About the middle of the last century (1855) an effort was made to break up this corrupt and corrupting system, but the real work was not accomplished until 1870.  In that year England threw open the majority of the positions in the civil service to competitive examination.  Henceforth the poorest day laborer, whether man or woman, might, if competent, ask for any one of many places which formerly some influential man or political “boss” reserved as gifts for those who obeyed his commands.

The next year (1871) the purchase of commissions in the army was abolished.[1] This established the merit system in the ranks, and now military honors and military offices are open to all who can earn them.

[1] Up to 1871 an officer retiring from the army could sell his commission to any officer next below him in rank who had the money to buy the position; whereas under the present system the vacancy would necessarily fall to senior officers in the line of promotion.  In the year following this salutary change the entire British army was reorganized.

The Registration Act of 1843 required every voter to have his name and residence recorded on a public list.  This did away with election frauds to a large extent.  It was supplemented in 1872 by the introduction of the “secret ballot” (S591).  This put an end to the intimidation of voters and to the free fights and riots which had so frequently made the polls a political pandemonium.  The Bribery Act of 1883 was another important measure which did much toward stopping the wholesale purchase of votes by wealthy candidates or by powerful corporations.

610.  Reforms in Law Procedures.

During Queen Victoria’s reign great changes for the better were effected in simplifying the laws and the administration of justice.  When she came to the throne the Parliamentary Statutes at Large filled fifty-five huge folio volumes, and the Common Law, as contained in judicial decisions from the time of Edward II (1307), filled about twelve hundred more.  The work of examining, digesting, and consolidating this enormous mass of legislative and legal lore was taken in hand (1863) and has been slowly progressing ever since.

The Judicature Acts (1873, 1877) united the chief courts in a single High Court of Justice.  This reform did away with much confusion and expense.  But the most striking changes for the better were those made in the Court of Chancery (S147) and the criminal courts.

In 1825 the property belonging to suitors in the former court amounted to nearly forty millions of pounds.[1] The simplest case might require a dozen years for its settlement, while difficult ones consumed a lifetime, or more, and were handed down from father to son,—­a legacy of baffled hopes, of increasing expense, of mental suffering worse than that of hereditary disease.

[1] See Walpole’s “History of England,” Vol.  III.

Much has been done to remedy these evils, which Dickens set forth with such power in his novel of “Bleak House.”  At one time the prospect of reform seemed so utterly hopeless that it was customary for a prize fighter, when he had got his opponent’s neck twisted under his arm, and held him absolutely helpless, to declare that he had his head “in chancery”!