The two men who got and deserved most credit for the happy termination of the Chartist meeting were Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, and the Duke of Wellington, whose opinions on the affair had the greatest weight with the Queen. On the 11th of April, when all was quiet, the Duke of Wellington met Lord Campbell, and the following conversation took place between them:--“I went up to him,” writes Lord Campbell, “and said, ‘Well, Duke, it has all turned out as you foretold.’ _Duke_--‘Oh, yes, I was sure of it, and I never showed a soldier or a musket. But I was ready. I could have stopped them wherever you liked, and if they had been armed it would have been all the same.’ _Campbell_--‘They say they are to meet next on the north side of the town, and avoid the bridges.’ _Duke_--‘Every street can be made a bridge. I can stop them anywhere.’ _Campbell_--‘If your Grace had commanded Paris on the 25th of February, Louis Philippe would still have been on the throne.’ _Duke_--‘It would have been an easy matter. I should have made the Tuileries secure, and have kept my communications open.’ Then, _more suo_, laying hold of my arm, and speaking very loud, and pointing with his finger, he added--‘Always keep your communications open, and you need have nothing to fear’”[101] When the _fiasco_ of the 10th of April put the Chartist organisation under the control of the “physical force” party, the first step was initiated by Mr. Ernest Jones in the National Convention. It was to reconstruct the whole Chartist body as a secret society, on the pattern of the United Irishmen. Moderate men were removed from the Executive Council, and agitators like Dr. Macdowall, who had taken a prominent part in the troubles of ’39 and ’42, were elected in their places. The change in their methods was first illustrated by the sudden assemblage, without warning, of a vast meeting of 80,000 men on Clerkenwell Green and Stepney Green, on the evening of the 29th of May, when processions from all parts of London also moved by converging routes to Smithfield, and then marched along Holborn, Oxford Street, Pall Mall, the Strand, Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, to Finsbury Square, where they dispersed. This was a demonstration arranged to test the working of the new secret organisation. Rifles and pikes began to appear in the lodgings of the Chartists. An alliance was formed with some of the turbulent leaders of the “Young Ireland” Party. Spies were swarming in every city, and a [Illustration: CHARTIST AGITATION: THE POLICE FORCE ON BONNER’S FIELDS. (_Reduced, by permission, after the Engraving in “The Illustrated London News.”_)]