. Since 1892 industrial constituencies, chiefly in
Yorkshire, Lancashire, South Wales, and the mining districts, have gone on
steadily electing and re-electing working-class representatives--trade
union secretaries and officers for the most part--and with the formation of
a National Labour Representation Committee in 1900, these representatives
became a separate and distinct party--the Labour Party after 1906--in the
House of Commons.

Enfranchisement to secure representation for the redress of grievances has
been the principle that has guided the English people towards democracy.
Both the middle class and the working class were convinced that
enfranchisement was necessary if the House of Commons was to be in any real
sense a representative assembly, and both have used enfranchisement for
obtaining representation in Parliament. The return of forty Labour Members
at recent general elections is evidence that a large electorate supports
the Labour Party in its desire to carry in Parliament legislation that will
make life a better thing for the labourer and his family; and in the House
of Commons the Labour Members have won a general respect. As a matter of
fact, the House of Commons to-day is in every way a more orderly, a more
intelligent, more business-like, and better-mannered assembly than it was
in the days before 1832.

No stronger evidence of the value of Parliamentary representation to the
working-class can be offered than the large output of what may be called
labour legislation in recent years. It is true that Lord Shaftesbury's
benevolent and entirely disinterested activities promoted Factory Acts in
the first half of the nineteenth century, but in the last twenty years
measures for the amelioration of the lot of the workman have been
constantly before Parliament.

REMOVAL OF RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES--CATHOLICS, JEWS, AND FREETHINKERS

The nineteenth century was not only the century of popular enfranchisement;
it was the century that saw the removal of religious disabilities, and the
free admission to Parliament and to the Government of Roman Catholics,
Nonconformists, Jews, and Freethinkers.

In the year 1800 Roman Catholics in England were excluded from Parliament,
from the franchise, from the magistracy, the Bar, the Civil Service, from
municipal corporations, and from commissions in the Army and Navy. Pitt was
willing to abolish these disabilities on the passing of the Act of Union,
and the Irish people we