I08	E N G L I S II    S A G A
disapprove of them, but they concerned his pocket and future
security.
His difficulty was to control them. Insular England could
never fathom the cause of European events: it merely observed
their consequences in its export orders. In 1848 they suddenly
became exceedingly grave. On Monday, February 22nd, the people
of France enjoyed to all appearance the rule of the powerful,
peaceful and impregnable monarchy. Two days later her King
was a fugitive in England and the flag of the terrible Republic
again flew over barricaded streets. Before the summer she was
drifting into mob rule and all Europe was following her blood-
stained example. Italy and Germany, with their confused,
divided petty kingdoms and principalities, were in a blaze from
the Baltic to the Tyrrhenian Sea: even Vienna and the high
priest of the ancien regime, Prince Mctternich, did not escape. In
Dresden, where the King of Saxony fled, the corpses were piled
up six or seven high in the streets. In all Europe, only Britain
seemed to ride out the storm. The fact gave.Englishmen con-
siderable satisfaction: ain the midst of the roar of revolutionary
waters that are deluging the whole earth," wrote Greville, "it
is grand to see how we stand erect and unscathed." Punch depicted
theproprietorof Mivart's Hotel—forerunner of Claridge's—present-
ing his humble respects to the Crowned Heads of the Continent
and begging to inform them that his hotel in Brook Street
continued the favoured house of call for dethroned potentates.
Not that England in this year of revolutions wholly escaped
a little revolution of its own. But though prefaced by a pro-
digious amount of noise and oratory, it was only a mock one
and did no one any harm but the revolutionaries. It was staged
by the Chartists who, relying on the general substratum of
poverty, called a monster demonstration on Kennington Common
for April loth to present a petition to Parliament. But the
government, remembering 1842, promptly fetched in the military,
put the defences of London into the hands of the aged victor of
Waterloo and swore in the City and the Whitehall clerks as
special constables. Against such preparations the mob was
helpless. The day, a fine one, ended in Fergus O'Connor, the
Chartist leader, shaking hands effusively with die police inspector
who forbade the procession and, after advancing on Westminster
in a cab, thanking a rather astonished Home Secretary for his
leniency. A rising in wretched Ireland later in the year fared