of purchase in the army, carried in the face of a reluctant House of Lords by means of a sudden exercise of royal prerogative under advice of the Government; the Premier announcing “that as the system of purchase was the creation of royal regulation, he had advised the Queen to take the decisive step of cancelling the royal warrant which made purchase legal”—­a step which, however singular, was undoubtedly legal, as was proved by abundant evidence.

A measure which may not improbably prove to have affected the fortunes of this country more extensively than any of those already enumerated was the Education Bill introduced by Mr. Forster in 1870, and designed to secure public elementary education for even the humblest classes throughout England and Wales.  Hitherto the teaching of the destitute poor had been largely left to private charity or piety, and in the crowded towns it had been much neglected, with the great exception of the work done in Ragged Schools—­those gallant efforts made by unpaid Christian zeal to cope with the multitudinous ignorance and misery of our overgrown cities.  It was very slowly that the national conscience was aroused to the peril and sin of allowing the masses to grow up in heathen ignorance; but at last the English State shook off its sluggish indifference to the instruction of its poor, and became as active as it had been supine.  Mr. Forster’s Bill is the measure which indicates this turning of the tide.  We do not propose now to discuss the provisions of this Act, which were sharply canvassed at the time, and which certainly have not worked without friction; but we may say that the stimulus then given to educational activity, if judged by subsequent results, must be acknowledged to have been advantageous.  The system of schools under the charge of various religious bodies, which existed before the Education Act, has not been superseded; that indeed would have been a deep misfortune, for it is more needed than ever; the masses of the population have been, to an appreciable extent, reached and instructed; and we shall not much err in connecting as cause and effect the wider instruction with the diminution of pauperism and crime which the statistics of recent years reveal.

The same member who honoured himself and benefited his country by this great effort to promote the advance of the “angel Knowledge” also introduced, in 1871, the Ballot Bill, designed to do away with all the violence and corruption that had long disgraced Parliamentary elections in this free land, and that showed no symptom of a tendency to reform themselves.  The new system of secret voting which was now adopted has required, it is true, to be further purified by the recent Corrupt Practices Bill and its stringent provisions; but no one, whose memory is long enough to recall the tumultuous and discreditable scenes attendant on elections under the old system, will be inclined to deny that much that was flagrantly disgraceful as well as dishonest has been swept away by the reforming energy of our own day.