"I shall expect to hear of other Chartist outbreaks, besides this of Sheffield. I am very much afraid that Tom [his son] will, in his desperate circumstances, be committing himself in Manchester. I was told some weeks since, by a Dewsbury man, of a turn out there one night of a thousand armed men, ready and willing to lay Dewsbury in flames. Such movements as these will decide the fate of Frost, and begging pardon moral force Chartism is as pure a piece of humbug as physical force Chartism, and more so. The first cannot succeed, the second may by haphazard and desperation. And as to the Socialists, their propositions for reform are monstrous. Imagine an appeal to all the agricultural, manufacturing, mercantile, and trading interests of this country, to stay their pursuits, and shape themselves by Mr. Owen's parallelograms. If there were unanimity, and no dissent, no adverse interests, it could not be done; with one mind, and successful examples, it would be a work of centuries in one country. Then would come the consideration of the conflicting interests or passions of other countries. I should be unmerciful in satire on the Socialists but for their warfare with the other superstition. They are a shabby, unstable crew of reckless projectors. There is really a moral want in their characters, and such I have found with the great mass of working-men reformers. If ever a man devoted himself body and soul to serve them I am that man; and yet how few of them there are who can find for me a civil word. I shall go on to reform the reformers, and have not a doubt but I shall get up a paying register."
"For the first time in my life I have a secret to keep. I am working an _incog._ experiment to market my labor. Do not mention this, for a breath of suspicion would paralyze it. I dislike secrets, but they are absolutely necessary to existence among the competitive tricks of human beings. I have had inflammation in my eyes ever since I returned from Birmingham. The doctors would tell me not to harass them by candle-light, but I must, and say as a doctor said of brandy, that 'he liked it better than his eyes' after warning a patient not to drink it who found him drinking. Our London Chartist insurrection was more contemptible than that of Sheffield. The truth is that Englishmen are not now weapon-fighting men, until they are trained as soldiers."