Despite temporary setbacks, however, the advance of the power of the
people in 1848 had been enormous. The dullest tyrant could hardly
believe longer in the permanence of personal despotism. Even England,
the stronghold of conservatism as well as of personal independence, was
shifting her aristocratic institutions slowly toward democracy.

The Reform Bill of 1832 had been only a small step in the direction of
popular government; but it opened the way for further reform. Almost
immediately upon its granting, began what was known as the Chartist
movement, an agitation kept up among the lower classes for a "charter"
or more liberal constitution. This soon became associated with a demand
for freer trade. The importation into England of bread-stuffs,
especially corn, was heavily taxed, and thus the poorer classes were
driven almost to the point of famine. The failure of the potato crop did
at last produce actual and awful famine in Ireland. Her peasants still
speak of 1847 as "the black year" of death. [Footnote: See _Famine in
Ireland_.]

Hundreds of thousands of the poorer classes starved. Then began a stream
of emigration to America. Under pressure of such facts as these, the
English "Corn Laws" were repealed, and gradually Great Britain assumed
more and more positively the attitude of "free trade." [Footnote: See
_Repeal of the English Corn Laws_.]


EXPANSION OF EUROPEAN INFLUENCE

Yet despite all the internal difficulties that thus convulsed Europe in
the middle of the nineteenth century, the period is also notable for the
rapid expansion of European influence over the other continents of the