nearly vacant, not a fifth of the usual population there, and those also of the strictly business kind."* Buckingham Palace was protected by a strong force under arms at Wellington Barracks, ready to march on it the moment it was threatened. The Bank was fortified by a company of Sappers and Miners, who built on the roof platforms for cannon, and guarded them with loopholed breastworks of sandbags, &c., so that a mob could be swept away by grapeshot at a moment's notice. Special constables, organised by Aldermen of the wards, guarded the City. Hardly a single red-coat, however, was to be seen anywhere, but at various strategic points troops were in readiness, to be let loose if the mob showed signs of fighting. There was a fight between the police and the mob at Blackfriars Bridge. But the police who guarded Waterloo Bridge were able to amuse themselves as they pleased. No Chartists came near it-the bridge being guarded by something much more formidable to them than troops, namely, the man who kept the toll-bar.

When the events of the 18th ended with the contemptuous treatment which the House of Commons gave to the Chartist petition, two things happened. The upper middle class burst into a chorus of triumph over their successful suppression of anarchy. The working classes who joined the Chartist movement were flung into the arms of the "physical force party," who pointed to the failure of the petition and the demonstration, as a proof that the methods of agitation favoured by Mr. Sturge and the Birmingham Convention were futile. It is important to keep these facts in view, for the transformation of the Chartist movement into a movement of violence after the 10th of April, has led many writers to assume that the peaceful agitation which culminated in the Kennington meeting was truly a revolutionary conspiracy, which was put down by the courageous demonstration made by the Party of Order. The facts that the meeting at Kennington was unarmed, that its numbers, so far from reaching 100,000, did not exceed 20,000, that the existence of a toll-bar on one of the bridges was suficient to determine the direction which the "revolutionary" procession should take, and, above all, the fact that the meeting was held on the Surrey side of the river, thus leaving the police and troops in complete command of the bridges in rear of the Chartists-all indicate that up to the 10th there was no serious idea of appealing to arms. It was absurd to argue that the event was dwarfed by the preparations which were made to meet it, for these preparations were kept secret. On the other hand, a good effect was subsequently produced by these preparations, for they showed that the Party of Order, though quite willing o give Mr. Feargus O'Connor full liberty to play the braggart and the fool, were also determined to maintain the law against any mob of law-breakers, however strong or however turbulent. They gave agitators fair warning that in England, at least, the resources of civilisation against anarchy were * Letter to Mrs. Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London, by J. A. Froude, Vol. I., p. 434.

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by no means exhausted. The Queen had with some hesitation yielded to the advice of the Cabinet, and had removed the Court to Osborne during this anxious period. But she and Prince Albert both kept a vigilant eye on events as they unfolded themselves in the metropolis. Writing to King Leopold on the 11th of April, she says:-"Thank God, the Chartist meeting and procession have turned out a complete failure! The loyalty of the people at large has been very striking, and their indignation at their peace being interfered with by such wanton and worthless men immense."* Albany Fonblanque had the fairness to admit that it was "clear that the bulk of the London Chartists have no disposition to commit themselves to the chances of involving it in outrage;"† and Mr. Cobden says, in one of his letters:--" In my opinion the Government and the newspapers have made too much fuss. about it (the Chartist rising)." ‡

The two men who got and deserved most credit for the happy termination of the Chartist meeting were Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, and the Duke of Wellington, whose opinions on the affair had the greatest weight with the Queen. On the 11th of April, when all was quiet, the Duke of Wellington met Lord Campbell, and the following conversation took place between them:-"I went up to him," writes Lord Campbell, "and said, "Well, Duke, it has all turned out as you foretold.' Duke-Oh, yes, I was sure of it, and I never showed a soldier or a musket. But I was ready. I could have stopped them wherever you liked, and if they had been armed it would have been all the same.' Campbell-They say they are to meet next on the north side of the town, and avoid the bridges.' Duke Every street can be made

a bridge. I can stop them anywhere.' Campbell If your Grace had commanded Paris on the 25th of February, Louis Philippe would still have been on the throne.' Duke-'It would have been an easy matter. I should have made the Tuileries secure, and have kept my communications open.' Then, more suo, laying hold of my arm, and speaking very loud, and pointing with his finger, he added-'Always keep your communications open, and you need have nothing to fear.""§

When the fiasco of the 10th of April put the Chartist organisation under the control of the "physical force" party, the first step was initiated by Mr. Ernest Jones in the National Convention. It was to reconstruct the whole Chartist body as a secret society, on the pattern of the United Irishmen. Moderate men were removed from the Executive Council, and agitators like Dr. Macdowall, who had taken a prominent part in the troubles of '39 and '42, were elected in their places. The change in their methods was first

• Martin's Life of the Prince Consort.

+ Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, p. 217.

Morley's Life of Cobden.

§ This was a favourite idea with the Duke. He attributed our Afghan disasters to our failure to keep open our communications.

illustrated by the sudden assemblage, without warning, of a vast meeting of 80,000 men on Clerkenwell Green and Stepney Green, on the evening of the 29th of May, when processions from all parts of London also moved by converging routes to Smithfield, and then marched along Holborn, Oxford Street, Pall Mall, the Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, to Finsbury Square, where they dispersed. This was a demonstration arranged to test the working of the new secret organisation. Rifles and pikes began to appear in the lodgings of the Chartists. An alliance was formed with some of the turbulent leaders of the "Young Ireland" Party. Spies were swarming in every city, and a

CHARTIST AGITATION: THE POLICE FORCE ON BONNER'S FIELDS. (See p. 337.)

(Reduced, by permission, after the Engraving in "The Illustrated London News.")

Secret Committee, consisting of seven men, named Cuffey, Ritchie, Lacey, Fay, Rose, Mullins, and a man named Powell, alias Johnson, who, though pretending to be a workman, was really a professional pedestrian, known in sporting public-houses as the "Welsh Nurse," began to plot a regular insurrection. Powell joined the Committee to betray it, and his counsels breathed of fire and slaughter. Ernest Jones had by this time been imprisoned for proclaiming to a meeting that the green flag would soon wave over Downing Street; and another man had also been imprisoned-one Williams-because in a speech he had insinuated that the Government was brutalising the people by letting the police beat them with truncheons, when they came into collision with Chartist meetings on Clerkenwell Green. Whit Monday, the 12th of June, was the day fixed on for the Revolution, and on that day the Metropolitan branches of the Society were to assemble on Blackheath and Bishop Bonner's

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Fields meetings which were prohibited by the police as illegal. When warrants were issued for the arrest of Macdowall and the leaders, the Blackheath meeting was abandoned, and orders were given to concentrate a Chartist gathering on Bonner's Fields, so as to divert a large police force from the

City. On the evening of the 12th the Chartists resolved to abandon the meeting on Bonner's Fields, not because the authorities at Scotland Yard prohibited it, but because it was raining, comforting themselves with the reflection that they had detained a large force of police and troops there to watch them. They were then in hopes, as Rose, one of the leaders, said to Mr. Frost, that in London by that time "they are at it hammer and tongs.'

Forty Years' Recollections, by Thomas Frost, p. 161.

But when the time came for striking, the conspirators were unprepared, and nothing was done. Some of the leaders-like Cuffey-now felt that it was hopeless to attempt an armed revolt, yet the forces behind them were too strong to be controlled, and they were compelled to go on when they would have drawn back. They accordingly fixed the 15th of August for the grand effort; but on that day, when waiting in the "Orange Tree" public-house, in Orange Street, Bloomsbury, they were suddenly arrested by a small body of armed police. "A sword," writes Mr. Frost, "was found under the coat of one, and the head of a pike, made to screw into a socket, under that of another. One had a pair of pistols in his pocket, and the fourth was provided with a rusty bayonet, fastened on the end of a stick. Some were without other weapons than shoemakers' knives. A pike, which no one would own, was found under a bench."

At this moment groups of surly-looking labourers were lounging in the streets and at the bars of public-houses in the Seven Dials. Suddenly a man with haggard eyes and a face pale with fear was seen to rush into the midst of a group at the corner of St. Andrew's Street, and whisper a few hurried words to a labourer, who with a pickaxe was fumbling about loose stone in the causeway. He was then seen darting from group to group, from public-house to public-house, and very soon the police began to hover in the distance. In a few minutes the groups of loungers had almost entirely disappeared, and the public-houses were mysteriously emptied. There is reason to believe that the flag of revolution was to have been first raised in the Seven Dials, where the first barricades were to have been flung up, the spot, says Mr. Frost, who was a leading Chartist, being chosen "on account of its contiguity to Whitehall, and the facilities offered by its narrow streets, radiating in so many directions from a common centre, for a rapid advance." The pale-faced man, whose appearance was the signal for the dispersal of the loungers round the Seven Dials, was an emissary from the "Orange Tree," bringing tidings of the arrests there. Cuffey, Ritchie, Lacey, and Fay were tried for sedition, and sentenced to transportation for life. Mullins received a long term of imprisonment. Powell, the spy, instead of a handsome reward, only got a free passage to Australia, where, being an idle fellow, he did not remain long. What became of him is not known. The other spy, a constable named Mullins, was subsequently dismissed from the police force for misconduct, and after a career of crime was hanged for murdering an old woman called Elmsley, at Hackney, for the sake of a few pounds she had in her house. The Chartist organisation broke up. Its members, finding that the working classes alone could effect nothing, sensibly reverted to the programme of Mr. Sturge and the Birmingham Convention. They accordingly joined the Parliamentary Reform Association, which was launched into existence by the middle-class Radicals, under the auspices of Mr. Joseph Hume and his political associates.