VICTORIA. 



753 



directing the establishment of " a hierarchy of 

 bishops deriving their titles from their own sees, 

 which we constitute by the present letter in the 

 various apostolic districts" in England. Cardinal 

 Wiseman, as Archbishop of Westminster and Ad- 

 ministrator Apostolic of the diocese of Bouthwark, 

 was to be the head of the Church in England; 

 and he issued a pastoral, in which he said: 

 " Catholic England has been restored to its orbit 

 in the ecclesiastical firmament from which its 

 light had long vanished, and begins now anew 

 its course of regularly adjusted action around the 

 center of unity, the source of jurisdiction, of light, 

 and of vigor." Lord John Russell wrote a letter 

 to the Bishop of Durham on the subject, in which 

 he condemned the bull as an assumption of au- 

 thority in England to give titles representing ter- 

 ritorial distinctions. The day following the ap- 

 pearance of the letter was Guy Faux day, and 

 instead of the usual effigies of that famous per- 

 sonage effigies of the Pope and the cardinal were 

 burned all through the country. The excitement 

 led to the introduction of Lord John Russell's 

 " ecclesiastical titles " bill, forbidding Catholic prel- 

 ates to take titles from names of places in the 

 kingdom under penalties. Although the bill was 

 opposed as petty and bigoted not only by all the 

 Catholic members, but by Liberals like Cobden 

 and Bright and many of the other members, it 

 was passed by a vote of 395 to 03, probably with 

 the feeling that something must be done to sat- 

 isfy the excited feeling in the country. But the 

 act does not seem to have been enforced, and in 

 1871 it was repealed. 



About the time that the Oxford movement was 

 going on in 1843 occurred the secession of the 

 Free Church of Scotland, which was a revolt 

 against the appointment of ministers by lay pa- 

 trons. It was led by Dr. Thomas Chalmers. In 

 1874 the bill for the abolition of Church patronage 

 in Scotland was passed, giving the congregations 

 the choice of their ministers, the point for which 

 the Free Church had contended. 



The question of disestablishing the Church in 

 Ireland was brought forward in Parliament in 

 1865 by Mr. Dillwyn, who moved that the position 

 of that establishment was unsatisfactory and 

 called for the early attention of the Government. 

 Mr. Gladstone's speech admitted that the position 

 of the Irish Church was unsatisfactory, as it min- 

 istered to only one eighth or one ninth of those 

 who were taxed to support it, but declared that 

 the Government was not able at that time to deal 

 practically with the question. This speech, show- 

 ing Mr. Gladstone's hostility to the Irish estab- 

 lishment, caused great excitement and drew upon 

 him the censure of the Church party, who believed 

 that his principle, if carried out, would interfere 

 with the Church in Wales, where the dissenters 

 were in a majority, and might even be pushed 

 still further. Nothing more was done at that 

 time, but in 1868 Mr. Gladstone offered a bill abol- 

 ishing compulsory church rates, which became a 

 law ; and in 1869, the bill abolishing the Irish 

 Church establishment, to take effect in 1871, re- 

 ceived the royal assent. A bill for disestablishing 

 the Church in Wales was defeated in 1895. 



Tn 1871 the university tests were abolished, thus 

 permitting students of every faith to enter Cam- 

 bridge and Oxford on equal terms. 



A bill for the regulation of public worship was 

 passed in 1874. Its purpose was to do away with 

 ritualism, which has for years been a disturbing 

 element in the Church. The bill has apparently 

 been a failure. 



Various Reforms and Improvements. 

 Many old abuses not mentioned above have been 

 VOL. XL. 48 A 



done away with during the past sixty years. In 

 1842 an act was passed forbidding the employment 

 of girls and women in mines and collieries. This 

 was in consequence of the report of a cominis^iuii 

 which had been appointed upon motion of Lord 

 Ashley, afterward Earl of JShaftesbury, that the 

 subject of such labor might be investigated. The 

 report showed that in many of the mines and 

 collieries these poor women had been set to draw 

 carts and carry loads like beasts of burden. Other 

 acts regulating labor and doing away with abuses 

 ha.ve been passed from time to time. Formerly the 

 laws against combinations of workingmen were 

 very stringent. Any effort to effect an advance in 

 wages was treated as a conspiracy. Trades unions 

 were not regarded as entitled to the protection of 

 the civil laws and could not prosecute a dishonest 

 member or secure themselves against robbery. 

 Their aims were looked upon as destructive to 

 society; strikes were held to be immoral, without 

 regard to their provocation or purpose. Some out- 

 rages on the part of trades unions in Sheffield and 

 Manchester about 1868 led to an investigation, 

 which, while it showed that some of them used 

 intimidation and crime to carry out their projects, 

 the majority were innocent of such methods: and 

 the inquiry led to discussion of the laws, and in 

 time to reforms in them, placing the workmen on 

 a better footing in many respects; in the matter 

 of contracts, where the law had been all on the 

 side of the employer, the employee was placed on 

 an equality with him. 



The abolition of the duty on paper was an im- 

 portant reform, as it enabled newspapers to be 

 sold much more cheaply, and thus contributed to 

 the spread of intelligence. The price of a daily 

 paper at the beginning of the reign was Gd. 

 Besides the heavy duty on paper there was a 

 stamp duty and a duty on advertisements. All 

 these were in time removed, the last, the duty on 

 paper, about 1860. 



In 1840 the uniform penny rate of postage was 

 established. The postal telegraph went into opera- 

 tion about 1868. 



In 1857 an act to make the celebrated Gretna 

 Green marriages no longer possible, provided that 

 a residence of at least twenty-one days in Scotland 

 should be required to make marriages legal. 



Prince Albert made strenuous efforts to banish 

 the practice of dueling from the army, and it has 

 gradually disappeared. 



The purchase system for commissions in the 

 army was abolished under peculiar circumstances. 

 Mr. Gladstone introduced a bill to do away with 

 it and make promotion depend upon merit : the 

 bill also provided for compensation to officers then 

 holding commissions which they had bought and 

 expected to sell again, and which therefore repre- 

 sented an investment, so that the bill would be an 

 act of confiscation virtually without that pro- 

 vision. It passed the Commons, but the Lords 

 attempted to delay and perhaps defeat it entirely. 

 They passed an amendment to the motion for the 

 second reading which was to the effect that it was 

 better not to take any action until a complete 

 plan for the reorganization of the army could be 

 effected. The Prime Minister thereupon devisod 

 a plan for defeating the scheme of the Lords. The 

 purchase of commissions was made legal only hy 

 royal warrant, and he advised the Queen to issue 

 a royal proclamation canceling the permission 

 which had been given by the warrants of herself 

 and her predecessors. This she did. The House 

 of Lords had then no option but to pass the bill, 

 as that was the only way to save the provision 

 providing for compensation. The action of Mr. 

 Gladstone in thus overriding the legislative power 



