Dismissal of Lord Palmerston.--Theory of the Relation between the Sovereign and the Cabinet.--Correspondence of the Sovereign with French Princes.--Russian War.--Abolition of the Tax on Newspapers.--Life Peerages.--Resignation of two Bishops.--Indian Mutiny.--Abolition of the Sovereign Power of the Company.--Visit of the Prince of Wales to India.--Conspiracy Bill.--Rise of the Volunteers.--National Fortifications.--The Lords Reject the Measure for the Repeal of the Paper-duties.--Lord Palmerston's Resolutions.--Character of the Changes during the last Century. INDEX. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER I. Mr. Hallam's View of the Development of the Constitution.--Symptoms of approaching Constitutional Changes.--State of the Kingdom at the Accession of George III.--Improvement of the Law affecting the Commissions of the Judges.--Restoration of Peace.--Lord Bute becomes Minister.--The Case of Wilkes.--Mr. Luttrell is Seated for Middlesex by the House of Commons.--Growth of Parliamentary Reporting.--Mr. Grenville's Act for trying Election Petitions.--Disfranchisement of Corrupt Voters at New Shoreham. The learned and judicious writer to whom is due the first idea of a "Constitutional History of England," and of whose admirable work I here venture to offer a continuation, regards "the spirit of the government" as having been "almost wholly monarchical till the Revolution of 1688," and in the four subsequent reigns, with the last of which his volumes close, as "having turned chiefly to an aristocracy."[1] And it may be considered as having generally preserved that character through the long and eventful reign of George III. But, even while he was writing, a change was already preparing, of which more than one recent occurrence had given unmistakable warning. A borough had been disfranchised for inveterate corruption in the first Parliament of George IV.[2] Before its dissolution, the same House of Commons had sanctioned the principle of a state endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, and had given a third reading to a bill for the abolition of all civil restrictions affecting members of that religion. It was impossible to avoid foreseeing that the Parliamentary Reform inaugurated by the disfranchisement of Grampound would soon be carried farther, or that the emancipation, as it was termed, of all Christian sects was at least equally certain not to be long delayed. And it will be denied by no one that those measures, which had no very obscure or doubtful connection with each other, have gradually imparted to the constitution a far more democratic tinge than would have been willingly accepted by even the most liberal statesman of the preceding century, or than, in the days of the Tudors or of the Stuarts, would have been thought compatible with the maintenance of the monarchy.