Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Reign of Queen Victoria, 1887, Vol. 2 of 2: A Survey of Fifty Years of Progress
It would be impossible in the Short space at my disposal to describe at length the successive stages Of the improve ment which has since been witnessed. Every decade seems to have witnessed more or less important changes, and the improvement to be recorded has taken place among great and threatening events, which could not but have involved huge disasters to the country unless widely ex tending and powerful causes, making for improvement and progress, had been at work In addition to this general statement I need only refer to the more important circum stances. First Of all, in the decade 1837 - 47 came the railway mania of 1844 - 45, which at any rate had for good result a huge railway extension throughout the United Kingdom. Simultaneously the Free-trade policy, which has since been the settled policy of the country, was introduced, while the passage of the Bank Acts settled definitely and for a long period what seemed to be interminable currency controversies, and gav*e to the country a stable money. The potato famine and the monetary crisis Of 1847, followed as they were by a year of revolution throughout Europe, with consequent interruption to business, constituted a sable cloud, to which the more favourable events of the period already referred to seemed only a silver lining but great as were the evils involved in these calamities, the material changes Of the period were really for the better on the whole. The advance Of Free-trade, it need hardly be added, was itself promoted by the great industrial calamity of the period - the potato famine.
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