rivate life,
would undoubtedly have made him an {62} eminent man. But the truth is
that the old feeling of blind unconditional homage to the sovereign was
dying out; it was dying of inanition and old age and natural decay.
Other and stronger forces in political thought were coming up to jostle
it aside, even before its death-hour, and to occupy its place. A king
was to be in England, for the future, a respected and honored chief
magistrate appointed for life and to hereditary office. This new
condition of things influenced the feelings and conduct of hundreds of
thousands of persons who were not themselves conscious of the change.
This was one great reason why George the First was so easily accepted
by the country. The king was in future to be a business king, and not
a king of sentiment and romance.

{63}

CHAPTER V.

WHAT THE KING CAME TO.

[Sidenote: 1714--Estimate of population]

The population of these islands at the close of the reign of Queen Anne
was probably not more than one-fifth of its present amount. It is not
easy to arrive at a precise knowledge with regard to the number of the
inhabitants of England at that time, because there was no census taken
until 1801. We have, therefore, to be content with calculations
founded on the number of houses that paid certain taxes, and on the
register of deaths. This is of course not a very exact way of getting
at the result, but it enables us to form a tolerably fair general
estimate. According to these calculations, then, the population of
England and Wales together was something like five millions and a half;
the population of Ireland at the same time appears to have been about
two millions; that of Scotland little more than one. But the
distribution of the population of these countries was very different
then from that of the present day. Now the great cities and towns form
the numerical strength of England and Scotland at least, but at that
time the agricultural districts had a much larger proportion of the
population than the towns could boast of. London was then considered a
vast and enormous city, but it was only a hamlet when compared with the
London which we know. Even then it absorbed more than one-tenth of the
whole population of England and Wales. At the beginning of the reign
of King George the First, London had a population of about seven
hundred thousand, and it is a fact worthy of notice, that rapidly as
the {64} population of E