home. He was an earnest advocate of the rights of Dissenters and Roman Catholics, as well as of the slaves in the West Indies.
While Canning was using his influence abroad and at home in the interests of the wronged and oppressed, Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, was busy reforming the Criminal Laws. Sir Samuel Romilly, in the early part of this century, had tried earnestly to get Parliament to lessen the number of crimes punishable with death, and had succeeded in getting pocket-picking removed from the list _ of capital offences. There was, it is said, over 200 crimes for which a person could be hanged. To steal five shillings from a shop or a fish from a pond, to injure Westminster Bridge, was to incur the death penalty, and to be put into the same list with the forger and murderer. At last men saw the folly and cruelty of the Criminal Law, and Peel, in 1824, managed to get Parliament to consent to remove more than 100 of the smaller offences from the list to which the death penalty was attached.
Not less useful than Canning and Peel in carrying out reforms was Huskisson, the President of the Board of Trade. He saw that England was suffering from her trade and navigation laws, and from the unwise restrictions placed upon working-men. He succeeded in reducing the duties on silk and wool, and had the laws repealed which prevented workingmen from travelling to seek employment in other parts of the country, as well as the law which gave a magistrate the power to fix the wages of labouring men. Besides, he paved the way for freer trade by offering foreign vessels special advantages in English ports, on the condition that the same privileges were given by foreign nations to English vessels. The years 1825-6 were years of scarcity, and following as they did a commercial panic arising out of foolish speculation, there was much distress, and some rioting. The high duties on food had now to give way for a time, and Huskisson passed a law by which the duty on wheat fell as the-price rose, and rose as the price fell. This was the famous “sliding scale” of duties, which lasted till free trade came in. The distress and lack of employment led to a large emigration to Canada, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, and the United States.
4. The Australian Colonies.—New South Wales in Australia was now a flourishing colony, and although at first settled by convicts
