To the people of to-day the term "Chartist" means nothing. Nine-tenths of the population of the United States possibly never heard the term. Yet it is only a few generations since men were sentenced to "Botany Bay" and other penal settlements for twenty, thirty, and more years, and sometimes "for life," for joining in this reform which demanded certain rights that _we_ have enjoyed without a thought ever since we were born. One of these grand old warriors for man's greater freedom used to visit at my father's house when I was a lad. He was an intellectual giant who had won the honor and fame the world freely accords to those who do not take it by the throat too severely, and once in a while he could be induced to tell of the days of his earlier conflict;--how that he and his compeers fought for a repeal of the corn laws--laws which made it almost impossible for a poor man to get bread--and for the right of a man to sell the products of his own labor from door to door to save himself from starvation. He was imprisoned and sentenced for a long term of years and while in prison wrote a poem of tremendous power and influence. How my heart burned to the old warrior, and I then and there declared that I live to learn their story Who've suffered for my sake, To emulate their glory, And to follow in their wake: * * * * * For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance. Then, too, how I recall the fight for religious freedom in England--some of it before my time, but some of it under my own eyes, and in which I had the joy of bearing a small part. The Lord George Gordon riots, described by Dickens in _Barnaby Rudge_, were provoked by religious hostility. When I was a boy, no Jew or Catholic could hold office in England--I think I am correct. This act, passed in the reign of Charles II--I write from memory--was thus in operation for two hundred years; two hundred years of injustice, prejudice, fostering of religious hatred and separations. Yet Benjamin Disraeli made a great premier, and was one of the most brilliant statesmen of Europe, and the Howard family, Cardinal Manning, and Cardinal Newman, all of whom were Roman Catholics, were loved and revered on every hand for their enlightened patriotism and the help they gave to everything that had the welfare of England at heart. It was a glad day for England that saw the removal of the disabilities from such good citizens as these, merely because they chose to exercise their perfect God-given right of freedom of choice in religious belief. And still, even as late as the ascension to the throne of George V, son of King Edward, and grandson of that progressive and liberal-minded Queen, Victoria, there remained in the oath a hateful spirit of narrowness and intolerance against Catholic beliefs. Thirty to forty years previously Charles Bradlaugh was refused his seat in the