attracting the young and energetic thither. It used, men said, to be
no such easy matter to get there when a stage coach was four or five
days creeping 100 miles and fares were high; but in 1770 a country
fellow 100 miles from London jumped on a coach in the morning and for
8s. or 10s. got to town by night, 'and ten times the boasts are
sounded in the ears of country fools by those who have seen London to
induce them to quit their healthy clean fields for a region of dirt,
stink, and noise.' A prejudice might well have been entertained
against the metropolis at this time, for it literally devoured the
people of England, the deaths exceeding the births by 8,000 a year.
One of the causes that had hitherto kept people from London was the
dread of the small-pox, but that was now said to be removed by
inoculation. Among the troubles farmers had to contend with were the
audacious depredations caused by poachers, generally labourers, who
swarmed in many villages. They took the farmer's horses out of his
fields after they had done a hard day's work and rode them all night
to drive the game into their nets, blundering over the hedges,
sometimes staking the horses, riding over standing corn, or anything
that was cover for partridges, and when they had sold their ill-gotten
game spent the money openly at the nearest alehouse. Then they would
go back and work for the farmers they had robbed, drunk, asleep, or
idle the whole day. The subscription packs of foxhounds were also a
great nuisance, many of the followers being townsmen who bored through
hedges and smashed the gates and stiles, conduct not unknown to-day.
In spite of these drawbacks the long period of great abundance from
1715 to 1765 and the consequent cheapness of food with an increase of
wages was attended with a great improvement in the condition and habits
of the people. Adam Smith refers to 'the peculiarly happy circumstances
of the country'; Hallam described the reign of George II as 'the most
prosperous period that England has ever experienced'[476]; and it was
Young's opinion about 1770 that England was in a most rich and
flourishing situation, 'her agriculture is upon the whole good and
spirited and every day improving, her industrious poor are well fed,
clothed, and lodged at reasonable rates, the prices of all necessaries
being moderate, our population increasing, the price of labour
generally high.'[477] The great degree of luxury to which the country
had arri