Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/376

 362 History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1846- 1832 had been permanently secured, and the necessity for violent agitation was not generally acknowledged. There was, however, some amount of excitement in the public mind, some response to the appeal made by the French Revolution, and there was a right and wrong way of trying to make use of it. O'Connor chose the wrong way, endeavouring to imitate the method of violent insurrection by which alone the people of France had been able to con- vince their Government of the earnestness of their desire for reforms. That method, even where, as in France, it seemed necessary, was of only temporary value ; in England it was not only unnecessary, it was impossible. Nevertheless O'Connor resolved to try it. Chartist demonstrations had been made in many places in Glasgow, attended with rioting and violence ; in Manchester, Birmingham, and other places, with more or less vehemence. A great national petition in favour of the charter was being signed all over the country, and its pre- sentation was to be the occasion of such a display of force as should overawe Parliament and coerce the Government. The day the loth of April was fixed on which the great demonstration was to be made, a fact in itself sufficient to show the impossibility of its success. Revolutions are not made to order, and delivered in to time, in that fashion ; and the Government had no difficulty, with such a definite notice given to them, in preparing measures sufficient to avert any danger. And so the day came and went, and all passed off safely. There were to have been half a million people at Kennington Common ; there were about 25,000. O'Connor said there were 5,706,000 signatures to the great petition ; there were 1,975,496, and a great number of them not genuine. The demonstration in both respects was great and important ; the exaggeration did more than the opposition to lessen its effect and subject it to ridicule. The Chartist agitation died away on the loth of April, but its effect was not altogether lost. There had never been any real danger of revolution, for there was no element in English political life to which such a course would be congenial. There was widespread