blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself that as long as all went well with him he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter; and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage. Most persons would have remembered this incident as a curious story to tell; but there was one mind which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance of the fact. It struck Mr. Rowland Hill that there must be something wrong in a system which drove a brother and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to hear of one another's welfare.'

Mr. Hill gradually worked out for himself a comprehensive scheme of reform. He put it before the world early in 1837. The root of Mr. Hill's system lay in the fact, made evident by him beyond dispute, that the actual cost of the conveyance of letters through the post was very trifling, and was but little increased by the distance over which they had to be carried. His proposal was therefore that the rates of postage should be diminished to a minimum; that at the same time the speed of conveyance should be increased, and that there should be much greater frequency of despatch. He recommended the uniform charge of one penny the halfounce, without reference to the distance within the limits of the United Kingdom which the letter had to be carried.

The Post Office authorities were at first uncompromising in their opposition to the scheme. They were convinced that it must involve an unbearable loss of revenue. But the Government took up the scheme with some spirit and liberality. Petitions from all the commercial communities were pouring in to support the plan, and to ask that at least it should have a fair trial. The Government at length determined in 1839 to bring in a bill which should provide for the almost immediate introduction of Mr. Hill's scheme, and for the abolition of the franking system except in the case of official letters actually sent on business directly belonging to her Majesty's service. The bill declared, as an introductory step, that the charge for postage should be at the rate 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 10, 1840, the postage was fixed at the uniform rate of one penny per letter of not more than half an ounce in weight. 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 eighty-two millions, which included some five millions and a half of franked letters returning nothing to the revenue 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 had not nearly doubled itself.

CHAPTER II.

SOME TROUBLES TO THE NEW REIGN.

THE new Queen's reign opened amid many grim and unpromising conditions of our social affairs. The winter of 1837-8 was one of unusual severity and distress. There would have been much discontent and grumbling in any case among the class, 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.

Only a few weeks after the coronation of the Queen a great Radical meeting was held in Birmingham. A manifesto was adopted there which afterwards came to be known as the Chartist petition. With that moment Chartism began to be one of the most disturbing influences of the political life of the country. For ten years it agitated England. 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. 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 country 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. The Reform Bill of 1832 had done great things for the constitutional system of England. It abolished fifty-six nomination or rotten boroughs, and took away half the representation from thirty others; it disposed of the seats thus obtained by giving sixty-five additional representatives to the counties, and conferred the right of returning members on Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and some thirty-nine large and prosperous towns which had previously had no representation. The bill introduced a 101. household qualification for boroughs, and extended the county franchise to leaseholders and copyholders. But it left the working classes almost altogether out of the franchise. It broke down the monopoly which the aristocracy and landed classes had enjoyed, and admitted the middle classes to a share of the law-making power, but the working class, in the opinion of many of their ablest and most influential representatives, were not merely left out, but shouldered out. This was all the more exasperating, because the excitement and agitation by the strength of which the Reform Bill was carried in the teeth of so much resistance were kept up by the working men. Rightly or wrongly they believed that their strength had been kept in reserve to secure the carrying of the Reform Bill, and that when it was carried they were immediately thrown over by those whom they had thus helped to pass it. Therefore at the time when the young Sovereign ascended the throne, the working classes in all the large towns were in a state of profound disappointment and discontent, almost indeed of disaffection. Chartism was beginning to succeed to the Reform agitation.

Chartism may be said to have sprung definitively into existence in consequence of the formal declarations of the leaders of the Liberal party in Parliament that they did not intend to push Reform any farther. At the opening of the first Parliament of Queen Victoria's reign the question was brought to a test. A Radical member of the House of Commons moved as an amendment to the address a resolution declaring in favour of the ballot and of shorter duration of Parliaments. Only twenty members voted for it; and Lord John Russell declared that to push Reform any farther then would be a breach of faith towards those who helped him to carry it. A great many outside Parlia

ment not unnaturally regarded the refusal to go any farther as a breach of faith towards them on the part of the Liberal leaders. A conference was held almost immediately between a few of the Liberal members of Parliament who professed Radical opinions and some of the leaders of the working men. At this conference the programme, or what was afterwards known as 'the Charter,' was agreed upon and drawn up. The name of Charter was given by Mr. O'Connell.

Quietly studied now, the People's Charter does not seem a very formidable document. Its points,' as they were called, were six. Manhood Suffrage came first. The second was

Annual Parliaments. Vote by Ballot was the third. Abolition of the Property Qualification (then and for many years after required for the election of a member to Parliament) was the fourth. The Payment of Members was the fifth; and the Division of the Country into Equal Electoral Districts, the sixth of the famous points. Three of the points-half, that is to say, of the whole number-have already been made part of our constitutional system. The existing franchise may be virtually regarded as manhood suffrage. We have for years been voting by means of a written paper dropped in a ballotbox. The property qualification for members of Parliament could hardly be said to have been abolished. Such a word seems far too grand and dignified to describe the fate that befell it. We should rather say that it was extinguished by its own absurdity and viciousness. The proposal to divide the country into equal electoral districts is one which can hardly yet be regarded as having come to any test. But it is almost certain that sooner or later some alteration of our present system in that direction will be adopted. Of the two other points of the Charter, the payment of members may be regarded as decidedly objectionable; and that for yearly Parliaments as embodying a proposition which would make public life an almost insufferable nuisance to those actively concerned in it.

The Chartists might be roughly divided into three classes -the political Chartists, the social Chartists, and the Chartists of vague discontent who joined the movement because they were wretched and felt angry. The first were the regular political agitators who wanted a wider popular representation; the second were chiefly led to the movement by their hatred of the bread-tax.' These two classes were perfectly clear as to what they wanted: some of their demands were just and

reasonable; none of them were without the sphere of rational and peaceful controversy. The disciples of mere discontent naturally swerved alternately to the side of those leaders or sections who talked loudest and fiercest against the lawmakers and the constituted authorities. Chartism soon split itself into two general divisions-the moral force and the physical force Chartism. A whole literature of Chartist newspapers sprang up to advocate the cause. The Northern Star was the most popular and influential of them; but every great town had its Chartist press. Meetings were held at which sometimes the most violent language was employed. It began to be the practice to hold torchlight meetings at night, and many men went armed to these, and open clamour was made by the wilder of the Chartists for an appeal to arms. A formidable riot took place in Birmingham, where the authorities endeavoured to put down a Chartist meeting. The Government began to prosecute some of the orators and leaders of the Charter movement; and some of these were convicted, imprisoned, and treated with great severity.

There

Wide and almost universal discontent among the working classes in town and country still helped to swell the Chartist ranks. The weavers and stockingers in some of the manufacturing towns were miserably poor. Wages were low every where. In the agricultural districts the complaints against the operation of the new Poor Law were vehement and passionate; and although they were unjust in principle and sustained by monstrous exaggerations of statement, they were not the less potent as recruiting agents for Chartism. was a profound distrust of the middle class and their leaders. It is clear that at that time the Chartists, who represented the bulk of the artisan class in most of the large towns, did in their very hearts believe that England was ruled for the benefit of aristocrats and millionaires who were absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of the poor. It is equally clear that most of what are called the ruling class did really believe the English working men who joined the Chartist movement to be a race of fierce, unmanageable and selfish communists who, if they were allowed their own way for a moment, would prove themselves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and all established securities of society. An ignorant panic prevailed on both sides.

The first foreign disturbance to the quiet and good promise of the new reign came from Canada. The condition of