“He defied the law, he suffered imprisonment, and lost his property in struggling for a right … we are indebted for the immense benefits derived by the masses from the circulation amongst them of cheap literature.”
Selfish, haughty and arrogant…and can merit nothing but the severest censure. All his actions, when closely scrutinized, fill us with the most unequivocal contempt.
The greatest and most fatal error in the annals of the world was suffering the growth and formation of an Aristocracy; it is the direst plague with which this earth is cursed, filling it with eternal bitterness.
Had this fierce untameable man, who, led only by the instinct of plunder and blood, any right claim to have his position recognised by millions of people as a king by right divine?
What would a Chartist republic look like in practice? Very few Chartist novelists discussed this question in depth, as most of them merely shined a light on social issues of the day. G W M Reynolds, however, used the fictional Italian state of Castelcicala in The Mysteries of London as a ‘laboratory’ in which his progressive theories of government might be tested.