Under a
defective system of poor-relief, recently reformed, an immense mass
of idle pauperism had come into being; it still remained to be seen
if a new Poor Law could do away with the mischief created by the old
one.
Looking at the earliest years of Her Majesty's rule, the first
impulse is to exclaim:
"And all this trouble did not pass, but grew."
It seemed as if poverty became ever more direful, and dissatisfaction
more importunate. A succession of unfavourable seasons and failing
crops produced extraordinary distress; and the distress in its turn
was fruitful first of deepened discontent, and then of political
disturbances. The working classes had looked for immediate relief
from their burdens when the Reform Bill should be carried, and had
striven hard to insure its success: it had been carried triumphantly
in 1832, but no perceptible improvement in their lot had yet
resulted; and a resentful feeling of disappointment and of being
victims of deception now added bitterness to their blind sense of
misery and injury, and greatly exasperated the political agitation of
the ten stormy years that followed.
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