considerable fall, for while in 1851 the gross income assessed was
£272,000,000, in 1879-80 it had only risen to £577,000,000.

Though the method of assessing companies as if they were single persons
renders it impossible to obtain accurate information in recent years as
to the number of persons enjoying incomes of various sizes, a comparison
made by Mr Mulhall of incomes in 1867 and 1895 indicates that, while the
lower middle-class is growing rapidly, the number of the rich is growing
still more rapidly. While incomes of £100 to £300 have grown by a little
more than 50 per cent., those from £300 to £1000 have nearly doubled,
those between £1000 and £5000 have more than doubled, and incomes over
£5000 have more than trebled.

But though such comparisons justify the conclusion that the upper grades
of skilled labour have made considerable advances, and that the lower
grades of regular unskilled labourers have to a less degree shared in
this advance, they do not warrant the optimist conclusion often drawn
from them, that poverty is a disease which left alone will cure itself,
and which, in point of fact, is curing itself rapidly. Before we consent
to accept the evidence of improvement in the average condition of the
labouring classes during the last half century as sufficient evidence to
justify this opinion we ought to pay regard to the following
considerations--

1. It should be remembered that a comparison between England of the
present day with England in the decade 1830-1840 is eminently favourable
to a theory of progress. The period from 1790 to 1840 was the most
miserable epoch in the history of the English working-classes. Much of
the gain must be rightly regarded rather as a recovery from sickness,
than as a growth in normal health. If the decade 1730-1740, for example,