The religious toleration granted in the universities was in accord with the general movement of the age.  It wil be remembered that the Catholics were readmitted to sit in Parliament (S573) late in the reign of George IV (1829), and that under Victoria the Jews were admitted (1858) to the same right (S599).  Finally Mr. Bradlaugh got his Oaths Bill passed (1888), and so opened PArliament to persons not only of all religious beliefs but of none.

In the meantime the compulsory payment of rates for the support of the Church of England had been abolished (1868) (S601); and the next year (1869) was made memorable by the just and generous act by which Mr. Gladstone disestablished the Irish branch of the English Church (S601).

614.  Transportation and Communication.

When the Queen ascended the throne (1837), the locomotive (S584) was threatening to supersede the stagecoach; but the progerss of steam as a motor power on land had not been rapid, and England then had less than 200 miles of railway open;[1] but before the end of her reign there were nearly 22,000 miles in operation, and there are now 24,000.  At first, the passenger accommodations were limited.  Those who could indulge in such luxuries sometimes preferred to travel in their own private carriages placed on platform cars for transportation.  For those who took first-class tickets there were excellent and roomy compartments at very high prices.  The second class fared tolerably well on uncushioned seats, but the unfortunate third class were crowded like cattle into open trucks, without seats, and with no roofs to keep the rain out.  But time remedied this.  Long before the Queen celebrated her first Jubilee (S607) the workingman could fly through the country at the rate of from thirty to fifty miles an hour, for a penny a mile, and could have all the comforts that a reasonable being should ask for.

[1] A part of what is now the London and Northwestern Railway.

Cheap postage (S590) came in (1840) with the extension of railways, and in a few years the amount of mail carried increased enormously.  Every letter, for the first time, carried on it a stamp bearing a portrait of the young Queen, and in this way the English people came to know her better than they had ever known any preceding sovereign.  The London papers now reached the country by train.

The Telegraph began to come into use in January, 1845, between the railway station at Paddington, a western district of London, and Slough, near Windsor.  The government eventually purchased all the lines, and reduced the charge on a despatch of twelve words to sixpence to any part of the United Kingdom.  The Telephone followed (1876), and then Wireless Telegraphy (1899).

615.  Light in Dark Places; Photography; the New Surgery (1834-1895).

The invention of the friction match, 1834 (S584), the abolition of the tax on windows (1851) (S595), with the introduction of American petroleum, speedily dispelled the almost subterraneous gloom of the laborer’s cottage.  Meanwhile photography, which began to be used in 1839, revealed the astonishing fact that the sun is always ready not only to make a picture but to take one, and that nothing is so humble as to be beneath his notice.