Collections and RecollectionsRussell, George William Erskine
History
Collections and Recollections
Russell, George William Erskine
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
It is superfluous to multiply illustrations. Enough has been said to
show that the circumscription of aristocratic privilege and the
diffusion of material luxury did not precipitate the millennium. Social
Equalization was not synonymous with Social Amelioration. Some
improvement, indeed, in the tone and habit of society occurred at the
turn of the century; but it was little more than a beginning. I proceed
to trace its development, and to indicate its source.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] I have since been told that this happy saying was borrowed from Sir
Francis Doyle.
IX.
THE EVANGELICAL INFLUENCE.
Mr. Lecky justly remarks that "it is difficult to measure the change
which must have passed over the public mind since the days when the
lunatics in Bedlam were constantly spoken of as one of the sights of
London; when the maintenance of the African slave-trade was a foremost
object of English commercial policy; when men and even women were
publicly whipped through the streets when skulls lined the top of Temple
Bar and rotting corpses hung on gibbets along the Edgware Road; when
persons exposed in the pillory not unfrequently died through the
ill-usage of the mob; and when the procession every six weeks of
condemned criminals to Tyburn was one of the great festivals of London."
Difficult, indeed, it is to measure so great a change, and it is not
wholly easy to ascertain with precision its various and concurrent
causes, and to attribute to each its proper potency. But we shall
certainly not be wrong if, among those causes, we assign a prominent
place to the Evangelical revival of religion. It would be a mistake to
claim for the Evangelical movement the whole credit of our social reform
and philanthropic work. Even in the darkest times of spiritual torpor
and general profligacy England could show a creditable amount of
practical benevolence. The public charities of London were large and
excellent. The first Foundling Hospital was established in 1739; the
first Magdalen Hospital in 1769. In 1795 it was estimated that the
annual expenditure on charity-schools, asylums, hospitals, and similar
institutions in London was £750,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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