of fourpence for each letter under half an ounce in weight, irrespective of distance, within the limits of the United Kingdom. This, however, was to be only a beginning; for on January 10th, 1840, the postage was fixed at the uniform rate of one penny per letter of not more than half an ounce in weight. The introductory measure was not, of course, carried without opposition in both Houses of Parliament. The Duke of Wellington, in his characteristic way, declared that he strongly objected to the scheme; but, as the Government had evidently set their hearts upon it, he recommended the House of Lords not to offer any opposition to it. In the House of Commons it was opposed by Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Goulburn, both of whom strongly condemned the whole scheme as likely to involve the country in vast loss of revenue. The measure, however, passed into law. Some idea of the effect it has produced upon the postal correspondence of the country may be gathered from the fact that in 1839, the last year of the heavy postage, the number of letters delivered in Great Britain and Ireland was a little more than eighty-two millions, which included some five millions and a half of franked letters returning nothing to the revenues of the country; whereas, in 1875, more than a thousand millions of letters were delivered in the United Kingdom. The population during the same time has not nearly doubled itself. It has already been remarked that the principle. of Sir Rowland Hill's reform has since been put into operation in every civilized country in the world. It may be added that before long we shall, in all human probability, see an interoceanic postage established at a rate as low as people sometimes thought Sir Rowland Hill a madman for recommending as applicable to our inland post. The time is not far distant when a letter will be carried from London to San Francisco, or to Tokio in Japan, at a rate of charge as small as that which made financiers stare and laugh when it was suggested as profitable remuneration for carrying a letter from London to the towns of Sussex or Hertfordshire. The "Penny-post," let it be said, is an older institution than that which Sir Rowland Hill introduced. A penny-post for the conveyance of letters had been set up in London so long ago as 1683; and it was adopted or annexed by the Government some years after. An effort was even made to set up

a half-penny post in London, in opposition to the official penny-post, in 1708; but the Government soon crushed this vexatious and intrusive rival. In 1738 Dr. Johnson writes to Mr. Cave "to entreat that you will be pleased to inform me, by the penny-post, whether you resolve to print the poem." After awhile the Government changed their penny-post to a twopenny-post, and gradually made a distinction between district and other postal systems, and contrived to swell the price for deliveries of all kinds. Long before even this time of the penny-post, the old records of the city of Bristol contain an account of the payment of one penny for the carriage of letters to London. It need hardly be explained, however, that a penny in that time, or even in 1683, was a payment of very different value indeed from the modest sum which Sir Rowland Hill was successful in establishing. The ancient penny-post resembled the modern penny-post only in name.

CHAPTER V.

CHARTISM.

Ir cannot, however, be said that all the omens under which the new Queen's reign opened at home were as auspicious as the coincidences which made it contemporary with the first chapters of these new and noble developments in the history of science and invention. On the contrary, it began amidst many grim and unpromising conditions in our social affairs. The winter of 1837-238 was one of unusual severity and distress. There would have been much discontent and grumbling in any case among the class described by French writers as the prolétaire; but the complaints were aggravated by a common belief that the young Queen was wholly under the influence of a frivolous and selfish minister, who occupied her with amusements while the poor were starving. It does not appear that there was at any time the slightest justification for such a belief; but it prevailed among the working-classes and the poor very generally, and added to the sufferings of genuine want the bitterness of imaginary wrong. Popular education was little looked after; so far

as the State was concerned, might be said not to be looked after at all. The laws of political economy were as yet only within the appreciation of a few, who were regarded not uncommonly, because of their theories, somewhat as phrenologists or mesmerists might be looked on in a more enlightened time. Some writers have made a great deal of the case of Thom and his disciples as evidence of the extraordinary ignorance that prevailed. Thom was a broken-down brewer, and in fact a madman, who had for some time been going about in Canterbury and other parts of Kent bedizened in fantastic costume, and styling himself at first Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham Castle, Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, king of the gypsy races, and we know not what else. He announced himself as a great political reformer, and for awhile he succeeded in getting many to believe in and support him. He was afterward confined for some time in a lunatic asylum, and when he came out he presented himself to the ignorant peasantry in the character of a second Messiah. He found many followers and believers again, among a humbler class, indeed, than those whom he had formerly won over. Much of his influence over the poor

Kentish laborers was due to his denunciations of the new Poor Law, which was then popularly hated and feared with an almost insane intensity of feeling. Thom told them he had come to regenerate the whole world, and also to save his followers from the new Poor Law; and the latter announcement commended the former. He assembled a crowd of his supporters, and undertook to lead them to an attack on Canterbury. With his own hand he shot dead a policeman who endeavored to oppose his movements, exactly as a savior of society of bolder pretensions and greater success did at Boulogne not long after. Two companies of soldiers came out from Canterbury to disperse the rioters. The officer in command was shot dead by Thom. Thom's followers then charged the unexpecting soldiers so fiercely that for a moment there was some confusion; but the second company fired a volley which stretched Thom and several of his adherents lifeless on the field. That was an end of the rising. Several of Thom's followers were afterward tried for murder, convicted, and sentenced; but some pity was felt for their ignorance and their delusion, and they were

not consigned to death. Long after the fall of their preposterous hero and saint, many of Thom's disciples believed that he would return from the grave to carry out the promised work of his mission. All this was lamentable, but could hardly be regarded as specially characteristic of the early years of the present reign. The Thom delusion was not much more absurd than the Tichborne mania of a later day. Down to our own time there are men and women among the Social Democrats of cultured Germany who still cherish the hope that their idol Ferdinand Lassalle will come back from the dead to lead and guide them.

But there were political and social dangers in the opening of the present reign more serious than any that could have been conjured up by a crazy man in a fantastic dress. There were delusions having deeper roots and showing a more inviting shelter than any that a religious fanatic of the vulgar type could cause to spring up in our society.

Only a few weeks after the coronation of the Queen a great Radical meeting was held in Birmingham. A manifesto was adopted there which afterward came to be known as the Chartist petition. With that movement Chartism began to be one of the most disturbing influences of the political life of the country. It is a movement which, although its influence may now be said to have wholly passed away, well deserves to have its history fully written. For ten years it agitated England. It sometimes seemed to threaten an actual uprising of all the prolétaire against what were then the political and social institutions of the country. It might have been a very serious danger if the State had been involved in any external difficulties. It was backed by much genuine enthusiasm, passion, and intelligence. It appealed strongly and naturally to whatever there was of discontent among the working-classes. It afforded a most acceptable and convenient means by which ambitious politicians of the self-seeking order could raise themselves into temporary importance. Its fierce and fitful flame went out at last under the influence of the clear, strong, and steady light of political reform and education. The one great lesson it teaches is, that political agitation lives and is formidable only by virtue of what is reasonable in its demands. Thousands of ignorant and miserable men all over the coun

try joined the Chartist agitation who cared nothing about the substantial value of its political claims. They were poor, they were overworked, they were badly paid, their lives were altogether wretched. They got into their heads some wild idea that the People's Charter would give them better food and wages, and lighter work if it were obtained, and that for that very reason the aristocrats and the officials would not grant it. No political concessions could really have satisfied these men. If the Charter had been granted in 1838, they would no doubt have been as dissatisfied as ever in 1839. But the discontent of these poor creatures would have brought with it little danger to the State if it had not become part of the support of an organization which could show some sound and good reason for the demands it made. The moment that the clear and practical political grievances were dealt with, the organization melted way. Vague discontent, however natural and excusable it may be, is only formidable in politics when it helps to swell the strength and the numbers of a crowd which calls for some reform that can be made and is withheld. One of the vulgarest fallacies of state-craft is to declare that it is of no use granting the reforms which would satisfy reasonable demands, because there are still unreasonable agitators whom these will not satisfy. Get the reasonable men on your side, and you need not fear the unreasonable. This is the lesson taught to statesmen by the Chartist agitation.

A funeral oration over Chartism was pronounced by Sir John Campbell, then Attorney-general, afterward Lord Chief-justice Campbell, at a public dinner at Edinburgh on October 24th, 1839. He spoke at some length and with much complacency of Chartism as an agitation which had passed away. Some ten days afterward occurred the most formidable outburst of Chartism that had been known up to that time, and Chartism continued, to be an active and a disturbing influence in England for nearly ten years after. If Sir John Campbell had told his friends and constituents at the Edinburgh dinner that the influence of Chartism was just about to make itself really felt, he would have shown himself a somewhat more acute politician than we now understand him to be. Seldom has a public man setting up to be a political authority made a worse hit than he did in