The name of Lord Melbourne has been kept green not only by the
Australasian metropolis, but by the fact that it was his duty as
Prime Minister to announce to the Princess Alexandrina Victoria
the fact--to her so momentous--that her uncle, William IV., was
dead (June 20, 1837), and that she, a girl of eighteen, was Queen
of England. Victoria, as she was known thenceforward, lived to
see the dawn of the twentieth century, to witness the enormous
development of the British empire in population, wealth, and
power, and it is perhaps not too much to say, to win all hearts
among her subjects by the simplicity, purity, and strength of her
character. Had she displayed the stubborn stupidity of her
grandfather, George III., or the immorality of some of his sons,
it is not rash to believe that the tide of radicalism might have
thrown down all barriers and swept away the throne on the flood
of democracy. By grace of character she was a model
constitutional sovereign, and her benign reign, the longest in
English annals, contributed more than the policy of any of her
ministers to make the monarchy popular and permanent.
The first decade of the Victorian era witnessed three great
agitations, two of which ended in fiasco and the third in a
triumph which wrought tremendous changes in the kingdom.
"Chartism," "Repeal," and "Free Trade" were the three topics on
which the thought of multitudes was engaged.