John Frost, the Chartist, has died, at the age of
ninety-six. The newspapers have felt themselves obliged to notice his death, and write about him ; but there is a general impression that the hero of the Newport riot, whose very name, in November, 1839, struck terror into the respectable middle-class, and who was hailed as the coming Robespierre, belonged to ancient history. English- men have, in fact, as much now to do with the Hep- tarchy as with the commotion of which the Newport magistrate was the soul. Frost Was, in truth, a hero by a sort of accident, and though he returned to England twenty years ago, he never took part in any public movement or emerged from obscurity. People who remember the trial, and were in a calm enough frame of mind to be impartial, have always been glad that Frost was allowed to spend his old age in peace in England. It was never clear that Frost and his 10,000 armed followers were really mad enough to propose a general revolution, or that they, in fact, meant more than breaking into Newport Jail and releasing their friends. The arguments used by the pre- sent Lord Chief Baron, who was counsel for Frost, went far to -show that he was a mere rioter ; and even in those excited times people were glad that an irregularity on the part of the Crown in furnishing the list of witnesses could be adduced as an excuse for commuting the capital sentence into transportation.
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