Page:The child's pictorial history of England; (IA childspictorialh00corn).pdf/192

 the parliament and country of Scotland had been, and this union took place on the first of January, 1801, which you will easily remember, because it was the first day of the nineteenth century.

42. Many good laws have been made since then, for the benefit of Ireland, and much been done to improve the country; but numbers of the Irish people still remain in a very distressed condition, and some of them wanted to have a separate Parliament again; and this is what is meant by Repeal of the Union; but this feeling is now fast dying away.

43. In the reign of George the Third, there were National and Sunday schools established in almost every part of England, so that the poor people might be able to have their children taught to read and write, which was a great blessing to them; for although there had long been charity schools in London, there were few in the country, and many of the shopkeepers in country towns, who had become quite respectable people by their industry, were so ignorant that they could not even make out their own bills, or keep their own accounts.

44. There were two more great improvements before the death of George the Third; the one was the invention of gas lights, which make the streets much lighter at night than the dim oil