It is an England of old inns and stagecoaches, where "manners and
roads were very rough"; where men were still cast into prison for
debt and lived and died there; where the execution of a criminal still
took place in public; where little children of tender years were
condemned to work in the depths of coal-pits, and amid the clang and
roar of machinery. It was a hard, cruel age. No longer did the people
look up to and reverence their monarch as their leader. England had
yet to pass through a long and bitter period of 'strife and stress,'
of war between rich and poor, of many and bewildering changes. The
introduction of coal, steam, and mechanism was rapidly changing the
character of the whole country. The revenue had grown from about
19,000,000 pounds in 1792 to 105,000,000 pounds in 1815, and there
seemed to be no limit to the national wealth and resources.
But these very changes which enriched some few were the cause of
misery and poverty to struggling thousands. Machinery had ruined the
spinning-wheel industry and reduced the price of cloth; the price
of corn had risen, and, after the close of the great war, other
nations were free once again to compete against our country in the
markets where we so long had possessed the monopoly of trade.
[Illustration: The Queen's first Council at Kensington Palace
Photo W.A. Mansell & Co.]
The period which followed the year 1815 was one of incessant struggle
for reform, and chiefly the reform of a Parliament which no
longer represented the people's wishes.
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