e supposed that social questions were
neglected, even in the darkest days of the war, however meagre the
legislative fruits may appear. Session after session, Romilly pressed
forward reforms of the criminal law, the institution of penitential
houses in the nature of reformatories, and the abolition of state
lotteries. Others laboured, and with greater success, to remedy the
delays and reduce the arrears in the court of chancery. Constant efforts
were made to expose defalcations in the revenue, to curtail exorbitant
salaries, and to put down electioneering corruption. In 1809 Erskine
introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. In 1810
there were earnest, if somewhat futile, debates on spiritual
destitution, the non-residence and poverty of the clergy, and the
scarcity of places of worship. Moreover, early in 1811, a premonitory
symptom of the repeal movement caused some anxiety in Ireland. It took
the form of a scheme for a representative assembly to sit in Dublin, and
manage the affairs of the Roman catholic population, under colour of
framing petitions to parliament, and seeking redress of grievances. It
was, of course, to consist of Roman catholics only, and to include Roman
catholic bishops. The Irish government wisely suppressed the scheme, and
Perceval justified their action, on the ground that a representative
assembly in Dublin, with such aims in view, bordered upon an illicit
legislature.

Except for the war in the Spanish peninsula, and the war between Russia
and the Porte on the Danube, the year 1810 was marked by undisturbed
peace throughout the continent of Europe. France continued to make
annexations, but they were at the expense of her allies, not of her
enemies. Her supremacy was signalised in a striking way by the marriage
of her _parvenu_ emperor, whose divorce the pope still refused to
recognise, with Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor of Austria. Though
thirteen out of twenty-six cardinals present in Paris declined to attend
it, this marriage was a masterstroke of Talleyrand's diplomacy; it
secured the benevolent neutrality of Austria for the next three years,
and weakened the counsels of the allies during the negotiations of
1814-15. But it went far to estrange the Tsar of Russia, who, though he
had courteously declined Napoleon's overtures for the hand of his own
sister, was greatly offended on discovering that another matrimonial
alliance had been contracted by his would-be broth