ballads and was spoken of as the widow of a certain Don Diego Leon, who had been shot by the Carlists. His lordship, an easy, good-natured man, had made her acquaintance in a railway carriage coming up from Southampton, and that was the story she had told him. She was permitted to sell laces, veils, trinkets, and "curios" to Lord Malmesbury's guests at his private concerts, so that she might earn a little money, while trying to dispose of some

-66

property," about which there was much mystery. Then she went on the stage at the Opera House as a dancer, but was a failure. It ultimately turned out that she was a rank impostor, for instead of being the widow of a Spanish Don, she was a "Spaniard" from Cork, who had married an Irish officer called James, in the Company's service in India. It was after her failure at the Opera House that she captivated the King of Bavaria, who used to permit her to review the Royal army, and amuse him by slashing the faces of his veteran generals with her riding-whip, when their troops failed to reach her standard of smartness. On the 19th of February she was driven from Munich -the troops refusing to fire on the people. Her house was sacked, and her collection of pictures destroyed.

M. Guizot, on the 21st of February, prohibited the Reform banquet in

i

1848.]

FLIGHT OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.

325

Paris. On Tuesday the 22nd the National Guard had revolted, and the mob from behind barricades attacked the troops. On Wednesday not one-tenth of the National Guards answered the roll-call. The Government was paralysed with panic; Ministers resigned, and M. Odillon Barrot impeached M. Guizot. The insurrection rapidly made headway, and on the 24th Louis Philippe abdicated in favour of his son, the Comte de Paris, and fled from his capital.

As soon as the Royal Family had left the Tuileries, the mob gutted the Palace, smashing everything in it but the throne, which they carried through the streets, amidst shrieks of derision. M. Lamartine formed a Provisional Government, which proclaimed a Republic. The King and Queen, it seems, made their way to Dreux, where, thanks to a friendly farmer, they procured disguises. After wandering to Trouville and Honfleur, they ultimately embarked in a fishing-boat, and were picked up by the Southampton steamer, Express, which had been hovering off Havre to meet the fugitives. On the 3rd of March, about midnight, his Majesty, under the name of "Mr. Smith," was shivering in a little public-house at Newhaven, called the "Bridge Inn." On the 4th they reached London, and immediately drove to Claremont. Other members of the Royal Family of France arrived by devious ways, after much

variety of perilous adventure, and were received by the Queen with a generous hospitality, the warmth of which was indeed far from pleasing to the English people.

England had neither forgotten nor forgiven the hostile duplicity of Louis Philippe's foreign policy, and even Prince Albert had to beg her Majestywhose heart has always been easily touched by the spectacle of sorrow or misfortune-to moderate her expression of sympathy for the dethroned monarch. In the House of Commons some of the Radicals, alarmed at the Ministerial proposals to increase the military expenditure of the country, professed to see in these courtly demonstrations of compassion additional proofs of hostile designs, on the part of England, against the French Republic. Cobden, in a letter to his friend, Mr. George Combe, of Edinburgh, said he dreaded the revival of the Treaty of Vienna, for he suspected that the Court and the aristocracy were eager to make war on the Republic. So far as Prince Albert was concerned this, as we have seen, was an unjust suspicion. But it was equally unjust to the Queen. "We do everything we can for the poor family," she wrote to King Leopold, "who are indeed sorely to be pitied. But you will naturally understand that we cannot make common cause with them, and cannot take a hostile position to the new state of things in France.” * In truth, Louis Philippe-who complained to the Queen that Palmerston's intrigues with the Liberals in France had upset his Government-deserved his fate. The outbreak which followed the foolish prohibition of the Reform banquet was only that of a turbulent mob. The King had a large and loyal army at his back, and the proverbial "whiff of grapeshot" would at the outset have quelled the rising. Louis Philippe, however, lacked the courage to defend his crown, and his flight transformed a riot into a revolution. At the same time the French people acquiesced in the Revolution of '48 for various reasons, which have been very fairly stated by two of the shrewdest observers of the day, Sir Robert Peel and M. Alexis de Tocqueville. When Mr. Hume crossed the floor of the House of Commons one evening, and carried the news of Louis Philippe's fall to Peel, the latter whispered to Hume:-"This comes of trying to govern the country through a narrow representation in Parliament, without regarding the wishes of those outside. It is what the Party behind me wanted me to do in the matter of the Corn Laws, and I would not do it."+ M. de Tocqueville, three weeks before the Revolution, predicted the catastrophe in a speech in the Chamber, in which he warned the Government that it was trembling on a volcano of Socialism. In a letter to Mr. Senior he says that the real cause of the Revolution was "the detestable spirit which animated the Government during this long reign; a spirit of trickery, of baseness, and of bribery, which has enervated and degraded the middle classes, destroyed Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXIV.

+ Cobden's Speeches, Vol. II., p. 548.

Le Moniteur, 28th January, 1847.

1848.]

THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT.

327

their public spirit, and filled them with a selfishness so blind as to induce them to separate their interests entirely from those of the lower classes, from whence they sprang," who were thus delivered over to the quacks of Communism, and the tyranny of ideas, destructive not merely of ministries and dynasties, but of moral order and civil society.* An elected legislature, springing from a narrow franchise, and a strong centralised Government, were both manipulated for dynastic, as distinguished from national, purposes, by a selfish monarch, who had not the courage to defend his throne. The vast increase in material wealth which Louis Philippe's reign brought to France, held as it was by a limited class, who had forfeited the respect of the nation, failed in these circumstances to avert the calamity that gave birth to the Second Republic.

England, more fortunate than France, was but lightly touched by the edge of the Revolutionary cyclone. It caused a few Chartist riots in Great Britain, and the rising of the Nationalist Party in Ireland, headed by Mr. Smith O'Brien.

On the 6th of March, whilst the Budget controversy was raging in the House of Commons, Mr. Cochrane, a defeated candidate for the representation of Westminster, organised a popular demonstration against the proposal to increase the Income Tax. A misguided mob, who had no incomes to tax, converted the meeting into a riot in Trafalgar Square, which the police suppressed. On the 5th of March Glasgow was surprised by a mob of unemployed workmen, and it took three days ere the police and the military forces, reinforced by special constables, restored order. Riots were also suppressed in Edinburgh, Manchester, and Newcastle. In London, however, the Chartists threatened to assemble on Kennington Common 150,000 men. Under the leadership of Feargus O'Connor they were to march to Westminster, ostensibly for the purpose of presenting to the House of Commons a monster petition, explaining their grievances, and demanding reform.

The grievance of the Chartists was really the grievance of the working classes. Their alliance and support enabled the middle classes to wring from the Crown and the Peers the Reform Bill of 1832. But the middle class alone profited by that Bill, which transferred political power from the aristocracy to the shopocracy, leaving the artisans and manual toilers unenfranchised. Why their persistent agitation for political privileges since 1832 should have led people to believe that revolution was impending in 1848, has been considered a mystery, especially as the outbreak on Kennington Common was a fiasco. Yet there was good reason for this panic. From Lord Grey's correspondence it is now clear that the country was on the brink of civil war in 1831, when the King resisted Reform. But from 1831 to 1848, the resistance to an extension of the franchise had come not from the Crown, but from the

• Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior, edited by M. P. Simpson, Vol. I., p. 37.

House of Commons. When, however, the House of Commons obstructs progress in England-and it is apt to do so whenever it gets the chance-the situation becomes serious. Obstruction from the Sovereign, if unreasonable and malignant, can always be met by the power of the Commons to stop supplies. Obstruction by the Upper House can be met by the power of the Crown to create new Peers. For obstruction by the House of Commons,

however, it was felt that there was no real remedy but argument or revolution -argument if the people were comfortable and patient, revolution if they were hungry and impatient.

The Chartist organisation of 1839-which collapsed with the Newport riotswas really a gigantic secret society. It was organised by Major Beniowski, a Polish teacher of mnemonics, three working men-Cardo, a shoemaker, Warden, a gardener, one Westropp (occupation unknown)-and a mysterious individual, said to be a foreign police spy. On a given hour, on a given day, twenty cities were to be burned to the ground, and a reign of terror was to be inaugurated. The late Mr. David Urquhart claimed to have discovered the conspiracy, and to have broken it up by demonstrating to some of the leading