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Product of a theocratic state, where the rich and the poor are united in God, he is shocked by "the Two Nations" into which, by the gradual break-up of the feudal world, this England is split. The cry of the Chartists does not leave him cold. He is one in revolt with Byron and Shelley against a Philistine world.
An old friend and fellow-contributor to "Politics for the People," led the Conservative attack, accusing him of unsettling the minds of the poor, making them discontented, &c. Some of the foremost Chartists wrote virulently against him for "attempting to justify the God of the Old Testament," who, they maintained, was unjust and cruel, and, at any rate, not the God "of the people."
"And I am told we shall keep so," said Lord de Mowbray. "The mills are mostly at work, and the men take the reduced wages in a good spirit. The fact is our agitators in this neighbourhood suffered pretty smartly in '39, and the Chartists have lost their influence. "I am sorry for poor Lady St Julians," said Lady Bardolf to Lady de Mowbray.
So then, in spite of Cockneys, chartists, coxcombs, rebels, radicals, and rascally reformers, yea, and the whole alphabetical list of what is whiggish, vulgar, and vexatious, "Maga still sitteth on Edina's crags, And from her throne of beauty rules the world!" Ah! my dear Godfrey of Godfrey Hall, in the county of Kent, Esquire, I know what you are thinking of.
Under the command of some Chartists, the people next paraded the streets to the music of fife and drum, and six policemen who drove up from Tilliedrum in a light cart were sent back tied to the seats." "No one has been punished?" "Not yet, but nearly two years ago there was a similar riot, and the sheriff took no action for months.
Two or three have been called home to be Ministers of Foreign Affairs, as they have learned something of constitutional liberty in England. England is, as yet, all quiet, and I hope will keep so, but the Chartists are at work and Ireland is full of inflammable matter.
Like the old Chartists with whom I once spent an evening, they tell you that their politics have been 'all talk' all words and there are few among them, except those to whom politics has become a profession or a career, who hold on until through weariness and disappointment they learn new confidence from new knowledge.
Nowadays, when leading statesmen assure us "we are all Socialists now," when the demands of the old "Chartists" are Liberal common form, when trades-unionism, co-operation, and state-aided benefits are largely supported by politicians, churchmen, journals, and writers, it is difficult for us now to conceive the bitter opposition which assailed the small band of reformers who, five-and-forty years ago, spoke up for these reforms.
The ranks of the Association were filled, and its treasury replenished; and the viceroy soon discovered how little was to be gained by a vulgar appeal to the meanest passion when it was addressed to the Irish people. Feargus O'Connor, afterwards leader of the English Chartists. Even before this great occasion, gifted spirits were insensibly moulding the character and destiny of the Association.
The Women Chartists were battering at its closed doors; and from peep-holes and other points of vantage within, smiling and indifferent legislators saw those bruised bodies, those strangely obsessed minds, those indomitable spirits carried off to magisterial lack of judgment and to prison.
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