1802-1832 time, brought into the House of Commons. On March 23, 1832, it was passed, and the Lords had then once more to consider it. On April 14 they passed the second reading. On May 7, on the motion of Lord Lyndhurst, who had been Chancellor in Wellington's ministry, they adopted a substantial alteration in it. The ministers at once asked the king to create fifty new peers to carry the bill. The king, who was getting frightened at the turmoil in the country, refused, and ministers resigned. Wellington was ready to take office, giving his support to a less complete Reform Bill, but Peel refused to join him, and Lord Grey's Government was reinstated, receiving from the king a promise to create peers if necessary. On this Wellington, unwilling to see the House of Lords swamped by fresh creations, persuaded many of his friends to abstain from voting. The bill met with no further obstacles, and, on June 7, became an Act of Parliament by the Royal Assent. In its final shape the Reform Act absolutely disfranchised forty-one boroughs and took away one member from thirty others. Thereby, and by its alteration of the franchise, it accomplished a great transference of power, in favor of the middle classes in the towns. Though it did not establish a democracy, it took a long step in that direction. The advent of the middle classes to power was prepared by a series of material improvements by which they were especially benefited. The canals made in the beginning of the reign of George III. no longer sufficed to carry the increased traffic of the country. Attention was therefore paid to the improvement of the roads. Telford, a Scotchman, taught road-makers that it was better to go round a hill than to climb over it, and, beginning in 1802, he was employed for eighteen years in improving the communications in Scotland and Wales by making good roads and iron bridges. He and another Scotchman, Macadam, also improved the surface of the roads, which had hitherto been made of gravel or flint, thrown down at random. Telford ordered the large stones to be broken and mixed with fine gravel, and Macadam pursued the same course round Bristol. Through these improvements traveling became more easy, and coaches flew about the country at what was considered to be the wonderful rate of ten miles an hour. The first application of steam to locomotion was in vessels. The first steamboat in Great Britain, The Comet, the work of 1811-1830 Henry Bell, plied on the Clyde in 1812, though Fulton in America had made a steamboat in 1811.2 It was not till later that a steamengine was made to draw travelers and goods by land. Of many attempts, none succeeded till the matter was taken in hand by George Stephenson, the son of a poor collier in Northumberland. He had learned something about machinery in the colliery in which he worked as a boy, and when he grew up he saved money to pay for instruction in reading and writing. He began as an engineer by mending a pumping-engine, and at last attempted to construct a locomotive. His new engine, constructed in 1814, was not successful at first, and it made such a noise that it was popularly known as “Puffing Billy." In 1816 he improved it sufficiently to enable it to draw trucks of coal on tramlines from the colliery to the river. At last, in 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened for the conveyance of passengers as well as goods, and both the line and the locomotive used on it were constructed under Stephenson's management. The new engine was able to draw ninety tons at the rate of eight miles an hour. In 1825 it was resolved to make a railway between Liverpool and Manchester, and Stephenson was employed as the engineer. In 1829, when it was finished, the proprietors were frightened at the idea of employing steam-engines upon it, till Stephenson persuaded them to offer a prize for an improved locomotive. Four inventors, of whom Stephenson was one, sent in engines to compete. Stephenson's, which was called the Rocket, was the only one which would move, and finally ran at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour. After that there was no doubt that Stephenson's was the only engine likely to be of any use. Unfortunately the experiment cost the life of a statesman. Huskisson, who had quarreled with Wellington in 1828, seeing him in a railway carriage, stepped up to shake hands, when he was himself run over by the Rocket and killed. 2 It is possible that Fulton and Bell had conceived the idea together, as they had been co-workers. B Chapter LVII THE REFORMERS IN POWER. 1832-1841 LEADING DATES WILLIAM IV., A.D. 1830-1837-VICTORIA, 1837-1901-ABOLITION OF EFORE the end of 1832 a Parliament met, in which the House of Commons was elected by the new constituencies created by the Reform Act. The Ministerialists were in an enormous majority, all of them anxious to make use of their victory by the introduction of practical reforms. There was, however, considerable difference among them as to the reforms desirable, the Radicals wishing to go much farther than the Whigs. To conceal, as far as possible, this difference, a new name—that of Liberals-was borrowed from continental politicians, to cover the whole party. Their opponents, finding the name of Tories unpopular, began to call themselves Conservatives. One of the first difficulties which the Government had to face was that of Irish tithes. In 1831 and 1832 the payment of tithes was often refused, and the collectors were sometimes murdered. General outrages also increased. The Government was divided as to the proper measures to be adopted. The Chief Secretarythe minister specially entrusted with Irish affairs—was Stanley, a man of great abilities and a fiery temper, who wished to accompany proposals of redress by strong measures for the coercion of those by whom the law was resisted. His policy was described as a quick alternation of kicks and kindness." On the other hand, O'Connell had begun to denounce the Union between Ireland and Great Britain and to ask for its repeal. In 1833 Stanley brought in a bill for the trial of offenders in disturbed districts by courtsmartial. As soon as this had been passed Althorp brought in another bill to reduce the number of Irish bishops. 66 1833-1834 Stanley had made so many enemies in Ireland that it was thought advisable to remove him from his post. He became Colonial Secretary, and was at once confronted with the question of the abolition of slavery in British colonies. For some years Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and Zachary Macaulay (the father of Macaulay the historian) had been pleading the cause of the slave. In the West Indies slaves were often subjected to brutal cruelty. When Stanley came into office, new as he was to the details of the subject, he mastered them in three weeks, and carried a bill for the complete abolition of slavery, though leaving the former slaves apprentices to their late masters for twelve years. The purchasemoney given by Great Britain to the slave-owners was 20,000,000. The apprenticeship system was found unsatisfactory and was soon done away with. The abolition of negro slavery was accompanied by an effort to lighten the sorrows of factory children who were kept at work in unwholesome air often for thirteen hours a day. Lord Ashley, who afterwards became Earl of Shaftesbury, took up their cause. and carried a bill limiting the hours of labor for children under thirteen years to eight hours a day, and for children between thirteen and eighteen to twelve hours a day, though he would himself have preferred a stronger measure. This law was the beginning of a factory legislation which has done much to make England peaceable and contented. The session of 1834 was occupied with a measure of a different kind. The Poor Law, as it existed, was a direct encouragement to thriftlessness. Relief was given to the poor at random, even when they were earning wages, so that employers of labor preferred to be served by paupers, because part of the wages would then be paid out of the rates. The more children a poor man had the more he received from the rates, and in this and in other ways laborers were taught that they would be better off by being dependent on the parish than by striving to make their own way in the world. The consequent increase of the rates had become unbearable to those who had to pay them; in one parish, for instance, rates which had been less than 11l, in 1801 had risen to 3671. in 1832. By the new Poor Law, passed in 1834, workhouses were built and no person was to receive relief who did not consent to live in one of them. The object of this rule was that no one might claim to be supported by others who was capable of support 1830-1834 ing himself, and residence in the workhouse, where work would be The ministry had by this time lost much of its popularity. ! |