BRITAIN. 



697 



ns first lord of the treasury and prime minister, upon 

 which occasion the ultra-tory members of the cabinet 

 seceded, a whig ministry was formed, and a bitter op- 

 position commenced on the part of the lories. July 6, 



1827, the plenipotentiaries of Russia and France, at 

 London, subscribed, with lord Dudley, the treaty of 

 London, for the settlement of the affairs of Greece, 

 (q. v.) The battle of Navarino was probably hastened 

 by the unauthorized publication of a part of the 

 treaty, by which the three powers obliged themselves 

 to use force, if necessary, to compel a cessation of 

 hostilities in the Mediterranean. August 8, Mr Can- 

 ning died, after a violent and painful illness. Imme- 

 diately after his death, lord Goderich was made chief 

 lord of the treasury and prime minister. January 8, 



1828, this minister retired from office, and his cabinet 

 was dissolved. The duke of Wellington was now 

 made prime minister. Early in this year, the corpor- 

 ation and test acts were abolished. (See Corporation 

 and Test Acts.) In April, 1829, the Catholic relief 

 bill was passed. See Catholic Emancipation. 



June 26, 1830, George IV. died, and was succeeded 

 by his brother, the duke of Clarence, under the title 

 of William IV. In the fall of 1830, after the revolu- 

 tionary movements on the continent of Europe, much 

 excitement occurred in England. The ministry be- 

 came unpopular, and, on a debate (November 15) in 

 the house of commons, respecting the civil list, the 

 majority against the ministry was 29. The duke of 

 Wellington announced, the next day, that he had re- 

 signed his office ; and, in a day or two, a new ministry 

 was formed, at the head of which was earl Grey. Mr 

 Brougham was appointed lord chancellor; lord Gode- 

 rich, secretary of the colonial department ; the mar- 

 quis of Anglesea, lord lieutenant of Ireland ; lord 

 Hill, commander-in-chief ; lord Al thorp, chancellor 

 of the exchequer ; the marquis of Lansdowne, presi- 

 dent of the council, &c. &c. One of the first acts of 

 the new ministry was to introduce bills (generally 

 called the reform bills), for extending the constituency 

 of the country. The popularity of this measure 

 strengthened their position in the cabinet, and enabled 

 them to combat successfully the old aristocracy. For 

 an account of the reform bills for England, Scotland, 

 and Ireland, the reader is referred to another section 

 of the present article, headed Parliament. The fur- 

 ther proceedings of the whig ministry must, meantime, 

 remain subjects for future history. 



The Civil State. The British nation may be con- 

 sidered as divided into three classes, the nobility, gen- 

 try, and commonalty. The clergy do not form a 

 separate estate, as in most countries of Europe. The 

 laws, however, acknowledge only two distinctions, 

 the nobility and the commonalty, the latter including 

 the gentry. The distinction between the nobility and 

 commonalty is by no means like that between the 

 patricians and plebeians in ancient Rome, nor that 

 between the nobles and citizens of France in the last 

 century. Intermarriages, it is well known, are usual : 

 the eldest son only inherits the rank and titles of the 

 ancestor ; the way to the highest dignities is always 

 open to talent and merit, and the privileges of nobility 

 are not of a kind to wound the self-respect of a com- 

 moner. The gentry is not, like the lower nobility in 

 many countries, separated by political privileges from 

 tlie commonalty, but sits with it in the house of com- 

 mons, where wealth, industry, talent, and knowledge 

 are the great moving powers. Nor have the high 

 ecclesiastical dignities (as in some cases in Germany), 

 nor the great offices of state, been connected with 

 birth. Two queens have reigned in England (Mary 

 and Anne), whose mother, Ann Hyde (wife of James 

 II.), was the daughter of an English lawyer (lord 

 Clarendon.) The British gentry enjoy no exemption 

 from taxes or other civil burdens ; the peers, indeed, 



are exempted from the performance of many littlo 

 public services, such as sitting on juries, &c. They 

 have also a right to be tried by the house of lords on 

 indictments for treason, or felony, or misprision there- 

 of ; but the administration of justice before this tribu- 

 nal is as strict as in the ordinary courts. Their persons 

 cannot be arrested in civil cases. The civil state of 

 the English nation has acquired its present organiza- 

 tion, like the other institutions of the country, by a 

 gradual development, and modifications suited to the 

 spirit of the age, but retarded by the attachment of 

 the nation to old customs. The nobility still bears 

 traces of the Saxon times, although the Saxons cannot 

 strictly be said to have had a hereditary nobility, in 

 the modern sense of the word. Their athelings were 

 only the members of the royal family, and probably 

 only the sons and grandsons of the king. The arch- 

 bishop of England, by virtue of his spiritual dignity, 

 and not, as some have stated, in the character of landed 

 proprietor, was equal to them in rank and privileges, 

 and had the same weregild. The country was divided 

 into shires, afterwards called counties, each of which 

 was governed by an ealdorman ; but this dignity was 

 not hereditary. (See Alderman.) Among the free- 

 men, the royal officers and thanes enjoyed particular 

 privileges ; but their dignity was not hereditary, and 

 the ccorls, or husbandmen, attained the same rank, 

 when they owned five hides of land, together with a 

 chapel, a kitchen, a hall, and a bell. A merchant, 

 who had made three voyages on his own account, re- 

 ceived the title of thane. The free peasants (accord- 

 ing to their various relations to the soil, called ceorls, 

 cotsets, bovarii, bowers, bare,) the serfs or bondsmen, 

 employed partly in personal services, and partly in 

 the cultivation of the ground (in Saxon theowmen esne, 

 in Danish tAraels,) made up the rest of the people. 

 The lines of distinction between these different classes 

 were not very broad, and it was not difficult fora serf 

 to become a freeman, a freeman a thane, and a thane 

 an ealdorman. Towards the end of the Saxon period, 

 there was a tendency to render all these distinctions 

 hereditary, which was completed and fixed by the 

 Norman conquest. The dignity of governor of a 

 county became hereditary and feudal, but in the course 

 of a century, had ceased to be any thing more than 

 titular. In the reign of king John, the earls, the de- 

 scendants of the former governors, were merely the 

 first class of barons, generally, indeed, with great 

 landed estates, but without any official character. 

 This had devolved on the sheriffs (shire-gerefan, vice- 

 comites, exactores, reeves of the shire,) who have con- 

 tinued to the present time. The whole property ot 

 the soil was vested in the king, as the lord paramount, 

 after the conquest, and every thing became hereditary ; 

 even the bishops and mitred abbots became barons. 

 The holders of fiefs, obliged to render military service 

 for their lands, constituted the knighthood ; the nobi- 

 lity, consisting of the two classes of earls and barons, 

 had a seat in parliament, where the knights appeared 

 only by deputies. That amidst these changes many 

 free husbandmen should be converted into villeins, is 

 not astonishing ; yet the commons, particularly the 

 city of London, had become so powerful, and the 

 freeholders so numerous, that the tendency to liberty 

 in the nation was decided. The risings of the people 

 against the oppressions of the barons in the reign of 

 Richard II. (1381), when the abolition of slavery and 

 ts consequent grievances was demanded, showed to 

 what the nation was tending, and before two hundred 

 years afterwards, every trace of villenage had disap- 

 peared. The landed proprietors, of all classes, par- 

 ticipated, as freeholders, in the choice of members ot 

 parliament ; the tenants only, who had no property in 

 the soil, and the copyholders, who were originally 

 tenants at will, and afterwards acquired a certain li 

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