the deep gulf between the two "nations" which lived side by side without knowledge of or care for each other. Though remedy came slowly and imperfectly, and was seldom directly from Chartist hands, there was always the Chartist impulse behind the first timid steps towards social and economic betterment. The cry of the Chartists did much to force public opinion to adopt the policy of factory legislation in the teeth of the opposition of the manufacturing interests. It compelled the administrative mitigation of the harshness of the New Poor Law. It swelled both the demand and the necessity for popular education. It prevented the unqualified victory of the economic gospel of the Cobdenites, and of the political gospel of the Utilitarians. If the moderate Chartists became absorbed in the Liberal and Radical ranks, it gave those parties a wider and more popular outlook. In a later generation rival political organisations vied with each other in their professions of social reform. The vast extension of state intervention, which has been growing ever since, was a response on thoroughly Chartist lines for the improvement of social conditions by legislative means. A generation, which expects the state to do everything for it, has no right to criticise the early Chartist methods on the ground that one cannot interfere with economic "laws" or promote general well-being by act of parliament. The whole trend of modern social legislation must well have gladdened the hearts of the ancient survivors of Chartism.
In the heyday of Chartism public opinion dreaded or flouted the Chartist cause. In the next generation the accredited historians of political and parliamentary transactions minimised its significance and dealt perfunctorily with its activity. Yet Chartism marks a real new departure in our social and political history. It was the first movement of modern times that was engineered and controlled by working men. Even its failures had their educational value. Its modest successes taught elementary lessons of self-discipline and self-government that made the slow development of British democracy possible without danger to the national stability and well-being. Its social programme was, like its political doctrine, gradually absorbed into current opinion. It helped to break down the iron walls of class separation, and showed that the terrible working man was not very different from the governing classes when the time came for him to exercise direct power.
