DURING the Crimean war Mr. Cobden in one of his pamphlets had pointed out that if the conflict were much prolonged, and carried out "with vigour," the disturbances in the currency through financial demands would ultimately affect the working population to an extent and with an intensity of which past experience of their sufferings would afford not example; for the evil would be in proportion to the numbers and density of our manufacturing community, which had attained dimensions that had no parallel in history. He forebore to speculate on all the consequences which might follow from the disorganization of this industrial population, and the more so as they would be the last to suffer from loss of occupation. He would not abandon the hope that the war might terminate before its calamities fell upon them. Happily the vast social machinery was not without its safety-valve for the assurance of those timid persons who lived in dread of its explosive energies. It was the interest of employers, having large amounts invested in fixed capitals, to continue to employ their work-people long after these investments ceased to be profitable. He knew instances where mill-owners, whilst hoping for better times, had preferred to work on at a loss of several thousand pounds a year of their floating capital rather than by closing their establishments to incur far greater sacrifices from the total unproductiveness of their buildings, machinery, labourers' cottages, and all that constituted their fixed capital; to say nothing of

the disadvantage of withdrawing from the market, and losing their connections and customers. There was an honourable pride too amongst the tall chimneys not without its use, which disinclined them to be the first to cease to smoke. It followed, however, that mischief might be insidiously working when all was apparent prosperity; and that very disposition to prolong the struggle might, under a continued pressure of adverse circumstances, render the ultimate catastrophe only the more sudden and calamitous. Hitherto the effects of the war had been felt by the workingclasses, not in the form of loss of employment, but through the high price of food, which had told with great severity on the unskilled labourer receiving the lowest rate of wages. The most numerous of that class, the agricultural labourers-that mute and helpless multitude who had never made their voice heard in the din of politics or their presence felt in any social movement—were the greatest sufferers. We had a school of sentimentalists who told us that war was to elevate man in his native dignity, to depress the money power, to put down mammon worship, and the like. Let them take a rural walk (they required bracing) on the downs, or the weald, or the fens, in any part of this island south of the Trent, and they would find the wages of agricultural labourers averaging at that moment under twelve shillings a week; let them ask how a family of five persons, which was below their average, could live with bread at 24d.

a pound. Nobody could tell. But follow the labourer as he laid down his spade or mattock and settled to his dinner in the nearest barn or shed, and peep into his wallet; or drop into his cottage at 12 o'clock and inquire what the family dinner consists of;-bread, rarely anything better and not always enough of that, with nothing left out of his earnings for tea, or sugar, or soap, or candles, or clothes, or the schooling of his children; and with his next year's harvest-money already mortgaged for shoes. Never within the recollection of living man was the farm-labourer's condition so bad as at that time. During the former great war he went straight to the parish-board for the "allowance" of 2s. 6d. a head for each child exceeding two; so that with his wages at fourteen shillings, if he had five children, his income was raised to upwards of a guinea a week. That might have been unsound political economy, but it stood between the labourer and starvation during the long French war.

Cobden's indictment against war was that it brutalized the masses, and made the rich richer and the poor poorer; but never were those evil tendencies developing themselves with such unrelenting pressure as then, that the old poor-law and the usury laws no longer existed. The war caused a rise in the price of grain, not in our market only, but on the Continent and over a great part of the world. The blockade of the Don, the Dnieper, and the other outlets for that region of "Black Earth" whose fertility had excited the amazement of geologists, and from which the sustenance of half Europe might, with proportionate labour and capital, be drawn, had caused the sudden cessation of an export of grain to Western Europe which, in 1853, the year before the war, had amounted to between five and six millions of quarters. The average price of wheat had been higher during the last year than for the last thirty years, higher even than in 1847, the year of the Irish famine, and that although the last year's crop in this country had been unprecedentedly large and the recent harvest had been considered to have been almost equal to an average. These were Cobden's arguments, and although many of his statements were of course

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called in question, there were too many signs that the effects which he prognosticated were already appearing. Happily, however, the war was not prolonged. Peace came, and not before a large proportion of the people, who had already begun to suffer, were ready to call out for it. Unpopular as the apostles of peace were at the time, their arguments had an after effect, and Cobden himself lived long enough to note that the war fever did not recur when at a later period there were some symptoms of its reappearance.

That there had been great scarcity of food was evident enough, but the advocates of the war had attributed it to deficient harvests at home, and their assertions were not easily answered by an appeal to figures, because, although the supplies which we obtained from abroad were correctly known, there were no accurate returns of the agricultural produce grown in our own island. It was quite certain, however, that the complaints of the labouring classes were urgent, and they were emphasized by various attempts to make them the cause of public disturbance.

The real distress, for the most part occasioned by the depression of industry and the severe weather-which not only added to the sufferings of the poor but greatly interfered with outdoor labour, was not the only cause of violent demonstrations. There are always gangs of disorderly ruffians ready to take advantage of a period of want, to forestall public charity and act the part of starving or frozen-out workmen. In London many outrages were committed by vagabonds of this description. In Liverpool, however, depredations known as "the bread riots" became still more serious. A vast number of dock and river-side labourers were thrown out of employment, and it was estimated that 15,000 persons, with their families and all who were dependent on them, were reduced to great destitution. It was known that the provisions made by the poor-law out of the rates would be totally inadequate to meet the widely spread need, and large subscriptions were made for the relief of suffering families by distribution of food, coals, and clothing. Enforced idleness and continued want, how

ever, produced persistent complaint, and in most large towns a part of the population consists of people who live by casual labour alternating with parochial relief or with petty crime. There are usually enough of this class to make a very dangerous element if they throw in their lot with the actual criminalsand therefore in Liverpool, when a gang of desperadoes came forward to lead on the idle and the vicious who were also among the starving, social order was disregarded. While the really industrious and honest poor mostly held back, the undeserving were organized into gangs, who went through the streets demanding bread, money, and provisions, and when both were refused or withheld, breaking into bakers' shops and food stores, emptying them of all that they contained and wrecking the furniture in revenge, or even entering private houses of the humbler sort and terrifying the poor tenants by threats of violence unless safety were purchased by the immediate payment of a small sum of money. Many shopkeepers escaped the ruin of their premises by throwing out loaves, bacon, sugar, cheese, and other articles; while others could not prevent the seizure of their entire stocks either by bold ruffians who forced their way in, lads who entered and pilfered right and left, or abandoned women who accompanied the mob and encouraged depredation by their cheers and. laughter. The industrious poor took no part in these outrages, and eventually the police captured about sixty of the leaders, and the mobs dispersed. Unfortunately, the evil example of the Liverpool gangs was afterwards followed in the poverty-stricken neighbourhoods of London, and in Stepney, Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, and Bermondsey bread riots were organized under the direction of stalwart ruffians, those of the southern quarter being mostly Irish. They contrived to do a great deal of mischief for two or three days; but the police force of London, when its members were concentrated upon a disturbed district, proved to be too strong for them, and the mobs were soon dispersed, their leaders being promptly arrested and imprisoned.

At the same time it is necessary to observe

that amidst much distress efforts were not wanting to promote the well-being of the lower classes of the community; and while philanthropic endeavours were numerous and unremitting, attention was directed to the extension of education, not only for the "respectable" portion of the community, but among the neglected children of London and in the large manufacturing centres of the kingdom.

These efforts were greatly increased when the war was over, and the relief of distress went hand-in-hand with plans for establishing schools and providing means for regular instruction.

"The Ragged School movement," under the energetic direction of Lord Ashley (the Earl of Shaftesbury), had already become the most prominent, and in one sense the most important of these organizations; for it was designed to reach the very lowest class of the community, and to provide not only a degree of secular education but moral and religious training for the waifs and strays of the juvenile population. The very title, "ragged schools," had been adopted in order that there might be no mistake as to the class of children who were to be benefited; and happily there were found a number of devoted men and women who entered into the scheme with an enthusiasm which produced very remarkable results. Rooms were engaged in the lowest neighbourhoods; a regular society was established under the name of "The Ragged School Union;" and on Sundays as well as on week-days a multitude of destitute, ignorant, and often friendless boys and girls assembled in places to which they were attracted not only by many opportunities for instruction but by provisions for their physical wants. School treats in the shape of interesting lectures, illustrated by the magic lantern and preceded by substantial meals, were frequent attractions; various methods for relieving the little "Arabs” of the London streets were adopted; and eventually arrangements were made for finding employment for those who were old enough to become shoe-blacks, errand-boys, and streetsweepers. This beneficent system had begun to operate with happy effect before the time

sweeping brigades were afterwards formed; a class of boys who are now known as street orderlies, and employed in sweeping the roads. As numbers of these children were both houseless and destitute, fifteen refuges had been established, containing 538 inmates-boys or girls who had been wanderers, sleeping in the markets or under railway arches, and pilfering or begging to keep themselves from starvation. By one refuge, twenty-one boys (in one year) were saved from crime, and were started fairly in life; some entered the army, others the navy; others became servants, or obtained employment in city shops and warehouses. A boy, who, as early as 1848 went to Australia from one of the first refuges, sent £5 to the ragged school of which he had been a member, and in 1858, when a regular emigration scheme had been established, the matron took ten girls to Canada, placed them in service, returned and took twenty-five more. The clergy of all denominations took up the movement, for it was above and beyond sectarianism. The Rev. William Tyler of Mile End, a wellknown Congregationalist minister, and the Rev. Hugh Allen, incumbent of St. Jude's, Whitechapel, were at that time among the foremost in the good work in the midst of that part of London where the dense mass of misery and ignorance demanded hearty unremitting effort; and they were well supported by an army of earnest helpers, who gave their time, and many of them their money, to the

cause.

It may be said with truth that the Ragged School movement, then the supreme effort of "the Voluntary principle" in education, averted incalculable evils during the time that the people, or at all events the children of the people, were perishing for lack of knowledge, while a national scheme of instruction was prevented by the irreconcilable hostility of the various religious bodies; but it also rendered a national system of education eventually possible by showing that sectarian differences could be merged in the contest of a great work, and that even religious instruction could be imparted on a broad and recognized basis to children whose moral and intellectual needs, like their physical hunger, demanded bread

upon which all could feed. To them those doctrinal distinctions which were the causes of contention that had so long kept their souls hungry, were evidently inapplicable, and in relation to ragged schools the sects for the most part tacitly agreed to be unsectarian.

The Ragged School movement, as it was called, was not alone in the effort to provide the means of education and moral and religious instruction for poor and abandoned children. Other agencies were also at work, and it may very well be understood that earnest men of all shades of political opinion were deeply interested in their success. Mrs. Gladstone had long been associated with charitable efforts of a distinctly practical kind for the relief of distress and for the rescue and protection of friendless and homeless boys and girls; and Mr. Gladstone gave such institutions his aid, and was ready to advocate their claims when his onerous parliamentary duties permitted. It would take us beyond these limits to give a list, or a description, of the special objects of the large number of societies and organizations for relieving ignorance and distress which sprung up during the period. Numbers of them still exist, and successfully carry on largely increased work. We may, however, refer to one local effort to advance education which was afterwards destined to secure good results, and to lead to wider and more organized systems of instruction. The district lying between Saint Luke's and Barbican, including Whitecross Street, Golden Lane, and Chequer Alley, was, and is still in many respects, one of the worst and most povertystricken in London-a congeries of lanes, courts, and blind alleys, a puzzle map of crime and destitution, consisting of a large number of foul and wretched tenements inhabited by a dense population. Some efforts had been previously made by a few good women belonging to the Wesleyan Methodists to improve the moral condition of the people of the neighbourhood by holding religious meetings and endeavouring to establish schools and missions; but in 1854 the incumbent of the parish (St. Thomas Charterhouse), the Rev. William Rogers, ascertaining that there were in his district 2386 children of the lowest