throughout the kingdom was strengthened, and one hundred and seventy
thousand special constables were sworn in, while extensive military
preparations were intrusted to the Duke of Wellington. The Chartists,
overrating their strength, held a great meeting on Kensington Common,
and sent a petition of more than five millions of names to the House of
Commons; but instead of half a million who were expected to assemble on
the Common with guns and pikes, only a few thousand dared to meet, and
the petition itself was discovered to be forged, chiefly with fictitious
names. It was a battle on the part of the agitators without ball
cartridges, in which nothing was to be seen but smoke. Ridicule and
contempt overwhelmed the leaders, and the movement collapsed.

Although the charter failed to become law, the enfranchisement of the
people has been gradually enlarged by Parliament in true deliberate
English fashion, as we shall see in future lectures. Perhaps the
Chartist movement may have ripped up the old sod and prepared the soil
for the later peaceful growth; but in itself it accomplished nothing for
which it was undertaken.

The repeal of the corn laws in 1846 was followed, as was the Reform Bill
of 1832, by a series of other reforms of a similar kind,--all in the
direction of free-trade, which from that time has continued to be the
established principle of English legislation on all the great
necessities of life. Scarcely had Lord John Russell in 1846 taken the
helm of state, when the duties on sugar were abolished, no
discrimination being shown between sugar raised in the British colony of
Jamaica and that which was raised in Cuba and other parts of the world.
The navigation laws, which prohibited the importation of goods except
in British ships, or ships which belonged to the country where the goods
were produced, were repealed or greatly modified. The whole colonial