Such was the bright side of the picture which a favored traveller would have seen at the close of the Napoleonic wars,—­on the whole, one of external prosperity and grandeur, compared with most Continental countries; an envied civilization, the boast of liberty, for there was no regal despotism.  The monarch could send no one to jail, or exile him, or cut off his head, except in accordance with law; and the laws could deprive no one of personal liberty without sufficient cause, determined by judicial tribunals.

And yet this splendid exterior was deceptive.  The traveller saw only the rich or favored or well-to-do classes; there were toiling and suffering millions whom he did not see.  Although the laws were made to favor the agricultural interests, yet there was distress among agricultural laborers; and the dearer the price of corn,—­that is, the worse the harvests,—­the more the landlords were enriched, and the more wretched were those who raised the crops.  In times of scarcity, when harvests were poor, the quartern loaf sold sometimes for two shillings, when the laborer could earn on an average only six or seven shillings a week.  Think of a family compelled to live on seven shillings a week, with what the wife and children could additionally earn!  There was rent to pay, and coals and clothing to buy, to say nothing of a proper and varied food supply; yet all that the family could possibly earn would not pay for bread alone.  And the condition of the laboring classes in the mines and the mills was still worse; for not half of them could get work at all, even at a shilling a day.  The disbanding of half a million of soldiers, without any settled occupation, filled every village and hamlet with vagrants and vagabonds demoralized by war.  During the war with France there had been a demand for every sort of manufactures; but the peace cut off this demand, and the factories were either closed or were running on half-time.  Then there was the dreadful burden of taxation, direct and indirect, to pay the interest of a national debt swelled to the enormous amount of L800,000,000, and to meet the current expenses of the government, which were excessive and frequently unnecessary,—­such as sinecures, pensions, and grants to the royal family.  This debt pressed upon all classes alike, and prevented the use of all those luxuries which we now regard as necessities,—­like sugar, tea, coffee, and even meat.  There were import duties, almost prohibitory, on many articles which few could do without, and worst of all, on corn and all cereals.  Without these it was possible for the laboring class to live, even when they earned only a shilling a day; but when these were retained to swell the income of that upper class whose glories and luxuries I have already mentioned, there was inevitable starvation.