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England-Parliamentary Reform

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Many of the Tories were sure that the Reform meant the ruin of England. Even the brave old Duke of Wellington wrote: "I don't generally take a gloomy view of things, but I confess that, knowing all that I do, I cannot see what is to save the Church, or property, or colonies, or union with Ireland, or eventually monarchy, if the Reform Bill passes."

With the coming in of the new Parliament the Whigs began to take the name of Liberals and the Tories of Conservatives, which you hear nowadays, though the others are occasionally used.

Although the slave trade had been extinguished wherever the English power reached, slavery still existed in the colonies. In 1833, in the face of the King's opposition, a bill was passed by Parliament, which set free all negro slaves in British colonies. They numbered eight hundred thousand, and their owners were paid $100,000,000 in the way of compensation. There were also thousands of white slaves in England at that time--wretched women and children who toiled in the factories till they dropped from exhaustion, and babes, six or seven years old, deep down in the mines, where they were cruelly beaten, and rarely had a glimpse of the golden sunlight. Parliament did not forget these unfortunates. The employment of women and young children in the collieries and factories was forbidden, and though human wisdom has never been able to abolish poverty and the sufferings of the poor, yet it can do and has done a great deal in the way of lessening those evils.

The year of 1830 was memorable in the history of England, for itw as in its autumn that the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened and carriages were drawn for the first time by steam. The credit of this invention belongs to George Stephenson, who had been experimenting and studying the problem for years. The unpopular management of the pioneer Bridgewater Canal gave rise in 1821 to the project of a railway between Liverpool and Manchester, and Stephenson was chosen engineer. When he announced that, instead of horses, he intended to employ an engine that would travel at the rate of twelve miles an hour, nearly every one looked upon him as a lunatic. You know they always do. "Twelve miles an hour!" exclaimed the dignified Quarterly Review, "as well trust one's self to be fired off on a Congreve rocket." It is an odd coincidence that Stephenson's little engine bore the name of Rocket. After seemingly unsurmountable difficulties the line was completed in 1829, when there was a competition of engines, and the Rocket demonstrated its great superiority over all the others. What took away the breath of the spectators was the demonstration that under favorable conditions it could travel at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour!

A member of Parliament had thought he would silence the inventor with the crushing question:

"Suppose, Mr. Stephenson, a cow should get on the track in front of your locomotive-what then?"

"It would be bad for the cow," was the quizzical reply of the inventor, and how many thousands of times the truth of his words has been proved!

The Duke of Wellington was one of the passengers on the first railway train, and, though the opening day was marred by the accidental killing of a man, it marked an era in the industrial history of Great Britain, which, like our own country, has since been gridironed by railway lines. It may interest you to know that Robert Stephenson, son of George, became a more famous engineer than his father, who died in 1848, leaving his fortune to his only son. The latter visited South America to inspect the gold and silver mines there, and long before his father's retirement from active business was conceded to be the foremost engineer in Europe. The principal great works with which his name is connected are the High Level Bridge over the Tyne, the Tweed Viaduct, the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits, the Victoria Bridge at Montreal, across the St. Lawrence, one of the grandest of all engineering achievements, and the Alexandria and Cairo Railway.

Of course you know what our forefathers had to do to start a fire. They sometimes made use of the convex or burning glass, but as the sun did not always shine, they had to resort to the flint and tinder. By quickly striking a glancing blow with a piece of steel against a flint, sparks were produced which were made to catch upon tinder or a prepared rag, which was afterward blown into a flame. It was a slow and awkward process, and you can understand what a trial it often became to one's patience. Many a boy, after blowing till he was tired out, has had to give it up and turn the task over to his father or older brother. After years of experiment, an English apothecary invented the friction match, which, as time went on, was greatly improved, until it has now become one of the most useful little conveniences in every household.

William IV. passed away at Windsor Castle, June 20, 1837. His two daughters by his wife, Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, died in infancy. This left as the heir to the throne Princess Alexandrina Victoria, the only child of his brother, Edward, Duke of Kent. Victoria was living with her widowed mother at the time, and was only eighteen years old. She was a religious girl, conscientious to the last degree, and destined to become one of the noblest queens that ever lived. Early that bright summer morning in 1837 she was suddenly awakened and told, much to her amazement, that she was Queen of Great Britain.

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O sovereign could have received a more enthusiastic welcome than Queen Victoria, and this loyalty and affection increased until her death, after the longest reign of any sovereign over Great Britain. The tribute came to her because she was worthy of it, and no matter who may come after her, none can ever hold a warmer place in the hearts of her people than she.

Queen Victoria came to the throne in troublous times. The price of corn was so high that for years the people of Ireland had lived wholly upon potatoes. The failure of the crop for several years caused such an appalling famine in that unfortunate island in 1846 that all must have perished had not the rest of the world come to their relief. Among the first to do so was our own country, which sent shiploads of provisions thither, while Parliament appropriated $50,000,000 to buy food for the sufferers. Despite all these charities, two millions, or one-fourth of the population of Ireland, died of starvation. Now there had existed for years a heavy duty upon the importation of corn. The ground upon which the Corn Laws were upheld was that home agriculture ought to be protected, and that a country, so far as practical, should depend upon itself for its supply of food. On the other hand, it was maintained that the Corn Laws profited only the land-owners and grievously oppressed the poor people. The Anti-Corn-Law League, formed in 1839, grew in numbers and strength, but it took the awful famine in Ireland to bring it success. very year of the famine (1846) Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister and leader of

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