Perhaps the best way to realizing...the actual progress of the last half-century would be to fancy ourselves suddenly transferred to the year 1800, with all our habits, expectations, requirements, and standards of living formed upon the luxuries and appliances collected round us in 1840. In the first year of the century we should find our selves eating bread at ls. 101/2d. the quartern loaf, and those who could not afford this price driven to short commons, to entire abstinence, or to some miserable substitute. We should find ourselves grumbling at heavy taxes laid on nearly all the necessaries and luxuries of life -- even upon salt; blaspheming at the high price of coffee, tea, and sugar, which confined these articles, in any adequate abundance, to the rich and easy classes of society; paying fourfold for our linen shirts, threefold for our flannel petticoats, and above fivefold for our cotton handkerchiefs and stockings; receiving newspapers seldom...and some days after date; receiving our Edinburgh letters in London a week after they were written, and paying thirteen pence-halfpenny for them when delivered, exchanging the instantaneous telegraph for the slow and costly express by chaise and pair; travelling with soreness and fatigue by the "old heavy" [coach] at the rate of seven miles an hour, instead of by the Great Western [railway] at fifty; and relapsing from the blaze of light which gas now pours along our streets, into a perilous and uncomfortable darkness made visible by a few wretched oil lamps scattered at distant intervals. But these would by no means comprise the sum total, nor the worst part, of the descent into barbarism. We should find our criminal law in a state worthy of Draco; executions taking place by the dozen; the stealing of five shillings punishable and punished as severely as rape or murder; slavery and the slave trade flourishing in their palmiest atrocity. We should find the liberty of the subject at the lowest ebb; freedom of discussion and writing always in fear and frequently in jeopardy; religious rights trampled under foot; Catholics, slaves and not citizens; Dissenters still disabled and despised. Parliament was unreformed; public jobbing flagrant and shameless; gentlemen drank a bottle where they now drink a glass, and measured their capacity by their cups; and the temperance medal was a thing undreamed of. Finally, the people in those days were little thought of, where they are now the main topic of discourse and statesmanship; steamboats were unknown, and a voyage to America occupied eight weeks instead of ten days.
We have ample means of showing by indisputable facts that wealth has been diffused as well as increased during the period under review; that so far from "the rich having become richer and the poor poorer," as is so often and so inconsiderately asserted, the middle classes have advanced faster than the great, and the command over the comforts and luxuries of life, even among peasants and artisans, is far greater now than at any former period.... The truth is, that the relief to the population generally, and to the working classes especially, which has been given by the remission of taxation, has been something quite unprecedented.... If we except the excise on soap, it may be said that no tax now remains on a single one of the strict necessaries of life. If a poor man is content to live, as wise and great men have often thought it well to live, in health and comfort, but with strict frugality . . . he may escape taxation almost entirely. The whole tendency of our fiscal changes for the last twenty years has been to release the working classes from all financial burdens.... To this enumeration of our increased command over the comforts and essentials of life must be added one more item, not the least important in its influence. In 1800 the poor man paid from 6d. to a shilling for each letter he received; it now costs him only one penny.
In no one point is the half-century we have just closed more distinguished from its predecessors than in the share of PUBLIC ATTENTION AND SYMPATHY WHICH THE CONDITION OF THE POORER CLASSES HAS OBTAINED. Formerly the lower orders were regarded, even by the kindly disposed, simply as hewers of wood and drawers of water.... The idea of studying them, of raising them, of investigating into the operation of the causes which affected them for good or evil, had scarcely taken rise. There was kindness, there was charity, there was sympathy towards the poor as individuals, but not any interest in their condition as a class. We are far from considering the multiplication of charitable institutions as a... source of unalloyed good to the indigent and industrious of the community, but it at least shows the increase of sympathy towards them on the part of the rich.... In the metropolis alone the charitable institutions reach 491 in number, and have an annual income of 1,765,000. Of these 109 were established in the last, and no less than 294 in the present century.
But a far stronger proof of the general interest now taken in the working classes, is to be found in the various commissions that have of late years been issued to inquire into the state of the people in various occupations. Wherever there was a rumor of an abuse, a tyranny, or an injustice, a representation was made in Parliament, and an investigation immediately took place. We have a Factory Commission, a Children's Employment Commission, a Commission to inquire into the Condition of those employed in Mines and manufactures, and Commision to inquire into the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture. We have had Inspectors of Mines and Inspectors of Factories appointed.... The third point to which we wish to draw attention, is the marked improvement which has taken place in one generation in habits of temperance, especially among the upper circles. Within the memory of men still in middle life, excess in wine was the rule, not the exception; few left the dinner-table without having taken more than was good for them; many got drunk every day.... Now, intemperance is as disreputable as any other kind of low debauchery, and, except in Ireland and at the Universities, a drunken gentleman is one of the rarest sights in society....