tigation of each
claim separately, the sum of L15,027 was awarded to the sufferers.
Rates to the amount of L20,000, for compensation, and to cover
expenses, were, made in the Hundred of Hemlingford, and with the
payment of these sums the Birmingham Riots of 1839 became matter of
history only.

It is a very extraordinary circumstance that to this time no one, so
far as I am aware, has observed a remarkable coincidence. On the 15th
of July, 1791, the houses of Mr. John Ryland, at Easy Hill, Mr. John
Taylor, Bordesley Hall, and William Hutton, the historian, in High
Street, were destroyed by the "Church and King" rioters. On the 15th
of July, in the year 1839, forty-eight years afterwards--to a day--the
Chartist rioters were rampant in the Bull Ring.

After 1839, the Birmingham Chartists gave very little trouble. There
were occasional meetings sympathising with the movement, in other
places, as at Newport in the following November, and in the Potteries
in 1842. These meetings, however, were not largely attended, and there
was none of the former excitement. On the 11th of April, 1848, the
date of Feargus O'Connor's wretched _fiasco_ in London, they played
their last feeble game. They held a meeting in the People's Hall, and
I there heard some violent revolutionary speeches. There was, however,
no response to their excited appeals, and from that day Chartism was
practically extinct.

It is not, perhaps, generally known that the principles embodied in
the famous "Charter" were not new. In 1780 Charles James Fox, the
great Whig leader, declared himself in favour of the identical six
points which were, so long after, embodied in the programme of the
Chartists. The Duke of Richmond of that time brought into the House of
Lords, in the same year, a Bill to give universal suffrage and annual
parliaments; and afterwards, Mr. Erskine, Sir James Macintosh, and
Earl Grey advocated similar views.

Several great causes were at work which tended to throw Chartism into
obscurity. The repeal of the Corn Laws had given the people cheap
bread, and the advent of free trade gave abundant work and good wages.
With increased bodily comfort came contentment of mind. The greater
freedom of intercourse, caused by railway travelling, showed the lower
classes that the governing bodies were not so badly disposed towards
them as they had been taught to believe. On the other hand, the upper
classes acquired a higher sense of duty to their humbler ne