of popular education in these countries as had been known to Prussia and other European nations almost for time out of mind. But Brougham had at least started the question, and he never ceased to keep it moving during his long life. Other reformers, too, as well as Mackintosh and Brougham, were making their voices heard above, or at all events through, the din and clamor of the controversy between the friends of the King and the champions of the Queen. Lord John Russell may be said to have then begun his noble career as reformer of the system of parliamentary representation, and Mr. Lambton, afterwards to be better known as Lord Durham, made more than one bold effort in the same direction. [Sidenote: 1821--George the Fourth visits Ireland] Russell and Lambton were both unsuccessful just then. The time had not yet come when the question of parliamentary reform was to break up ministries, set the country aflame with agitation, and put a thick-witted Sovereign to the necessity of choosing between submission to the popular demand or facing the risk of revolution. But it might have been clear to reflective men that the days of unconditional loyalty to the will of a monarch had nearly run their course in England, and that the demand for a reform in the criminal law, a relaxation of the repression of free speech, the establishment of some system of popular education, and the adoption of a really representative principle in the construction of Parliament was destined before long to prove irresistible. The case of the reformers was emphasized by the widespread agricultural distress from which the country had long been suffering. The inevitable reaction had set in, too, after the spasmodic inflation of trade and commerce which had accompanied the long period of war. Even if the governing system of England had been as wise and humane as it was {23} unenlightened and harsh, the condition of the country would, of itself, have favored almost any demand for reform. As the Government system actually was, only a national prosperity of universal and impossible sleekness could have kept the people of England much longer indifferent to the necessity for reform in almost every department of the political and social system.