754 



VICTORIA. 



by royal prerogative was severely criticised, even 

 by a "large section of his own party, to whose 

 principles it was clearly opposed. Flogging in the 

 army was abolished in 1ST!). 



In 1868 a bill was passed in Parliament to do 

 away with public executions, which had long been 

 a source of scandal to the better elements of the 

 population; it had come to be understood that they 

 were only a source of hardening and brutalization 

 to the very class they were intended to impress 

 by terrible warning/ Transportation for crime 

 came to an end in l's.">7. and debtors' prisons have 

 been abolished. 



Strangely enough, up to the year 1870 England 

 had in> system of national education. There were 

 private M-liools and church schools and charity 

 schools, but no system of free public education; 

 more than two thirds of the children were without 

 school advantages. In 1870, during Mr. Glad- 

 stone's first administration, a bill was brought in 

 by Mr. Forster to establish a system of schools, 

 and after much opposition, not perhaps to the es- 

 tablishment of schools, but to some features of the 

 plan, it \\as carried, and the present system of 

 board schools was instituted; improvements have 

 been made from time to time. 



About 1874 the country was stirred by the 

 revelations made by Mr. Plimsoll in Parliament 

 concerning the practice of sending out seamen in 

 merchant vessels which were unseaworthy but 

 insured, so that the owners were indifferent to 

 their fate, while the law allowed seamen who failed 

 to fulfill their agreements to be sent to prison. 

 A sailor, therefore, who found himself committed 

 to sailing in a crazy vessel had the alternative 

 of risking his life or going to prison. Mr. Plim- 

 soll offered a bill for securing close inspection of 

 ships, which was opposed as too stringent by ship- 

 owners and others; a bill affording temporarily 

 a measure of relief was passed in 1875, and in 

 1870 its provisions with others were embodied in 

 a permanent act, which was passed. 



The great advances in the comforts and con- 

 veniences of life, the improvements in methods of 

 travel and communication, the multiplication of 

 machinery, the discoveries of science, the new ap- 

 plications of known scientific principles all these 

 advantages of the wonderful progress of the past 

 sixty years Knghind has shared with all other 

 civiii/.ed nations, and they need only be referred 

 to here. 



In the year following Victoria's accession steam 

 communication was established between Kngland 

 and America: the Sirins, the Great Western, and 

 the Royal William crossed the Atlantic. The 

 Cunard line was established two years later. The 

 same year ( 1837) that Prof. Morse applied to Con- 

 ;jrc" for aid tor his electric telegraph, two Eng- 

 lishmen Wheatstorie and Cooke took out a pat- 

 nt for improvements " in giving signals and 

 sounding alarms in distant places by means of' 

 electric currents transmitted through metallic cir- 

 cuit." The \h^\ successful Atlantic cable was laid 

 in iSlili: now all the oceans are traversed in this 

 wav. the Atlantic by 14 line-,. 



- In ls:;7 -I!*." says Alfred RusscI Wallace. " I 

 was living near Leighton I'.u/./ard while the Lon- 

 don and Birmingham Railway, the precursor of 

 the present London and Northwestern system, was 

 in process of construction; and when the first sec- 

 tion was opened to Watford I traveled by it to 

 London third class in what is now an ordinary 

 goods truck, with neither roof nor seats, nor any 

 other accommodation than is now given t<> coal. 

 iron, and miscellaneous goods. If it rained or the 

 wind wax cold the passengers sat on the tloor and 

 protected themselves as they could." 



VIRGINIA. 



The half-centenary jubilee of the first use of 

 locomotives on the road from Stockton to Dar- 

 lington in 1825 was celebrated at Darlington in 

 September, 1875, under the auspices of the North- 

 eastern Railway Company. The Liverpool and 

 Manchester line had been opened in 1830; the 

 London and Birmingham was lirst opened through- 

 out in 1838. The Queen made her first journey 

 by rail from Windsor to Paddington in 1842. The 

 London Times says of it: "The master of the 

 horse, whose business it was to provide for the 

 Queen's ordinary journeys by road, was much put 

 out by this innovation. He marched into the 

 station several hours before the start to inspect 

 the engine as he would have examined a steed. 

 But greater merriment was occasioned by the 

 Queen's coachman, who insisted that, as a matter 

 of form, he ought to make believe to drive the 

 engine. After some dispute he was told that he 

 might climb on to the pilot engine which was to 

 precede the royal train, and the good fellow ac- 

 tually did this; but his scarlet livery, white gloves, 

 and wig suffered so much from soot and sparks 

 that he made no more fuss about his rights in after 

 trips. The run to Paddington was successfully 

 accomplished, and the motion of the train was 

 found to be so pleasant that the Queen readily 

 trusted herself to the railway for a longer journey 

 a few weeks later, when she paid her first visit to 

 Scotland." 



About this time the mania for railway specu- 

 lations set in. Vast sums were subscribed for 

 projected lines; in the autumn of 1845 a table 

 published by the Times showed that 1,428 com- 

 panies had been registered and were pledged to the 

 outlay of 701,243,208. A panic followed. " For 

 a while railway scrip was not only unsalable, but 

 not to be parted with as a gift. Holders of half- 

 paid-up shares resigned themselves to bankruptcy 

 and men who had raved at Parliament for not 

 passing railway bills with sufficient speed leaped 

 with joy when it happened that the project of 

 their particular company was thrown out, thereby 

 enabling the concern to be wound up and the 

 shareholders to be discharged from further liabil- 

 ity." At the time of the first jubilee (1887) the 

 railway mileage in the United Kingdom was 

 277,131. 



VIRGINIA, a Southern State, one of the origi- 

 nal thirteen, ratified the Constitution June -2~>. 

 1788; area, 42.450 square miles. The population, 

 according to each decennial census, was 747.<il<> 

 in 1790; 880,200 in 1800: 974.C.OM in 1810: I.IM;:,. 

 116 in 1820; 1,211,405 in 1830; 1.23!).7!>7 in Is Hi: 

 1,421,601 in 1850; 1.596,318 in 1860; 1.22.->.1<53 in 

 1870; 1,512.565 in 1880; 1,655,980 in 1890; ar 

 1,854,184 in 1900. Capital, Richmond. 



Government. The following were the State 

 officers in 1!)00: Governor, J. lloge Tyler; Lieu- 

 tenant Governor. Kdward Kchols; Secretary of 

 State, Joseph T. Lawless; Attorney-General, A. 

 J. Montague: First Auditor, Morton Marye: 

 ond Auditor, Josiah Ryland. Jr. (succeeded. Oct. 

 17, by John G. Dew) : Treasurer, A. W. I human. 

 Jr.; Adjutant General, W. Nalle; Superintendent 

 of Public Instruction. Joseph W. Soiithall: Com- 

 missioner of Agriculture. Geoige W. Koiner: Hail- 

 road Commissioner, .lames ( '. Hill; Commissioner 

 of Labor, Archer Montague (succeeded, Feb. 1. 

 by .1 I!. Doherty): Register of the Land Office. 

 J. W. Richardson: President of the Supreme ( ourt 

 of Appeals, James Keith: Justices. John W. Riely 

 (succeeded. Oct. 1. by A. A. Phlegar). John A. 

 r.iiclianan. George M. Harrison, and Richard II. 

 Cardwell. All are Democrats. 



Population. The census of 1900 shows the in- 

 crease of population for the State to have been 



