of improvement were already evident. In 1815 the pillory was done away with for every offense except perjury, and twenty years later it was abolished for that offense as well. The flogging of women was declared illegal in 1817. Brougham did much to simplify procedure, while Peel, who prepared the way for a better enforcement of the laws by the establishment of the metropolitan police system in 1829, greatly improved the criminal code, and, before he left office, he had reduced the capital penalties to about a score, including murder, arson, highway robbery, house-breaking, cattlestealing, counterfeiting, and forgery. While he deserves much credit, his work would have been impossible but for a change in public opinion to which the persistent efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly largely contributed. All together, while the great epoch of reform came after 1832, not a little was done in the previous decade to break down old exclusive privileges, and to legislate with a view to promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

General Conditions. Traill, Social England, VI. S. Walpole, History of England, I, chs. I-III. Brodrick and Fotheringham, ch. XX.

Social and Industrial. J. Ashton, Social Life under the Regency (1890). Cambridge Modern History, X, ch. XXIII (bibliography 883-889). Cunningham, English Industry and Commerce. Porter, Progress of the Nation. Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages and Agriculture and Prices. Wm. Cobbett, Rural Rides (new ed., 1886) and Tour in the Northern Counties (1833). R. M. Garnier, History of the English Landed Gentry (1893) and Annals of the British Peasantry (1895). Hammond, The Town Labourer and The Village Labourer. Prothero, English Farming. Webb, Trades Unionism. Usher, Industrial History. H. R. Hodge, Economic Conditions, 1815– 1914 (1917).

Literature and Scholarship. Cambridge Modern History, X, chs. XXIIXXIV (bibliographies 879-882, 890-892). Moody and Lovett. Taine, III. Saintsbury, Nineteenth Century Literature (1896). O. Elton, A Survey of English Literature, 1780–1830 (2 vols., 1913). G. M. C. Brandes, Main

1 By successive Acts, passed at intervals during the next generation, capital penalties were steadily reduced, and, since 1861, the only offenses punishable by death are four, i.e. treason, murder, piracy with violence, and setting fire to arsenals and dock-yards. It is commonly said that the excessive death penalties furnished the most fruitful encouragement to crime, since juries shrank from convicting. As a matter of fact, the percentage of convictions was fairly high, though the utmost rigor of the law, in the case of first offenders, was usually evaded by a merciful disregard of the facts. For example, when a culprit had robbed a house of clearly more than 40s. he was found guilty of stealing 39s. 10d., and not let off, but sentenced to some lighter punishment, such as transportation.

Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature (Eng. tr. V, 1905). L. Stephen, Hours in a Library (3 vols., 1892). H. A. Beers, English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century (1899). E. Dowden, The French Revolution and English Literature (1897). W. J. Courthope, A History of English Poetry, (1905). W. V. Raleigh, The English Novel (1894). W. L. Davidson, Political Thought in England: the Utilitarians from Bentham to J. S. Mill (1915).

CHAPTER L

THE EPOCH OF REFORM. WILLIAM IV (1830-1837)

William IV. William, Duke of Clarence, the third son of George III, had nearly completed his sixty-fifth year when he came to the throne. While naturally kind-hearted, he was full of prejudices, liable to sudden fits of passion, and prone to make long rambling and absurd speeches on the most inappropriate occasions. At his accession, however, these peculiarities were not generally known, and he proved so good-natured, frank and simple that he was received with popular enthusiasm almost unheard of. In spite of his shortcomings and follies he had right instincts, and a rough common sense, which proved a great help to his Ministers in the first great crisis of his reign. The Causes of the Reform Movement. Catholic Emancipation had been carried in Parliament against the popular will, while parliamentary reform, which was now coming to be the burning issue, owed its passage to the demands of a majority of the English people. The revolution in public opinion which had recently begun to manifest itself was due to a combination of four causes. The first was the transference of the balance of wealth from the landed aristocracy to the great merchants and manufacturers. The second was the shifting of the centers of population from the south and east to the midlands and the north, which made the unequal distribution of representation between the two sections a crying grievance. The third was the fact that the horrors of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic aggression, and, indeed, of the domestic unrest which followed the Great War, were fading from the memory of Englishmen, while the recent course of events in Paris was such as to stimulate rather than to retard their ardor. The fourth, and perhaps the most significant cause of all, was the influence of the advanced thinkers and the zeal of the practical statesmen who labored to prepare the way during the long and discouraging years of reaction.

Jeremy Bentham and His Influence. Foremost in influence was the pioneer of the Utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), of whom it is perhaps not too much to say "progressive and practical reformers

throughout the world owe more . . . than to any other single man." When he was twenty years of age he adopted as his maxim "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and the means which he adopted for realizing his end was scientific legislation. Beginning as an advocate of moderate and gradual reform, the refusal of the statesmen in power to listen to him was responsible for turning him into a radical, though his conversion was somewhat delayed by his fear of the French Revolution. His Catechism of Parliamentary Reform, in which he outlined his political views, was written in 1809, but was not published till 1817. Assuming that the aim of all government is utility - the good of the governed - he argued that the existing system was hopelessly at fault, since it was the instrument of the aristocratic minority for the promotion of class interests. Curiously enough, he had a low opinion of mankind, believing that the governing motive of the individual was the furtherance of his own ends. For that very reason, however, he advocated the extension of popular government, on the ground that the control of the majority would make for the good of the greatest number. He failed to realize that, even if all men were selfish, their individual interests were bound to conflict, and that the sum total would not be harmony, but discord; nevertheless, his arguments for increased parliamentary representation had great force and wide-reaching effect. Owing, however, to the diffuseness and obscurity of his style, his views were spread more through his disciples than by his own writings. Philosophical radicals, popular agitators, and practical statesmen all contributed to carry his teachings into effect.

Movement for Parliamentary Reform. While parliamentary reform did not become an issue in practical politics till the beginning of the reign of William IV, the subject had been discussed at intervals for nearly a century. Best known among its early and unsuccessful advocates were Chatham, Wilkes, and Pitt. In 1792, the Society of the Friends of the People was formed for promoting the movement; but sober folk very generally coupled it with Revolutionary designs. The cause was still further prejudiced when the Radicals took it up and proceeded to demand also universal suffrage, annual parliaments, equal electoral districts and vote by ballot. In 1819, however, Lord John Russell, by introducing a motion for moderate reform, once more identified the question with the Whig party. Though he gained an increasing body of supporters, he fought an uphill fight for thirteen

years.

The Eve of Triumph. Whig Gains in the Election of 1830. — For a time even the liberal remnant of the Canningites persisted in re

garding the existing parliamentary system as the only breakwater against the rising tide of democracy, but the temperate attitude of the Whig leaders had won the confidence of the conservative middle classes. They contended that, while universal suffrage was wild and dangerous, the enfranchisement of householders and the transfer of votes from small decayed boroughs to populous towns was not only safe and reasonable but an imperative recognition of the growing importance of the commercial and industrial classes. Parliament was dissolved during the summer of 1830, and in the general election which followed, the Whigs made such decisive gains that the doom of the old Tory party was sounded.

Advent of Grey's Reform Ministry (November, 1830).—Nevertheless, the King's speech at the opening of Parliament contained no reference on the subject of reform. The disappointment of the reformers was turned to fury when Wellington, in the Lords, declared that the existing representative system "possessed the full and entire confidence of the country." Insisting further that "no better system could be devised by the wit of man," he announced that not only would he never introduce a Reform Bill himself, but that "he should always feel it his duty to resist such measures when proposed by others." The effect of the speech was to overthrow his Government. Apparently the Duke spoke on his own authority; but the Cabinet stood by him and resigned in November, on an adverse vote on the Civil List, without waiting to face the inevitable question. Thereupon, Earl Grey (1764-1845) consented to form a Ministry, on condition that parliamentary reform should be made a Cabinet question. He had grown old in the service of the Whig party during the period of its adversity. Fear of radicalism had caused him for a time to hold aloof from reform, of which he had been an early pioneer; but he had again taken up the work, and it was fitting that the surviving Nestor of the cause should be chosen Premier on the return of the Whigs to office. The Ministers whom he selected were almost exclusively peers or men of titled connections; however, it was a remarkable group, four of whom subsequently became Prime Ministers. The task confronting the new Ministry was a tremendous and complicated one. The Unreformed House of Commons. Inequalities of Representation. The existing representative system was both inadequate and corrupt. The franchise was restricted to a few, and was unequally distributed. The area embraced by the ten southern counties of England had almost the same number of representatives as that of the thirty midland and northern counties where there were nearly three times as many inhabitants. Lancashire and Cornwall offered