"They then returned to the town headed by the Band, and concluded in the High Street by playing and singing in full chorus the grand national anthem of "God save the King," while the bells rang the old Constitution out and the new one in! Thus ended three days such as the inhabitants of Royston never before witnessed, and probably never will again." Other towns in the district--Hitchin, Biggleswade, Ware, Baldock, &c.,--also had their celebrations, and among the villages there was a "spirited little set out" at Meldreth, where 750 were provided with dinner, and the musical amateurs of the village and neighbourhood with their "violins, clarinets, horns, &c., which they were using to the best of their knowledge, gave youthful spirits to the aged, and so well was the commemoration of the Reform Bill conducted that it was much admired by all who witnessed it. In the evening they all, ladies and gentlemen and poor, about 400 in number, had a reel together, and concluded the evening in a very amiable manner, wishing success to reform." At the present time when comprehensive schemes of Old Age Pensions are talked of which may, if carried out, transform much of the present character of relief of the poor, it will perhaps be of interest to glance at the state of things just before the introduction of the present Poor-law had worked a complete parochial revolution. There is, I imagine, a general impression amongst us, when we ever turn our thoughts back to the subject, that the remarkable shaking of the dry bones during the Reform Bill period, which culminated in the great measure of 1832, was merely a matter of politics--that John Bull was only buying a new broom to sweep away here and there an Old Sarum, and dust the benches of St. Stephen's for new company and--_voila tout_! the nation was reformed at a stroke! Yet that was not all by any means. In most of the rural districts of England there were parishes, not here and there, but parishes by shoals, presenting a state of things more rotten and more demoralizing than anything that the annals of Borough-mongering could furnish. {160} Then the great bulk of the poor people in our villages held to the sentiment expressed in the lines-- Come let us drink, sing, and be merry, For the parish is bound to maintain us! When the ratepayers began to assert themselves the pauper element broke out in open riot and incendiarism. Then came severe penal measures, Poor-law commissions, and an awakening of the national conscience to the fact that there was something besides political Old Sarums to reform if the salt in John Bull's family cupboard was not to entirely lose its savour. A state of things was disclosed in many villages in rural England at which the more thoughtful stood aghast, for under the sacred name of charity, laziness and immorality, unblushing and impudent, were found to be feeding the stream of pauperism and eating out the vitals of our country life.