Some months after the ratification of the emancipation bill. King George IV. died at Windsor (June 26th, 1830). Great events, both at home and abroad took place under his regency or during his reign. Peace was concluded in Europe after the last efforts of a supreme struggle; the great injustice so long endured by the English Catholics, was removed by the free action of the Protestants. This glory belonged to others rather than to him: he left the Duke of Wellington to conquer at Waterloo--he had so many times recounted the part he had taken in the combat that he finally forgot that he had not left England during that epoch. He left the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel to bear alone the burden of a measure to which he was opposed from habit of mind, as well as from personal repugnance, without any conscientious scruples. Brilliant, highly educated and refined, he spread about him, in the intimacy of his court, a baneful influence; corrupt himself and a corrupter of others. The burdens of the foreign wars and the great Parliamentary struggles, left only as their results, demoralization and lasting evil to the country. Chapter. XLI. William IV. Parliamentary Reform. (1830-1837). A grand and consoling spectacle to contemplate, is that throughout the whole course of English history, the great lords and the landed gentry, the masters of the soil and of the national wealth, are always to be found in the front rank in political contests as well as in the army; in Parliament as well as on the field of battle. The English barons had wrested Magna Charta from John Lackland; in the government which was to accomplish a parliamentary reform, useful and legitimate in some respects, doubtful and bold in others, thirteen members of the House of Lords headed the popular movement, resolved to raise high the standard of a reform fatal to their influence and their natural domination. {463} Courageously faithful in its task of moderating the outbursts of the inconsiderate passions of the nation, the English aristocracy has never yielded its right to be the first to brave all dangers, and the first to advance all progress: it has lessened the encroachments of the rising wave of democracy; it has opened its ranks to all signal merit; it has given up its children to common life and common labor, prompt to bear the burden of the national destiny, in all its directions, and ardent to maintain England in that glorious position in the vanguard of liberty, that she has occupied with honor in Europe for many centuries.