STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685 .

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in some districts which were fortunate enough to possess C | , I 'J P -large beds, and in the capital, which could easily be suppliedby water carriage. It seems reasonfble to believe that atleast one half of the quantity then extracted from the pitswas consumed in London. The consumption of Londonseemed to the writers of that age enormous, and was oftenmentioned by them as a proof of the greatness of the imperialcity. They scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmedthat two hundred and eighty thousand chaldrons, that is tosay, about three hundred and fifty thousand tons, were, inthe last year of the reign of Charles the Second, brought tothe Thames. At present near three millions and a half oftons are required yearly by the metropolis; and the wholeannual produce cannot, on the most moderate computation,be estimated at less than thirty millions of tons. *

While these great changes have been in progress, the rentof land has, as might be expected, been almost constantlyrising. In some districts it has multiplied more than tenfold.

In some it has not more than doubled. It has probably, onthe average, quadrupled.

Of the rent, a large proportion was" divided among thecountry gentlemen, a class of persons whose position andcharacter it is most important that we should clearly under-stand; for by their influence and by their passions the fateof the nation was, at several important conjunctures,determined.

We should be much mistaken if we pictured to ourselves J hccoun 'tile squires of the seventeenth century as men bearing a close tiemcn.resemblance to their descendants, the county members andchairmen of quarter sessions with whom we are familiar. The 'modern country gentleman generally receives a liberal educa-

* See Chamberlayne’s State of England, 1084, 1087; Anglic Metro-polis, 1091; M‘Culloch’s Statistical Account of the British Empire, PartJII. chap. ii. (edition of 1847). In 1845 the quantity of coal brought intoLondon appeared, by the parliamentary returns, to be 3,40u,000 tons.