ut of joint and raised issues which confused
ordinary minds. The old political catchwords 'Peace, retrenchment, and
reform,' no longer awoke enthusiasm. Civil and religious liberty were
all very well in their way, but they naturally failed to satisfy men and
women who were ground down by economic oppression, and were famished
through lack of bread. The social condition of England was deplorable,
for, though the Reform Bill had brought in its wake measures of relief
for the middle classes, it had left the artisans and the peasants almost
where it found them. In spite of the new Poor Law and other enactments,
the people were burdened with the curse of bitter and hopeless poverty,
and the misery and squalor in which they were permitted to live threw a
menacing shadow over the fair promise of the opening years of the young
Queen's reign. The historians of the period are responsible for the
statement that in Manchester, for example, one-tenth of the population
lived in cellars; even in the rural districts, the overcrowding, with
all its attending horrors in the direction of disease and vice, was
scarcely less terrible, for in one parish in Dorset thirty-six persons
dwelt, on an average, in each house. The wonder is, not that the
Anti-Corn Law League under such circumstances grew strong and the demand
for the People's Charter rang through the land, but that the masses in
town and country alike bore the harsh servitude of their lot with the
patience that was common, and with the heroism that was not rare.

[Sidenote: PEEL'S OPEN MIND]

Lord John Russell never refused to admit the ability of Peel's
Administration. He described it as powerful, popular, and successful. He
recognised the honesty of his great rival, his openness of mind, the
courage which he displayed in turning a deaf ear to the croakers in his
own Cabinet, and the genuine concern which he manifested for the
unredressed grievances of the people. In his 'Recollections' he lays
stress on the fact that Sir Robert Peel did not hesitate, when he
thought such a step essential to the public welfare, to risk the fate of
his Ministry on behalf of an unpopular measure. Ireland was a stone of
stumbling in his path, and long after he had parted with his old ideas
of Protestant ascendency he found himself confronted with the suspicion
of the Roman Catholics, who, in Lord John's words, 'obstinately refused
favours at Peel's hands, which they would have been willing to accept