A law was passed in this reign to allow Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament and help to make laws for the country. There was much talking and considering before this was done, for many people thought that if the Roman Catholics helped to make laws, they would try to change the religion of the country, and to bring back popery, which had in former times kept the people in darkness, and caused a great deal of misery and cruel persecution, as you have read in the former part of this History. Others, believing that the Roman Catholics of the present day were wiser, and that they would continue loyal to the Sovereigns and faithful to the laws of the land, consented to admit them to equal privileges with their Protestant fellow-countrymen. So at last this law was passed; and now Roman Catholics sit in Parliament, and are made Judges in courts of law. About the same time the severe laws against Protestant Dissenters, which were made under Charles the Second, were done away with. The king died at Windsor at the age of sixty-eight, after a reign of ten years. George the Fourth was a very accomplished man, but he cared so much more for pleasing himself than for doing his duty and thinking of others, that he was not a favourite with his people. Many new buildings were erected, and various improvements made in this reign. The New London Bridge and the Thames Tunnel were begun; the Menai Suspension Bridge, joining the Isle of Anglesey to North Wales, was completed; the Regent’s Park was laid out; the Zoological Gardens were opened; and Regent Street and other handsome streets were built. One very great improvement was made by Sir Robert Peel in causing the streets and roads to be guarded night and day by active, well-drilled policemen, instead of by watchmen, who used to be on duty only at night, and who were very frequently feeble old men scarcely able to take care of themselves. FOOTNOTES: [4] This is the end of little Arthur’s History, as first written by Lady Callcott; but for the benefit of the children of the present day who read this little History, a few more chapters are added. CHAPTER LIX. WILLIAM IV.—1830 to 1837. How the Reform Bill was passed; how Slavery in our colonies was abolished; how there were Revolutions in France and Belgium; how the cholera broke out; how railways were established; and how the Houses of Parliament were burned down. As King George the Fourth left no child to succeed him, his brothers were the next heirs to the throne. The Duke of York, the second son of George the Third, died three years before George the Fourth, and left no child; so William Henry, Duke of Clarence, the third son of George the Third, now mounted the throne. William the Fourth, who had been brought up as a sailor, was at this time sixty-four years old; he was married to an excellent German Princess, named Adelaide of Saxe Meiningen, and he had had two daughters, but they both died in early infancy.