The popular discontent at her uninterrupted seclusion had been gathering force for many years, and now burst out in a new and alarming shape.

Republicanism was in the air.
Radical opinion in England, stimulated by the fall of Napoleon III and the establishment of a republican government in France, suddenly grew more extreme than it ever had been since 1848.

It also became for the first time almost respectable.

Chartism had been entirely an affair of the lower classes; but now Members of Parliament, learned professors, and ladies of title openly avowed the most subversive views.

The monarchy was attacked both in theory and in practice.