MODERN MEASURES.

We must pass hastily over the Reform Bills of 1832 and 1837, which were scarcely charters, but the advantages gained by the people in more extended suffrage by the former, led up to riotous consequences, and the demand for a People's Charter, the provisions of which were not altogether new. They had been brought before Parliament in 1780. The Lords were at first opposed to the Reform Bill, but it was eventually carried. The "working" classes, as they are termed, that is the artizans, got little benefit by it, though the middle classes were represented. appointment not unnaturally ensued, and the lower classes wished to insist upon more reform. They became Chartists. Chartism, says Mr. McCarthy, "may be said to have sprung definitively into existence in consequence of the formal declaration of the leaders of the Liberal party in parliament that they did not intend to push reform any farther." The working man fancied he had been thrust out into the cold, and was determined to let his influence be felt.

Dis

A People's Charter was accordingly drawn up according to O'Connell's advice. But the question had been tried in the House immediately parliament met. An amendment was moved to the Address in favour of the Ballot, but only twenty voted for it, and the Government declined to proceed farther upon the path of reform. It was not long before the measure took definite shape, and the Charter was supported by thousands who objected to physical force, and by hundreds of thousands who believed in it.

THE CHARTISTS' RIOTS.

The Chartists, as they called themselves, demanded more power and a more potent voice in the affairs of state under the guise of the Peoples' Charter. The points enumerated in the Charter were six in number, viz. (1) Universal Suffrage, (2) Vote by Ballot, (3) Annual Parliaments, (4) Payment of Members, (5) Abolition of Property qualification, and (6) Equal Electoral Districts.

After the Reform Act of 1832 had passed, the disturbance was initiated, and first showed symptoms of terrorism in 1838, when the Welsh Chartists, after some seasons of depression and indifferent harvests, felt the hard hand of famine. When work got scarcer and food dearer, the unreflecting portion of the community, ascribing all their troubles to the Government, began to agitate for a more equal share in the administration. Some six Members of Parliament, and an equal number of working-men," as they called themselves, met and drew up the Charter.

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The result, when promulgated, was received with acclamation everywhere, and the popular opinion, already red-hot, was diligently fanned with fiery orations by platform windbags; and as a consequence of this, "brute force" was threatened to back up the demands of the people. Then the Chartist riots commenced, but were put down at once, and the leaders imprisoned. A Convention-termed "National"-was elected, and Birmingham, as the hot-bed of Radicalism, was chosen as the scene of the first meeting in May 1839. The suggestions put forth to the people were sufficiently subversive. Universal cessation from labour was one of the means whereby the Government was to be coerced; exclusive dealing and a run on the savings banks were other ways by which the Chartists hoped to gain their ends. Their arrangements led them, however, into a riot, the military being called out; and excesses subsequently were frequently committed. The petition presented to the House of Commons was not favourably received; and the year 1839 closed with rioting in Wales, Newport being particularly distinguished in this way.

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The flame of discontent smouldered still. In 1842 more riots occurred in various districts, and a Joseph Sturge came to the front, but did not succeed in uniting the people in a Suffrage Union,” as he hoped to do. The climax of Chartism occurred in 1848, when measures were taken by the Duke of Wellington to act with vigour on the least sign of violence on the part of the mob. The circumstances of that time must be fresh in the minds of nearly all readers. The enrolment of special constables and the military preparations were on a most extensive scale. The great Chartist meeting was on Kennington Common, and thousands were to march to Westminster and demand their rights. They didn't!

There was considerable danger imminent, and those in London at the time will remember the excitement that pervaded all classes. Some two hundred thousand constables had been sworn in; and John Leech, in the pages of Punch, made merry at the expense of some of these "specials" when danger was over. The principles of the Chartist were that, as an individual, he had an equal right to vote and to partake in the administration of the law, and as he paid taxes he had a right to representation in parliament. These were what may be termed the moderate section; others went far beyond this, and desired to initiate an entirely new state of things; in fact, tended to Communism. doubt these latter doctrines had weight with uneducated people, but a very slight examination showed that the claims could not be recognised in the form proposed.

No

THE KENNINGTON SCARE.

When Louis Philippe had been deposed and revolution was stalking over the Continent, the Chartists, with Fergus O'Connor at their head, imagined that it was a good time to intimidate the Government. The Convention sat in London, and wanted to resort to force. The people must be represented; and finally these unruly spirits, though probably many acted in good faith and sincere conviction, declared that a Republic or a Charter must be granted, and parliament ought to be petitioned.

A monster meeting was convened, and the huge procession was to be organized upon Kennington Common. The Government was to be overawed, and the legislature coerced by this display of force. On April 10th the people assembled, though the meeting had been proclaimed unlawful; and fortunately Fergus O'Connor had restricted the carriage of arms else the result might have been different. This resolve disgusted the "brute force" section, and numbers left the meeting or never united with it. About twenty-five thousand people came, about half were spectators; and after some speeches the procession was abandoned. The preparations

everywhere in London, though scarcely any soldiers were visible, had been so complete that any attempt at violence would have been at once severely checked.

This effort was an utter failure. The petition was signed by thousands, including hundreds of fictitious and assumed names; ridicule fell heavily upon the "People's Charter," and it collapsed. This was the last of it. Since then the wage-earning classes have greatly benefited by ballot voting, and there is no farther need for any such monster meetings.

What may be yet in store for England we cannot say. Radicalism is rearing up its head, decrying the House of Lords, and attempting to browbeat an institution as old as the Commons. It was not by setting classes at variance that the liberties of the people (not merely those of the artizans, who are not the "people" any more than the merchants or the aristocracy, but of all classes) were secured. Those who object to the existence of the Lords and their descendants will do well to remember that it was by the barons of England that Magna Charta-the first great charter of libertywas obtained. H. F.

stuffs were spread before their gaze; and with the pleasure of children engaged with a new toy, coupled with the keenness of business men on the look-out for a good bargain, they doubtless turned over and handled with joyful eagerness the new goods just come from the far-off East.

The firelight flickered on the low-pitched, smoke-blackened ceiling, and the short winter day waned into night, but still they lingered over the goods; yet had they known what terrible danger lurked in the folds of those seemingly harmless materials, they would not only have shrunk back from them in terror and alarm, but would instantly have consigned them to the flames. For even as in the tiny seed lies hidden the promise of the stately oak or the lovely flower, so in these goods lay hidden the virulent contagion, the veritable seeds of death, which before long would burst forth into widespread pestilence. The death-cart rolling on its awful rounds, the hundreds of plague-stricken dwellings, the noisome plague-pits and pest-houses, the unparalleled dreariness and desolation of that fearful plague time, and the horrible deaths of a hundred thousand human beings, were the outcome of the contagion hidden in those infected goods. Those goods brought the plague to London; and in that picturesque old house in Drury Lane the Great Plague of 1665 was born.

THE FIRST VICTIMS.

No suspicion seems to have been entertained that these goods carried contagion, although they had come from the Levant by way of the Netherlands, where the plague was at that time raging frightfully; for, according to an Order in Council then in force, all ships coming from Holland were quarantined for thirty days; but very shortly after the parcel was opened, two Frenchmen who lived in the house began to show signs of feverishness and ill-health. A shivering not caused by the winter's cold shook their shuddering frames, a horrible nausea seized them, headache, swellings in various parts of the body, and low, muttering delirium succeeded; then, in a short time, the dreaded and unmistakable plague-spots appeared on their bodies, and death supervened. This was on the 20th of December, and these two men were held to be the first victims of the GREAT PLAGUE.*

*These are the generally accepted facts; but Mr. F. W. Brayley, F.S.A., points out that they are not strictly accurate, as "there were six persons died of the plague in 1664, as appears from the General Bill for that year;" and he also states that London had not been quite free for some years. Dr. Hodges, who practised in London during the time of the Plague, says in his "Letter to a Person of Quality on the Rise, Progress,

The frightened family did all in their power to conceal the circumstance, but to no purpose. The news got abroad; and the authorities sent surgeons and physicians to make official inquiry; and they, finding on the bodies the fatal spots which were so characteristic of the plague that they were known as "tokens," sent in their report that the two men had indeed died of the dreaded disease, and the fact was so stated in the published Bills of Mortality. It does not appear, however, that many precautions were taken; and although the cold weather was unfavourable for the spread of the disease, yet other houses in the vicinity became infected; and not long afterwards, another Frenchman, who had resided in the same house, but who, for fear of infection, had removed to Bearbinder Lane, in the City, fell sick in the same way, and died also.

Then, indeed, people's hearts began to fail them for fear, especially as the recorded number of the deaths in certain parishes, and especially in St. Giles', began to rise, and it was thought that many persons died of the plague whose deaths were publicly referred to other causes. And so in the time of the shameless sin and licentious luxury of the court of the "merrie monarch" fell this terrible pestilence into the city, like a bolt from out the blue of a summer sky, and the people were aroused from their selfish pleasures by a heart-shaking dread of this dire disease.

FORMER PLAGUES.

The people had good reason to dread this frightful scourge, for they remembered the terrors of the plague in previous times, and the terrible ravages then occurring on the Continent. London had frequently been visited

Symptoms, and Cure of the Plague":"After the most strict and serious inquiry by undoubted testimonies, I find that this pest was communicated to us from the Netherlands, by way of contagion and if the most probable relations deceive me not. it came from Smyrna to Holland in a parcel of infected goods." And a writer in Northouck's London (1773) says that in the year 1663, shocking ravages were made in Amsterdam by the plague, so much so that measures were taken to prevent its spread into England. But in vain, for at the close of the year 1664, it was brought over to London m some Levant goods that came from Holland. Thes goods were carried to a house in Long Acre, near Drury Lane, or in the upper part of Drury Lane, where they were first opened. Here two Frenchmen died The disorder communicated itself to other houses in the neighbourhood, and infected the parish officers who were employed about the dead. Another Frenchman who lived near the infected houses removed into Bearbinder Lane, City, and died there Again, De Foe in his "History of the Plague." says: "The first person that died of the plague was on December 20th, or thereabouts, 1664, and in or about Long Acre; the infection was generally said to be from a parcel of silks imported from Holland and opened in that house."

by pestilence. The narrowness of the streets, the closeness of the houses, built as they then were with the upper stories projecting over the lower, and the crowding together of the people, all rendered the inhabitants very liable to infectious diseases; and the recurrence at irregular intervals of these terrible pestilences is one of the most remarkable facts of history. Frequently-indeed nearly always-they took their rise in the crowded, heated, filthy cities of the Levant and Asia, and spreading westward into Europe, they slew tens of thousands in their onward march.

One of the most notable of these epidemics was the "Black Death" of 1348-9, which, rising in Asia, strode rapidly westward, and raged fearfully for many months in all countries of Europe. Great Britain and Ireland suffered severely, and it is said that in London alone two hundred persons were buried daily in the Charterhouse. The best description of the ravages of this pestilence in Italy is to be found in the introduction to the Decameron of Boccaccio.

The next great time of plague was in the closing years of the fifteenth century, from 1485 to 1500, when at intervals the disease known as the "Sweating Sickness" carried off thousands. According to the old historian Stow, this pestilence was so dreadful in London that Henry VII. removed his court to Calais. Again in 1506, and once more in 1517, the "Sweating Sickness" ravaged the land, so much so that, according to the same writer, half the inhabitants died in all the capital towns of England, and Oxford was quite depopulated. This disease was so fatal that it caused death in three hours. In addition to these, there were numerous other occasions when fearful and fatal epidemics prevailed.

But terrible as these diseases were, and widespread as were their ravages, they sink into comparative insignificance when placed beside the fearful plague which raged in London in 1665. So surpassingly dreadful were the scenes of this awful sickness, and so enormous was the mortality, that it is fittingly known as the Great Plague. Doubtless also greater prominence has been given to this visitation by reason of Daniel Defoe's celebrated narrative. Although written many years after the occurrences took place, it has yet been elaborated with so much care, and contains so many truthful details, evidently compiled either from the accounts of eye-witnesses, or from records to which the writer had access, that it leaves a remarkably graphic picture in the reader's mind.

No

other similar narrative, except that of Thucydides, which gives an account of the Plague at Athens, 430 B.C., can be compared to Defoe's, and the two may fitly be ranked together. It is written as if by an eye

witness, a saddler of Whitechapel; and many of the circumstances he records may be traced to publications to which Defoe had

access.

It cannot be decided whether this plague was of precisely the same character as those which had before swept thousands into one common grave. Indeed, differences of opinion still exist as to its precise nature, and the means of its communication from one person to another.

THE PORTENT OF THE BLAZING STAR.

*

During the month of February 1665, but few deaths seem to have occurred; and the severe frost which had bound the land in its icy fetters still continuing, the ravages of the frightful pestilence were still further delayed. But with the advent of April warm, dry weather set in, and the Bills of Mortality rose very high. Then, indeed, terrible apprehensions arose among the people; and the news quickly spread that, especially in St. Giles's parish, the pestilence was in several streets, and many families were all sick together with it. Then the knowing ones began to point out that the Blazing Star, or comet which a short time before had passed over the city, had certainly foretold this visitation; and that as the star was faint and dull, it prognosticated a severe and heavy judgment of God, like the plague; also that the new one which was appearing (April 1665) + being swift and bright in appearance, it foretold that the pestilence would slay quickly, like a fiery furnace; although after the Great Fire of London the wise folk and astrologers held that it had foretold that great calamity.

There were other signs and symptoms and supernatural appearances, portending, according to the numerous wizards and astrologers of that day, many evils. Some averred that they saw an angel in the upper air brandishing a fiery sword over the city; while others maintained that they saw a ghost walk about the streets and point from the houses to the churchyards; but there is no need to burden our pages with these details, except to point out that they increased the panic of the people. It was not until the 26th of April, 1665, when the number of deaths was already becoming frightful, that any official effort seems to have

"

*December 2nd, 1664, "It was now exceeding cold, and a hard, long, frosty season.' January 4th, 1665, "Excessive sharp frost and snow."-EVELYN'S DIARY. February 6th, 1665, "One of the coldest days, all say, they ever felt in England."- PEPYS' DIARY.

+ Both comets are mentioned in "Pepys' Diary," and also in the first volume of "Philosophical Transac tions." The first appeared in December 1664, and the second in April 1665.