oor-rates. The state of
Sheffield was not less severe--and the blast furnaces of Wolverhampton
were extinguished. There were almost daily meetings, at Liverpool,
Manchester, and Leeds, to consider the great and increasing distress of
the country, and to induce ministers to bring forward remedial measures;
but as these were impossible, violence was soon substituted for
passionate appeals to the fears or the humanity of the government. Vast
bodies of the population assembled in Staleybridge, and Ashton, and
Oldham, and marched into Manchester.

For a week the rioting was unchecked, but the government despatched a
strong military force to that city, and order was restored.

The state of affairs in Scotland was not more favourable. There were
food riots in several of the Scotch towns, and in Glasgow the multitude
assembled, and then commenced what they called a begging tour, but which
was really a progress of not disguised intimidation. The economic crisis
in Ireland was yet to come, but the whole of that country was absorbed
in a harassing and dangerous agitation for the repeal of the union
between the two countries.

During all this time, the Anti-Corn Law League was holding regular
and frequent meetings at Manchester, at which statements were made
distinguished by great eloquence and little scruple. But the able
leaders of this confederacy never succeeded in enlisting the sympathies
of the great body of the population. Between the masters and the workmen
there was an alienation of feeling, which apparently never could be
removed. This reserve, however, did not enlist the working classes on
the side of the government; they had their own object, and one which
they themselves enthusiastically cherished. And this was the Charter, a
political settlement which was to restore the golden age, and which the
master manufacturers and the middle classes generally looked upon
with even more apprehension than Her Majesty's advisers. It is hardly
necessary to add, that in a state of affairs like that which is here
faintly but still faithfully sketched, the rapid diminution of the
revenue was inevitable, and of course that decline mainly occurred in
the two all-important branches of the customs and excise.

There was another great misfortune also which at this trying time hung
over England. The country was dejected. The humiliating disasters of
Afghanistan, dark narratives of which were periodically arriving, had
produced a more dep