The condition of Hindostan next received the attention of Parliament; and on the renewal of the charter of the East India Company, in 1833, its commercial monopoly was abolished, and trade with the East was thrown open to the merchants of all the world.  The political jurisdiction of the Company was, however, retained.

The new Parliament then turned its attention to a reduction of taxes.  The duty on tiles was repealed; also the two-shilling stamp duty on advertisements, together with the vexatious duty on soap.  Dramatic copyrights also received protection, and an improvement in the judicial administration was effected.  Sinecure offices were abolished in the Court of Chancery, and the laws of dower and inheritance were amended.

The members most active in these reforms were Lord Althorp, Daniel O’Connell, Joseph Hume, and William Cobbett.  Lord Althorp, afterward Earl Spencer, made not less than one thousand speeches, and O’Connell six hundred, in support of these reforms,—­all tending to a decrease in taxation, made feasible by the great increase of wealth and the abolition of useless offices.

The Trade Unions (a combination of operatives to secure improvement in their condition) marked the year 1834, besides legislative enactments to reduce taxation.  Before 1824 it was illegal for workmen to combine, even in the most peaceable manner, for the purpose of obtaining an increase of wages.  This injustice was removed the following year, and strikes became numerous among the different working-classes, but were generally easily suppressed by the capitalists, who were becoming a great power with the return to national prosperity.  For fifty years the vexed social problem of “strikes” has been discussed, but is not yet solved, giving intense solicitude to capitalists and corporations, and equal hope to operatives.  The year 1834, then, showed the commencement of the great war between capital and labor which is so damaging to all business operations, and the ultimate issue of which cannot be predicted with certainty,—­but which will probably lead to a great amelioration of the condition of the working-classes and the curtailment of the incomes of rich men, especially those engaged in trade and manufactures.  There will always be, without doubt, disproportionate fortunes, and capitalists can combine as well as laborers; but if the strikes which are multiplying year by year in all the countries of Europe and the United States should end in a great increase of wages, so as to make workmen comfortable (for they will never be contented), the movement will prove beneficent.  Already far more has been accomplished for the relief of the poor by a combination of laborers against hard-hearted employers than by any legislative enactments; but when will the contest between capital and labor cease?  Is it pessimism to say that it is likely to become more and more desperate?