Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays

We talk of our hardy forefathers; and rightly. But they were hardy, just as the savage is usually hardy, because none but the hardy lived. They may have been able to say of themselves--as they do in a State paper of 1515, now well known through the pages of Mr. Froude: "What comyn folk of all the world may compare with the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity?