y 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.

But negro slaves were not the only slaves in those days. There were
white slaves as well,--women and children born in England, but
condemned by their necessities to work underground in the coal mines,
or to exhaust their strength in the cotton mills. They were driven by
brutal masters who cared as little for the welfare of those under them
as the overseer of a West India plantation did for his gangs of black
toilers in the sugar-cane fields. On investigation it was found that
children only six and seven years of age were compelle