using the attention of Parliament and the country
to the lamentable and disgraceful absence of anything like a system of
national education. On June 28, 1820, Brougham brought forward the
first definite proposal submitted to the House of Commons for a scheme
of national education designed to apply to England and Wales. A
parliamentary committee had been sitting for some time to make
inquiries and receive evidence as to the state of education in the
poorer districts of the land. This, too, was owing almost altogether
to the energy and the efforts of Brougham, but the inquiries of the
committee were resulting in nothing very practical, and Brougham
therefore {22} went a step further than he had previously gone and
brought forward his definite scheme for national education. It is
hardly necessary to say that he did not succeed in carrying his
measure, and that generations had yet to pass away before any real and
comprehensive effort wag made by the State to establish such a system
of popular education in these countries as had been known to Prussia
and other European nations almost for time out of mind. But Brougham
had at least started the question, and he never ceased to keep it
moving during his long life. Other reformers, too, as well as
Mackintosh and Brougham, were making their voices heard above, or at
all events through, the din and clamor of the controversy between the
friends of the King and the champions of the Queen. Lord John Russell
may be said to have then begun his noble career as reformer of the
system of parliamentary representation, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards to
be better known as Lord Durham, made more than one bold effort in the
same direction.

[Sidenote: 1821--George the Fourth visits Ireland]

Russell and Lambton were both unsuccessful just then. The time had not
yet come when the question of parliamentary reform was to break up
ministries, set the country aflame with agitation, and put a
thick-witted Sovereign to the necessity of choosing between submission
to the popular demand or facing the risk of revolution. But it might
have been clear to reflective men that the days of unconditional
loyalty to the will of a monarch had nearly run their course in
England, and that the demand for a reform in the criminal law, a
relaxation of the repression of free speech, the establishment of some
system of popular education, and the adoption of a really
representative principle in the construction