held in terrorem over them, than they took a new view of their public duty, and did not consider that they were doing wrong in treating these prisoners as their good moral character entitled them to be treated.

were.

We are not Chartists. We need scarcely say that we are not Anarchists or Revolutionists. We think, with Mr. Macaulay, that an unlimited extension of the suffrage, in the present state of society, would defeat the ends of civilization. Therefore we have no sympathy for the objects for which this Mr. Lovett and his fellow-prisoner, Mr. Collins, had been peaceably contending. But we are Englishmen; and, as Englishmen, we hate tyranny in every shape and under every disguise. We are too much ruled by the spirit of the bourgeoisie. We are not as our ancestors We look not as they did at the abstract right, but only at the expediency. We have no sympathy, in politics, for any thing that is not "respectable." We are no longer animated by that austere love of justice which gained us our political freedom. Our unequal taxation, our class legislation, our unnatural distinctions of rank all attest this. Nations with one accord, have discarded sanguinary punishments for political offences. The stake and fagot, the scaffold and the guillotine, have alike disappeared. The refinement of our race enables us to adopt milder forms of punishment. But though the form may be more mild, the spirit may be the same. Jack Cade might have been condemned to lose his head, or to be hung, drawn, and quartered; that would have been in accordance with the spirit of those times. Think you, that by substituting for a sanguinary punishment the series of low tortures we have described, that you have made any advance in the direction of clemency or of justice? Not at all; the persons subjected to such indignities have become, by their education and the refinement of their moral feelings, so sensitive that they feel such indignities more acutely than more appalling punishments. We should be glad to see this indirect and cowardly mode of punishing opinion discontinued, now that theuniversal voice of mankind has pronounced that opinion shall not be punished at all. If you dare not sentence a man to moral torture in a court of justice, why be so mean as to inflict it upon him in the guise of prison regulations? It may be a capital joke for Undersecretaries of State, or bigoted country gentlemen thus to make the law, in spite of itself, a means of gratifying their short-sighted passions. But it is not for such purposes that the law is made; and, for our own parts, we would rather see a hundred demagogues escape punishment, than that such a stain should be cast on the majesty of English constitutional law as this petty revenge

of Warwickshire magistrates for their Birmingham panic.

The best rebuke was given by these prisoners themselves, who occupied the time, which most men would have spent in bitter revilings of their petty tyrants, in inditing a small book entitled Chartism, written in a very noble spirit of forbearance, of kindliness towards all classes, and containing a well-organized scheme for the education and improvement of the people, socially and politically. As a mere literary production it is interesting, but it becomes more so when we contrast the almost philosophical calmness of its tone with the painful circumstances under which it was written. The Morning Chronicle, speaking of this little book, says- "The fact of such a work as that having been concocted in gaol is a severe rebuke on wrongheadedness, to call it by no stronger term, that visits political offences with vexatious restrictions and torturing aggravations of the judicial sentence of simple imprisonment. May the plans, statements, and sentiments of this work meet with the attention they merit from legislators and statesmen."

Ultimately, after many unsuccessful attempts, the "moral-force" Chartists under the guidance of Mr. Lovett, carried out their views as to the formation of a mutual instruction society. These attempts seldom realize the expectations of their founders; and the National Hall, in Holborn, is certainly not a very strong lever for revolutionizing society. But the intention is good; and, as far as we have been able to learn, the different classes for instruction, the library, readingrooms, lectures, &c., &c., which go to complete the plan, are well-conducted. Looking over the list* of subscribers for this association, we find, among a host of others, the following names and sums: Lord Brougham, 10l.; Mr. Leader, M. P., 501.; Mr. Travers, 10.7; Mr. W. H. Ashurst, 17.; Mr. Hume, M. P., 5l.; Mr. Elphinstone, M. P., 5l.; Mr. J. S. Mill, 5l.;- Mr. P. A. Taylor, 5l.; Dr. Bowring, 1l.; Mr. T. S. Duncombe, M. P., 10l.; Mr. Warburton, M. P., 25l.; Mr. P. Williams, M. P., 1l.; Mr. H. B. Fearon, 5l.; Mr. John Marshall, M. P., 10l.; General Evans, 5l.; Dr. Southwood Smith, 17.; Mr. B. Wood, M. P., 10l.; Sir John Easthope, 10.; the Earl of Radnor, 251.; Mr. Swynfen Jervis, 5l.; Mr. Gilbert Pouncey, 51.; Mr. George Grote, 10l.; Mr. Rigby Wason, M. P., 5l.; Mr. Sharman Crawford, M. P., 10l.; General Johnson, M. P., 17.; Mr. W. Collins, M. P., 17.; Sir F. Burdett, M. P., 5l.; Sir M. Wood, M. P., 10l.; Mr. Milner Gibson, M. P., 5l.; Mr. O. Cave, M. P., 5l.; Mr. C. P. Villiers, M. P., 5l.; Mr. Wynne Ellis, M. P., 10.; Mr. Wakley, M. P., 5l.; Mr. Hawes, M. P., 31. 3s.; Mr. Prescott, the banker, 51.; Mr. Charles Buller, M. P., 21.

and the "Complete Suffrage" men are inclined to an union with the middle classes for the carrying out of extensive reforms, it is not impossible that some new designation will be adopted that will be common to all.

There are certain bodies of men in this country of so servile a spirit that they will follow wherever a rich man or a titled man may lead. They would profess Cannibalism if a duke and a lord or two set them the example. The classes in question do not, we will do them the justice to say, class Chartism with Cannibalism, but they have a general and vague impression that it is but another name for every possible offence against life and property. To sustain the emasculate intellects of such persons, and for this purpose only, it is desirable to inform them that, actually a DUKE, not much more than fifty years ago, attempted to make something very like Chartism the law of the land. If, too, these timid politicians are not already fortified by being informed that six actual living M. P.'s signed the "Charter" about ten years ago, at the hotel in Cockspur Street, it may be as well to add, that some of the most brilliant names in our history (including an earl) have been ranged, in former days, on the same side. The Duke we refer to was the Duke of Richmond, who, in the year 1780, introduced a bill to give universal suffrage and annual parliaments, resting his case on the axiom that he was not proposing any thing new, but only restoring an old right and practice of the people.

There is another class of persons who do not pin their faith upon peers, and make small account even of M. P.'s and baronets, but who have much reverence for great historical names. These persons we would remind that in the year 1780 Charles James Fox was the chairman of a committee of electors of Westminster which met to determine on the subject of the right of voting. Charles James Fox and a colleague, Thomas Brand Hollis (a good old historical name) recommended to the electors of Westminster the following conditions of a perfect electoral system: 1. Annual Parliaments.

2. Universal Suffrage.

3. Equal Electoral Districts.

4. No Property Qualification.
5. Vote by Ballot.

6. Payment of Members.

Thus Charles James Fox recommended six "points," which fifty-seven years afterwards were embodied in a document called the "People's Charter." If Chartists are to be charged with the blame of every infraction of the law which may take place at a public assemblage of the working classes who meet to devise schemes for establishing one or all of those principles, how does this react on the memory of Charles James

Fox?

Surely it is as unfair to the working classes to cover their reasonable and peaceful demands with opprobrium, as it would be to cast on the reputation of the great Whig statesman the reproach of all the broken heads and broken windows of the last few years, to say nothing of the follies of the 200,000 special constables.

These seditious and unconstitutional doctrines were not promulgated exclusively either by the predecessor of the present great Tory and Protectionist Duke, or by the political father of the Greys and the Russells of our day. In times when Whigs were not indisposed to a little sedition for the advancement of their party interests, there was formed a certain society called the " Society of Friends of the People." Its chief members were the late Earl Grey, Mr. T. Erskine, Sir James Macintosh, and noblemen and members of parliament enough utterly to paralyze the thinking faculties of the bourgeoisie of London, Manchester, Liverpool, and all the great towns. This society did not openly go quite so far as Charles James Fox, but they went far enough to justify the chief demand of the working classes of the present day, namely, an almost unlimited extension of the suffrage.

Certainly, persons friendly to the working classes must regret that the advocacy of Chartism should have dropped down first from the hands of the Duke of Richmond, Charles James Fox, Earl Grey, Mr. Erskine, Sir James Mackintosh, into those of Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Hume, Col. Thompson, Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Whittle Harvey, and Mr. Wakley (not such great statesmen as Mr. Fox or Earl Grey, but apparently like them in their readiness to drop the cause of the people as soon as it should become necessary for them to act), and by and by into the guardianship of such a mere demagogue as Mr. Feargus O'Connor. The inauguration of the movement by those great men of the past century was solemn and imposing enough. The final denouement on Monday, the 10th of April, 1848, was such as must have given pain to every sincere lover of constitutional order. Perhaps, had the originators of the movement, or their political descendants, given some consistent countenance to it in its intermediate stages, England might have been spared the spectacle which her special constables presented to the world.

Seriously, if the panic which possessed the whole country, and excited the most extravagant hopes in foreign enemies but a few weeks ago, was really attributable to Chartism, it is not possible any longer to evade a grave consideration of the question. Does the reader know what was really the state of London on the 10th of April? Panic was universal, in public and in private. Every man made his house a castle, as

would justify the Duke of Wellington's preparations. The working classes, however, remember a long score of past sufferings. It is not natural for hungry men to reason as coolly as sleek economists. They cannot understand that the inequalities in men's condition, and the periodical inflictions of extreme poverty, are not the result of the laws, and for this reason, they naturally desire to have the making of those laws. This is the normal condition of Chartism. But, at the present time, there are special external causes for increased activity, of hope, and intellectual working among the masses. The spread of the habit of reading makes them acquainted, from day to day, with the events of the world. They see in France a Republic established by the prowess of the lower orders, and maintained without violence or outrage. They see an election of representatives of the people conducted in a manner more orderly than the elections at Nottingham or Wigan, or even in London itself, at which the voting is on the principle of universal suffrage, and where a considerable number of the candidates are working men. With the practice of universal suffrage on the other side of the Atlantic they have long been familiar. Both America and France might be regarded by them as exceptional cases. But if they turn their eyes to the rest of Europe, they see two of the most despotic monarchies of the Continent adopting, nay, even initiating, that very principle of representation which forms the basis of their own claims.

Prussia and Austria have, alike, accepted universal suffrage as the foundation of their new constitutions. With such facts before us, can we feel astonished that the sober, honest, hardworking artisans of this country-who, be it remembered, are by their birthright as Englishmen free, with whom pride is a national virtue, who are not anarchists, savages, vagabonds, or pickpockets, - can we be surprised that they, too, think the time is come when they might be invited to take their place, according to their station in the country, in the national councils? And are we wise, knowing our own power and strength, and entertaining no fear (especially during the two months the special constables are in office), of the efforts of those who would disturb public order - are we wise to continue pouring contempt and obloquy on men, whom we wilfully confound with that vile portion of the population which, in the countries we speak of, seems to be so little dreaded that there is scarcely an exception made against them in the new constitutions? The Chartists profess, in this respect, to be a sort of moral police; for they say they would refuse the franchise to all persons convicted of criminal offences against the law.

But because we would have this question met in a manly way are we therefore Chartists? No. Discussing the Charter fairly, and conceding it, are two very different matters. We put ourselves in the position of the honest, hard-working artisan. We know that if we had given, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year, guarantees of our good citizenship, we should not like to be told, that because we did not pay 10l. a-year, not in rent, for that nine out of ten artisans pay, but in rent for a house according to the definition of a revising barrister, we should be deemed unfit to exercise a franchise which is given to all persons paying that amount of rent, without any test of their moral or intellectual fitness, and which, moreover, is bestowed, with all the prodigality of injustice, upon the freemen of boroughs, a class notoriously vicious and corruptible through their drunkenness or their avarice.

The fault of the Chartists consists in their aiming at too much. But this has been the fault of all political agitators. When Clarkson " went” for total and immediate emancipation of the Negro, he was regarded by his opponents as Chartists are regarded by theirs. When Mr. Cobden "went" for total and immediate repeal of the corn-laws, it was supposed that he had entered on as hopeless a crusade. But Clarkson and Cobden both lived to see the accomplishment of their impossible aims. From the consequences of both those great agitations the applicants for the Charter, and those who contemptuously oppose them, might alike derive an useful lesson. The obstinate and infatuated opposition of the slave-holding interests to all change, forced the abolitionists more under the influence of exasperation than was consonant with their character. The opposition of the landlords and leading statesmen to a rational modification of the cornlaws drove Mr. Cobden to a fanatical adherence to total and immediate repeal; whereas, had a timely consideration been given to the question, a more equitable and rational adjustment might have been made. The Chartists, in like manner, include in their demands propositions which it is utterly impossible to entertain in the present state of society in this country.

Without defending the Septennial Act, we must say that annual parliaments would be an annual nuisance. In regard to the suffrage question, it may be observed that thousands of working men in this country might exercise it if they would take the trouble. Their neglect ought not, of course, to abrogate the right of others. But this apathy is a fact not to be overlooked, and it demands consideration ere even think of making the extension of the suffrage so great as to throw the representation into

we