Norfolk, once the homes of the iron trade and a busy woollen trade, are to-day sparsely peopled. Their industries have left them to go in search of northern coal. Lancashire, once almost the poorest county in England, has become the richest.

XXXIII. CROWN AND PARLIAMENT.

THE REFORM BILL.

We have seen that the "Glorious Revolution" of 1689, which turned James II. from the throne, settled for ever the question between King and Parliament which should be master. Henceforward no king could hope to resist Parliament. Yet all the same another hundred and fifty years were to pass before it could be said with truth that Parliament alone ruled. For the kings, having failed in one plan, turned to another. Instead of ruling in defiance of Influence of the Parliament, they began to rule Parliament itself; they obtained so much Parliament. influence over ministers, members, and electors, that during the eighteenth century Parliament generally did what the king wanted.

Crown over

We can perceive this more plainly by an example or two. Even as early as Anne's reign it becomes clear. Anne was at first in the hands of the Duchess of Marlborough. The duchess and her husband wanted the war to go on, and so did the Whig party. Therefore the duchess persuaded Anne to favour Whig ministers. At length Anne grew tired of the duchess and took a new favourite, Mrs. Masham. Mrs. Masham was a Tory, and so Anne turned gradually towards the Tories, who wanted to bring the war

to an end. At last Tory ministers came in, and Marlborough was dismissed. It is true that the country approved of what the queen did, but had the queen not wished for a change, she could have kept Marlborough in power.

The Whig Houses.

Again, George I. favoured the Whigs, and his son George II. did the same, because both feared that the Tories were hankering to have the Stuarts back. Accordingly the Whigs came into power with George I., and stayed in for about fifty years. One ministry followed another-Stanhope, Walpole, Carteret, Pelham, Newcastle, Pitt- but all were Whig. It is true that the kings were not responsible for this Whig monopoly of office. Neither George I. nor George II. took much interest in party questions. The great Whig families in England were at that time able by bribery and influence to keep Parliament full of Whigs. Being in office, the Whigs could, and did, use their power and patronage to keep themselves in office by favouring their supporters and making friends of those who were wavering. Yet we shall see that the king's power was strong enough to break down the power of the Whig families when it was used against them.

George III. had been brought up to dislike the Whigs. His mother was never tired of saying to him in his boyhood, "George, be a king". George III., He had learnt to think of the Whigs as the great foes of the royal power, so he favoured the Tories from the first. At first he found Parliament

1760-1820.

in the hands of the Whig houses. He tried a Tory minister, but the Commons and the Lords both contained a majority of Whigs. By degrees, however, the Tories, with the king's support, grew stronger: first he was able to put in power those Whigs whom

he least disliked; finally, in 1783 he overthrew the great Whig coalition which was headed by Fox, and made a young man of twenty-four, William Pitt, son of the Great Commoner, prime minister. HenceforAscendency ward for fifty years there were practically of the Tories. nothing but Tory ministries. Pitt himself was prime minister for nineteen years (1783-1801 and 1804-1806), Lord Liverpool for fifteen years (18121827). In fact power, which in the early part of the eighteenth century had seemed to belong entirely to the Whigs, appears in the latter part to be the absolute property of the Tories.

Influence.

The fact was that the king had found out means to get a party of men in the Commons who would supRoyal port whomsoever he wished. There were many ways of using this royal influence. Pensions and honours were freely given to members and their friends; promotion in the army and navy went much by royal favour; a friendly word from the king would secure the votes of those who liked to be thought intimate at court. Thus the name of the "King's Friends" was openly bestowed on a large party in the Commons. In the Lords things were even more simple, for the king could make whom he pleased a lord. Thus the House of Lords, Whig under the first two Georges, became strongly Tory under the third George. On one occasion, in order to defeat Fox's India Bill, the king made Lord Temple show to each peer a card on which he had written the message that "whoever voted for the India Bill was not only not his friend, but would be considered by him as an enemy", and as a result the bill was thrown out.

1783.

The growth of this royal power by which Parliament was moulded to the king's wishes was plainly

seen, and the Whig party did its best to check it. Bills were passed to diminish the king's patronage; and the Commons voted, "that the power of the Crown has increased, and ought to be diminished". This was an excellent piece of advice, but it was not clear how it could be carried out.

By degrees men came to see that the reason why Parliament had thus fallen into the hands of the king was that the House of Commons did not Parliament did really represent the nation. Birmingham, not Represent the Nation. Leeds, Manchester, and many of the big towns had no members, while little boroughs, where there was only a handful of voters, returned two. Gatton with seven electors sent up two members. Ludgershall had one elector: he proposed himself, voted for himself, and sat in Parliament as a representative of himself. Old Sarum was no longer even a village; there were absolutely no inhabitants, yet members sat for it. Even in the large towns and counties that had members, it was often the case that very few persons had the right to vote as electors. There were only thirty-three voters in Edinburgh, and the same number in Glasgow; only one hundred and fifteen in Argyllshire. "Pocket-boroughs", as they were called, enabled a rich patron to return many members at his wish. One duke returned eleven members, another nine, and of course in these small places everyone expected to be bribed before he would vote. When Sheridan was returned for Stafford an item in his election expenses ran thus, "Paid 250 burgesses £3 each".

This plainly called for reform. We may wonder that reform did not come sooner, but during

Reform.

the long war against Napoleon men were too much interested in that to care about altering things

(M 595)

at home. And what had been done in France made the Tory party nervous. They spoke of the reformers in Britain as if they were persons who wanted to make a revolution, to destroy the throne and turn Britain into a republic. Thus the wild things that had been done in the name of liberty in France, the execution of the king and queen, the murders of nobles, and the confiscation of property, had the result of putting off reform in Britain for nearly forty years.

When King George III. died, however, the question could not be put off any longer. The Whigs at last George IV., got a majority in the Commons. Lord 1820-1830. Grey became Prime Minister, and Lord John Russell brought in the Reform Bill to take away the right of returning members from the pocketboroughs, and give the seats to the counties and large Then began a desperate struggle; the bill was thrown out on the third reading, and Bill, 1831. Parliament dissolved. The country, however, was bent on reform, and the Whigs came back again with a huge majority-over a hundred. The Reform Bill passed the Commons in spite of all the Tories could do to delay it.

towns.

Reform

The fate of the bill now hung on the Lords, and the Lords rejected it. This nearly caused a rebellion. There were riots in many towns. The Dukes of Nottingham and Rutland had made themselves prominent by their opposition to the bill; Nottingham Castle was burnt to the ground and Belvoir Castle attacked by a furious mob. At Bristol the recorder was pelted in the streets, hustled into the Mansion-house, and at length forced to flee over the roofs to escape from his pursuers. Men collected arms, and spoke of marching on London; and in the capital itself shops were closed, church bells tolled