the administration of the national exchequer. But we have never
admitted "personality" as a title to enfranchisement.

[Illustration: THE GORDON RIOTS

_From the Painting by Seymour Lucas, R.A._]

Cartwright followed with the multitude of political writers of his time to
deduce a right to vote, and his deduction is as worthless as the rest of
the _a priori_ reasoning. But the brave old man--he was tried for
"sedition" at the age of eighty in the Government panic of 1820--was an
entirely disinterested champion of the poor and a real lover of liberty. He
believed the affairs of government ought to be a matter of common concern,
and that they were quite within the capacities of ordinary men.
Cartwright's life--much more than his writings--kept the democratic ideal
unshaken in the handful of "Radical Reformers" who survived the Tory
reaction on the war with the French Republic in 1793, and his glowing
enthusiasm helped to kindle the fire for political enfranchisement that was
burning in the hearts of the manufacturing population by 1818. But in 1777
the electorate was not anxious for reform, and the unenfranchised gave no
thought to their political disabilities. On the very day in 1780 that the
Duke of Richmond proposed, in the House of Lords, a resolution in favour of
manhood suffrage and annual Parliaments, the London mob, stirred up by the
anti-Catholic fanaticism of Lord George Gordon, marched to Westminster with
a petition to repeal Savile's Act of 1778, which allowed Catholics to
bequeath land and to educate their own children. There was a riot, and in
the course of the next six days the mob burnt Newgate, sacked Catholic
chapels, and generally plundered and ravaged the City.

In the House of Commons Pitt made three attempts to get reform
considered--in 1782, 1783 and 1785--and on each occasion his resolution was
defeated by an overwhelming majority. After that Pitt made no further
effort for reform, and from 1793 to 1795 the Government he led passed the
Acts of repressive legislation which made all democratic propaganda
illegal, and crushed all political agitation.

But "the Cause" was not dead.

Sir Francis Burdett, M.P. for Westminster, Henry Hunt, better known as
"Orator Hunt," and Cobbett with his "Political Register," in various ways
renewed the campaign for manhood suffrage, and the growth of the
manufacturing districts made a change in the constitution of Parliament
imperative.

Burdett was sent to the