Considerably more than half
the members were not elected at all, but were recommended by patrons.
The average price of a seat in Parliament was 5000 pounds for a
so-called 'rotten borough.' Scotland returned forty-five members
and Cornwall forty-four members to Parliament! The reformers also
demanded the abolition of the 'taxes on knowledge,' by which was
meant the stamp duty of fourpence on every copy of a newspaper, a
duty of threepence on every pound of paper, and a heavy tax upon
advertisements. The new Poor Laws aroused bitter discontent. Instead
of receiving payment of money for relief of poverty, as had formerly
been the case, the poor and needy were now sent to the 'Union'
workhouse.
A series of bad harvests was the cause of great migrations to the
factory towns, and the already large ranks of the unemployed grew
greater day by day. The poverty and wretchedness of the working class
is painted vividly for us by Carlyle when he speaks of "half a million
handloom weavers, working 15 hours a day, in perpetual inability to
procure thereby enough of the coarsest food; Scotch farm-labourers,
who 'in districts the half of whose husbandry is that of cows, taste
no milk, can procure no milk' . . . the working-classes can no longer
go on without government, without being _actually_ guided and
governed."
Such was Victoria's England when she ascended the throne, a young
girl, nineteen years of age.
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