suffrage. Even at the time of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne (1837-1901) there was great discontent among the people. "Wages were low, work scarce, and bread dear. In the cities thousands of half-fed creatures lived in squalid cellars; in the country the same class occupied wretched hovels hardly better than cellars. … A very large proportion of the children of the poorer classes were growing up in a state of barbarism. They knew practically little more of books or schools than the young Hottentots of South Africa."[1]
As to public offices, those were considered up to 1870 as the booty of the party which was successful in an election; and the motto of some politicians was, "Every man for himself and the National Treasury for us all." These scandalous proceedings ceased when positions in the civil service were to be obtained solely by competitive examinations.
In spite of her unquestionable wealth and her powerful position in the world England has still to solve a very delicate problem—the agricultural question, which is giving some concern. Thousands of acres of fertile soil are no longer under cultivation and the laborers thus left without employment are congregating more and more in the towns.[2] The consequences of the agricultural crisis were also felt in the British colonies of the West Indies; they have lost much of their former
- ↑ D. H. Montgomery, The Leading Facts of English History, pp. 392, 397.
- ↑ Many detractors, the principal among them being Spenser St. John, affect to see a new evidence of the incapacity of the Haitians to govern themselves in the fact that agriculture is not as nourishing as they think it should be; yet the resources of Haiti cannot be compared with those of England where agriculture is causing so much concern. Very few foreigners take the trouble of looking for the economic causes when there is question of the condition of Haiti. If agriculture is not prosperous there are many who pretend that it is the fault of the Haitians, and hasten to charge them with being a lazy and indolent race; and when, as in England, the people desert the country and show a tendency to congregate in the towns Spenser St. John will affirm in all seriousness that cannibalism and fetichism have driven them from the fields; he does not care to go into the matter and find out whether like causes may produce like effects in England as in Haiti.
