Municipal reform had been making progress in England since 1835, when taxpayers in cities were allowed a voice in elections for city offices. Even women who paid taxes were recognized in certain cases. In 1858 the Jews were emancipated from the political disabilities which had heretofore oppressed them, and Baron Rothschild took his seat in Parliament. In 1867 the second Reform Bill, giving the suffrage to tax-paying householders and others, was introduced and carried by the Conservatives under the lead of Mr. Disraeli. The spread of the suffrage did not stop here, and a third Reform act, in 1884, gave the right to vote to all residents of counties in the United Kingdom, on the same terms as those which had already been granted to towns. For the success of this measure credit must be given chiefly to Joseph Arch, a farm hand from Warwickshire, who was seated in the House of Commons in 1886. For most practical purposes, the English people now rule themselves as fully as do the Americans.

Coincidentally with these political reforms, there had been proceeding rectifications of procedure in ecclesiastical matters. The Church of England had always arrogated the right to collect taxes for its support from persons of whatever denominations a manifest injustice, since these denominations had to pay for churches of their own, whose creeds were opposed to that of the Church of England. Finally, in 1868, these church rates were abolished and no one who did not wish to do so was obliged to pay the expenses of other peoples' way to heaven. Thanks to Mr. Gladstone, Ireland shared in this relief. In 1870, unsectarian Board Schools were established; and in 1891, an Act of Parliament finally made education practically free in England.

But the sufferings of Ireland were not confined to educational and religious disabilities. Most of the land was owned by non-resident English landlords, and rents were collected by overseers, who evicted upon non-payment. Improvements made on land by tenants gave them no profit, but only increase of taxes. A bill introduced in 1870 by Gladstone gave damages to evicted tenants, and an allowance for improvements; and provided for courts of arbitration between tenants and landlords. But no bill could make potatoes grow in bad years; and the threat of another famine between 1876 and 1879 caused the formation of the Irish Land League, which aimed to give Ireland to the Irish, and evict the non-resident landlords. Parliament was slow to aid the organization, and it resorted to a system of non-intercourse with unjust landlords and agents, which, because it was first applied to an agent named Boycott, was called by his name. Suffering increased, and the people took to violent measures; there were fires, mutilations of cattle, and murders; and the government suppressed the League, as being morally if not actually responsible. Another Land Bill, in 1881, attempted new remedies, by giving the tenant the right to have his rent fixed by a board of land commissioners; this rent could not be raised for fifteen years; and meanwhile the tenant might sell his tenancy to the highest bidder. The reply of the Irish to this overture was the murder, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, of the Secretary of Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and of Mr. Burke, an officer of the government. The deed was disavowed by the National Party of Ireland; but it naturally cooled the zeal of Englishmen to push reforms on the line of conciliation.

Ireland may be called an unlucky country; though matters there are far better than they have been, and may be expected gradually to improve. But in England, civic freedom and enlightened methods have steadily increased. The control of shire and county business is reverting to the hands of the people, after having been usurped by the great landowners; there is a little parliament, with fall rights of discussion, in every village; and any twelvemonth resident may be elected to office. The spoils system, by which the party in power seized all the offices without regard to the merits of incumbents, was done away with; and competitive examinations opened the way to all fit persons to occupy government positions. The purchase of army commissions was abolished in 1871. Election frauds were checked by a Registration Act, and by the secret ballot. Law procedure was simplified and expedited by revising and digesting the records and precedents, and by uniting the chief courts in one High Court of Justice. Suits at law can now be settled with comparative promptness; and no accused person is in danger of condemnation without a fair hearing. The abuses of insane asylums have also been corrected; and the benefits of applied science are too numerous to mention in detail.

All these things have been accomplished during the reign of Victoria. But it is needless to say that, although Her Majesty undoubtedly has been friendly to all progress, the actual work has been done by the people, under the guidance of a number of distinguished men who have been, one after the other, the true rulers of England; not always as Prime Ministers, but always as the repositories of real power. Some of the most eminent of these men are Cobden, John Bright, Gladstone, Palmerston, Lord Russell, Lord Beaconsfield or Mr. Disraeli, a Jew of genius; Lord Hartington, afterward the Duke of Devonshire; and a few more. There has been at least one distinguished Irishman in Parliament during the past twenty years: Charles Stewart Parnell; he was the founder and leader of the Land League, and waged relentless war against English power in Ireland. Of the Prime Ministers of the queen's reign the most eminent have been Palmerston, Disraeli and Gladstone. Viscount Palmerston was born in 1784; he was one of the Temples of Hampshire, and had a strain of Irish blood in him. But he was a typical Englishman of a sort: easy, jovial, bluff, sceptical, a man of the world : confident, not to be browbeaten or intimidated: of vast experience and gifted with an immense capacity for business, and love of it; a diplomatist who made many blunders yet always seemed to prevail; a light-hearted, genial, liberal autocrat. He had inexhaustible nervous energy, and habitually carried in his mouth a small twig, which, being reproduced in "Punch's" cartoons, came to be regarded as characteristic of his temperament. He entered Parliament in 1807, and filled various positions under government before reaching the supreme office in 1855, which he held, with a brief interval, until his death ten years later. In politics he was first a Pitt Tory, and afterward a Whig. He defended the Turks against Russia, and espoused the Southern side in the American Civil War. He was a favorite of the Queen, and of fortune, and amused, and was liked by, the English people.

Gladstone was a man of entirely opposite character: grave from the beginning, learned, earnest, strenuous, conscientious; a Scotchman, though born in Liverpool and educated at Oxford, where he took a double first class in classics and mathematics. He entered Parliament in 1832, at the age of twenty-three, and lost no time in showing his ability. His early political experience was under Sir Robert Peel; but in the course of years he changed from Conservatism to Liberalism, in the advocacy of which principles his greatest triumphs as a statesman were won. He achieved his greatest distinction as Chancellor of the Exchequer, making finance seem as interesting as a fairy-tale, and solving problems which had seemed impossible. It was in 1868, at the age of fifty-nine, that he was Prime Minister for the first time; and thrice again did he occupy that august position. He was a strong and strict leader, so that it has been said that the history of his administration is the history of the British Empire during those periods. He disestablished the Irish Church, and brought in several bills for the improvement of Ireland, though his two chief bills were defeated. He was a bitter foe of Turkey, and some of his phrases, such as "the Unspeakable Turk" have entered into history. He sat in Parliament continuously (with the exception of about eighteen months) for sixty-two years; retiring on account of age in 1894, and dying in 1898, at the age of eighty-nine, by far the most eminent Englishman of his time. He was always the friend of freedom, of the oppressed and poor, and of progress; he had many enemies; but considering the multiplicity of his activities, his mistakes were marvelously few. Besides politics, he always kept up his interest in literature, and published various works on ecclesiastical and classical subjects. One marvels at the vast capacity and momentum of that mind and will, always occupied with the promotion of what their owner believed to be the public good. The country that can breed such a man need feel no apprehensions. The flame kindled in his heart in boyhood burned to the socket of old age. His eloquence was one of the great possessions of England during the Nineteenth Century; and every decade that he lived added to her stature among nations.