King's time, out of a population of five millions and a half, 600,000 were in receipt of alms, _i.e._, more than one in ten; and if their children under 16 years of age were included, their number would amount to 900,000, or one in six. Now, while the labourers' wages were then, as a rule, unequal to maintain them in the way they lived, we know that their scale of living was much below that which is common among their class to-day. The only thing which was much cheaper then than now was butcher meat, mutton being only 2d. a lb., and beef, 1¼d.; but half the population had meat only twice a week, and a fourth only once. The labourer lived chiefly on bread and beer, and bread was as dear as it is now. Potatoes had not come into general use. Butter and milk were cheaper than now, but were not used to the same extent. Fuel, light, and clothing were all much dearer, and salt was so much so as to form an appreciable element in the weekly bill. When so many of the staple necessaries of life were high in price, the labourer's wages naturally could not afford a meat diet. Nothing can furnish a more decisive proof of the rise in the real remuneration of the wage-labourer since the Revolution than the fact that the wages of that period were insufficient to maintain the lower standard of comfort prevalent then, without parochial aid, while the wages of the same classes to-day are generally able to maintain their higher standard of comfort without such supplementary assistance. Then the hours of labour were, on the whole, longer; the death rate in London was 1 in 27, in place of 1 in 40 now; and all those general advantages of advancing civilization, which are the heritage of all, were either absent or much inferior.