s could
deprive no one of personal liberty without sufficient cause, determined
by judicial tribunals.

And yet this splendid exterior was deceptive. The traveller saw only
the rich or favored or well-to-do classes; there were toiling and
suffering millions whom he did not see. Although the laws were made to
favor the agricultural interests, yet there was distress among
agricultural laborers; and the dearer the price of corn,--that is, the
worse the harvests,--the more the landlords were enriched, and the more
wretched were those who raised the crops. In times of scarcity, when
harvests were poor, the quartern loaf sold sometimes for two shillings,
when the laborer could earn on an average only six or seven shillings a
week. Think of a family compelled to live on seven shillings a week,
with what the wife and children could additionally earn! There was rent
to pay, and coals and clothing to buy, to say nothing of a proper and
varied food supply; yet all that the family could possibly earn would
not pay for bread alone. And the condition of the laboring classes in
the mines and the mills was still worse; for not half of them could get
work at all, even at a shilling a day. The disbanding of half a million
of soldiers, without any settled occupation, filled every village and
hamlet with vagrants and vagabonds demoralized by war. During the war
with France there had been a demand for every sort of manufactures; but
the peace cut off this demand, and the factories were either closed or
were running on half-time. Then there was the dreadful burden of
taxation, direct and indirect, to pay the interest of a national debt
swelled to the enormous amount of L800,000,000, and to meet the current
expenses of the government, which were excessive and frequently
unnecessary,--such as sinecures, pensions, and grants to the royal
family. This debt pressed upon all classes alike, and prevented the use
of all those luxuries which we now regard as necessities,--like sugar,
tea, coffee, and even meat. There were import duties, almost
prohibitory, on many articles which few could do without, and worst of
all, on corn and all cereals. Without these it was possible for the
laboring class to live, even when they earned only a shilling a day; but
when these were retained to swell the income of that upper class whose
glories and luxuries I have already mentioned, there was inevitable
starvation.

To any kind of popular sorrow and misery, howeve