n 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.

News came across the Atlantic from Boston, 1846, that Dr. Morton had
rendered surgery painless by the use of ether. Before a year passed
the English hospitals were employing it. Sir James Y. Simpson of
Edinburgh introduced chloroform (1847). These two agents have
abolished the terror of the surgeon's knife, and have lengthened life
by making it possible to perform a class of operations which formerly
very few patients had been able to bear.

A score of years later Sir Joseph Lister called attention to the
important results obtained by antiseptic methods in surgery; next came
(1895) the introduction from Germany of the marvelous X ray, by whose
help the operator can photograph and locate a bullet or other foreign
substance which he is endeavoring to extract. Together, these
discoveries have saved multitudes of lives.

616. Progress of the Laboring Classes; Free Trade, 1846.

At the date of the Queen's accession a number of laws existed
restricting the free action of workingmen. Only three years before
Victoria's coronation six poor agricultural laborers in Dorsetshire
were transported (1834) to penal servitude at Botany Bay, Australia,
for seven years, for peacefully combining to secure an increase of
their wages, which at that time were only six shilling a week. In
fact, the so-called "Conspiracy Laws," which made Labor Unions liable
to prosecution as unlawful, if not actually criminal organizations,
were not wholly repealed until after the opening of the twentieth
century.

Meanwhile Parliament passed the Trade Union Acts, in 1871 and 1876,
which recognized the right of workingmen to form associations to
protect their interests by the use of all measures not forbidden by
the Common Law.[1] In 1906 the persistent political pressure of
organized labor induced a Liberal Cabinet (of which Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman was Prime Minister) and the invariably Conservative
House of Lords to pass a still more important act. That measure
exempted Trade Unions from liability to pay damages for a certain
class of injuries which they might commit in carrying on a strike.[2]
During the above period of more than thirty years the unions have
gained very largely in numbers and in financial as well as political
strength. On the other hand th