a body under O'Connell to the number of about forty; the Radicals
are scattered up and down without a leader, numerous, restless, turbulent,
bold, and active; the Tories, without a head, frightened, angry, and
sulky."

THE WORKING CLASS STILL UNREPRESENTED

But the working classes were the really disappointed people in the country.
They had worked for the reformers, and their energies--and their
violence--had been the driving force that had carried the Bill into law. If
their expectations were extravagant and their hopes over-heated, the more
bitter was their distress at the failure of the Reform Act to accomplish
the social improvements that had been predicted.

CHARTISM

So the working class in despair of help from the Government, decided to get
the franchise for themselves, and for twelve years, 1838-1850, Chartism was
the great popular movement. The _Five Points of the People's Charter_ were
proclaimed in 1838: (1) Universal Suffrage; (2) Vote by Ballot; (3) Annual
Parliaments; (4) Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of
Parliament; (5) Payment of Members. A Sixth Point--Equal Electoral
Districts--was left out in the National Petition.

Although the Chartist demands were political, it was the social misery of
the time that drove men and women into the Chartist movement. The
wretchedness of their lot--its hopeless outlook, and the horrible housing
conditions in the big towns--these things seemed intolerable to the more
intelligent of the working people, and thousands flocked to the monster
Chartist demonstrations, and found comfort in the orations of Feargus
O'Connor, Bronterre O'Brien, and Ernest Jones.

The Charter promised political enfranchisement to the labouring people, and
once enfranchised they could work out by legislation their own social
salvation. So it seemed in the 'Forties--when one in every eleven of the
industrial population was a pauper.

Stephens, a "hot-headed" Chartist preacher, put the case as he, a typical
agitator of the day, saw it in 1839: "The principle of the People's Charter
is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his happiness.
The question of universal suffrage is, after all, a knife-and-fork
question. It means that every workman has a right to have a good hat and
coat, a good roof, a good dinner, no more work than will keep him in
health, and as much wages as will keep him in plenty."[79]

The lot of the labourer and the artisan was found to be w