ter of rates and tithes,--the great cause of Irish
discontent and violence at that time. It will be seen that new
complications arose with every successive Parliament from that time to
this, landlords finding it as difficult to collect their rents as the
clergy did their tithes. And these difficulties appear to be as great
to-day as they were fifty years ago. It still remains to be seen how
Ireland can be satisfactorily governed by any English ministry likely to
be formed. On that rock government after government, both liberal and
conservative, has been wrecked, and probably will continue to be wrecked
long after the present generation has passed away, until the English
nation itself learns to take a larger view, and seeks justice rather
than the conservation of vested interests.

But if the reformed Parliament failed to restore order in Ireland, and
to render that justice which should have followed the liberal principles
it invoked, yet in matters strictly English great progress was made in
the removal of crying evils.

Among these was the abolition of slavery in the British West India
Islands, which as early as 1833 occupied the attention of the House,
even before the discussion on Irish affairs. The slave-trade had been
suppressed long before this, through the untiring labors and zeal of
Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay (father of the historian), and other
philanthropists. But the evils of slavery still existed,--cruelty and
oppression on the part of slave-owners, and hardships and suffering on
the part of slaves. Half-caste women were bought and sold, and flogged
and branded. As early as 1823 Fowell Buxton, then in Parliament,
furnished with facts by Zachary Macaulay, who had been manager of a West
India estate, brought in a motion for the abolition of slavery. Canning
was then the leading member of the House of Commons; although he did not
go so far as Buxton, still he did something to remedy the evils of the
system, and was supported by Brougham, Mackintosh, and Lushington,--so
that the flogging of women was abolished, and married slaves were not
separated from their children. In 1830, Henry Brougham introduced a
motion for the total abolition of slavery in the British colonies, and
thrilled the House by his eloquence and passion; but his motion was
defeated. When the new reform Parliament met in 1831, more pressing
questions occupied its attention; but at length, in 1833, Buxton made a
forcible appeal to ministers