Alpha Book

During 1782-1783
the old Whig and Tory parties [Footnote: See above, pp. 285 f.] were
sadly broken up, and a new element was unmistakably infused into party-
warfare by the spirit of reform.
[Sidenote: Need and Demand for Reform]
Surely, if ever a country needed reform, it was Great Britain in 1783.
The country was filled with paupers maintained by the taxes; poor
people might be shut up in workhouses and see their children carted off
to factories; sailors were kidnapped for the royal navy; the farmhand
was practically bound to the soil like a serf; over two hundred
offenses, such as stealing a shilling or cutting down an apple tree,
were punishable by death; religious intolerance flourished--Quakers
were imprisoned and Roman Catholics were debarred from office and
Parliament. And Ireland was being ruined by the selfish and obstinate
minority which controlled its parliament.
But about these things English "reformers" were not much concerned. A
few altruistic souls decried the traffic in black slaves, but that evil
was quite far from English shores.


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