health and the increase in human happiness due to the enormous advance in
the sciences of medicine, surgery, and hygiene. Indeed these sciences in
their modern form virtually began with the discovery of the facts of
bacteriology about 1860, and the use of antiseptics fifteen years later,
and not much earlier began the effective opposition to the frightful
epidemics which had formerly been supposed to be dependent only on the will
of Providence.

Political and social progress, though less astonishing, was substantial. In
1830 England, nominally a monarchy, was in reality a plutocracy of about a
hundred thousand men--landed nobles, gentry, and wealthy merchants--whose
privileges dated back to fifteenth century conditions. The first Reform
Bill, of 1832, forced on Parliament by popular pressure, extended the right
of voting to men of the 'middle class,' and the subsequent bills of 1867
and 1885 made it universal for men. Meanwhile the House of Commons slowly
asserted itself against the hereditary House of Lords, and thus England
became perhaps the most truly democratic of the great nations of the world.
At the beginning of the period the social condition of the great body of
the population was extremely bad. Laborers in factories and mines and on
farms were largely in a state of virtual though not nominal slavery,
living, many of them, in unspeakable moral and physical conditions. Little
by little improvement came, partly by the passage of laws, partly by the
growth of trades-unions. The substitution in the middle of the century of
free-trade for protection through the passage of the 'Corn-Laws' afforded
much relief by lowering the price of food. Socialism, taking shape as a
definite movement in the middle of the century, became one to be reckoned
with before its close, though the majority of the more well-to-do classes
failed to understand even then the growing necessity for far-reaching
economic and social changes. Humanitarian consciousness, however, gained
greatly during the period. The middle and upper classes awoke to some