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On the 11th of April, 1848, the
date of Feargus O'Connor's wretched _fiasco_ in London, they played
their last feeble game. They held a meeting in the People's Hall, and
I there heard some violent revolutionary speeches. There was, however,
no response to their excited appeals, and from that day Chartism was
practically extinct.
It is not, perhaps, generally known that the principles embodied in
the famous "Charter" were not new. In 1780 Charles James Fox, the
great Whig leader, declared himself in favour of the identical six
points which were, so long after, embodied in the programme of the
Chartists. The Duke of Richmond of that time brought into the House of
Lords, in the same year, a Bill to give universal suffrage and annual
parliaments; and afterwards, Mr. Erskine, Sir James Macintosh, and
Earl Grey advocated similar views.
Several great causes were at work which tended to throw Chartism into
obscurity. The repeal of the Corn Laws had given the people cheap
bread, and the advent of free trade gave abundant work and good wages.


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