Let me show you the condition of England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At that time London was the most populous capital in Europe, yet it was dirty, ill built, without any sanitary provisions whatever. The deaths were one in 23 each year. Now in a much more crowded population they are not one in forty. Much of the country was then heath and swamp. Almost within sight of London there was a tract, twenty-five miles round, almost in a state of nature; there were but three houses upon it. In the rainy season the roads were almost impassable. Through gullies filled with mud, carriages were dragged by oxen. Between places of great importance the roads were little known, and a principal mode of transport was by pack horses, of which passengers took advantage by stowing themselves away between the packs. The usual charge for freight was 30 cents per ton a mile. After a while, what they were pleased to call flying coaches were established. They could move from thirty to fifty miles a day. Many persons thought the risk so great that it was tempting Providence to get into one of them. The mail bag was carried on horseback at five miles an hour. A penny post had been established in the city, but many long-headed men, who knew what they were saying, denounced it as a popish contrivance. Only a few years before, Parliament had resolved that all pictures in the royal collection which contained representations of Jesus or the Virgin Mary should be burned. Greek statues were handed over to Puritan stone masons to be made decent. Lewis Meggleton had given himself out as the last and the greatest of the prophets, having power to save or damn. He had also discovered that God was only six feet high and the sun four miles off. There were people in England as savage as our Indians. The women, half naked, would chant some wild measure, while the men would brandish their dirks and dance. There were thirty-four counties without a printer. Social discipline was wretched. The master flogged his apprentice, the pedagogue his scholar, the husband his wife; and I am ashamed to say that whipping has not been abolished in our schools. It is a relic of barbarism and should not be tolerated one moment. It is brutal, low and contemptible. The teacher that administers such punishment is no more to blame than the parents that allow it. Every gentleman and lady should use his or her influence to do away with this vile and infamous practice. In those days public punishments were all brutal. Men and women were put in the pillory and then pelted with brick-bats, rotten eggs and dead cats, by the rabble. The whipping-post was then an institution in England as it is now in the enlightened State of Delaware. Criminals were drawn and quartered; others were disemboweled and hung and their bodies suspended in chains to rot in the air. The houses of the people in the country were huts, thatched with straw. Anybody who could get fresh meat once a week was considered rich.