aspect of the new plague, the cleansing and whitewashing,the gifts of clothing and food; and the impression was made on all thoughtful minds, that improved knowledge and care on the subject of health were the cause of our comparative impunity under the visitation of this plague, and that a still improved knowledge and care were the requisites to a complete impunity hereafter. Though our progress from that day to this has been slower than it ought to have been, the awakening of society in England to the duty of care of the public health must date from the visitation of the cholera in 1831-2.

the

The state of the rural districts was fearful at the time of the accession of the Grey Administration. Everybody knew about the rick-burning and machine-breaking; and the thoughtless and narrow-minded called for soldiery and police, stringent laws and severe punishments. More thoughtful persons, however, looked also at the condition of the agricultural interest generally, complaints of distress, renewed from year to year, the increase of pauperism and poor-rates, and the growth of crime, as well as of misery; and they saw that the evil was one which stringent laws and severe punishments could not cure, nor even reach. They saw that the real mischief lay in the antiquated and corrupted poor-law, which they knew to be what it was The poor-law. declared to be by a French commission sent over to inquire into its operation,-"the great political gangrene of England, which it was equally dangerous to meddle with and to let alone." Under this system, in its union with the corn-laws, the condition and prospects of the country were truly such as to make sagacious statesmen tremble. No previous Administration had understood the mischief in all its extent and its bearings; but the facts were, that, while rents were nominally very high, no landowner was sure of his income; that the farmers were subject to fluctuations in their receipts, which discouraged all prudence and self-education for their business; that land was badly tilled, or actually going out of cultivation; that the quality of labor was deteriorating incessantly, from the practice of paying wages more and more out of the rates; that the laborers were becoming more and more reckless and demoralized, as they came to form a huge pauper class; that the honest and independent of their order were drawn down faster and faster into pauperism; that the class of small shopkeepers were becoming, in increasing numbers, unable to pay rates, and compelled, instead, to apply for relief; that country parishes were exhibiting themselves, with less and less shame, as scenes of unprincipled jobbing and scandalous vice, where every one who could, thrust his hand into the public purse, where the honest and independent became the victims of the knavish and reckless, where the un

chaste might prosper while the chaste must starve, where the capitalists of the parish must sink under the coalition between the magistracy and the paupers, and where ruin impended over all. The amount of money expended for the relief of the poor in England and Wales had risen, in half a century, from under two millions to above seven millions per annum; and this vast expenditure went to increase, instead of to relieve, the pauperism of the country. Here was this enormous tax, becoming ruinous by annual increase, less production from the land, less industry among the laborers, more vice, more misery, a great race of illegitimate children growing up, riots by day, fires by night, the stout heart of England sinking, and likely to be soon broken; and all from the existence of a poor-law system for whose repeal or alteration there was no popular demand, while it was certain that every item of it would be clutched fast to the last mo ment by parties and persons the most difficult to deal with, from their lack of either enlightenment or public principle. Next to the reform question, the gravest which presented itself to the handling of the new Ministry was undoubtedly that of the poorlaw.

Swan-river settlement.

If it was proposed to lighten the pressure upon the poor-rate by the resource of emigration, the question was, How was it to be done? - where were the people to go? The true principles of colonization were on the eve of being announced, but they were not yet understood; and there was the story of the Swan-river settlement, new and disheartening, within every man's knowledge. The Swan-river settlement dates from 1829 as a British colony. The accounts given of the district on the western coast of New Holland by Captain Stirling, who became its first governor, caused the grandest expectations. And the fault of the failure did not lie in any deception about the natural advantages of the place. The fault was in ignorance of the first principles of colonization. Vast tracts of land were sold or granted to individuals. The colony was to be exempted, as a favor, from any importation of convicts. The settlers were to be allowed two hundred acres of land for every laboring man, woman, or child above ten years of age, that they should import into the colony; and forty acres of land were given, up to the end of 1830, for every amount of 37. imported into the settlement in any shape. Thus land superabounded in proportion to capital; and the capital brought in, though so scanty in proportion to the land, abounded in proportion to the labor. The richest of the colonists could obtain no laborers; and they sat down upon their lands, surrounded by their rotting goods, their useless tools, and the frames of houses which there were no hands to erect; without shelter, and certain soon to be without food, if more labor could

not be obtained. Instead of more, there was daily less, as the few laborers who were on the spot made use of their first exorbitant earnings to possess themselves of enough of the cheap land to make them their own masters. Now it appeared that the secret of the success of other settlements, pitied for their liability to convict immigration, was in their convict labor; and the Swanriver colonists petitioned the government at home to send them convicts to save them from destruction. Some of the settlers wandered away, as they could find opportunity, to other colonies, stript of every thing, or carrying the mere wrecks of their expensive outfit, and declaring of the famous Swan-river district," It is a country to break one's heart; " and people at home heard such tales of perplexity and disaster as shook the popular confidence in emigration as a resource, and might well make the government hesitate in regarding it as a remedy, in any degree, for the intolerable pressure upon the poor-rate.

Slavery.

And what was the state of older colonies? The moral sense of the nation must be met in regard to the abolition of slavery. From the time of the issue of the famous circular in Canning's day, from the time that the cause of the negro had been taken up by the powers at home, it was certain that a radical change must take place in the relation between the proprietors of men and their legal human property; and none who saw what a vast universe of morals lies above and beyond the range of the law could for a moment doubt what that change would be. But there were enough of men, as there are in every community, who see nothing above and beyond the existing law to make the process of change appear in anticipation very difficult and hazardous. Those interested in human proprietorship would perhaps no longer try to push Clarkson into the dock at Liverpool, or even dare to murder missionaries at such a distance as Demerara; but they had to be reminded that laws could be altered or abolished, and taught that eternal principles exist which compel the destruction of bad laws: and unwilling pupils like these are very slow at learning their lesson. This mighty work, of the abolition of slavery, lay clear before the eyes of the ministers, needing to be done, and soon. Another colony in the west Canada was in an unsatisfactory state; but the call for reform there appeared to be less pressing than it really was, and no adequate attention was given to it for yet a few years. As for our great Indian dependencies, there was no option about attending to them and their needs, for the company's charter was about to expire; but it was a question of mighty importance to future ages, as well as of vital consequence to many millions of living men, what the terms of the great East-India proprietorship or administra

Canada.

India.

tion should be from this time forward: whether the new doctrine of commercial freedom should spread to the nations of the East, by our practice of it there; or whether any of the time-hallowed monopolies of the most majestic of merchant companies should be contended for against the rising popular will.

Nearer home, there was that difficulty, without limit as to depth and extent, the state of Ireland. The form in which

Irish Church.

Tithes.

the spirit of outrage now showed itself was opposition to the Church. It had become impossible to collect tithe in Ireland; and men saw that to collect tithe in Ireland would never be possible again. Here was the insulted Church to be vindicated, for there was as yet no debate whether to maintain it, – and, at all events, the starving Irish clergy to be succored; many of whom had pawned or sold their furniture and clothes, and were working like laborers to raise potatoes to feed their children, or were thankful for the gift of a meal of porridge for their families from a neighbor. In England, too, in places where the clergymen were strict about their dues, an imitation of Irish methods of dealing with tithe-collectors began to be heard of; and the affair was becoming urgent. Chancery reform, and many improvements in our judicial system besides, were needed and demanded. The severity of our Law reform. criminal law had been for many years condemned, and one relaxation after another had been procured; but much more remained to be done than had yet been effected. The infliction of punishment was still perniciously uncertain, from the law ordaining severer penalties than the tribunals chose to inflict; and a complete revision of the criminal law, in order to bring it into harmony with the spirit of a new age, was a great work pressing to be done. There was another noble task new, beneficent, but not on that account the less urgently necessary for which the nation looked confidently to the new Administration, and especially to the Henry Brougham who was so deeply pledged to the cause; the work of preparing a national system of education lay before the new rulers. The struggle and success of the people in the reform question was a plea for it; the growing evils of the poor-law system were a plea for it; the hope of the operative classes, and the despair of the rick-burners and the machine-breakers, were pleas for it. But these pleas, and all others, were in vain. It was not that Henry Brougham, during his four years of power, made efforts which were defeated, as efforts on behalf of education have been since, by sectarian or other differences: it was not here that the disappointment lay; but in Henry Brougham never approaching the subject at all, during his four years of power. This affair lay before the new Administration, when they came

Education.

into office, with the others just enumerated; and it was the greatest of them all. It alone was left untouched, and must be omitted in the narrative of what was done between 1830 and 1834.

Banks.

There was, besides, the currency question, sure to turn up, under all administrations, with every vicissitude of the national fortunes; and now more sure than usual from the approaching expiration of the bank charter. There was the usual eagerness everywhere for the reduction of taxation; and more than the usual expectation, from the confidence felt that a reforming Ministry would deal freely with sinecure offices and pensions which a Tory government could not be expected to touch.

The opportunity must be taken, while the spirit of reform pervaded the nation, and the enlightened will of the middle classes was in its completest union and vigor, to reform Municipal the municipal institutions of the country. A liberal reform. Cabinet, anxious to raise the national mind and character by an extension of self-government, could not but know that it was as desirable to purify and enlarge municipal administration and powers as to amend the parliamentary representation. And this work, which would have been necessary if they had had nothing else to do than to carry parliamentary and corporation reform, was made yet more indispensable in their eyes by the necessity which they foresaw of introducing a principle and practice of centralization, new to administration in England, and requiring not only a careful watch over itself, but a set-off of enlarged local powers in some other direction. They foresaw that the perplexing and overwhelming task of poor-law reform could be accomplished no otherwise than by taking out of the hands of local administrators the powers which had been so long and so grossly abused, that the wisest and best individuals could not be the reformers of the system in their own neighborhoods, but only its victims. These powers must now be confided to some central body, and by them locally administered. Whether this necessity was a good or an evil one might be and was debated by the two orders of politicians by whom the great question of centralization and local administration is for ever debated; but while some insisted that business was much better done for the people when done by welltrained officials, sending out their functionaries from a central office, and others contended that no such advantages could compensate for the loss to the people of the habit and the privilege of managing their local affairs for themselves, the new government felt that a municipal reform, which should enlarge the local powers and public interests of the people, would be the best safeguard they could give against the possible evils of such cen