It is not easy to determine which of many historic incidents of interest should take precedence. The 10th of April, known as the day of Chartist Terror—still spoken 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 different the facts were from what is believed to be the peril of the metropolis on that day. I have long regarded it as one of the "bygones" having instruction in them. The French have their 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), when the Reign of Terror ended, and their 18th Brumaire (November 9, 1799), when the Napoleonic Terror began, and the English have their 10th of April, 1848, when a million special constables were out staff in hand, 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 imaginable enemy was the Chartist Convention of less than two hundred persons. The most distinguished of the Special Constables was Louis Napoleon, who four years later became known as the assassin of French liberty, and whose career is one of the infamies of Imperialism.
The 10th of April, 1848, has for more than half a century held a place in public memory. The extraordinary hallucination concerning it has become historic, and passes as authentic. Canon Charles Kingsley was the chief illusionist in this matter. He wrote: "On the 10th of April, the Government had to fill London with troops, and put the Duke of Wellington in command, who barricaded the bridges and Downing Street, and other public buildings."* Nobody "had" to do what Kings-ley relates. Nine years had elapsed since any one had taken the field against the Government, and that was in a Welsh town 147 miles away. John Frost and his tiny band 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 servitude, and no one had attempted to imitate him. Nor had he any followers in London in 1848. At his trial no noblemen, no aristocratic ladies, crowded the court to cheer him by their sympathy, or mitigate his sentence by their influence—as they did when Dr. Jameson and others were on trial for their wanton and murderous raid on the Government of South Africa. Such is the difference between the insurgency of poverty seeking redress, and the insurgency of wealthy insolence seeking its further aggrandisement There was absolutely nothing in the field against the Duke of Wellington in London but a waggon, on which a monster petition was piled.
     * Introduction to "Alton Locke," by Thomas Hughes.
Politically speaking, London has seen no tamer day than the 10th of April, 1848. There was less ground for alarm than when a Lord Mayor s procession passes through the city. The procession of actual Chartists, able to leave their work to join it, could never have amounted 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 carrying the first Reform Bill. That was hidden up a chimney in 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. It came into my possession, and I have often shown it to members of the Government to convince them what risks Society ran in Wellington's days—and are exposed to still.
The Chartists had held a Convention in London the week before the 10th, and were unable to obtain any place of meeting except a small social institution in John Street, Tottenham Court Road, which could not seat 150 persons at the Convention table. The hall was lent to them by the most pacific body 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 "Alton Locke" a statement that: "The Duke of Wellington declared in the House of Lords that no great society had ever suffered as London had during the proceeding, while the Home Secretary telegraphed to all the chief magistrates of the kingdom the joyful news that the peace had been kept in London."*
     * Prefatory Memoir of Kingsley's Works, by Thomas Hughes,
       p. 13.
Never did the craziest despotic Government in Europe engage in such a political imposture. It was pitiable that the Duke of Wellington should have had no more self-respect than to compromise his great career by fortifying London against an imaginary enemy. The Government had plentiful information and must have known the truth—the contrary of what they alleged.
It may be said in extenuation of these affected Ministerial terrors, that the Parisian revolution of that year had communicated unrest to the people of England. It had inspired them with pleasure, but not with insurgency, for which they were as uninclined as they were unprepared, and none knew this better than the Duke of Wellington. The Parisian population had seen military service. They understood the use 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—no riot took place anywhere. It would seem that ignorance, rashness, wildness, and irresponsible language are by no means peculiar to the working classes. We must cease to wonder at the Duke of Wellington when an accredited publicist like Judge Thomas Hughes, who was educated at Rugby, could tell the world himself that "It is only by an effort that one can realise the strain to which the nation was subjected."
On that awful day, nobody was reported as found looking into a shop window with a predatory glare in his eyes, and no account came up from the provinces that a single Chartist was observed to peep over a hedge in a menacin............