Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 1 (of 2)

of in hysterical accents-will do, as it shows the wild way with which sober, staid men can write history. I was out that day with the Chartists, and well know how di

and, to prevent a National Petition of the people being presented to the House of Commons. Yet no conspiracy existed-nor even had the police fabricated a plot (as they often did in those days)-no disorder had been threatened, not a man was armed; the only imaginab

of followers were the insurgents. All were put down in twenty minutes by a few soldiers. Frost came to London in 1839 to consult James Watson, Henry Hetherington, Richard Moore, William Lovett, and other responsible Chartists, whom he most trusted. They besought Frost to abandon his idea of an attack upon Newport, as no one would support him. There were no arms in London on April, 1848, no persons were drilled, no war organisation existed, and no intention of rising anywhere. The Government knew it, for they had spies everywhere. They knew it as well or better in 1848 than in 1839. For nine years John Frost had then been in penal serv

o "Alton Locke,"

d to four thousand. There was not a single weapon among them, nor any intention of using it had they possessed it. There was only one weapon known to be in London, in the hands of the Chartists, and that was a Colonel Macerone's spear, fabricated in 1830, to assist in ca

dy of politicians in London-the followers of Robert Owen. Yet Mr. Thomas Hughes adopted and authenticated Kingsley's incredible belief, that the country was in danger of these earnest but entirely impotent Chartist petitioners; and Mr. Hughes actually quotes believingly in his introduction to "Al

of Kingsley's Works

1

of Wellington should have had no more self-respect than to compromise his great career by fortifying London against an

of arms, had them, and knew how to settle their differences at the barricade. London had never seen a barricade. The people were all unused to arms, and were without the means or the knowledge to storm a police station. Yet, according to Canon Kingsley, Wellington told the Government "that no capital had gone through such days as England had on the 10th of April," when no man was struck-no man was killed-n

th a predatory glare in his eyes, and no account came up from the provinces t

the lecturer at John Street The audience was composed largely of de

ld move quietly on. Nothing would tell more strongly on public opinion than such heroic observance of order. Hetherington, one of the bravest who walked in the ranks, told me he would do it. The Government, by their ostentatious provocation, in garrisoning the Bank with soldiers, crowding Somerset House with them, parading troops on Clerkenwell Green,

artists, in prison and out, from the beginning of the mov

and, in the character of reporters. The police took kindly to us, and gave us good positions of advantage, where we could see everything that took place thereabouts, and even protected us from being incommoded. We were there to watch the police, not the pe

lourable ground for outrage on the part of the police. In justice t

the mayors in the land "the day had passed off quietly," thus creating a false te

were created entirely by the magistrates, who introduced a hundred Lon

a revolution was threatened in England. One hundred thousand armed men were to meet on Kennington Common and thence to march on Westminster, and there to compel, by physical force, if necessary, the acceptance of the People's Charter by the Houses of Parliament." Could such a lunatical statement be written by any one, and his friends not procure a magistrate's order for his removal to the nearest asylum? How were the "hundred thousand" to get the arms into London-if they had them. Whence wer

d from, partly by an army of volunteers, special constables, partly by the Duke of Wellington's discreet placing of his troops.... The attempt to overawe Parliament by a 'physical force' demonstration was a fiasco." The world knows a good deal of historians who draw upon their imagination for their facts, but here is a responsible teacher, drawing upon his terrors of fifty years ago, for statements which nobody believes now or believed then, who knew the facts. The Duke of Wellington's great name in war imposed upon amateur politicians. The Duke-contrary to his reputation for military veracity-readily lent himself to the Government of that day, that they might figure before the country as the deliverers of England, from the nation-shaking assault of a miscellaneous crow

ch the Legend of the Tenth of April was built. These incidents of histori