accession of George III. has also witnessed occurrences not only full of
exciting interest at the moment, but calculated to affect the policy of
the kingdom and the condition of the people, for all future time, in a
degree only second to the Revolution itself. Indeed, the change in some
leading features and principles of the constitution wrought by the
Reform Bill of 1832, exceeds any that were enacted by the Bill of Rights
or the Act of Settlement. The only absolutely new principle introduced
in 1688 was that establishment of Protestant ascendency which was
contained in the clause which disabled any Roman Catholic from wearing
the crown. In other respects, those great statutes were not so much the
introduction of new principles, as a recognition of privileges of the
people which had been long established, but which, in too many
instances, had been disregarded and violated.

But the Reform Bill conferred political power on classes which had never
before been admitted to be entitled to it; and their enfranchisement
could not fail to give a wholly new and democratic tinge to the
government, which has been visible in its effect on the policy of all
subsequent administrations.

And, besides this great measure, the passing of which has often been
called a new Revolution, and the other reforms, municipal and
ecclesiastical, which were its immediate and almost inevitable fruits,
the century which followed the accession of George III. was also marked
by the Irish Union, the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the
principle of universal religious toleration; the loss of one great
collection of colonies, the plantation of and grant of constitutions to
others of not inferior magnitude, which had not even come into existence
at its commencement; the growth of our wondrous dominion in India, with
its eventual transfer of all authority in that country to the crown;