Kingsley looked up to Carlyle as his master, to whom he owed more than to any other man.  “Of the general effect,” he said, “which his works had upon me, I shall say nothing:  it was the same as they have had, thank God, on thousands of my class and every other.”

When, finally, violent methods proved of no avail and the Chartist party dissolved, the democratic movement took a fresh lease of life.  As Carlyle had already pointed out, the question of the people was a ‘knife and fork’ question—­that is to say, so long as taxes were levied upon the necessities of life, the poorer classes, who could least of all afford to pay, would become poorer.

Sir Robert Peel was the first to remove this injustice, by substituting a tax upon income for the hundred and one taxes which had pressed so heavily upon the poor.  Manufacturers were now able to buy their raw materials at a lower price, and need no longer pay such low wages to keep up their profits.

In 1845 Peel went a step farther, and in order to relieve the famine in Ireland, he removed the duty on corn.  Thus, since corn could now be imported free, bread became cheaper.

The Corn Law Repealers had fought for years to bring this about.  Their leader and poet, Ebenezer Elliott, declared that “what they wanted was bread in exchange for their cottons, woollens, and hardware, and no other thing can supply the want of that one thing, any more than water could supply the want of air in the Black Hole of Calcutta.”  Bad government

      Is the deadly will that takes
    What Labour ought to keep,
    It is the deadly power that makes
    Bread dear and Labour cheap.

It was not until there had been many riots and much bloodshed that the Irish Famine forced Peel at last to give way.

A third party of reformers were working for the same end.  This was the ‘Young England’ party, whose leader was Disraeli, a rising young politician.  By birth a Jew, he had joined the English Church and the ranks of the Tory party.  His early works are chiefly sketches of social and political life and are not concerned with the ’question of the People.’  He took as his motto the words Shakespeare puts into Ancient Pistol’s mouth,

    Why, then the world’s mine oyster,
    Which I with sword will open,

thus showing at an early age that he had a firm belief in his own powers.  From the beginning of his career he never hesitated in championing the cause of the People, and declared that “he was not afraid or ashamed to say that he wished more sympathy had been shown on both sides towards the Chartists.”

The people had begun to look upon the upper classes as their oppressors, who were living in comfort upon the profits wrung from their poorer brethren.

Thomas Cooper in his Autobiography describes the reckless and irreligious spirit which continued poverty was creating among the half-starved weavers: