The 10th April 1848 is one of the most famous days in the history of the nineteenth century. The Chartists of London had screwed themselves up for a decisive trial of strength with the ruling classes. They found themselves outnumbered by the combined resources of the civil and military powers. They shrank back before the prospect of a collision with the vast forces of law and order and property commanded by the Duke of Wellington and Richard Mayne. What was to have been a triumphant demonstration of the overwhelming power and determination of the people, ended in the anything but triumphal progress of a few hired hackney coaches carrying a dubious petition. “The 10th April, 1848 will long be remembered as a great field day of the British Constitution”, announced the Times. “The signal of unconstitutional menace, of violence, of insurrection, of revolution, was yesterday given in our streets, and happily despised by a peaceful, prudent, and loyal metropolis. That is the triumph we claim…. This settles the question. In common fairness it ought to be regarded as a settled question for years to come. The Chartists and Confederates made the challenge, and chose the field and trial of strength. They must stand by their choice. They chose to disturb the metropolis for the chance of something coming of it. They fished for a revolution and have caught a snub. We congratulate them on their booty, which we hope they will divide with their partners in Dublin. It is, perhaps, a fortunate circumstance that so momentous a question as the free action of the British Legislature should be settled thus decisively….”

From the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, as absolutism emerged in its classic development, the lower classes of western Europe experienced great insecurity and hardship. The Hundred Years' War, the end of serfdom, the quickening of economic activity, the secular price advance, and the explosion of religious conflict shattered traditional social bonds, produced widespread destitution, and uprooted large numbers of peasants who took to the roads in a desperate nomadism. These vagrant populations, existing on theft, brigandage and, mainly, begging, evoked severe governmental repression which was to prove generally unpopular and, in the long run, ineffective. In seventeenth-century France certain private groups also were to take up the cause of repressing vagabondage through a systematic program of confinement in workhouses – a program which, while complementing royal policy, would draw its main inspiration from the ascetic spirituality of the French Counter Reformation. These hôpitaux généraux are of interest as concrete expressions of the convergence of social problems, absolutist political tendencies, and religious attitudes.

When H. M. Hyndman's contentious and authoritarian leadership of the British Social Democratic Federation provoked William Morris and nine other members of its Executive Council to resign on December 24, 1884, the Federation not only lost an important segment of its strength, but also some of its most effective members. With Morris went Dr. Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx Aveling, Belfort Bax (the confidant of Engels), Samuel Mainwaring (a leader of the Labour Emancipation League), John Lincoln Mahon (the founder, with Andreas Scheu, of the Scottish Land and Labour League), Robert Banner (with the very active Woolwich branch of the Federation), W. J. Clark, J. Cooper, and Joseph Lane. On December 30, less than a week after the secession of this group, Morris and his colleagues formed the Socialist League which almost immediately threatened to become a most formidable competitor of the S.D.F. From its headquarters in a Farringdon Street loft at the edge of East London, the Socialist League issued its periodical, The Commnoweal, and sallied forth to realize William Morris's hope of educating the masses for “the great and inevitable change” in British political, economic, and social life.

Das seinerzeit unter den Polen und Italienern ziemlich populäre Tagesblatt „L'Espérance” erschien unter der Leitung des Franzosen Armand Lévy von 1859 bis 1861 in Genf. Lévy stand in Verbindung mit dem Prinzen Napoleon, bekannt unter den Spottnamen Plon-Plon und „roter” Prinz. Die „Espérance” war aber kein von der französischen Regierung subventioniertes Blatt. Sie nahm finanzielle Unterstützungen ausschliesslich von den gegen ihre eigenen Regie-rungen kämpfenden Patrioten an, hauptsächlich wohl von Italienern und Polen. Cavour gewährte der Zeitung keine Unterstützung, weil er sich mit Preussen und Russland nicht verfeinden wollte.

Es muss einem Belgier auffallen, dass im algemeinen die Sozial-geschichte seines Landes im Ausland wenig bekannt ist. Oft ergibt sich, dass man Belgier, die eine nicht unbeträchtliche Rolle gespielt haben, eigentlich nur dem Namen nach kennt.