in the year 1772:

'To paint the manners of the lower rank of the inhabitants of London
is to draw a most disagreeable caricature, since the blackest vices
and the most perpetual scenes of villainy and wickedness are
constantly to be met with there. The most thorough contempt for all
order, morality, and decency is almost universal among the poorer sort
of people, whose manners I cannot but regard as the worst in the whole
world. The open street for ever presents the spectator with the most
loathsome scenes of beastliness, cruelty, and all manner of vice. In a
word, if you would take a view of man in his debased state, go neither
to the savages nor the Hottentots; they are decent, cleanly, and
elegant, compared with the poor people of London.'

This is very strongly put. If you will look at some of Hogarth's
pictures you will admit that the words are not too strong.

Union had long since been forbidden; union was called conspiracy;
conspiracy was punishable by imprisonment. If men cannot combine they
sink into their natural condition and become savages again. All these
evils fell upon our unfortunate working men as a natural result of
neglect first, and of enforced isolation. Union was forbidden. During
all these years every man worked for himself, stood by himself; there
was no association. Therefore, there followed savagery. There was no
education. Had there been either, association or rebellion must have
followed. The awakening of associated effort took place at the
beginning of the French Revolution. It was caused, or stimulated, by
that prodigious movement; and the first combinations of working men
were formed for political purposes. Since then, what have we seen?
Associations for political purposes formed, prohibited, persecuted,
formed again in spite of ancient laws. Associations victorious; we
have seen Trades Unions formed, prohibited, formed again, and now
flourishing, though not quite victorious. And the spirit of
association, I cannot but believe, grows stronger every day. In this
most glorious century--the noblest century for the advancement of
mankind that the world has ever seen, yet only the beginning of the
things that are to follow--we have gained an immense number of things:
the suffrage, vote by ballot, the Factory Acts, abolition of flogging,
the freedom of the press, the right of public meeting, the right of
combination, and a system of free education by which the national
character, the nationa