at its concession must have been an
utter failure, because instead of satisfying everybody forever it had
only led other people to demand that other acts of justice should also be
done. Some members of Wellington's own party were now inclined for the
first time to become advocates of Parliamentary reform, on the ground
that nothing but a reduced franchise in England could save the State
Church from being overthrown by the emancipated Roman Catholics. Those
who had trembled before at the possibility of revolutionary sentiments
leading to the subversion of the throne, now declared themselves in
terror lest the spread of Roman Catholic doctrine should lead to the
subversion of the Protestant altar. The truth is, and it is a truth of
which governments have to be reminded even in our own times, that the
long delay of justice was alone answerable for any alarm which might have
been caused by its sudden concession. The arguments in favor of Catholic
Emancipation were just as strong, and ought to have been just as clear,
to all rational men before it became evident to Wellington and Peel that
there was no choice but between emancipation and civil war. The plain
duty of a civilized government is to redress injustice at the earliest
possible moment, and not to wait idly or ignorantly until the danger of a
popular uprising makes instant redress inevitable.

[Sidenote: 1829--Need for radical reforms]

The great distress in many parts of the country was in the mean time
leading to new forms of crime. The burning of corn-ricks and farm-houses
was becoming in many districts the terrible form in which hunger and want
of work made wild war against property. The Game Laws, which were then
at their highest pitch of severity, led to {85} ferocious and frequent
struggles between the patrons and the enemies of legalized monopoly.
Poachers were killed by game preservers, and game preservers were killed
by poachers. Every assize court told this same story. An entirely new
form of crime broke out in the murders which were committed for the sake
of obtaining bodies to be sold for the purposes of dissection. The price
of food was often made enormously high by the purely artificial
restrictions imposed upon its importation, and even in some cases on its
mere production, and in ordinary human society increase of poverty always
means increase of crime. A large proportion of the population was sunk
in absolute ignorance, and as yet no syst