and the fiery impetuosity
of his spirit brought him more than once into conflict with leaders
whose temperament was cold and whose caution was great. The rebellion in
Canada withdrew Lord Durham from the arena of English politics at the
beginning of 1838. Then it was that the people recognised to the full
the temper of the statesmen that were left, and the fact that, if
deliverance was to come from political and social thraldom, they must
look to themselves and organise their strength.

The representatives of the working classes in 1838 formulated their
demand for radical political reform in the famous six points of the
People's Charter. This declaration claimed manhood suffrage; the
division of the country into equal electoral districts; vote by ballot;
annual Parliaments; the abolition of property qualification for a seat
in the House of Commons; and payment of members of Parliament for their
services. The People's Charter took the working classes by storm: it
fired their imagination, inspired their hopes, and drew them in every
manufacturing town and district into organised association.

[Sidenote: A SORRY CHAMPION]

The leader of the movement was Feargus O'Connor, an Irish barrister and
journalist, who had entered Parliament in 1832 as a follower of
O'Connell and as member for Cork. He quarrelled, however, with the Irish
leader, a circumstance which was fatal to success as an agitator in his
own country. Restless and reckless, he henceforth carried his energy and
devoted his eloquence to the Chartist movement in England, and in 1847
the popular vote carried him once more to the House of Commons as member
for Nottingham. He copied the tactics of O'Connell, but had neither the
judgment nor the strength of the Irish dictator. He seems, indeed, to
have been rather a poor creature of the vainglorious, bombastic type. A
year or two later he became hopelessly insane, and in the vaporing
heroics and parade of gasconade which marked him as the champion of the
Chartists in the spring of 1848 it is charitable now to discover the
first seeds of his disorder. However that may be, he was a nine-days'
wonder, for from All Fools' Day to the morning of April 10 society in
London was in a state of abject panic. The troubles in Ireland, the
insurrections and rumours of insurrection on the Continent, the
revolution in France, the menacing discontent in the provinces, and the
threatening attitude of the working men in the metropolis