Note 185 — Chapter VII

“Life,” ii. 122. On the famous 10th of April 1848 (Chartist day) Colonel Maberly likewise showed his martial spirit and strong sense of the virtue of discipline when he requested Rowland Hill to place his own clerks and those of the Money Order Office—in all about 250—under his, the Colonel's, command, thus making up a corps of special constables some 1,300 strong. All over London, on and before that day, there was great excitement; a large supply of arms was laid in, defences were erected at Governmental and other public buildings, very little regular work was done, and there was any amount of unnecessary scare, chiefly through the alarmist disposition of the Duke of Wellington—seldom, rumour said, averse from placing a town in a more or less state of siege, and ever ready to urge upon successive Governments the desirability of spending huge sums on fortifications whose destiny ere long was to become obsolete—though partly also because there were many people still living who could remember the Gordon riots immortalised in “Barnaby Rudge,” and who feared a repetition of their excesses. But the Chartists were a different set of men from Gordon's “tag, rag, and bobtail” followers. On the morning of the 10th, my father, driving to the Post Office, came up in Holborn with the long procession marching in the direction of Kennington Common (now a park), preparatory to presenting themselves with their petition at the Houses of Parliament. Calling on the cabman to drive slowly, my father watched the processionists with keen interest, and was much struck with their steady bearing, evident earnestness, and the bright, intelligent countenances of many of them. On close inspection, not a few terrible revolutionists are found to look surprisingly like other people, though the comparison does not invariably tell in favour of those other people.