Let us review the national situation. It was a time of general alarm and
uncertainty, from political unrest, commercial stagnation, and
devastating pestilence. "The terrors of the time begat a hundred forms
of strange fanaticism; and among men who were not fanatics there was a
deep and wide conviction that national judgments were overtaking
national sins, and that the only hope of safety for England lay in a
return to that practical recognition of religion in the political sphere
at the proudest moments of English history. 'The beginning and the end
of what is the matter with us in these days,' wrote Carlyle, 'is that we
have forgotten God.'"

England was in a condition of great political excitement and expectancy.
One of the greatest battles in Parliamentary history had just been
fought and won by the people. The Reform Bill, which admitted large
classes, hitherto unrepresented, to the right of citizenship, had
passed, after a long struggle, during which law and order were defied
and riots prevailed in various parts of the kingdom.

The King clearly perceiving that the wish of the people could no longer
be disregarded with safety, and heedless of the advice of the
aristocracy, gave his assent to the measure. This bill, which became a
law June 7, 1832, "transformed the whole of the Electoral arrangements
of the United Kingdom." It was demanded that the King be present in the
House of Lords to witness the ceremony of the subjugation of his crown
and peers, as it was deemed, but the King, feeling he had yielded enough
to the popular will, refused. Walpole, in his history, writes: "King and
Queen sat sullenly apart in their palace. Peer and country gentleman
moodily awaited the ruin of their country and the destruction of their
property. Fanaticism still raved at the wickedness of a people; the
people, clamoring for work, still succumbed before the mysterious