TWO:Such was the state of public feeling that preceded the dissolution of Parliament. This event was the signal for the wildest exultation and triumph among the people. There was a general illumination in London, sanctioned by the Lord Mayor. In Edinburgh and other cities where the civic authorities did not order it, the Reform Clubs took upon themselves to guide the people in their public rejoicings. In many places the populace broke the windows of those who refused to illuminate; and in some cases those who did comply had their windows smashed, if suspected of Tory principles. In Scotland the mobs are said to have been peculiarly violent. Sir Archibald Alison states that the windows of his brother, Professor Alison, whose life had been devoted to the relief of the poor, though illuminated, "were utterly smashed in five minutes, as were those of above a thousand others of the most respectable citizens." The Lord Provost of Edinburgh was seized by the mob on the day of the election, who tried to throw him over the North Bridge, a height of ninety feeta crime for which the ringleaders were afterwards convicted and punished by the judiciary court. The military were called out, but withdrawn at the request of Lord Advocate Jeffrey. At Ayr, he says, "the Conservative voters had to take refuge in the Town Hall, from which they were escorted by a body of brave Whigs, who, much to their honour, had them conveyed to a steamboat." "No person anywhere in Scotland could give his vote for the Conservative candidate." At Lanark a dreadful riot occurred, and the Conservative candidate was seriously wounded in the church where the election was going forward. At Dumbarton the Tory candidate, Lord William Graham, only escaped death by being concealed in a garret, where he lay hidden the whole day. At Jedburgh a band of ruffians hooted the dying Sir Walter Scott. "I care for you no more," said he, "than for the hissing of geese." Sir Walter, in his diary, says:"The mob were exceedingly vociferous and brutal, as they usually are now-a-days. The population gathered in formidable numbersa thousand from Hawicksad blackguards. I left the burgh in the midst of abuse and gentle hints[335] of 'burke Sir Walter!'" In London the windows in the houses of the leading Anti-Reformers were all broken. The Duke of Wellington was not spared in this raid against the opponents of popular rights. The windows of Apsley House were smashed with volleys of stones. It happened, unfortunately, that the duchess lay dead within at the time. She had expired just as the booming of the guns in St. James's Park announced the approach of the king to dissolve Parliament. The crowd knew nothing of this. The Duke, however, was determined that he would not suffer an outrage like this another time. He had iron shutters put up, so as to guard every window which was liable to be assailed, either from Piccadilly or Hyde Park; and to the day of his death they remained.But we come now to a new phase in the Poor-Law system, rather a complete revolution, by which the flood-gates of pauperism were opened, and all those barriers that had restrained the increase of population were swept away. The old system had been somewhat relaxed in 1782 by Mr. Gilbert's Act, which, by incorporating parishes into unions, prevented grasping landlords and tenants from feeling that intense interest in the extinction of population and pauperism which they did when the sphere was limited to a single parish. But in the year 1795 the price of corn rising from 54s. to 74s., and wages continuing stationary, the distress of the poor was very great and many of the able-bodied were obliged to become claimants for parish relief. But instead of meeting this emergency by temporary expedients and extra grants suited to the occasion, the magistrates of Berks and some other southern counties issued tables showing the wages which they affirmed every labouring man ought to receive, not according to the value of his labour to his employer, but according to the variations in the number of his family and the price of bread; and they accompanied these tables with an order directing the parish officers to make up the deficit to the labourer, in the event of the wages paid him by his employer falling short of the tabulated allowance. This was the small beginning of a gigantic evil. The practice originating in a passing emergency grew into a custom, and ultimately assumed the force of an established right, which prevailed almost universally, and was productive of an amount of evil beyond anything that could have been conceived possible. The allowance scales issued from time to time were framed on the principle that every labourer should have a gallon loaf of standard wheaten bread weekly for every member of his family, and one over. The effect of this was, that a man with six children, who got 9s. a week wages, required nine gallon loaves, or 13s. 6d. a week, so that he had a pension of 4s. 6d. over his wages. Another man with a wife and five children, so idle and disorderly that no one would employ him, was entitled to eight gallon loaves for their maintenance, so that he had 12s. a week to support him. The increase of allowance according to the number of children acted as a direct bounty upon early marriage.
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