e peerage."--Hallam,
_Constitutional History_ i., 360.]

[Footnote 223: Sir A. Alison, "History of Europe," xxiii., 55, quotes a
paragraph from the _Examiner_ newspaper, which says: "The ground,
limited as it is, which it is proposed to clear and open to the popular
influence, will suffice as the spot desired by Archimedes for the plant
of the power which must ultimately govern the whole system. Without
reform, convulsion is inevitable. Upon any reform farther reform is
inevitably consequent, and the settlement of the constitution on the
democratic basis certain."]

[Footnote 224: Hallam, "Constitutional History," c. xvi., _in fin._]

[Footnote 225: "Semper in republica timendum est ne plurimum valeant
plurinn."--Cicero.]

CHAPTER X.

Abolition of Slavery.--Abridgment of the Apprenticeship.--The East India
Company's Trade is Thrown Open.--Commencement of Ecclesiastical
Reforms.--The New Poor-law.--State of Ireland.--Agitation against
Tithes.--Coercion Bill.--Beginning of Church Reform.--Sir Robert Peel
becomes Prime-minister.--Variety of Offices held Provisionally by the
Duke of Wellington.--Sir Robert Peel Retires, and Lord Melbourne Resumes
the Government.--Sir Robert Peel Proposes a Measure of Church
Reform.--Municipal Reform.--Measures of Ecclesiastical Reform.

Apart from the consideration of the abstract principle, on which the
advocates of Parliamentary Reform had insisted, of the light of many
classes hitherto unrepresented to representation, they had also dwelt on
the practical advantage which might be expected to ensue from the
greater degree in which public opinion would henceforth be brought to
bear on the action of the Houses, and, by a natural consequence, on the
administrative government also. And the bill had hardly passed when this
result began to show itself, not only in transactions of domestic
legislation, but in others which affected our most remote dependencies,
both in the East and West. We have seen in a previous chapter how
Wilberforce, after twenty years of labor and anxiety, reaped the reward
of his virtuous exertions in the abolition of the slave-trade. But he
had not ventured to grapple with the institution which gave birth to
that trade, the employment of slaves in our West India Islands. Yet it
was an evil indefensible on every ground that could possibly be alleged.
It was not only a crime and an injustice, but it was an anomaly, and a
glaring inconsistency, in any British