Revolutions of 1830.— The year 1830 is one of the notable dates in the 19th century. In America the victory of Jackson had just marked a fresh advance in popular government; and the first labor union movement in America (the backbone of Jacksonian Democracy in the East) was agitating, in some places with successful strikes, for a 10-hour day in place of the dawn to-dark day, for regulation of child labor so as to permit schooling during part of the year at least, and for a modern free State system of schools in place of the existing schools for the poor. In England the First Reform Bill began its two-year struggle in Parliament. On the continent of Europe, revolution struck a new blow at the system of Metternich. This time the movement started in Fiance, where the July Revolution replaced the divine-right Bour bon monarchy with the constitutional, bour geois monarchy of the Orleanists. Explosions followed over Europe. The Belgians rose against their Dutch masters; the Poles against Russia; Italian risings seemed for a moment to have some chance in the Papal States and the duchies; and, while Russia and Austria were busied in Poland and Italy, liberal gains were secured in several 'German states. But soon Metternich, his hands free once more, set himself patiently to restore the old order in Germany. France, it is true, was lost to the °Holy Alliance,' and joined England in de fending liberal Belgium against despotic inter vention. But in the final result, France and Belgium were the only European gainers from this period. It was to take the third great "year of revolutions,° to sweep away Metternich's shattered system.
To appreciate in any measure the wonderful progress of the remaining two-thirds of the 19th century, it is needful to grasp conditions when the Victorian era began. It was still a small, despotic world, far more remote from the great, progressive world of 1900 than from the world of 1600. Civilization held only two patches on the globe,— western Europe and eastern North America. In the latter, the real frontier of the United States reached less than one-third the way across the continent, and poli tics and society were dominated by the slave power. Europe knew °Germany" only as a pious aspiration of revolutionaries, and °Italy° as a °geographical expression." Metternich stood guard over central Europe. On the east hung Russia, an inert mass, in the chains of her millions of serfs. Under the contemptible Or leans monarchy, France was taking breath be tween spasmodic revolutions. England herself had only begun to stir under the long oligarchic rule of her landlord class. The rest of the globe counted; a fringe of Australia held a convict camp; eastern Canada was .a group of jealous, petty provinces, learning to agitate in disorderly fashion for self-govern ment; Spanish America, prostrate in anarchy, gave as yet little hope of the coming renaissance; Japan was to sleep a generation longer; while the two largest continents were undisturbed in their native barbarism, except for England's grasp upon the hem of India and South Africa.
England in the 19th Century.— In Europe, England was to lead the van of progress; and in England, almost alone in Europe, reform was to come without revolution. But the England of 1830 was still mediaeval. During the great French wars from 1690 to 1815, except for the one development of ministerial government, England had retrograded politically and socially. Her society was marked by extreme inequalities between rich and poor, intensified by cruel class legislation; her government, superficially rep resentative, had really fallen into the hands of a selfish landlord class; her boasted local self-government was intensely aristocratic; her Established Church was aristocratic and unspir itual. In the last half-century along with the industrial revolution had come a marvelous in crease of population and growth of city life, calling imperatively for new adjustments; but the great Tory party met all calls for reform with sullen denunciation and repressive legis lation which made free speech a crime.
Under the system of rotten and pocket bor oughs, more than half the House of Commons were the appointees of less than 200 landlords, while most of the rest represented small fan tastic constituencies. Thus, reform necessarily began with Parliament itself. This parlia mentary reform was accomplished by three great measures; that of 1832 placed power in the hands of an intelligent middle class, the landed and mercantile interests; 35 years later, the Second Reform Bill (1867) gave power to the skilled artisan class of the towns; the bill of 1884 once more doubled the electorate; and the reform of 1918 made England a democ racy with complete manhood and womanhood suffrage, and with abolition of all "plural voting.' The Reform Bill of 1832 was followed at once by social reform, in response to the swell ing tide of humanitarianism in literature and society. Legislation swept away negro slavery in the colonies, and the hideous white slairery of women and children in English factories and mines; reformed the barbarous and fan tastic criminal code; abolished the worst abuses of the pauperizing poor-law ; began the pro tection of workmen in factories against care lessness or wilful neglect of capitalists; gave women a few legal rights; adjusted taxation more equitably; swept away the corn laws and introduced the free-trade era; removed the press gang and brought in the penny post ; en larged the self-government of the colonies; and established a wonderfully efficient system of democratic self-government in cities at home. Subsequent political reform, despite the Irish difficulties after 1870, added to the rate of social reform. In particular should be noticed: (1) ballot reform and the elimination of corrup tion from politics; (2) the adoption of a broad school system; (3) the true democracy estab lished in rural units by the local government bills of 1888 and 1894; (4) the complex indus trial legislation; and (5) for dependencies where the nature of the population forbids self government, the adoption of efficient, unselfish colonial administration, in which England has set an example for all world powers. Even India and Egypt, with their tremendous diffi culties, were touched with new life. And the great provinces of the English-speaking col onies, Canada and Australia, were encouraged to organize themselves into two mighty federal states (1867 and 1901) —a movement fitly consummated after the Boer War by the generous establishment of the federal Union of South Africa (1909). Mr. Gladstone's de feat and retirement in 1895 checked internal reform for some 10 years; but by 1906 the Liberals had come into power again, under the vigorous leadership of Asquith and Lloyd George. As early as 1892 a famous Liberal platform had called for Irish Home Rule, Welsh disestablishment, sweeping reforms in taxation, old-age pensions, and, as a necessary step toward any reforms for the "mending or ending" of the lords. This program was now taken up in earnest. In 1911, after successive referendums and a three-year parliamentary struggle, the veto of the Lords was virtually abolished. Then the rest of the "New Castle program" was quickly put into law, along with the most advanced and comprehensive factory acts, workman's compensation acts, and social insurance acts yet known to the world — including insurance against unemployment. By Lloyd George's radical system of taxation, too, the money to wage this "war against pov erty') was being drawn largely from that class of wealthy men who receive their wealth with out rendering services to society in return. Other countries were moving, too, along like lines. But at the instant of success, all this fair promise of the new 20th century was blighted, in all European lands, by the devasta tion of the World War.