ments. The "Complete" journals, the _Weekly Dispatch_,
_Weekly Chronicle_, _Examiner_, etc., fell gradually into the sleepy tone
of the other Liberal sheets, espoused the cause of Free Trade, attacked
the Ten Hours' Bill and all exclusively working-men's demands, and let
their Radicalism as a whole fall rather into the background. The Radical
bourgeoisie joined hands with the Liberals against the working-men in
every collision, and in general made the Corn Law question, which for the
English is the Free Trade question, their main business. They thereby
fell under the dominion of the Liberal bourgeoisie, and now play a most
pitiful role.

The Chartist working-men, on the contrary, espoused with redoubled zeal
all the struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Free
competition has caused the workers suffering enough to be hated by them;
its apostles, the bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies. The working-
man has only disadvantages to await from the complete freedom of
competition. The demands hitherto made by him, the Ten Hours' Bill,
protection of the workers against the capitalist, good wages, a
guaranteed position, repeal of the new Poor Law, all of the things which
belong to Chartism quite as essentially as the "Six Points," are directly
opposed to free competition and Free Trade. No wonder, then, that the
working-men will not hear of Free Trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws
(a fact incomprehensible to the whole English bourgeoisie), and while at
least wholly indifferent to the Corn Law question, are most deeply
embittered against its advocates. This question is precisely the point
at which the proletariat separates from the bourgeoisie, Chartism from
Radicalism; and the bourgeois understanding cannot comprehend this,
because it cannot comprehend the proletariat.

Therein lies the difference between Chartist democracy and all previous
political bourgeois democracy. Chartism is of an essentially social
nature, a class movement. The "Six Points" which for the Radical
bourgeois are the beginning and end of the matter, which are meant, at
the utmost, to call forth certain further reforms of the Constitution,
are for the proletarian a mere means to further ends. "Political power
our means, social happiness our end," is now the clearly formulated war-
cry of the Chartists. The "knife and fork question" of the preacher
Stephens was a truth for a part of the Chartists only, in 1838, it is a
truth