years ago, all the wealth of a great
lord like Ormond, or of a merchant prince like Clayton, could not have
purchased. Some frightful diseases have been extirpated by science;
and some have been banished by police. The term of human life has been
lengthened over the whole kingdom, and especially in the towns. The year
1685 was not accounted sickly; yet in the year 1685 more than one in
twenty-three of the inhabitants of the capital died. [203] At present
only one inhabitant of the capital in forty dies annually. The
difference in salubrity between the London of the nineteenth century
and the London of the seventeenth century is very far greater than the
difference between London in an ordinary year and London in a year of
cholera.

Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society, and
especially the lower orders, have derived from the mollifying influence
of civilisation on the national character. The groundwork of that
character has indeed been the same through many generations, in the
sense in which the groundwork of the character of an individual may be
said to be the same when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when
he is a refined and accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the
public mind of England has softened while it has ripened, and that we
have, in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a kinder
people. There is scarcely a page of the history or lighter literature
of the seventeenth century which does not contain some proof that our
ancestors were less humane than their posterity. The discipline of
workshops, of schools, of private families, though not more efficient
than at present, was infinitely harsher. Masters, well born and bred,
were in the habit of beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of
imparting knowledge but by beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent
station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability of
hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs were
disposed to murmur because Stafford was suffered to die without seeing
his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russell
as his coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. [204] As little mercy was shown by the populace to sufferers of
a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well
if he escaped with life from the shower of brickbats and paving stones.
[205] If he was tied to the cart's tail,