National life and character.

  • Pearson, Charles H. (Charles Henry), 1830-1894.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National life and character. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    82/376 (page 70)
    CHAP. the population.1 Compare the increase of Sweden, with a population of the highest type, at once warlike and industrial, during a rather longer period, and it will seem very small indeed. Sweden with its old province Finland has increased at most fourfold; the Irish people at least fifteenfold.2 Lest it should be supposed that these are specu- lative calculations, or based upon casual instances, it may be pointed out that under present conditions of society, a class or a people which values comfort and position highly cannot possibly increase as rapidly as the class that contents itself with bare existence. The English aristocracy is a typical example of the way in which a close corporation dies out. Its members are almost always wealthy in the first instance, and their estates have been constantly added to by favour from the Crown,3 by something like the monopoly of the 1 By the highest estimate, MulhalFs, they were as 13-2 to 64 in 1672. In 1849 they were as 8-19 to 18-65. 2 It has been calculated, says Fryxell, that at the beginning of Charles XL's reign the population of Sweden and Fiuland of those times consisted of 1,775,000 persons.—Svea Rikes Historie, xviii. s. 155. Sweden and Finland—the latter enormously benefited by the neigh- bourhood of St. Petersburg—contained in 1880 a population of about 6,500,000. The emigration from these countries will not add more than half a million to this estimate. 3 It is generally supposed that William III.'s grants to Bentinck, Keppel, and the husband of Lady Elizabeth Villiers, are the last in- stances of royal gifts on a large scale to favourites. This, however, is not quite the case. Mme. de Walmoden had a peerage and money from George II. Lord Bute is supposed to have received at least £300,000, which the Princess of Wales had saved out of her large revenue (Walpole's Last Journals, i. p. 19), and Greville says of Lady Conyngham, whom George IV. admired : The wealth she has accumulated by savings and presents must be enormous (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 212). George III. wrote to Lord North in 1777: I must insist you will now state to me whether £12,000 or £15,000 will not set your affairs in order; if it will, nay, if £20,000 is necessary, I am resolved you shall have no other person concerned in freeing them but myself.—Letter 410, ed. Donne. But this is a very small part of what the North family got from royal favour. Compare George III.'s letter of December 12, 1778: