[15]
ing class in an exhaustive manner. There was in fact too much ground for Disraeli's statement that England at that time consisted of two nations, the rich and the poor. The poor were still largely illiterate, and so inarticulate; and the comparative absence of the large half-educated class which now dominates all public discussion made the cultivated gentry a class apart. Their own standard of culture was higher than that of the leisured class to-day; but they took little interest in the lives of the poor, until they were forced to do so. We however who have witnessed the succession of economic crises which attend and follow a great war ought not to forget the appalling difficulties with which the government was confronted. In 1795 there was actual famine, which was met by the famous system of doles out of the rates, in augmentation of wages, a most mischievous bit of legislation, like the similar expedients of the last three years. It had the double effect of pauperising the rural labourer and of putting an artificial premium on large families—the children
