The first reformed Parliament--Steam communication with India--State of Ireland--Lawless behaviour--Malversation of justice--O'Connell and the Trades' Political Union--Crime in Ireland. On August 16th the King in person prorogued Parliament, and on December 3rd it was dissolved, by proclamation, and the country was plunged into all the turmoil of a General Election. This was to be the first reformed Parliament, and all sorts of evils arising from its democratic tendencies were prophesied. But it turned out better than was expected. It was reserved to our later days for the title of Member of Parliament to be turned almost into a byword and reproach; and some of the persons who sat in the parliament of 1892-5 would not have been tolerated, nor could their speeches and remarks have been delivered. True, there was not a prize-fighter in that parliament, as there was in the first reformed one, but John Gully, the member for Pontefract, was respectable after his kind. From a butcher boy he became a pugilist, and William IV., as Duke of Clarence, witnessed his first fight, in 1805, with the "Game Chicken." Then he turned a publican, and retired from the ring in 1808. He then became a betting man and owner of racehorses, was a temporary royal page at the coronation of George IV., made a lot of money in his profession, bought Ackworth Park, near Pontefract, which little pocket borough he sat for from December 10, 1832 to July 17, 1837. Worthy of note is it that an iron steam vessel, built for the East India Company, and intended to be employed as a towing vessel on the Ganges, was taken on a trial trip, on October 13th, down the Thames, having the chairman and several members of the court of directors of the Hon. East India Company on board. This, certainly, was in advance of the times, and one can scarcely believe that the same body of men could sanction the following letter, within a month afterwards:-- "East India House, November 8th. SIR, I have laid before the Court of Directors of the East India Company your letter of the 25th October, on the subject of communication by means of steam vessels between England and India, by the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; and, in reply, I am commanded to inform you that the Court, after a long and careful consideration of the subject, have been convinced that no advantage commensurate with the expense, as far as past experiments have shown, can arise from the establishment of steam packets on that line."