'universal suffrage,' at least such as it now exists in Germany; the
Redistribution Bill now before Parliament creates 'equal electoral
districts'--on the whole not more unequal than those of Germany;
'payment of members,' and shorter, if not actually 'annual
Parliaments,' are visibly looming in the distance--and yet there are
people who say that Chartism is dead.

"The Revolution of 1848, not less than many of its predecessors, has
had strange bedfellows and successors. The very people who put it
down have become, as Karl Marx used to say, its testamentary
executors. Louis Napoleon had to create an independent and united
Italy, Bismarck had to revolutionise Germany and to restore Hungarian
independence, and the English manufacturers had to enact the People's
Charter.

"For England, the effects of this domination of the manufacturing
capitalists were at first startling. Trade revived and extended to a
degree unheard of even in this cradle of modern industry; the previous
astounding creations of steam and machinery dwindled into nothing
compared with the immense mass of productions of the twenty years from
1850 to 1870, with the overwhelming figures of exports and imports, of
wealth accumulated in the hands of capitalists and of human working
power concentrated in the large towns. The progress was indeed
interrupted, as before, by a crisis every ten years, in 1857 as well
as in 1866; but these revulsions were now considered as natural,
inevitable events, which must be fatalistically submitted to, and
which always set themselves right in the end.

"And the condition of the working-class during this period? There was
temporary improvement even for the great mass. But this improvement