The saddest fact, in connection with the internal history of England, at this time, was the condition of the people. They had small wages, and many privations. They had no social rank, and were disgraced by many vices. They were ignorant and brutal. The wages of laborers only averaged four shillings a week, while those of mechanics were not equal to what some ordinarily earn, in this country and in these times, in a single day. Both peasants, and artisans were not only ill paid, but ill used, and they died, miserably and prematurely, from famine and disease. Nor did sympathy exist for the misfortunes of the poor. There were no institutions of public philanthropy. Jails were unvisited by the ministers of mercy, and the abodes of poverty were left by a careless generation to be dens of infamy and crime. Such was England two hundred years ago; and there is no delusion more unwarranted by sober facts than that which supposes that those former times were better than our own, in any thing which abridges the labors or alleviates the miseries of mankind. "It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman; when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns; and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guinea. But we too shall, in our turn, be outstripped, and, in our turn, envied. There is constant improvement, as there also is constant discontent; and future generations may talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as a time when England was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendor of the rich."
REFERENCES.--Of all the works which have yet appeared, respecting this interesting epoch, the new History of Macaulay is the most brilliant and instructive. Indeed, the student scarcely needs any other history, in spite of Macaulay's Whig doctrines. He may sacrifice something to effect; and he may give us pictures, instead of philosophy; but, nevertheless, his book has transcendent merit, and will be read, by all classes, so long as English history is prized. Mackintosh's fragment, on the same period, is more philosophical, and possesses very great merits. Lingard's History is very valuable on this reign, and should be consulted. Hume, also, will never cease to please. Burnet is a prejudiced historian, but his work is an authority. The lives of Milton, Dryden, and Clarendon should also be read in this connection. Hallam has but treated the constitutional history of these times. See also Temple's Works; the Life of William Lord Russell; Rapin's History. Pepys, Dalrymple, Rymeri Foedera, the Commons' Journal, and the Howell State Trials are not easily accessible, and not necessary, except to the historian.