Description
This excerpt, first published as part of Volume 1 of Macaulay’s History of England in 1848, is from the edition of the entire work revised by the author and published by Porter & Coates in Philadelphia in 1876, and subsequently prepared for Wikisource by users Beeswaxcandle, Arnapha, LlywelynII, Coldspur, Mattisse and Adam sk~enwikisource. The section headers from the first edition have been added to improve legibility; spelling and punctuation have been corrected; and e-book hyperlinks to footnotes have been fixed. The text of this version is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
The cover illustration is a detail of the scan of the frontispiece of the 1939 Alexander Duckham & Co facsimile of John Ogilby’s 1675 Britannia, published by Dr. Chris Mullen. The frontispiece is an engraving of Macaulay by an illegible artist from volume 1 of George Otto Trevelyan’s 1876 Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, published in New York by Harper & Brothers and available on Wikipedia.
Current version: 1.1, 15/2/2021
Section headings:
- The Great Change in the State of England Since 1685 1
- The Population of England in 1685 4
- The Increase of Population, Greater in the North Than in the South 7
- The Revenue in 1685 10
- The Military System 13
- The Navy 23
- The Ordnance 32
- The Non-Effective Charge 33
- The Charge of Civil Government 34
- The Great Gains of Ministers and Courtiers 35
- The State of Agriculture 38
- The Mineral Wealth of the Country 44
- The Increase of Rent 47
- The Country Gentlemen 48
- The Clergy 54
- The Yeomanry 66
- The Growth of the Towns 67
- Bristol 67
- Norwich 69
- Other Country Towns 71
- Manchester 73
- Leeds 74
- Sheffield 75
- Birmingham 76
- Liverpool 77
- Watering-places: Cheltenham, Brighton, Buxton, Tunbridge Wells 78
- Bath 81
- London 83
- The City 85
- The Fashionable Part of the Capital 92
- The Lighting of London 99
- Whitefriars 100
- The Court 101
- Coffee Houses 105
- The Difficulty of Travelling 110
- The Badness of the Roads 111
- Stage Coaches 117
- Highwaymen 121
- Inns 124
- The Post Office 127
- Newspapers 129
- Newsletters 132
- The Observator 134
- A Scarcity of Books in Country Places 135
- Female Education 136
- The Literary Attainments of Gentlemen 138
- The Influence of French Literature 139
- The Immorality of the Polite Literature of England 142
- The State of Science in England 150
- The State of the Fine Arts 157
- The State of the Common People 160
- Agricultural Wages 161
- The Wages of Manufacturers 164
- The Labour of Children in Factories 166
- The Wages of Different Classes of Artisans 166
- The Number of Paupers 168
- The Benefits Derived by the Common People from the Progress of Civilization 170
- The Delusion Which Leads Men to Overrate the Happiness of Preceding Generations 174
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