universal suffrage and annual parliaments were advocated. These, and more violent projects, tending at times to riot and insurrection, had led to the adoption of stringent provisions for repressing sedition. Nevertheless, during the Regency and the reign of George IV., the question of Reform had been raised at intervals in Parliament, and the public desire for it continued to increase. This feeling had been strongly displayed at the elections for the new Parliament; and great was the indignation at finding from the King's speech, and the language held by the Duke of Wellington, that no Reform was to be looked for from the Government. Such was the ferment that the King was advised against going in state to dine at the Guildhall, as usual at the beginning of a reign, and Wellington and Peel resigned office a few days afterwards, when they were succeeded by a ministry under the leadership of Earl Grey. On the 1st March, 1831, Lord John Russell, on the part of the new Government, brought in a Reform Bill, which was so much more sweeping than had been expected that it was received by the Opposition with mingled amazement and scorn. The ministry, being defeated, prevailed on the King to dissolve the Parliament. A new House of Commons, elected to the cry of "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," sent the desired measure up to the Lords, by whom it was rejected. Incendiary fires, and riots at Derby, Nottingham, and Bristol, marked the autumn of 1831, whilst public excitement became general and intense. A third Reform Bill was brought in by the ministry, and passed by the Commons; and on finding both the Crown and the people against them, the Peers were at last induced to give up their opposition to the measure, which became law, June 7, 1832. Reform Bills were also passed for Scotland and Ireland. of 1832, fifty-six boroughs were disfranchised, and fortythree new ones, together with thirty county constituencies,

By the Act

were created; a 10. householder qualification being established in boroughs, and the county franchise extended to copyholders, leaseholders, and tenant occupiers of premises of certain values. The Reformed Parliament, the object of great hopes and greater fears, met January 29, 1833. Setting vigorously to work, it passed several important Acts; without however realizing the forebodings of the anti-Reform party, who had thought a revolution was at hand. It was about the beginning of this reign that the Tories took the name of Conservatives, as denoting that they sought to preserve the ancient institutions of the country. Their political opponents were already known by the name of Liberals. That of Radical had come up about 1818, being then applied to those who desired a radical reform of Parliament.

2. Abolition of Slavery. Although the slave-trade had been put down wherever English power reached, slavery still existed in the Colonies. In August, 1833, was passed a measure of which Englishmen are justly proud—the Act for the Abolition of Slavery, at the cost of twenty millions sterling in compensation to the slave-owners.

3. Death of King William.—The King died at Windsor Castle, June 20, 1837. By his wife Princess Adelaide of SaxeMeiningen, he had two daughters, who both died in infancy. He was succeeded on the throne of Great Britain and Ireland by her present Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, the only child of his brother Edward Duke of Kent. The succession to the throne of Hanover (which in 1815 had been constituted a kingdom) being limited to the male line, that country passed to Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, fifth son of George III., and thus became separated from Great Britain. Among the important Acts of this reign are those for the reform of the poor-laws and of municipal corporations. Alterations were also made in the constitution of the East India Company. The government of the British territories in India

remained in its hands, but it ceased altogether to be a commercial body.

4. The Houses of Parliament.-On the 16th October, 1834, the Houses of Parliament were accidentally burned down. Westminster Hall was happily saved from the destruction. In the next reign the Parliament houses were replaced by the present building, the work of Sir Charles Barry.

5. Railways. George Stephenson.—The autumn of 1830 is memorable for the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, on which passenger carriages were drawn by a locomotive steam-engine at the speed of a race-horse. Neither the road nor the engine were wholly new things; for wooden tramways had been used in collieries as early as the 17th century, while many of the improvers of the steam-engine had thought of turning it to locomotive purposes, and some had succeeded in so doing. But no one had made locomotives at once economical and efficient before George Stephenson, who by degrees greatly improved both engines and roads. Stephenson was a self-taught Northumbrian, who from an engine-fireman had risen to be engineer of a colliery near Killingworth, and who amongst his other inventions had devised a safety-lamp for the use of miners, upon the same principle as that constructed about the same time by the great chemist Sir Humphry Davy. Still, with all that Stephenson had yet done, the advantages of locomotives were doubted, so that many would have preferred to use horses on the new Liverpool and Manchester line. But steam-power carried the day, and Stephenson and his son Robert constructed the famous engine "Rocket." From that time dates the use of railways and railway engines, whose promoters had once been jeered at for thinking that a speed of twenty miles an hour might possibly be attained with safety, and that stage-coaches and post-chaises might be superseded.

CHAPTER XLIV.

VICTORIA,

Queen Victoria; the Prince Consort (1)—abandonment of the protective duties on corn (2)—the Chartists (3)—wars in China, India, and elsewhere; the Crimean War (4)—the Indian Mutiny; Chinese wars; the Abyssinian expedition (5)— Canada (6)—legislation; penny postage; newspapers; parliamentary reform; legislation for Ireland (7)—Arctic voyages; the Franklin expedition; inventions (8)—literature (9).

1. Victoria, 1837.—Although called to the throne in a time of political restlessness and discontent, Queen Victoria, then only eighteen years of age, was received by her subjects with warm loyalty. On the 10th February, 1840, her Majesty married her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The Prince, whose public and private conduct gained him the respect of the whole nation, died December 14th, 1861.

2. The Repeal of the Corn Laws.—The chief question of the time was the repeal of the Corn Laws, or laws laying heavy duties on the importation of foreign corn. Many upheld these restrictions, on the ground that home agriculture ought to be encouraged, or protected, by keeping up the price of corn, and that a country ought, as far as might be, to depend upon itself for its supply of food. On the other side, those who held Free-trade doctrines argued that the effect of the Corn Laws, so far as they were operative, was to set, for the benefit of the landowners, an artificial limit to the wealth and population of the kingdom in general. A number of zealous free-traders, in 1839, formed an association, the Anti-Corn-Law League, which employed itself in enlightening, by speech and writing, the public mind as to the ill effect

of protective laws. The League gradually made way; but it was not till 1846, when the failure of the potato-crop was threatening a fearful famine in Ireland, that its cause triumphed, the leader of the Conservatives, Sir Robert Peel, then prime minister, bringing in and carrying, to the dismay of many of his party, bills for abolishing, or reducing to a merely nominal amount, the duties on foreign corn, cattle, and other productions. This repeal of the corn duties, though carried in 1846, did not come into complete operation till 1849. The honour of the measure was attributed by Peel to Richard Cobden, the foremost of the free-trade politicians, whose doctrines—that every man and every nation should be free to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, without the laws interfering to favour some particular class of producers are now recognised and acted upon in Great Britain.

3. The Chartists. Side by side with the Corn-law struggle went the Chartist agitation. The Chartists were for the most part working men, who suffered from the distress then generally prevailing, and who looked to further reforms in the system of parliamentary representation for the means of mending their condition. Their name came from their "People's Charter," the document in which they set forth their demands-universal suffrage, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, the division of the country into equal electoral districts, the abolition of the property qualification of members, and payment for their services. After some rioting in 1839, the Chartists remained tolerably quiet until 1848, when, excited by the revolutions which took place that year in France and other parts of the Continent, they determined to make show of their strength. Mustering on the 10th April, on Kennington Common, they designed to march through London to the House of Commons, carrying a petition embodying their demands, which they