Editing 1834 (section)

=== October–December ===
* [[October 16]] – The [[Palace of Westminster]] is destroyed by [[Burning of Parliament|fire]], along with both the House of Commons and the House of Lords (which are not in session) of the British Parliament.  An investigation later traces the disaster to an order from the Exchequer to the Board of Works to destroy the [[tally stick]]s that had been stored as part of record keeping, the use of the furnaces beneath the House of Lords to carry out the task, and the failure of authorities to stop the work or to fight the fire after smoke had first been detected, the conclusion being that the fire was "wholly attributable to carelessness and negligence."<ref name=Fires>"Fires, Great", in ''The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance'', Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) pp74-75</ref>
* [[November 14]] – [[William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne]] becomes the last [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom]] to be dismissed by the British monarch.  [[William IV of the United Kingdom|King William IV]] temporarily appoints [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington]], to form a caretaker government.<ref>Michael S. Patridge, ''The Duke of Wellington, 1769-1852: A Bibliography'' (Greenwood Publishing, 1990) p129</ref><ref>Rory Muir, ''Wellington: Waterloo and the Fortunes of Peace 1814-1852'' (Yale University Press, 2013) pp439-440</ref>
* [[December 3]] – The ''[[Zollverein]]'' institutes the first regular [[census in Germany]]. The population is 23,478,120.
* [[December 10]] – Sir [[Robert Peel]] succeeds [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|The Duke of Wellington]] as [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom]].
* [[December 11]] – The [[Sixth Xhosa War]] is characterized by severe clashes between white settlers and [[Bantu peoples]] in [[Cape Colony]]; Dutch-speaking settlers colonize the area north of [[Orange River]].