If their expectations were extravagant and their hopes over-heated, the more bitter was their distress at the failure of the Reform Act to accomplish the social improvements that had been predicted.
CHARTISM So the working class in despair of help from the Government, decided to get the franchise for themselves, and for twelve years, 1838-1850, Chartism was the great popular movement.

The _Five Points of the People's Charter_ were proclaimed in 1838: (1) Universal Suffrage; (2) Vote by Ballot; (3) Annual Parliaments; (4) Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of Parliament; (5) Payment of Members.

A Sixth Point--Equal Electoral Districts--was left out in the National Petition.
Although the Chartist demands were political, it was the social misery of the time that drove men and women into the Chartist movement.

The wretchedness of their lot--its hopeless outlook, and the horrible housing conditions in the big towns--these things seemed intolerable to the more intelligent of the working people, and thousands flocked to the monster Chartist demonstrations, and found comfort in the orations of Feargus O'Connor, Bronterre O'Brien, and Ernest Jones.
The Charter promised political enfranchisement to the labouring people, and once enfranchised they could work out by legislation their own social salvation.

So it seemed in the 'Forties--when one in every eleven of the industrial population was a pauper.
Stephens, a "hot-headed" Chartist preacher, put the case as he, a typical agitator of the day, saw it in 1839: "The principle of the People's Charter is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his happiness.
The question of universal suffrage is, after all, a knife-and-fork question.