ABSTRACT
The wave of revolution which had swelled and burst in France was now sweeping over the rest of Europe. In our own country, it gave a great impetus to the Chartist movement—a very harmless one on the whole, now that we can look back on it. Two or three of the ‘points’ of the Charter are the law of the land, and the suffrage has been so widely extended as to be not far from universal. Several of the Chartist leaders were worthy and honest men, William Lovett more especially, whose acquaintance I made in after days. Before long, I was to have more than one friend who had been a Chartist. But Chartism had in the main surrendered itself to the leadership of a tall, red-haired, brazen-tongued Irishman, who ended his life in a madhouse—Feargus O'Connor. For myself, advanced Radical as I was for those days, I had long ceased to look for any substantial results from merely political reform. Even had universal suffrage and annual Parliaments been granted the right, exercised once a year, to (say) one 50,000th part of an M.P., it did not seem to me worth a struggle. Social reform alone was worth living for, and if need were, dying for.
