The perfection of the steam locomotive and the inception and
marvelous development of the system of steam railway
transportation marked the second quarter of the century. The name
of the Stephensons, father and son, is inseparably connected with
this work which has affected so deeply the economic and social
life of the nation, and has contributed in a thousand indirect
ways to the expansion and consolidation of the empire. It has
been said that in 1825 the traveler from London to Rome went no
faster than the courier of the Caesars, eighteen hundred years
before. Thanks to George Stephenson's inventive genius, the
traveler of today consumes scarcely more time between London and
Peking.


THE REFORM OF PARLIAMENT


The reform of Parliament was the next question to come up for
settlement. In 1830 representation in the House of Commons still
remained upon a basis which had been established centuries
before. Meantime the distribution of the voting population had
been totally transformed. The most populous shires had no more
seats than the least of all. There were decayed boroughs which
had dwindled in population until but a handful of voters
remained, yet these "rotten" boroughs retained their right to
choose one or more members of Parliament, while the great modern
manufacturing towns and seaports were totally unrepresented. The
agitation for parliamentary reform, which rose in the middle of