were fifty years ago.  It still remains to be seen how Ireland can be satisfactorily governed by any English ministry likely to be formed.  On that rock government after government, both liberal and conservative, has been wrecked, and probably will continue to be wrecked long after the present generation has passed away, until the English nation itself learns to take a larger view, and seeks justice rather than the conservation of vested interests.

But if the reformed Parliament failed to restore order in Ireland, and to render that justice which should have followed the liberal principles it invoked, yet in matters strictly English great progress was made in the removal of crying evils.

Among these was the abolition of slavery in the British West India Islands, which as early as 1833 occupied the attention of the House, even before the discussion on Irish affairs.  The slave-trade had been suppressed long before this, through the untiring labors and zeal of Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay (father of the historian), and other philanthropists.  But the evils of slavery still existed,—­cruelty and oppression on the part of slave-owners, and hardships and suffering on the part of slaves.  Half-caste women were bought and sold, and flogged and branded.  As early as 1823 Fowell Buxton, then in Parliament, furnished with facts by Zachary Macaulay, who had been manager of a West India estate, brought in a motion for the abolition of slavery.  Canning was then the leading member of the House of Commons; although he did not go so far as Buxton, still he did something to remedy the evils of the system, and was supported by Brougham, Mackintosh, and Lushington,—­so that the flogging of women was abolished, and married slaves were not separated from their children.  In 1830, Henry Brougham introduced a motion for the total abolition of slavery in the British colonies, and thrilled the House by his eloquence and passion; but his motion was defeated.  When the new reform Parliament met in 1831, more pressing questions occupied its attention; but at length, in 1833, Buxton made a forcible appeal to ministers to sweep away the greatest scandal of the age.  He was supported by Lord Stanley, then colonial secretary, who eloquently defended the cause of liberty and humanity; and he moved that effectual measures be at once taken to abolish slavery altogether, with some modifications.  Thomas Babington Macaulay, who had entered Parliament in 1830, also brought all his eloquence to bear in behalf of the cause; and the upshot of the discussion was that Parliament set free the slaves, and their masters received twenty millions of pounds as a compensation.  Thus the long agitation of fifty years pertaining to negro emancipation in the British dominions was closed forever.  The heart of England was profoundly moved by this act of blended justice, humanity, and generosity, which has been quoted with pride by every Englishman from that time to this.  Possibly a similar national assumption of the vast expense of recompensing English owners of Irish lands may at some time relieve Ireland of alien landlordism and England of her greatest reproach.