George IV., who had been regent since his father's illness in 1812, reigned in his own name from 1820 to 1830, though his voice in the affairs of state was small indeed. His Ministers, Liverpool, Canning, Goderich, and Wellington, were confronted by serious problems of domestic policy which had sprung up during the long period of foreign wars and partly in direct consequence of those disturbing conditions. The one recurrent question which found definite settlement in this reign was that of Catholic emancipation. The penal laws against Roman Catholics had disgraced the English statute-books for two centuries. On the first of January, 1801, the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland had gone into effect under the name of the United Kingdom. The Irish Parliament, which had met in Dublin since 1782, went out of existence, and in the place of "Home Rule" Ireland was represented in both houses of the Imperial Parliament at Westminster. Pitt had promised the numerous Catholics of Ireland that the laws which made them ineligible to represent their country in Parliament should be repealed, and had abandoned office in disgust when George III. refused to sanction his project of Catholic emancipation. In 1807 the Whig ministry espoused the same cause, and in turn resigned because of the opposition of the Crown. In Daniel O'Connell the cause at length found a spokesman whose eloquence, wit, and talent for "agitation" soon combined his Irish partisans into "The Catholic Association." Working in conjunction with the Whigs of England, O'Connell's followers formed a body which could not be neglected. Soon after Canning's untimely death the Duke of Wellington had taken office. He was a Tory, with all the prejudices of that political faith deepened by his birth and training as an Irish Protestant, but the agitation had reached such proportions that he saw in it a menace of civil war, to avoid which he was willing to abandon his most cherished opinions on the Catholic question. Accordingly, in 1829, the Iron Duke faced about and brought in the bill which, becoming a law by Whig and Canningite votes, admitted Roman Catholics to Parliament, and to civil rights only a little short of complete. But instead of removing the Irish question from politics, it was only prepared for more strenuous presentation in a new guise, for O'Connell was returned to Parliament at the head of some fifty Catholic members to agitate for Irish independence. RAILWAYS