Durham, as a royal commission, constituted, by the formal consent of the sovereign, the Reform Bill the law of the land.

Separate bills had to be passed for Scotland and Ireland, but this was done with scarcely any opposition. The changes in the representation of the three kingdoms amounted in substance to this :-In England, the county constituences were increased from 52 to 82, and their members from 94 to 159. Fifty-six boroughs, returning 111 members, having less than 2,000 inhabitants each under the new census, were disfranchised; and 30 boroughs, having a population under 4,000, were reduced from two to one representative each. The united constituency of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis was reduced from four members to two. Thus the total reduction of borough members was 143, but as it had been decided against the Ministry that the aggregate of representatives should not be lessened, these 143 were redistributed. The new metropolitan boroughs, Marylebone, Finsbury, the Tower Hamlets, and Lambeth, received two each. Other places with a population exceeding 25,000 had 14 members allotted them—new and large provincial constituences, 63-and 21 boroughs of a population exceeding 12,000, one each. The county franchise was extended by the admission of copy-holders, lease-holders, and £50 tenants. The old corporation

freemen were not deprived of their votes if they had qualified before March, 1831; and the borough franchise was extended to the occupiers of tenements worth £10 a year, with certain provisions as to rate-paying and registration. The mode of election was very greatly improved by shortening the time of polling in counties from fifteen days to two, and in all cities and boroughs to one day. The qualification of a representative remained as before. In Ireland there was no change in the number of constituencies, nor in Scotland, but a more equitable distribution of representatives. The Irish county franchise was little altered from the arrangement of 1829; but that of Scotland was much enlarged.

The most palpable feature in the new system of representation was, the preponderance given to the counties; which, with the exclusion of the ballot, soon excited suspicion and complaints. But the people believed that they had opened up a way to the obtainment of complete justice—that the middle classes were pledged, by fellowship in struggle, to aid in the enfranchisement of the millions who were left in the condition they had found intolerable-and so they gave themselves up to exultation and hope.

CHAPTER II.

WHAT FRANCE GAINED BY HER SECOND REVOLUTION-BELGIUM SEPARATED FROM HOLLANDINSURRECTIONARY CHANGES IN SWITZERLAND, ITALY, AND GERMANY-THE POLISH STRUGGLETHE SUBLIME PORTE AND THE PASHA OF EGYPT-THE NEW KINGDOM OF GREECE-CIVIL WAR IN PORTUGAL AND SPAIN.

WHILE the important though miserably imperfect change in the political system of England, narrated in the last chapter, had been effecting itself, insurrection had been making the tour of continental Europe; but to leave upon its track little else than the desolation of civil war, and the monuments of royal or popular recalcitration.

France, that was the first to stir-that began and finished her revolution in a few days-profited as little as any by the movements she initiated. The first revolution turned up the soil of the country; it thoroughly destroyed, if it did not reconstruct-the second, only overturned a throne to get rid of its occupant in favour of a supplanter. The one was effected by and for the people—the other only by the people. Their utmost gain was the abolition of hereditary peerage-and that was a questionable gain, as a senate of royal creatures was substituted. They obtained an enlargement of the suffrage only from one to two hundred thousand voters-and their new monarch immediately set himself to work to reduce this miserable fraction of the population to its former proportion by the systematic corruption. of patronage. He did not in return give even peace and security to the nation. Within the first three years of his reign, several republican émeutes had been experienced in Paris; and Lyons was the centre of a Bourbon insurrection that required Marshal Soult and an army of 26,000 men for its suppression. Within the same period, more than four hundred journalists and authors had been prosecuted; the invasions of personal liberty had been more bold and numerous than under Polignac; and a girdle of fortresses had begun to rise around Paris. The venerable Lafayette never forgave himself the error of crowning the man who had thus deceived him; and at his death—which occurred in May, 1834, in his seventy-seventh year-his funeral eulogium was not permitted.

Belgium was the next link to Paris in the electric chain. The union of the Netherlands with Holland had turned out as was foretold when it was arbitrarily effected at the partition of 1815. Subject by turns to Germany and France, the population was a mixture of both races; and neither would assimilate with the Dutch, especially under a constitution which inverted the right proportions of political power. The performance of the opera of

"Massaniello," at Brussels, was the spark that exploded the train of animosities and discontents. The King made some concessions to the insurgent populace; but in a few weeks the capital was again in the hands of the Radicals; and a large army sent to reduce them to obedience was compelled to evacuate after five days' hard fighting (Sept. 1830). On the 5th of October, Belgian independence was proclaimed, and the Prince of Orange was driven from the country; but Antwerp was bombarded by the Dutch commandant from the citadel. A National Assembly resolved upon a monarchy in preference to a republic; and the crown was offered to the Duke of Nemours, son of the King of the French. Louis Philippe declining its acceptance, to conciliate the other European powers, it was offered to Prince Leopold, the widower of our Princess Charlotte. By him it was accepted, and he shortly afterwards married a daughter of Louis Philippe. Russia and Prussia objected for some time to the recognition of the new kingdom, but ultimately were overruled; and the united force of England and France having handed over Antwerp to the Belgians, peace was restored, though negotiations on the subject occupied the diplomatists for eight or ten years longer. Belgium has certainly shown no signs of repentance for her share in these troubles; but is, probably, the best-governed state of the Continent.

The revolutionary flame spread on either hand—into Germany on the one side, into Switzerland and Italy on the other. The aristocratic canton of Berne precipitated the outbreak by endeavouring to prevent it. Zurich took the lead in granting reforms, and became the chief of a concordate of democratic states, which triumphed over an antagonistic confederation, and prevented, by the aid of France, the alienation of Basle, Neufchatel, and Valais.-Italy was agitated at several points, and in Rome the Pope was deposed, in the summer of 1831; but Austrian intervention, with overwhelming force, frustrated once more all hopes of unity and independence. The German revolutions commenced with Brunswick. The Duke Charles consummated a career of obstinacy and extravagance by warning his subjects he knew better than Charles the Tenth how to defend his throne; which provoked them to storm and burn his palace (September, 1830), from which he escaped by a garden. His brother William was chosen to replace him, and gave satisfaction. The ex-Duke tried to regain his throne by democratic professions and appeals, but obtained no support; and as he had before been censured by the German powers for gross libels on his late guardian, George the Fourth of England and Hanover, he was discountenanced by them now, and has since kept alive a disgraceful notoriety in London and Paris.-The King of Saxony excited the anger of his people by blind devotion to the Catholic Church, and was compelled, by successive and disastrous tumults, to make a virtual abdi

cation in favour of his nephew, Duke Frederick.-The Elector of Hesse Cassel had a mistress whom the people drove from the capital; and he placed the reins of government in the hands of his son, that he might follow her. But the son was as tyrannical and profligate as the father; and the people had again to rise, to protect his own mother from his insults, and to obtain the constitution which the father had promised.-Hanover was governed by a Minister against whose policy the people rose, headed by some eminent professors. The insurrection was suppressed; but the Duke of Cambridge, representing his brother, the King of England, conceded the removal of the Minister, and a more liberal constitution.-In Aix-la-Chapelle, Elberfeld, Jena, Altenberg, and other towns, there were disturbances; but they led to no important result.—A peaceable meeting of German Radicals at Hanspach, in May, 1832, was followed by the arrest of their leaders, the suppression of the liberal press and of political clubs, and the arbitrary imposition of taxes. A bold attempt on the part of the revolutionary students at Frankfort to liberate the political prisoners, and overawe the Diet, had only the effect of increasing the severity of the German Governments.

Poland suffered with patience the tortures inflicted by the Grand Duke, or arch-fiend, Constantine, up to the end of November, 1830. Some students of the military school at Warsaw had drunk to the immortal memory of Kosciusko. Two commissions having decided that there was no ground for punishment in this, Constantine ordered, on his own authority, the flogging and imprisonment of the youths. Their comrades rose in arms, part of the garrison joined them, and then the town's-people. By the 3rd of December, the Russians had been expelled, after a frightful slaughter, from the ancient capital of Poland. Some of the nobles had presented to the Archduke a petition for the fulfilment of the constitution guaranteed in 1814; and as every thing had been done in the name of the Emperor, it was deemed possible that his wrath might not be kindled. But Marshal Klopscki was made Dictator, in case defence should be necessary. With the new year, came the tidings of an army on the march to punish the "horrid treason" of the Poles; and before its end, the Emperor had proclaimed, "Order reigns in Warsaw." The patriots-that is, the nobles and the professional classes; for it must be confessed, that the mass of the people had been reduced by serfdom to a condition of animal indifference -fought with heroic valour, against tremendous odds. For a time they were sustained by hopes of help from various quarters-from the sympathy of Hungary, Germany, France, and England; even from Austrian and Prussian jealousy of Russian aggrandisement. But Austria and Prussia were wedded to the Czar by ties stronger than their jealousyHungary and Germany could send only a few volunteer auxiliaries-France

and England were too far from a country that had no sea-board; even if the crafty monarch of the one had not already begun to intrigue with the Northern Powers, and the Foreign Secretary of the other to delude himself and the nation with a dashing show of liberalism. So unhappy Poland was abandoned to the merciless vengeance of the Czar Nicholas. The survivors of battle were sent to the mines of Siberia-noble ladies were married to the common soldiers of the victor's hordes-crowds of infants were transported to Russia before they had learned the name of their native land— the universities were suppressed and the libraries broken up-the Polish constitution was formally abrogated for government by "organic statutes;" and even the use of the Polish language forbidden. Some thousands of the patriots escaped over the frontier, carrying with them cholera, and other pestilential diseases, that became a new source of political trouble; the ignorant populations of Southern Europe rising in many places against the physicians and higher classes, as poisoners. Europe hastened to console, with alms, the victims of its guilty or most unhappy indolence. Large contributions were raised for them in London and Paris, and many still subsist upon public bounty. However remote from democracy may have been their sentiments at home, they have become in exile the migratory army of revolution; conspicuous in nearly every tumult of every capital, since their expatriation.

While Western and Central Europe had been thus agitated by the risings of the multitude against their hereditary masters, the East was witness to the supremacy of individual strength over traditional power. Scarcely had Turkey concluded a peace with Russia, than she fell prostrate before the powerful vassal who had alone stood between her and the Northern autocrat. Mohammed Ali took advantage of a quarrel with a brother Pasha to extend his dominion from Egypt over the whole of Syria; and, in reply to the interference of his suverain, turned his march across the Taurus right upon Constantinople. As England and France had a common interest in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman empire, they joined with Russia in inducing Ibrahim to stop his march, and effected an arrangement which left Mahommed hereditary ruler of Egypt.

Leopold, now King of the Belgians, had been previously invited by the guardian powers of Greece to accept the throne of that new kingdom; and would probably have acceded, but for a letter from the Count Capo d'Istria, describing the state of the country in such language as to make the position of its ruler anything but desirable. It is possible that the Count was unwilling to resign his own position as President; but his unhappy fate-murdered at midday, and on the threshold of a church-within a few months of that letter, and the inability of his brother to hold the reins which he had seized, gave a melancholý confirmation to the warning. At last, Otho, the