women were unable to sign the register. The social elevation of the
people, so ran the miserable plea of those who assuredly were not given
to change, was fraught with peril to the State. Hodge, it was urged,
ought to be content to take both the Law and the Commandments from his
betters, since a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As for the
noisy, insolent operatives and artisans of the great manufacturing
towns, was there not for them the strong hand of authority, and, if they
grew too obstreperous, the uplifted sabre of the military as at
Peterloo? It was all very well, however, to extol the virtues of
patience, contentment, and obedience, but the sense of wrong and of
defiance rankled in the masses, and with it--in a dull and confused
manner--the sense of power.

[Sidenote: THE AWAKENING OF THE PEOPLE]

The Reform Bill of 1832 mocked in many directions the hopes of the
people, but it at least marked a great social as well as a great
political departure, and with it came the dawn of a new day to modern
England. As the light broadened, the vision of poets and patriots began
to be realised in practical improvements, which came home to men's
business and bosom; the standard of intelligence rose, and with it
freedom of thought, and the, sometimes passionate, but more often
long-suffering demand for political, social, and economic concessions to
justice. It was long before the privileged classes began to recognise,
except in platform heroics, that it was high time to awake out of sleep
and to 'educate our masters;' but the work began when Lord Althorp
persuaded the House of Commons to vote a modest sum for the erection of
school buildings in England; and that grant of 20,000_l._ in 1832 was
the 'handful of corn on the top of the mountains' which has brought
about the golden harvest of to-day. The history of the movement does
not, of course, fall within the province of these pages, though Lord
John Russell's name is associated with it in an honourable and emphatic
sense. The formation, chiefly at his instance, in 1839 of a Council of
Education paved the way for the existing system of elementary education,
and lifted the whole problem to the front rank of national affairs.

[Sidenote: POPULAR EDUCATION]

He was the first Prime Minister of England to carry a measure which made
it possible to secure trained teachers for elementary schools; and his
successful effort in 1847 to 'diminish the empire of ignorance,' as