STATE OF ENGLAND IN 16S5.

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had sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, and -which, in ™* p -the reign of James the First, had been a singularly miserableplace, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom athird were half starved and half naked beggars. It seemscertain from the parochial registers that the population didnot amount to four thousand at the end of the reign of Charlesthe Second. The effects of a species of toil singularly un-favourable to the health and vigour of the human frame wereat once discerned by every traveller. A large proportion ofthe people had distorted limbs. This is that Sheffield whichnow, with is dependencies, contains a hundred and twentythousand souls, and which sends forth its admirable knives,razors, and lancets to the farthest ends of the world. *

Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance jiirming-to send a member to Oliver’s Parliament. Yet the manu- 1,am-facturers of Birmingham were already a busy and thrivingrace. They boasted that their hardware was highly esteemed,not indeed as now, at Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara andTimbuctoo, but in London, and even as far off as Ireland.

They had acquired a less honourable renown as coiners ofbad money. In allusion to their spurious groats, the Toryparty had fixed on demagogues, who hypocritically affectedzeal against Popery, the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in1B85 the population, which is now little less than two hundredthousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birminghambuttons were just beginning to be known: of Birminghamguns nobody had yet heard; and the place whence, twogenerations later, the magnificent editions of Baskerville wentforth to astonish all the librarians of Europe, did not containa single regular shop where aBible or an alma rack could bebought. On market days a bookseller named Michael John-son, the father of the great Samuel Johnson, came over

* Hunter’s History of Hallamshire.

Macaulay, History. I.

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