The new rising political star of the mid 1830s was Lajos Kossuth, who began to rival Szécheny's popularity due to his talent as orator in the liberal fraction of the parliament. Kossuth called for broader parliamentary democracy, rapid industrialization, general taxation, economic expansion through exports, and the abolition of serfdom and aristocratic privileges (equality before the law). The alarm of the government at the power and popularity of the Liberal party induced it, soon after the accession of the new king, the emperor Ferdinand I (1835–1848), to attempt to crush the reform movement by arresting and imprisoning the most active agitators among them, Lajos Kossuth and Miklós Wesselényi. But the nation was no longer to be cowed.