n
must have been larger than the proportion which receives relief now. It
is good to speak on such questions with diffidence: but it has certainly
never yet been proved that pauperism was a less heavy burden or a less
serious social evil during the last quarter of the seventeenth century
than it is in our own time. [202]

In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of civilization has
diminished the physical comforts of a portion of the poorest class. It
has already been mentioned that, before the Revolution, many thousands
of square miles, now enclosed and cultivated, were marsh, forest, and
heath. Of this wild land much was, by law, common, and much of what was
not common by law was worth so little that the proprietors suffered it
to be common in fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were
tolerated to an extent now unknown. The peasant who dwelt there could,
at little or no charge, procure occasionally some palatable addition to
his hard fare, and provide himself with fuel for the winter. He kept a
flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich with apple blossoms.
He snared wild fowl on the fell which has long since been drained and
divided into corn-fields and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furze
bushes on the moor which is now a meadow bright with clover and renowned
for butter and cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase of
population necessarily deprived him of these privileges. But against
this disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be set off. Of the
blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring with them a large
proportion is common to all ranks, and would, if withdrawn, be missed
as painfully by the labourer as by the peer. The market-place which the
rustic can now reach with his cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixty
years ago, a day's journey from him. The street which now affords to
the artisan, during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and a
brilliantly lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so dark
after sunset that he would not have been able to see his hand, so ill
paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck, and so
ill watched that he would have been in imminent danger of being knocked
down and plundered of his small earnings. Every bricklayer who falls
from a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing who is run over by a
carriage, may now have his wounds dressed and his limbs set with a skill
such as, a hundred and sixty