t Newport in Wales.

In England reforms have been effected only by appeals to reason and
intelligence, and not by violence. Infuriated mobs, successful in France
in overturning governments and thrones, have been easily repressed in
England with comparatively little bloodshed; for power has ever been
lodged in the hands of the upper and middle classes, intolerant of
threatened violence. In England, since the time of Cromwell, revolutions
have been bloodless; and reforms have been gradual,--to meet pressing
necessities, or to remove glaring injustice and wrongs, never to
introduce an impractical equality or to realize visionary theories. And
they have ever been effected through Parliament. All popular agitations
have failed unless they have appealed to reason and right.

Thus the People's Charter movement, beginning about 1838, was a signal
failure, because from the practical side it involved no great principles
of political economy, nothing that enriches a nation; and from the side
of popular rights it was premature, crude, and represented no
intelligent desire on the part of the people. It was a movement nursed
in discontent, and carried on with bitterness and illegal violence. It
was wild, visionary, and bitter from the start, and arose at a period
when the English people were in economic distress, and when all Europe
was convulsed with insurrectionary uprisings, and revolutionary
principles were mixed up with socialism and anarchy. The Chartist
agitation continued with meetings and riots and national conventions
until 1848, when the Revolution in France gave a great impulse to it.

At last some danger was apprehended from the monster meetings and
inflammatory speeches of the Chartists, and government resolved to
suppress the whole movement by the strong arm. The police force
throughout the kingdom was strengthened, and one hundred and seventy
thousand special constables were sworn in, while extensive military
preparations were intrusted to the Duke of Wellington. The Chartists,
overrating their strength, held a great meeting on Kensington Common,
and sent a petition of more than five millions of names to the House of
Commons; but instead of half a million who were expected to assemble on
the Common with guns and pikes, only a few thousand dared to meet, and
the petition itself was discovered to be forged, chiefly with fictitious
names. It was a battle on the part of the agitators without ball
cartridges, in which no