So fast
has the time moved that there is now a little difficulty in
understanding the passionate hopes with which the Charter was
associated on the one side, and the panic which it inspired on the
other; and there is much to move wondering compassion in the profound
ignorance which those hopes betrayed, and the not inferior misery
amid which they were cherished. Few persons are now so credulous as
to expect that annual Parliaments or stipendiary members would insure
the universal reign of peace and justice; the people have already
found that vote by ballot and suffrage all but universal have neither
equalised wealth nor abrogated greed and iniquity; and though there
be some dreamers in our midst to-day who look for wonderful
transformations of society to follow on possible reforms, there is
not even in these dreamy schemes the same amazing disproportion of
means to be employed and end to be attained as characterised the
Chartist delusion.
[Illustration: Daniel O'Connell.]
In Ireland men were reposing unbounded faith in another sort of
political panacea for every personal and social evil--the Repeal of
the Union with England, advocated by Daniel O'Connell, with all the
power of his passionate Celtic eloquence, and supported by all his
extraordinary personal influence.
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