The feeling attending the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832 (S582) had passed away; but now a popular agitation began which produced even greater excitement. Although the act of 1832 had equalized parliamentary representation and had enlarged the elective franchise to a very considerable degree, yet the great body of workingmen were still shut out from the right to vote. A Radical Party called the "Chartists" now arose, which undertook to secure further measures of reform.
They embodied their measures in a document called the "People's
Charter," which demanded:
1. Universal male suffrage. 2. That the voting at elections should be by ballot. 3. Annual Parliaments. 4. The payment of memebers of Parliament. 5. The abolition of the property qualification for parliamentary candidates.[1] 6. The division of the whole country into equal electoral districts.
[1] Property qualification: In 1711 an act was passed requiring candidates for election to the House of Commons to have an income of not less than 300 pounds derived from landed property. The object of this law was to secure members who would be comparatively free from the temptation of receiving bribes from the Crown, and also to keep the landed proprietors in power to the exclusion of rich merchants. This law was repealed in 1858.
The Chartists held public meetings, organized clubs, and published newpapers to disseminate their principles, but for many years made very little progress. The French revolution which dethroned King Louis Philippe (1848) imparted fresh impetus to the Chartist movement. The leader of that movement was Feargus O'Connor. He formed the plan of sending a monster petition to Parliament, containing, it was claimed, nearly five million signatures, praying for the passage of the People's Charter.
A procession of a million or more signers was to act as an escort to the document, which made a wagonload in itself. The Government became alarmed at the threatened demonstration, forbade it, on the ground that it was an attempt to coerce legislation, and organized a body of 250,000 special policemen to preserve order.
The Duke of Wellington took command of a large body of troops held in reserve to defend the city; and the Bank of England, the Houses of Parliament, the British Museum, and other public buildings were made ready to withstand a siege.
It was now the Chartists' turn to be frightened. When they assembled (1848) on Kennington Common in south London, they numbered less than thirty thousand, and the procession of a million which was to march across Westminster Bridge, to the Houses of Parliament, dwindled to half a dozen. When the huge petition was unrolled it was found to contain only about a third of the boasted number of names. Further examination showed that many of the signatures were spurious, having been put down in jest, or copied from gravestones and old London directories. With that discovery the whole movement collapsed, and the House of Commons rang with "inextinguishable laughter" over the national scare.
Still the demands of the Chartists had a solid foundation of good sense, which the blustering bravado of the leaders of the movement could not wholly destroy. Most, if not all, of the reforms asked for were needed. Since then, the steady, quiet influence of reason and of time has compelled Parliament to grant the greater part of them.[1]
[1] Sir Thomas Erskine May, in his "Constitutional History of England," says: "Not a measure has been forced upon Parliament which the calm judgment of a later time has not since approved; not an agitation has failed which posterity has not condemned."