who, year after year, from 1815 to 1830 obstructed the reform of the criminal laws as much as they could; most of the reforms in them were due to the Whigs or to the more enlightened Tory Sir Robert Peel.
Admission of Dissenters, Catholics, and Jews to Parliament, 1828–53.To Tory Governments belongs the credit of beginning to remove the laws which made a man’s admission to Parliament depend upon his religious opinions. Both Lord Castlereagh, who died in 1822, and Mr. Canning, who died in 1827, had always been anxious to admit Catholics to Parliament; but it was just after Canning’s death that, first the Protestant Dissenters in 1828, and then the Catholics in 1829, were admitted. Jews had to wait till 1853, and those who openly declared their disbelief in any religion at all till 1884. The support of the State to the Protestant Church in Ireland, which dated from the time of Elizabeth, was taken away in 1868. Church revival, 1829.The zeal of the Church of England was, from 1829 onwards, quickened by men like Newman and Dr. Pusey, and religion is now a far more vital force in our daily lives than it was at the end of George III’s reign. Differences of opinion upon religion still exist, and still occasionally lead to squabbles between Churchmen and Dissenters, but they are being smoothed away; of all passions religious hatred is now seen to be the most odious, and all reasonable men acknowledge that the teaching of sound morality is the main duty of all religious bodies. Without religion there can be no good morals, and without good morals the wisest laws are futile.
Other reforms.The Whigs are responsible for the abolition of slavery in our West Indian Islands (1833); the importation of slaves from Africa thither had been prohibited as far back as 1807. They can also claim the credit of the