the advice of some of their more extreme leaders, threw all their support into the cause of the Tories, and so helped the downfall of the Melbourne Administration.

Wide and almost universal discontent among the working-classes in town and country still helped to swell the Chartist ranks. The weavers and stockingers in some of the manufacturing towns were miserably poor. Wages were low everywhere. In the agricultural districts the complaints against the operation of the new Poor Law were vehement and passionate; and although they were unjust in principle and sustained by monstrous exaggerations of statement, they were not the less potent as recruiting agents for Chartism. There was a profound distrust of the middle class and their leaders. The Anti-Corn-law agitation which was then springing up, and which, one might have thought, must find its most strenuous support among the poor artisans of the towns, was regarded with deep disgust by some of the Chartists, and with downright hostility by others. A very temperate orator of the Chartists put "We the feeling of himself and his fellows in clear terms. do not object to the repeal of the Corn Laws," he said; "on the contrary, when we get the Charter we will repeal the Corn Laws and all the bad laws. But if you give up your agitation for the Charter to help the Free-traders, they will never help you to get the Charter. Don't be deceived by the middle classes again! You helped them to get the Reform Bill, and where are the fine promises they made you? Don't listen to their humbug any more. Stick to your

Charter. Without your votes you are veritable slaves." The Chartists believed themselves abandoned by their natural leaders. All manner of socialist doctrines began to creep in among them. Wild and infidel opinions were proclaimed by many. Thomas Cooper tells one little anecdote which he says fairly illustrates the feelings of many of the fiercer spirits among the artisan Chartists in some of the towns. He and his friends were holding a meeting one day in Leicester. A poor religious stockinger said: "Let us be patient a little longer; surely God Almighty will help us soon. "Talk to us no more about thy Goddle Mighty," was the fierce cry that came, in reply, from one of the audience; "there isn't one! If there was one, he wouldn't let

us suffer as we do!" About the same time a poor stockinger rushed into Cooper's house, and throwing himself wildly on a chair, exclaimed, "I wish they would hang me! I have lived on cold potatoes that were given me these two days, and this morning I've eaten a raw potato for sheer hunger. Give me a bit of bread and a cup of coffee, or I shall drop!" Thomas Cooper's remark about this time is very intelligi ble and simple. It tells a long, clear story about Chartism. "How fierce," he says, "my discourses became now in the Market-place on Sunday evenings! My heart often burned with indignation I knew not how to express. I began, from sheer sympathy, to feel a tendency to glide into the depraved thinking of some of the stronger but coarser spirits among the men."

So the agitation went on. We need not follow it through all its incidents. It took in some places the form of industrial strikes; in others, of socialistic assemblages. Its fanaticism had in many instances a strong flavor of nobleness and virtue. Some men under the influence of thoughtful leaders pledged themselves to total abstinence from intoxicating drinks, in the full belief that the agitation would never succeed until the working-classes had proved themselves, by their self-control, to be worthy of the gift of freedom. In other instances, as has been already remarked, the disappointment and despair of the people took the form of infidelity. There were many riots and disturbances; none, indeed, of so seemingly rebellious a nature as that of Frost and his companions, but many serious enough to spread great alarm, and to furnish fresh occasion for Government prosecutions and imprisonments. Some of the prisoners seem to have been really treated with a positively wanton harshness and even cruelty. Thomas Cooper's account of his own sufferings in prison is painful to read. It is not easy to understand what good purpose any Government could have supposed the prison authorities were serving by the unnecessary degradation and privation of men who, whatever their errors, were conspicuously and transparently sincere and honest.

It is clear that at that time the Chartists, who represented the bulk of the artisan class in most of the large towns, did in their very hearts believe that England was ruled for the

benefit of aristocrats and millionnaires who were absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of the poor. It is equally clear that most of what are called the ruling class did really believe the English working-men who joined the Chartist movement to be a race of fierce, unmanageable, and selfish communists who, if they were allowed their own way for a moment, would prove themselves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and all established securities of society. An ignorant panic prevailed on both sides. England was indeed divided then, as Mr. Disraeli's novel described it, into two nations, the rich and the poor, in towns at least; and each hated and feared the other with all that unthinking hate and fear which hostile nations are capable of showing even amidst all the influences of civilization.

CHAPTER VI.

QUESTION DE JUPONS.

MEANWHILE things were looking ill with the Melbourne Ministry. Sir Robert Peel was addressing great meetings of his followers, and declaring with much show of justice that he had created anew the Conservative party. The position of the Whigs would in any case have been difficult. Their mandate, to use the French phrase, seemed to be exhausted. They had no new thing to propose. They came into power as reformers, and now they had nothing to offer in the way of reform. It may be taken as a certainty that in English politics reaction must always follow advance. The Whigs must just then have come in for the effects of reaction. But they had more than that to contend with. In our own time, Mr. Gladstone had no sooner passed his great measures of reform than he began to experience the effects of reaction. But there was a great difference between his situation and that of the Whigs under Melbourne. He had not failed to satisfy the demands of his followers. He had no extreme wing of his party clamoring against him on the ground that he had made use of their strength to help him in carrying out as much of his programme as suited his own coterie, and that he had then deserted them. This

was the condition of the Whigs. The more advanced Liberals and the whole body of the Chartists, and the workingclasses generally, detested and denounced them. Many of the Liberals had had some hope while Lord Durham still seemed likely to be a political power, but with the fading of his influence they lost all interest in the Whig Ministry. On the other hand, the support of O'Connell was a serious disadvantage to Melbourne and his party in England.

But the Whig ministers were always adding by some mistake or other to the difficulties of their position. The Jamaica Bill put them in great perplexity. This was a measure brought in on April 9th, 1839, to make temporary provision for the government of the island of Jamaica, by setting aside the House of Assembly for five years, and during that time empowering the governor and council with three salaried commissioners to manage the affairs of the colony. In other words, the Melbourne Ministry proposed to suspend for five years the constitution of Jamaica. No body of persons can be more awkwardly placed than a Whig Ministry proposing to set aside a constitutional government anywhere. Such a proposal may be a necessary measure; it may be unavoidable; but it always comes with a bad grace from Whigs or Liberals, and gives their enemies a handle against them which they cannot fail to use to some purpose. What, indeed, it may be plausibly asked, is the raison d'être of a Liberal Government, if they have to return to the old Tory policy of suspended constitutions and absolute law? When Rabagas, become minister, tells his master that the only way to silence discontent is by the literal use of the cannon, the Prince of Monaco remarks very naturally that if that was to be the policy, he might as well have kept to his old ministers and his absolutism. So it is with an English Liberal Ministry advising the suspension of constitutions.

In the case of the Jamaica Bill there was some excuse for the harsh policy. After the abolition of slavery, the former masters in the island found it very hard to reconcile themselves to the new condition of things. They could not all at once understand that their former slaves were to be their equals before the law. As we have seen much more lately in the Southern States of America, after the civil war and

the emancipation of the negroes, there was still a pertinacious attempt made by the planter class to regain in substance the power they had had to renounce in name. This was not to be justified or excused; but, as human nature is made, it was not unnatural. On the other hand, some of the Jamaica negroes were too ignorant to understand that they had acquired any rights; others were a little too clamorous in their assertion. Many a planter worked his men and whipped his women just as before the emancipation, and the victims did not understand that they had any right to complain. Many negroes, again, were ignorantly and thoughtlessly "bumptious," to use a vulgar expression, in the assertion of their newly-found equality. The imperial governors and officials were generally and justly eager to protect the negroes; and the result was a constant quarrel between the Jamaica House of Assembly and the representatives of the home Government. The Assembly became more insolent and offensive every day. A bill, very necessary in itself, was passed by the imperial Parliament for the better regulation of prisons in Jamaica, and the House of Assembly refused to submit to any such legislation. Under these circumstances, the Melbourne Ministry proposed the suspension of the constitution of the island. The measure was opposed not only by Peel and the Conservatives, but by many Radicals. It was argued that there were many courses open to the ministry short of the high-handed proceeding they proposed; and, in truth, there was not that confidence in the Melbourne Ministry at all which would have enabled them to obtain from Parliament a majority sufficient to carry through such a policy. The ministry was weak and discredited; anybody might now throw a stone at it. They only had a majority of five in favor of their measure. This, of course, was a virtual defeat. The ministry acknowledged it, and resigned. Their defeat was a humiliation; their resignation an inevitable submission; but they came back to office almost immediately under conditions that made the humiliation more humbling, and rendered their subsequent career more difficult by far than their past struggle for existence had been.

The return of the Whigs to office-for they cannot be said to have returned to power-came about in a very odd