charlatans to stir up the minds of the people. The Chartists, headed
by Fergus O'Connor, took advantage of the privations of the populace by
appealing to their passions and their sufferings, representing them as
the dupes of the upper and middle classes, especially the latter, who
were described as enriching themselves at the expense of the poor. The
"people's charter" was declared to be the panacea; all social evils were
to vanish before the application of that political remedy. Some of the
political demands of the chartists were just; all classes of liberal
politicals felt that the people were entitled to a wider distribution of
the franchise, but many who thus felt were deterred from the concession
by the intemperate language and impracticable schemes of Fergus O'Connor
and the lesser leaders of the confederacy. Whatever might be supposed
imprudent as a measure of political agitation in a rich country,
and where the vast mass of the people had a strong aversion to all
constitutional, or as it was the fashion to name them, "organic
changes," by sanguinary or violent means, was resorted to by Mr.
O'Connor and his coadjutors. He propounded principles of political
economy so absurd, that it was difficult to suppose he could have any
faith in his own theories,--holding out the hope of an ultimate division
of the land among the people: others propounded the doctrine of a law by
which every man should be provided with "a fair day's wages for a fair
day's work," and the duty of supplying that "fair day's work" for him
rested, it was alleged, with the government. These men, in fact, did
their utmost to bring about a social war, and the doctrines of communism
were actively propagated and eagerly received among large numbers of
the operatives in the metropolis and the north of England, and among the
labourers elsewhere. There was, probably, no important town in England
that had not its chartist association, which looked forward to a violent
political revolution by which high wages could be procured by little
labour. The Chartists, like the Irish repealers, were divided into
sections, characterised respectively by their profession of physical
force or moral force. The moral force Chartists were like the Old
Irelanders, not generally very sincere in their belief of its efficacy.
They professed it merely as a cover to conceal what they meditated; they
were as much physical-force men as those who were so designated, but
did not deem