Commons had 558 members, 354 of whom, according to legal form, were returned by "less than 15,000 electors, but actually on the nomination or recommendation of the Government, and 197 private patrons, including many peers." It is thus evident that the younger Pitt's declaration had its foundation in fact: "This House is not the representative of the people of Great Britain; it is the representative of nominal boroughs, of ruined and exterminated towns, of noble families, of wealthy individuals, of foreign potentates." As early as 1653, Oliver Cromwell attempted Parliamentary reform by increasing the county members, giving representation to Leeds, Halifax, and Manchester, and striking off small boroughs from the list. This laudable reform was, however, cancelled when the Stuarts were restored to the throne. From the middle of the eighteenth century Parliamentary reform was again pressed forward, but without avail. The terrors of the French Revolution frightened the governing classes in England, and it was not until Napoleon was safe at St. Helena that reform measures were seriously taken up. In connection with the agitation for Parliamentary reform, notice should be taken of William Cobbett, who has been called the Father of English Radicalism. In 1816, his Weekly Political Register was reduced from Is. d. to 2d., and by this means cheap political information, good and bad, was supplied to permeate the consciousness of the people with the new principles of reform. Orators, poets, writers, and pamphleteers were busy arousing the working classes, and Hampden clubs were founded all over the country for the purpose of pressing forward the demands for the suffrage. Under the leadership of Lord John Russell, such reform was again

and again forced upon the House, until in 1832, after two defeats, and in spite of the bitter opposition of the House of Lords, the Clergy, the Universities, Army and Navy, and the Inns of Courts, the famous Reform Bill became law, and the tide set in towards Democracy. The conflict was not waged in Parliament alone, however, for all over the country were groups of men determined not to abate their activities until the walls of political privilege were battered down. When the second Bill was rejected by the House of Lords, rioting at once began in the large towns where the news had been anxiously awaited. The third Bill was finally passed by the House of Lords, after threats from the Prime Minister, and warnings from the king.

The enfranchisement of the middle classes in 1832 opened the castle of the privileged to the assaults of the disinherited, and Political History since that time centres about the struggles for enfranchisement of the masses. It is, however, well to bear in mind continually the significant words of Sidney Webb: "None of these enfranchised classes has ever sincerely desired to admit new voters to share the privileges, and submerge the power which it had won; but each political party in turn has been driven to 'shoot Niagara,' in order to compete with its opponents." By the Act of 1832, 143 seats were taken from "rotten" and small boroughs, and distributed among the new centres of population.

In 1867, Radical agitation and rioting forced the Tory Government to extend the electoral franchise in boroughs to householders and certain lodgers, and to reduce the county occupation franchise. In 1878, the tenement Occupier was enfranchised. In 1885, the agricultural labourer became a "sovereign voter." The decentralis

ing local government acts of 1888-1894 have opened the way for local autonomy. Thus within the past one hundred years the world has witnessed a silent revolution in English politics, which has resulted in the vesting of power in the hands of the people.

Sec. 6.—Industrial Democracy. Just as the political history of the past one hundred years has centred in political democracy, so the industrial history, on its economic and social side, has centred in Industrial Democracy. The labour movement has followed two paths, but both lead in the same direction. On one hand, the people are forcing industrial issues upon the national law-making body; and on the other, they are combining in voluntary associations all to the end that better conditions of life and labour may be secured. The first Parliament after the Reform of 1832 took up, among other things, the thread of factory legislation which had been dropped in the struggles over the franchise. In 1833-34, an important Act was passed which applied to all textile industries. The labour of children between the ages of nine and thirteen was limited to forty-eight hours, and that of young persons between thirteen and eighteen to sixty-nine hours per week. Night work for the young was forbidden, and ten hours a day made the limit for children in the silk mills. This Act met with a storm of opposition on the part of capitalists and mill owners, but it did not prevent the conviction of one out of every eleven of the mill owners for failure to observe its provisions. In 1842, the employment of women and children in underground work was forbidden. By the famous Ten Hours Act of 1847, and its supplement in 1850, the labour of women and children was restricted to ten hours a day. Since the

labour of women and children could not be shortened without closing the mills where they were employed, the Ten Hours Bill practically applied to men also, and ten hours a day thus became the general rule for factories. It is impossible to give here even a brief synopsis of the most important of the long list of factory and restrictive acts which have been passed within living memory.

After the breach was once made in the solid ranks of the individualists, and the desirability of collective action became apparent, act after act was passed curtailing the sphere of individual enterprise, and subjecting private gain to the welfare of society at large. The problems of municipalisation and nationalisation are now on, and the tendency is obviously toward public control of the means of life. The battle has been long and hard, and even now only the first redoubts are in possession of the people. The power is theirs, however, but they will progress only so far as their intelligence and character will permit. The future is in the hands of the people, and, as Mrs. Besant says: "Humanity will not break down. The faith which is built on it is faith founded on a rock. Under healthier and happier conditions, humanity will rise to heights undreamed of now; and the most exquisite Utopias, as sung by the poet and idealist, shall, to our children, seem but dim and broken lights compared with their perfect day. All that we need are courage, prudence, and faith-faith, above all, which dares to believe that justice and love are not impossible, and that more than the best that man can dream of shall one day be realised by men."

Sec. 7.-Mutual Aid. Along with the struggle for the factory acts there was developing among the workers a sense of the power and desirability of unity. The

Political Economists who regarded society as composed of a group of independent and warring units did not long occupy the fortress of knowledge unassailed. Owen, Carlyle, Maurice, Kingsley, Ruskin-the humanitariansimpeached in eloquent, if not always logical, English the old assumptions. The position of the assailants is summed up in Kingsley's pungent words: "The man who tells us that we ought to investigate Nature simply to sit still patiently under her, and let her freeze, and ruin, and starve, and stink us to death, is a goose, whether he calls himself a chemist or a political economist." Though it was some time before the idea of corporate humanity determining its own mode of life found expression in the works of the learned, the people instinctively sought protection in mutual aid, and on every hand there sprang up organisations having for their purposes the amelioration of the conditions of their members.

Sec. 8.—Trade Unionism. As has been pointed out, in the eighteenth century there were no well-defined classes of employers and employed. The skilled and industrious artisan, by reason of the small capital required in manufacture, could rise in time to the position of a master workman. When the Industrial Revolution made capital and machinery relatively more important than labour, there was developed a large class of workers doomed by necessity to remain employés all their lives. The medieval guild regulations were without avail, and in the chaos of the beginning of the new order there were no generally recognised principles of organisation. The workers were not only compelled to accept the bondage, with its shocking conditions as to hours and wages, but they were also forbidden to combine for