Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/250

 engaged in establishing freehold-land societies throughout England and Scotland. Many suburban estates were bought and subdivided among the shareholders as sites for cottages; one out of many advantages of the arrangement being that thousands of artisans, then without the franchise, were thus enabled, by a flank movement, to obtain it.

About the same time Mr. Beal came prominently forward in the character of an ecclesiastical reformer, addressing a series of trenchant letters to the Bishop of London on certain popish practices observed in the Church of St. Paul, Wilton Place, and of St. Barnabas, Pimlico. A memorable action, "Westerton and Beal v. Liddel," ensued. The legality of ritualism had never been legally challenged since the Reformation. Mr. Beal appeared in person before the Privy Council, and obtained a favorable judgment, but without costs, which were cheerfully defrayed by public subscription. The agitation resulted in the Public Worship Act, and the end is not yet.

In 1857 Mr. Beal entered on a long and arduous struggle with the gas-companies of the metropolis. These companies had "districted" London among themselves, and ruled the consumers with a rod of iron. Mr. Beal contrived to effect a combination of vestries against the companies,—on the principle, I suppose, of setting a thief to catch a thief,—and after a contest which lasted all through '57, '58, '59, and '60, the Metropolitan Gas Act was passed, which improved the quality of the gas-supply, limited its price, curtailed dividends, and effected a net saving to the consumers of three million one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars per annum,—a sum equivalent to the entire school-board rate.