[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxvi, S31.

Before the passing of the Reform Bill, and the legislation which supplemented it, the election of a member of Parliament was a kind of local reign of terror.  The smaller towns were sometimes under the control of drunken ruffians for several weeks.  During that time they paraded the streets in bands, assaulting voters of the opposite party with clubs, kidnaping prominent men and confining them until after the election, and perpetrating other outrages, which so frightened peacable citizens that often they did not dare attempt to vote at all.

Finally, the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 effected, in its own way, a change which was perhaps as momentous as that which the Revolution of 1688 had accomplished.[2] That, as we have seen (S497), made the King dependent for his crown on his election to office by Parliament.  On the other hand, the Reform Bill practically took the last vestige of real political authority from the King and transferred it to the Cabinet (S534), who had now become responsible to the House of Commons, and hence to the direct will of the majority of the nation.  But though the Sovereign had laid down his political scepter, never to resume it, he would yet, by virtue of his exalted position, continue to wield great power,—­that of social and diplomatic influence, which is capable of accomplishing most important results both at home and abroad.  To-day then, though the King still reigns, the People, and the People alone, govern.

[2] Compare the three previous Revolutions represented by (1) Magna Carta (S199); (2) De Montfort’s House of Commons (S213); (3) the Civil War and its effects (SS441, 450, 451).

583.  Abolition of Slavery, 1833; Factory Reform, 1833-1841.

With the new Parliament that came into power the names of Liberal and Conservative began to supplant those of Whig and Tory (S479), for it was felt that a new political era needed new party names.  Again, the passage of the Reform Bill (S582) changed the policy of both these great political parties.  It made Liberals and Conservatives bid against each other for the support of the large number of new voters (S582 (4)), and it acted as an entering wedge to prepare the way for the further extension of suffrage in 1867 and 1884 (S534), representing the Commons, had gained a most significant victory; and further reforms were accordingly carried against the strenuous opposition of the King.

Buxton, Wilberforce, Brougham, and other noted philanthropists secured the passage through Parliament of a bill, 1833, for which they, with the younger Pitt, had labored in vain for half a century.  By this act all negro slaves in the British West India colonies, numbering about eight hundred thousand, were set free, and the sum of 20,000,000 pounds was appropriated to compensate the owners.

It was a grand deed grandly done.  Could America have followed that noble example, she might thereby have saved a million of human lives and many thousand millions of dollars which were cast into the gulf of civil war, while the corrupting influence of five years of waste and discord would have been avoided.