The Leading Facts of English History Part 63

About the middle of the last century (1855) an effort was made to break up this corrupt and corrupting system, but the real work was not accomplished until 1870. In that year England threw open the majority of the positions in the civil service to compet.i.tive examination.

Henceforth the poorest day laborer, whether man or woman, might, if competent, ask for any one of many places which formerly some influential man or political "boss" reserved as gifts for those who obeyed his commands.

The next year (1871) the purchase of commissions in the army was abolished.[1] This established the merit system in the ranks, and now military honors and military offices are open to all who can earn them.

[1] Up to 1871 an officer retiring from the army could sell his commission to any officer next below him in rank who had the money to buy the position; whereas under the present system the vacancy would necessarily fall to senior officers in the line of promotion. In the year following this salutary change the entire British army was reorganized.

The Registration Act of 1843 required every voter to have his name and residence recorded on a public list. This did away with election frauds to a large extent. It was supplemented in 1872 by the introduction of the "secret ballot" (S591). This put an end to the intimidation of voters and to the free fights and riots which had so frequently made the polls a political pandemonium. The Bribery Act of 1883 was another important measure which did much toward stopping the wholesale purchase of votes by wealthy candidates or by powerful corporations.

610. Reforms in Law Procedures.

During Queen Victoria's reign great changes for the better were effected in simplifying the laws and the administration of justice.

When she came to the throne the Parliamentary Statutes at Large filled fifty-five huge folio volumes, and the Common Law, as contained in judicial decisions from the time of Edward II (1307), filled about twelve hundred more. The work of examining, digesting, and consolidating this enormous ma.s.s of legislative and legal lore was taken in hand (1863) and has been slowly progressing ever since.

The Judicature Acts (1873, 1877) united the chief courts in a single High Court of Justice. This reform did away with much confusion and expense. But the most striking changes for the better were those made in the Court of Chancery (S147) and the criminal courts.

In 1825 the property belonging to suitors in the former court amounted to nearly forty millions of pounds.[1] The simplest case might require a dozen years for its settlement, while difficult ones consumed a lifetime, or more, and were handed down from father to son,--a legacy of baffled hopes, of increasing expense, of mental suffering worse than that of hereditary disease.

[1] See Walpole's "History of England," Vol. III.

Much has been done to remedy these evils, which d.i.c.kens set forth with such power in his novel of "Bleak House." At one time the prospect of reform seemed so utterly hopeless that it was customary for a prize fighter, when he had got his opponent's neck twisted under his arm, and held him absolutely helpless, to declare that he had his head "in chancery"!

611. Reforms in Criminal Courts and in the Treatment of the Insane.

In criminal courts an equal reform was effected, and men accused of burglary and murder are now allowed to have counsel to defend them, and the right of appeal is secured; whereas, up to the era of Victoria, they were obliged to plead their own cases as best they might against skilled public prosecutors, who used every resource known to the law to convict them.

Great changes for the better have also taken place in the treatment of the insane. Until near the close of the eighteenth century this unfortunate cla.s.s was quite generally regarded as possessed by demons, and dealt with accordingly. William Tuke, a member of the Society of Friends, inaugurated a better system (1792); but the old method continued for many years longer. In fact, we have the highest authority for saying that down to a pretty late period in the nineteenth century the inmates of many asylums were worse off than the most desperate criminals.

They were shut up in dark, and often filthy, cells, where "they were chained to the wall, flogged, starved, and not infrequently killed."[2] Since then, mechanical restraints have, as a rule, been abolished, and the patients are generally treated with the care and kindness which their condition demands.

[2] Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th and 11th editions) under "Insanity."

612. Progress in the Education of the Ma.s.ses.

We have seen that since 1837 the advance in popular education equaled that made in the extension of suffrage and in civil service reform.

When Victoria began her reign a very large proportion of the children of the poor were growing up in a stat bordering on barbarism. Many of them knew little more of books or schools than the young Hottentots in Africa.

The marriage register shows that as late as 1840 forty per cent of the Queen's adult subjects could not write their names in the book; by the close of her reign (1901) the number who had to "make their mark" in that interesting volume was only about one in ten. This proves, as Lord Brougham said, that "the schoolmaster" has been "abroad" in the land.

The national system of education began, as we have already seen, in 1870 (S602). Later, the a.s.sisted Education Act (1891) made provision for those who had not means to pay even a few pence a week for instruction. That law practically put the key of knowledge within reach of every child in England.

613. Religious Toleration in the Universities; Payment of Church Rates abolished.

The universities felt the new impulse. The abolition of religious tests for degrees at Oxford and Cambridge (1871) threw open the doors of those venerable seats of learning to students of every faith.

Since then colleges for women have been established at Oxford and in the vicinity of Cambridge, and the "university-extension"

examinations, with "college settlements" in London and other large cities, have long been doing excellent work.

The religious toleration granted in the universities was in accord with the general movement of the age. It wil be remembered that the Catholics were readmitted to sit in Parliament (S573) late in the reign of George IV (1829), and that under Victoria the Jews were admitted (1858) to the same right (S599). Finally Mr. Bradlaugh got his Oaths Bill pa.s.sed (1888), and so opened PArliament to persons not only of all religious beliefs but of none.

In the meantime the compulsory payment of rates for the support of the Church of England had been abolished (1868) (S601); and the next year (1869) was made memorable by the just and generous act by which Mr. Gladstone disestablished the Irish branch of the English Church (S601).

614. Transportation and Communication.

When the Queen ascended the throne (1837), the locomotive (S584) was threatening to supersede the stagecoach; but the progerss of steam as a motor power on land had not been rapid, and England then had less than 200 miles of railway open;[1] but before the end of her reign there were nearly 22,000 miles in operation, and there are now 24,000. At first, the pa.s.senger accommodations were limited. Those who could indulge in such luxuries sometimes preferred to travel in their own private carriages placed on platform cars for transportation. For those who took first-cla.s.s tickets there were excellent and roomy compartments at very high prices. The second cla.s.s fared tolerably well on uncushioned seats, but the unfortunate third cla.s.s were crowded like cattle into open trucks, without seats, and with no roofs to keep the rain out. But time remedied this. Long before the Queen celebrated her first Jubilee (S607) the workingman could fly through the country at the rate of from thirty to fifty miles an hour, for a penny a mile, and could have all the comforts that a reasonable being should ask for.

[1] A part of what is now the London and Northwestern Railway.

Cheap postage (S590) came in (1840) with the extension of railways, and in a few years the amount of mail carried increased enormously.

Every letter, for the first time, carried on it a stamp bearing a portrait of the young Queen, and in this way the English people came to know her better than they had ever known any preceding sovereign.

The London papers now reached the country by train.

The Telegraph began to come into use in January, 1845, between the railway station at Paddington, a western district of London, and Slough, near Windsor. The government eventually purchased all the lines, and reduced the charge on a despatch of twelve words to sixpence to any part of the United Kingdom. The Telephone followed (1876), and then Wireless Telegraphy (1899).

615. Light in Dark Places; Photography; the New Surgery (1834-1895).

The invention of the friction match, 1834 (S584), the abolition of the tax on windows (1851) (S595), with the introduction of American petroleum, speedily dispelled the almost subterraneous gloom of the laborer's cottage. Meanwhile photography, which began to be used in 1839, revealed the astonishing fact that the sun is always ready not only to make a picture but to take one, and that nothing is so humble as to be beneath his notice.

News came across the Atlantic from Boston, 1846, that Dr. Morton had rendered surgery painless by the use of ether. Before a year pa.s.sed the English hospitals were employing it. Sir James Y. Simpson of Edinburgh introduced chloroform (1847). These two agents have abolished the terror of the surgeon's knife, and have lengthened life by making it possible to perform a cla.s.s of operations which formerly very few patients had been able to bear.

A score of years later Sir Joseph Lister called attention to the important results obtained by antiseptic methods in surgery; next came (1895) the introduction from Germany of the marvelous X ray, by whose help the operator can photograph and locate a bullet or other foreign substance which he is endeavoring to extract. Together, these discoveries have saved mult.i.tudes of lives.

616. Progress of the Laboring Cla.s.ses; Free Trade, 1846.

At the date of the Queen's accession a number of laws existed restricting the free action of workingmen. Only three years before Victoria's coronation six poor agricultural laborers in Dorsetshire were transported (1834) to penal servitude at Botany Bay, Australia, for seven years, for peacefully combining to secure an increase of their wages, which at that time were only six shilling a week. In fact, the so-called "Conspiracy Laws," which made Labor Unions liable to prosecution as unlawful, if not actually criminal organizations, were not wholly repealed until after the opening of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile Parliament pa.s.sed the Trade Union Acts, in 1871 and 1876, which recognized the right of workingmen to form a.s.sociations to protect their interests by the use of all measures not forbidden by the Common Law.[1] In 1906 the persistent political pressure of organized labor induced a Liberal Cabinet (of which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was Prime Minister) and the invariably Conservative House of Lords to pa.s.s a still more important act. That measure exempted Trade Unions from liability to pay damages for a certain cla.s.s of injuries which they might commit in carrying on a strike.[2]

During the above period of more than thirty years the unions have gained very largely in numbers and in financial as well as political strength. On the other hand they now have to contend with the radical Socialists who are seeking to convert England into a republic in which the government would carry on all industries and would prohibit private individuals from conducting any business whatever.

[1] One result of the organization of Trades or Labor Unions has been the shortening of the hours of labor. In 1894 the Government established an eight-hour day for workingmen in dockyards and in ordnance factories.

[2] The Trade Disputes Act of 1906. This forbids any suit for tort against a Trade Union. See A. L. Lowell's "The Government of England," II, 534; and S. Gompers in _The Outlook_ for February, 1911, p. 269.

The unions will accomplish more still if they succeed in teaching their members to study the condition of industry in England, to respect the action of those workers who do not join a.s.sociations, and to see clearly that "if men have a right to combine," they must also "have an equal right to refuse to combine."

In 1837 the English Corn Laws (S592) virtually shut out the importation of grain from foreign countries. The population had outgroiwn its food supply, and bread was so dear that even the agricultural laborer cried out. "I be protected," said he, "but I be starving." The long and bitter fight against the Corn Laws resulted not only in their gradual abolition, 1846, but in the opening of English ports to the products and manufactures of the world. With the exception of tobacco, wines, spirits, and a few other articles, all imports enter the kingdom free.

But though Great Britain carries out the theory that it is better to make things cheap for the sake of those who buy them, than it is to make them dear for the sake of those who produce them, yet all of the great self-governing English colonies impose protective duties[1] even against British products (S625). One of the interesting questions suggested by the Queen's "Diamond Jubilee" (1897) (S607) was whether England's children in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada would take any steps toward forming a commercial fre-etrade union with the mother country. More than ten years later that point still remained under discussion (S625).

[1] Except in certain cases, where the colonies, e.g. Canada, grant preferential duties, or practical free trade, in certain articles exported to the British Isles.

617. The Small Agricultural Holdings Act; the Agricultural Outlook.

Through the influence of the greatly increased popular vote, which resulted from the Third Reform Act (S600), the farm laborers made themselves felt in the House of Commons. They secured the pa.s.sage of the Small Agricultural Holdings Act (1892). This gave those who worked on the land the privilege of purchasing from one to fifty acres, or of taking it on lease if they preferred.[2] But, notwithstanding the relief granted by this measure, the agricultural problem is to-day one of the most serious England has to solve. Just as New England now depends in large measure on the West for its food supply, so the British Isles depend in great measure on America for breadstuffs. Thousands of acres of fertile soil have gone out of cultivation in the eastern half of the island, mainly because the farmers cannot compete with foreign wheat.

[2] The Small Agricultural Holdings Act enables the County Council (S600) to acquire, by voluntary arrangement, suitable land for the purpose of reletting or reselling it to agricultural laborers and men of small means. Under certain safeguards the Council may advance up to three fourths of the purchase money.

The Royal Agricultural Commission, in a report made a number of years ago (1897), could suggest no remedy, and believed matters must grow worse. A leading English journal,[3] in commenting on the report, said, "The sad and sober fact is that the English farmer's occupation is gone, or nearly gone, never to return."

[3] The Bristol _Times and Mirror_, August 5, 1897.