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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 1287: ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE.—CLOSE OF THE PARLIAMENTARY LABOURS OF 1847.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE.—CLOSE OF THE PARLIAMENTARY LABOURS OF 1847.

On the 20th of December the house adjourned for the Christmas holidays, and did not meet again until February. Thus closed the first session of the new parliament, and the legislative business of the year.

Throughout the year the sanitary deficiencies of large cities, and their moral peculiarities, were the subjects of desultory conversation in parliament, and of extensive discussion in the newspapers and at public meetings. To such a degree did the sanitary question excite public interest, that her majesty was advised to recommend its consideration to the new parliament; and during the educational debates, the moral and intellectual condition of large towns, and especially of the metropolis, was a theme of desponding comment. The reverend Dr. Guthrie, of Edinburgh, has since then eloquently shown that the providential dispensation which consigns so large a portion of our people to the close confines of cities, like all the other arrangements of Providence, however mysterious, are full of goodness and mercy:—“Somehow or other, amid their crowding and confinement, the human mind finds its fullest, freest expansion. Unlike the dwarfed and dusty plants which stand around our suburban villas, languishing like exiles for the purer air and freer sunshine that kiss their fellows far away in flowery field and green woodland, on sunny banks and breezy hills, man reaches his highest condition amid the social influences of the crowded city. His intellect receives its brightest polish where gold and silver lose theirs—tarnished by the searching smoke and foul vapours of city air. The finest flowers of genius have grown in an atmosphere where those of nature are prone to droop and difficult to bring to maturity. The mental powers acquire their full robustness where the cheek loses its ruddy hue and the limbs their elastic step, and pale thought sits on manly brows, and the watchman, as he walks his rounds, sees the student’s lamp burning far into the silent night.”