qualified to form a House of Commons, to consult with him as to the government of the empire. The sovereign for this purpose conferred the right of representation on this or that town, or district, or county, according as he thought fit, and this arrangement had gone on from generation to generation. Now it sometimes happened that a place that had been comparatively popular and prosperous at the period when it obtained the {100} right of representation had seen its prosperity and its population gradually ebb away from it, and leave it little better than a bare hill-side, and yet the bare hill-side retained the right of representation, and its owner could send any one he pleased into the House of Commons. There were numberless illustrations of this curious anomaly all over the country. The great families of landed proprietors naturally monopolized among them the representation of the counties, and many of them enjoyed also the ownership of the small decaying or totally decayed boroughs which still retained the right of returning members to Parliament. On the other hand, the development of manufacturing energy had caused the growth of great and populous towns and cities, and most of these towns and cities were actually without representation or the right of representation in the House of Commons. Thus a condition of things had arisen which was certain to prove itself incompatible with the spread of education and the growth of public interest in all great questions of domestic reform. [Sidenote: 1830--The Princess Victoria]