which a large portion of the public deemed necessary for improving the institutions of the country, and for other beneficial purposes. The most important of these, in a moral point of view, was the abolition of slavery in the colonies, the sum of twenty millions being paid to the owners of the negroes, as a compensation. By this act, eight hundred thousand slaves were (August 1, 1834) placed in the condition of freemen, but subject to an apprenticeship to their masters for a few years.
In the same year, an act was passed for amending the laws for the support of the poor in England, which had long been a subject of general complaint. One of the chief provisions of the new enactment established a government commission for the superintendence of the local boards of management, which had latterly been ill conducted, and were now proposed to be reformed. The able-bodied poor were also deprived of the right which had been conferred upon them at the end of the eighteenth century, to compel parishes to support them, either by employment at a certain rate, or pecuniary aid to the same amount: they were now left no resource, failing employment, but that of entering poor-houses, where they were separated from their families. The contemplated results of this measure were a reduction of the enormous burden of the poor-rates, which had latterly exceeded seven millions annually, and a check to the degradation which indiscriminate support was found to produce in the character of the laboring classes.
Early in 1837, the ministry again introduced into the House of Commons a bill for settling the Irish tithe question; but before this or any other measure of importance had been carried, the king died of ossification of the vital organs (June 20), in the seventy-third year of his age, and seventh of his reign, being succeeded by his niece, the Princess Victoria. The deceased monarch is allowed to have been a conscientious and amiable man, not remarkable for ability, but at the same time free from all gross faults.
COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRESENT REIGN.
Queen Victoria began to reign June 20, 1837, having just completed her eighteenth year; was crowned on the 28th of June in the following year; and was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Coburg and Gotha, February 10, 1840. In the autumns of 1842, '44, '47, and '48, her majesty visited Scotland, but on each occasion more in a private than in a state capacity; residing at the mansions of the nobility that lay in her route to the Highlands, where the Prince Consort enjoyed the invigorating sports of grouse-shooting and deer-stalking. In 1843 she paid a visit, entirely divested of state formalities, to the late royal family of France; and shortly after made another to her uncle, the king of the Belgians. In 1845, besides making the tour of the English midland counties, the royal pair visited the family of Prince Albert at Coburg and Gotha; receiving the attentions of the various German powers that lay on their outward and homeward route. Her majesty has received in turn the friendly visits of several crowned heads, among whom have been the ex-king of the French, Leopold of Belgium, the king of Saxony, and the emperor of Russia. Such interchanges and attentions are not without their impor*
