The riots at Newport and Birmingham gave some excuse to the government for repression in 1839–40; in 1848 no outbreaks were even threatened to justify the sentences on Ernest Jones and other Chartist speakers. The government’s chief concern was to end the agitation, even if this could only be accomplished by means of a special act of parliament, and the unsavoury methods of _agents provocateurs_. Lord John Russell and his Whig colleagues were not the men to be kept from their purpose by any nice discrimination in the choice of weapons. It was not the time, when crowns were falling on the continent, to hesitate about crushing a movement which seemed to menace public safety in England. That the strength of Chartism was in the sober, law-abiding character of most of its adherents the government knew no more than they knew that the movement was already doomed for want of cohesion. The bitter hostility of the government pursued Ernest Jones in prison, and left him to be treated as a common felon. Ordered to pick oakum he refused, and was put on a diet of bread and water. The struggle between the prisoner and his gaolers was at last brought before the House of Commons,[142] and in the end Ernest Jones was allowed to purchase exemption from the allotted prison tasks by a small payment of money. On his release from prison the Chartist movement was flickering out. It was impossible to work with O’Connor, who, now looking favourably on household suffrage, was already failing in health and showing signs of the insanity which possessed him two years later. The trade-union movement and the co-operative store were attracting the attention of intelligent workmen, to whom for the time political enfranchisement seemed a lost cause. Contesting Halifax in 1852, Ernest Jones only polled 52 votes, and the _People’s Paper_, which he started in that year and edited, never had the success of the _Northern Star_. Feargus O’Connor was led away from the House of Commons hopelessly insane, to die in 1855, and Chartism utterly disintegrated could not be revived by Ernest Jones. In 1854 the movement was extinct, and from that time till his death Ernest Jones gave his political support to the advanced Radicals. He contested Nottingham in 1853 and 1857, but without success, returned to his old practice at the Bar, and wrote novels and poems. In 1868, the year of household suffrage in the towns, he was adopted by the Radicals as parliamentary candidate for Manchester, and then on January 26, 1869, came a sudden failure of the heart, and death ended all earthly hopes and plans for Ernest Jones. He was just fifty when he died, and though Chartism had passed away, Ernest Jones had not outlived his usefulness or his popularity with all those who believed in the ultimate triumph of democracy, and he had gained the respect of many earlier foes.