being almost exactly a century.

The term Tontine is derived from the name of the originator of this scheme of life annuity, the principle of which is this. The person who advances £100 is at liberty to name any life he pleases, during the existence of which he draws a certain annuity; and as the shares of the dead nominees are distributed among the living ones, the annuity continually increases till the last survivor gets the whole income.

A comparison of the experience between two Tontines gives the exact measure of the effect produced on the duration of life, by such changes in the social condition of the people as may have occurred in the interval between them.

A person of the male sex (for there is a considerable difference in the results in the two sexes), living in 1793, compared with a male living in 1690, at fifteen years of age, had gained an expectation of life of nearly ten years; at twenty years of age, nine years and a half; at twenty-five years of age, upwards of eight years; at thirty years of age, upwards of seven years, and so on.

Or the gain in the expectation of life may be stated more correctly in years, thus: Take for example a man at the age of 30, in 1693 his expectation of life would have been 26.665; in 1790 it would have been 33.775 years.

On this evidence Mr Finlaison justly observes that civilization could not have increased by a single leap in the time of Mr Pitt, but must have been slowly on the increase at least since the days of Queen Anne.

We may then fairly conclude, that in the interval between the close of the 17th and 18th centuries human life gained an addition equivalent to a fourth part of its whole term. What has it gained in the succeeding century? What has been the increase in the value of life in this first half of the century in which we ourselves have lived? Though unfortunately we can appeal to the results of no renewed tontine to enable us to answer this question with exactness, yet there are not wanting evidences that the value of life continues progressively to increase. It must necessarily continue to increase, because the main conditions on which life and health depend have experienced, during the whole of the present century, an expansion and improvement, on which no former age presents a parallel. It will be sufficient to establish this fact, to glance at what has been effected within this period in the multiplication and diffusion of the three primary necessaries of existence—food, clothing, and fuel.

Such has been the increased production of food during the present century, that the quantity now raised maintains ten millions more human beings than existed at its commencement; for on the first enumeration of the people in 1801 the population of Great Britain was eleven millions; in 1851, it was twenty-one millions.

Footnote 15:

Considering that there appears to be no objection in principle to the method of raising a loan by Tontine, and that the scheme is a popular one, it seems highly desirable that we should continue this means of measuring with positive exactness the results of our advancing civilization.

Footnote 16: