to make them the guardians of their own property and pecuniary interests; to give to them the right of making a selection of qualified persons from whom the magistrates were to be chosen; in a word, to put an end to power without responsibility. The Municipal Reform Bill was in the House of Commons from the 5th of June to the 20th of July; the great battles were fought in Committee after the Bill had been read a second time on the 15th of June. The chief struggle was for the preservation of the existing rights, privileges, and property of freemen. The third reading of the Bill was passed without a division. The opposition to the Bill in the House of Lords was headed by lord Lyndhurst, whose pre-eminent abilities were called forth on this occasion in the most striking manner. It was determined to call in counsel to be heard on behalf of certain corporations, and sir Charles Wetherell addressed the House on the 30th and the 31st of July. His violent invectives were no doubt contributory to the adoption of certain damaging amendments; but they produced through the country an irritation against the obstructive powers of the House of Lords. When the amendments of the peers were sent back to the House of Commons, the quarrel between the two Houses became very serious. Lord John Russell and sir Robert Peel, much to their honour, took the part of moderators in this great dispute. There were free conferences between a Committee of the House of Commons and Managers on the part of the House of Lords. After the last conference, three days before the prorogation of Parliament, lord John Russell recommended that for the sake of peace the House should agree to the Bill as it then stood, reserving the right of introducing whatever improvements the working of it might hereafter show to be necessary. The Bill for Municipal Reform received the royal assent on the 9th of September.

The compromise upon this Bill had averted, in some degree, the apprehension of a perilous conflict between the two branches of the legislature. The question of Corporation Reform in Ireland was disposed of in the Session of 1836 with an absolute indifference to the opinions of the Commons. Just previous to the prorogation in that year Lord Lyndhurst, who had with infinite courage and ability directed the triumphant strategy of the Tory peers, in reviewing the business of the Session, taunted the government with the fact that, "In this House they are utterly powerless; they can effect nothing." Mr. Hume, in his review in the other House of the business of Parliament, asked whether it were possible that the Commons could allow the Lords any longer to continue their opposition to all mea. sures of real reform? Mr. Hume was not alone in the expression of his opinion. The experience of the Session of 1836 produced amongst moderate men a very unwilling conviction of the necessity for remodelling the Upper House. Amidst the rivalries, the jealousies, the political hatreds of the opposing parties of each House, several measures of real utility had struggled into life in these two Sessions. During the administration of sir Robert Peel he had submitted to a Committee of the House of Commons the details of a measure for facilitating the commutation of tithe in parishes in England and Wales. In the Session of 1836, lord John Russell introduced the government plan, which was founded upon the same principle as that of sir Robert Peel, of a money payment instead of a payment in kind,

A. D. 1836.

SOCIAL AMELIORATION.

871

but differing from it as establishing a compulsory instead of a mere voluntary commutation. The object of the measure which was finally passed was to assimilate tithes as much as possible to a rent-charge upon the land. The Tithe Commutation Act, with subsequent statutory improvements, has worked successfully under the management of three Commissioners. Another important measure of the Session of 1836 was the passing of the Bill for allowing Counsel to prisoners. The Bill was introduced to the House of Lords by lord Lyndhurst, who then made a most honourable declaration that his former opposition to the measure had been converted into a hearty approval of it. In the Session of 1835 an important Act was passed for effecting greater uniformity of practice in the government of prisons in England and Wales, and for appointing Inspectors of Prisons in Great Britain. This most salutary statute was founded upon Reports of a Select Committee of the House of Lords. In the Session of 1836, when the Inspectors appointed under the Act of 1835 had made their first Report, the management of prisons again came under the consideration of Parliament. On this occasion an earnest conviction of the horrors of the gaolsystem with regard to juvenile offenders was manifested in a manner which promised at no distant time the establishment of Reformatories. The Act for the Government of Prisons was not as yet extended to Scotland, except as regarded the appointment of Inspectors. From the early Reports of the first Inspector of the Scotch prisons, Mr. Frederic Hill, there is no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that they were absolutely worse than the worst in England. On the 12th of February, 1836, lord John Russell introduced a Bill for the General Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. At the same time he brought forward a Bill for amending the law regulating the Marriages of Dissenters, which regulation was connected with the establishment of a General Civil Registration. In this Session the government rendered a great benefit to journalism and the general commerce of literature, in the reduction of the stamp on newspapers and of the duty on paper.

At the close of the parliamentary session of 1836, it was lamented in the king's speech that Spain was an exception to the general tranquillity of Europe. Ferdinand the Seventh, who died in 1833, had left by his will his infant daughter Isabel as heir to his throne. The brother of Ferdinand, Don Carlos, immediately disputed the title of Isabel, maintaining that by the Salic law females were excluded from the sovereignty of Spain. The civil war which ensued lasted till 1840. Under the treaty of Quadruple Alliance, whose object was the restoration of internal peace in Spain, Great Britain had afforded to the queen of that country the co-operation of a naval force. A British Legion, under the command of lieutenant-general sir De Lacy Evans, accomplished some brilliant exploits, and was generally successful against the Carlist troops; but these triumphs were bought with severe losses. The intervention of our government, and the whole scope of the Quadruple Treaty of 1834, were the objects of severe parliamentary

censure.

Belgium had quietly settled down into a Constitutional Monarchy. In 1831 the boundaries of the new kingdom were defined, and prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was chosen to reign over it, the peaceable possession of

his territory being guaranteed by the five great Powers to this most sagacious and discreet of sovereigns. In 1832, king Leopold married the eldest daughter of the king of the French. Louis Philippe's reign had not been exempted from solicitudes, during the six years that he had been king. The license of the press, and the occasional hostility of the Chambers, produced a counter-disposition on the part of the king to struggle against what he believed to be the evils of the representative system. From October, 1832, to September, 1836, there had been nine changes of ministry. During these changes, and the consequent excitement of parliamentary conflicts, there had been more than one conspiracy of which the great object was to assassinate the king. In 1836, an attempt to overthrow the government was made by a young man of twenty-five, who relied only upon his name, his abilities, and his daring. When, by the death in 1832 of the duke of Reichstadt, the son of the emperor Napoleon, Charles Louis Napoleon, the youngest son of Louis Bonaparte, became, according to a decree of 1804, heir to the throne, the natural course of his ambition was to assert his claim against one whom he regarded as a usurper. Early in the morning of the 30th of October, Louis Napoleon, having the sup port of a colonel who commanded a battalion at Strasbourg, presented himself at the barrack of a regiment of artillery, and was received with shouts of "Long live the Emperor." At another barrack the attempts of the prince upon the fidelity of the troops was repulsed; and he and his followers were arrested by the colonel and other officers of the forty-sixth regiment of infantry. The affair was over in a few hours without bloodshed. An imperfect telegraphic despatch received in Paris on the 31st, had thrown the Court and the ministers into the most painful suspense, before the real result of this rash enterprise was known. Louis Philippe and his Cabinet came to the resolution of not bringing prince Louis to trial, but of sending him to the United States of America, where he remained till October, 1837, when he encountered the risks of a return to Europe to be with his mother at her death. After that event he took up his abode in England, where he was generally regarded merely as a man of pleasure, not possessing any force of character that would justify a lofty ambition, although he had previously become known in Europe as a writer of diligent research and unquestionable ability.

On Tuesday the 20th of June, 1837, king William the Fourth expired, after several weeks' suffering, from an affection of the chest. The most eminent men of the State bore testimony in parliament to the public virtues of the late king, to his patriotism, his love of justice, his rare candour, his devotion to business, his amiable disposition, his entire freedom from all vindictive feelings. His abrupt dismissal of the ministry of Lord Melbourne was the only slip in the prudent course of the constitutional government of the sailor-king.

A.D. 1837-1842.

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.

873

CHAPTER LXIV.

FOUR years after the crown passed from William the Fourth to his niece the entire population of England, Wales, and Scotland, was estimated at nearly nineteen millions, of whom nearly eight millions, male and female, were distinctly classified by their occupations. The wonderful variety of stations and pursuits exhibited in this classification constitutes the distinctive character of modern British civilization. A very large proportion of the three millions of the people who were engaged in commerce, trade, and manufacture were necessarily to be found in the cities and towns. Since the commencement of the Regency, the population of sixy-eight of the principal towns of England and Scotland had increased 100 per cent., the aggregate population having increased only 54 per cent. One of the most curious social problems at the period of the queen's accession was the apparent difficulty of feeding the population of London,-nearly two millions of human beings, collected together in places more or less densely peopled, comprised within a circle whose radius was four miles from St. Paul's. This difficulty vanishes under the self-regulating movements of the present social organization. The distribution of the food of London is accomplished more by the agency of shop-keepers than by the stall-sellers at markets. The costardmonger, who derived his name from the apple which he sold, had in 1837 almost wholly passed away from the busy streets into the suburbs. The orange-woman standing on the pavement with her basket had nearly ceased to traffic. The public places of refreshment were not essentially different from those of the beginning of the century as far as regarded the chop-house and the eating-house. But the institution of Clubs had materially contributed to the luxurious comforts of the higher classes, and two thousand Coffee-houses had sprung up in London, where the artizan could obtain his cup of tea or coffee for three half-pence or twopence and read the newspapers and periodical works. The increase in the means of communication had at this period largely increased the certainty of the supply of food, both as to its abun dance and the time occupied in its transit. But valuable to every class of the London population as was the consequent partial cheapening of some of the necessaries of life, the physical and moral condition of the great bulk of the people would have been little improved as long as the public health was utterly neglected. Three years before Victoria became our sovereign, attention was roused, in some degree, to this question by a distinguished architect, Mr. Sydney Smirke. The year after her Majesty's accession a laborious investigation into the health of the metropolis, instituted under the authority of the Poor Law Commissioners, made a startling revelation of the details of the mass of vice, misery, and disease, which existed in close contiguity with the most opulent parts of the great city. There was then no public provision in London, nor as far as we know in any of the provincial towns, for promoting cleanliness amongst the poor by the establishment of Public Baths and Washhouses. In the poorer districts of London, and in nearly every city and town of Great Britain, the

supplies of water were wholly inadequate to preserve the cleanliness and consequent health of the labouring population. The first step in this direction was made by a poor woman named Catherine Wilkinson, in 1832, when the cholera first appeared in England. Her plan was matured in Liverpool in 1846, in a large establishment, to the superintendence of which she and her husband were appointed. A public bath may now be procured in London for twopence. Equally injurious to health as an insufficient supply of pure water was the prevailing custom twenty years ago of burying the dead in towns. In 1832 an Act was passed for the formation of a cemetery at Kensal Green. The cemeteries of Norwood and Highgate were added some eight or ten years later, but all these were for the opulent. The parish graveyards still continued open in their constantly increasing abomination.

Many of the evils of the factory system, which had grown up in the rapid development of the powers of the steam-engine, had begun to be remedied by legislative interference. Independently of the unwholesome dwellings in which many of the factory operatives were compelled to abide, their health was better cared for, during their hours of labour, than in the miserable workshops in which too many artizans then earned their bread. The report of a Commission appointed in 1840 to inquire into the employment of the children of the poorer classes in mines and collieries, exhibited in some mining districts a state of things, with regard not only to children but to women, which could scarcely be paralleled by any of the barbarous practices which have contributed to make negro slavery so abhorrent to the feelings of the people of England. Two years later a Bill, brought in by lord Ashley, for restraining the employment of women and children in mines and collieries was passed, after considerable debate, in both Houses of Parliament. The greatest evil of the early employment of children of both sexes in agricultural labour was to be found in their removal from school before they had acquired the commonest rudiments of knowledge. The employment of women was injurious in their being withdrawn from the proper superintendence of their families. The total number of agricultural labourers in Great Britain in 1841 was a little above one million one hundred and thirty-eight thousand, of which number fifty-six thousand were females. Since 1811 the proportion of the agricultural to the commercial and miscellaneous classes of the people had been gradually diminishing. The amended Poor Law had been in operation for three years, when a Parliamentary Inquiry was instituted upon complaints of its administration. In 1837 the labourers, who in 1834 had manifested a lawless spirit of opposition to the new law, had become aware that its intention was to raise them to a better condition instead of grinding them down. Undoubtedly there was individual suffering in the transition from the allowance system to the stern refusal of aid to the able-bodied labourer, and the time was yet distant when what was wanting in the New Poor Law towards placing the agricultural labourer in his proper relation to the whole social system would be supplied by a feeling of brotherhood between the rich and the poor.

In 1836 a Commission was appointed to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient Constabulary Force in the counties of England.