Mr. Hallam's "Constitutional History" closes, as is well known,with the death of George II. The Reformation, the great Rebellion,and the Revolution, all of which are embraced in the period ofwhich it treats, are events of such surpassing importance, and suchall-pervading and lasting influence, that no subsequenttransactions can ever attract entirely equal attention. Yet thecentury which has elapsed since the accession of George III. hasalso witnessed occurrences not only full of exciting interest atthe moment, but calculated to affect the policy of the kingdom andthe condition of the people, for all future time, in a degree onlysecond to the Revolution itself. Indeed, the change in some leadingfeatures and principles of the constitution wrought by the ReformBill of 1832, exceeds any that were enacted by the Bill of Rightsor the Act of Settlement. The only absolutely new principleintroduced in 1688 was that establishment of Protestant ascendencywhich was contained in the clause which disabled any Roman Catholicfrom wearing the crown. In other respects, those great statuteswere not so much the introduction of new principles, as arecognition of privileges of the people which had been longestablished, but which, in too many instances, had been disregardedand violated.
But the Reform Bill conferred political power on classes whichhad never before been admitted to be entitled to it; and theirenfranchisement could not fail to give a wholly new and democratictinge to the government, which has been visible in its effect onthe policy of all subsequent administrations.
And, besides this great measure, the passing of which has oftenbeen called a new Revolution, and the other reforms, municipal andecclesiastical, which were its immediate and almost inevitablefruits, the century which followed the accession of George III. wasalso marked by the Irish Union, the abolition of slavery, theestablishment of the principle of universal religious toleration;the loss of one great collection of colonies, the plantation of andgrant of constitutions to others of not inferior magnitude, whichhad not even come into existence at its commencement; the growth ofour wondrous dominion in India, with its eventual transfer of allauthority in that country to the crown; with a host of minortransactions and enactments, which must all be regarded as, more orless, so many changes in or developments of the constitution, as itwas regarded and understood by the statesmen of the seventeenthcentury.
It has seemed, therefore, to the compiler of this volume, that anarrative of these transactions in their historical sequence, so asto exhibit the connection which has frequently existed betweenthem; to show, for instance, how the repeal of Poynings' Act, andthe Regency Bill of 1788, necessitated the Irish Union; howCatholic Emancipation brought after it Parliamentary Reform, andhow that led to municipal and ecclesiastical reforms, might not bewithout interest and use at the present time. And the modernfulness of our parliamentary reports (itself one not unimportantreform and novelty), since the accession of George III., hasenabled him to give the inducements or the objections to thedifferent enactments in the very words of the legislators whoproposed them or resisted them, as often as it seemed desirable todo so.
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