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/ 2 '

THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST

MOVEMENT

BY

PRESTON WILLIAM SLOSSON, A. M.

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN THE

Faculty of Political Science
Columbia University

n ■ 5"/

NEW YORK
I916

HD

Copyright, 1916

BY

PRESTON WILLIAM SLOSSON

PREFACE

The present study is rather a problem in causation than

a complete narrative of the Chartist movement. During a

score of years, which may be roughly indicated as lying

between the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the

outbreak of the Crimean War, the portion of the British

laboring classes which aspired to play a part in national

politics entered the political arena not as an ally of the

middle-class reformers but as an independent party with a

program and an organization of its own. Ever since that

time many individuals have preached class-consciousness to

the workers, but it was not until the recent organization of

the Labour Party that a political party based upon class

lines was again able to win the allegiance of a majority or

even a large minority of British workingmen. Even the

present-day Labour Party has been less independent of the

Liberals than were the Chartists, although this may be due

rather to the necessary compromises of Parliamentary work

than to lack of class feeling. Why a popular movement,

so generally supported by the unenfranchised classes of

Great Britain as was the Chartist agitation, should have

been abandoned without attaining the program of reforms

to which it was pledged is a difficult and complex question

and one to which insufficient attention has been paid. The

aim of the present survey has been to contribute a little to

TEe'^lscussion of this vitally important question in the

political history of Great Britain in the nineteenth century.

The writer owes much to the Columbia School of Political

Science for instruction and inspiration, but an especial debt

253] S

/

PREFACE

[254

of gratitude to Professor James T. Shotwell for taking this
study in charge; to Professor Carlton Hayes and to Pro-
fessor WiUiam Archibald Dunning for the time and atten-
tion which they have so freely given to supervising its
preparation ; to Professor Edwin R. ^A. Seligman for gen-
erously granting access to the remarkable collection of source
material for British social history in his library; to Mr.
Edward A. Porritt, author of The Unreformed House of
Commons, for helpful suggestions; and to Mr. J. H. Park,
whose forthcoming study of The Reform Bill of i86j adds
to this another chapter in the struggle for the reform of
the British franchise.

Preston William Slosson.
Mav, 1916,

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface 5

Introduction 11

CHAPTER I

Chartism as a Class Movement

Popular distrust of the middle-class Radicals 17

Organiza tion of the Chartist party 19

The demand for further political reform 21

tThe Charter as a class document 22

Economic character of the movement recognized by its opponents 28

Aims o f Chartist leaders 31

Views on national revenue and taxation 31

On state subsidized co-operation 33

The land -monopoly grievance 35

Small holdings championed 37

Abolition of primogeniture , 38

Land nationalization versus peasant proprietorship 39

Anticipation of the single tax by O'Brien 42

Confidence in political action as a means to social betterment 43

Sources of Chartist strength 44

The trades unions 45

General poverty of the industrial classes 46

Opposition of the Chartists to the Anti-Corn Law League 47

Opposition to the factory system 51

Attitude of the ruling classes to social legislation 52

The reform of the Elizabethan Poor Law 54

Chartist attacks upon the new law ... 1 57

CHAPTER II

The High Tide of Chartism

Chief periods of Chartist activity 60

The petition of 1842 61

Numbers associated with the movement in that year 62

The industrial depression of 1842; extreme poverty among the people . . . 63

255] 7

g CONTENTS [256

PAGS

Peel's first reform of the Corn Laws 65

Agitations and disorders; the great strike of August 66

Attempt to turn the strike into a political demonstration 68

Repression of the agitation 69

r Political alliance with Sturge's Complete Suffrage Union; the conference of

April 72

■~ Chartist activity in the elections for Parliament 73

Failure of the December conference 74

Disappearance of the Complete Suffrage Union 77

CHAPTER III

^ The Disintegration of the Chartist Movement

Weakness of the movement after 1842 78

■•" Increasing influence of O'Connor 78

The debate with Bright and Cobden go

•» O'Connor alienates rival leaders from the party 81

— Physical force versus moral force methods 82

"■ O'Connor's land plan ; its failure 84

Continued industrial disorders 93

Revival of Chartist strength 94

Chartist success in the elections of 1847 94

" Chartist revolutionary spirit in 1848 . . 95

Alarm of the government and of the general public 97

The demonstration of April tenth 99

Evidence of the waning strength of the movement as shown by the petition

of 1848 lOI

Repressive measures taken by the authorities 102

Loss of popular interest in the agitation 103

Rival reform organizations started 106

Dominant influence of Ernest Jones after 1848 109

Attempts to revive the Chartist movement no

Failure to sustain the party organization 113

CHAPTER IV

The Improvement in the Condition of the British Working

Class after 1842

Difficulty of determining the influence of economic factors 115

y Recovery of business from the depression of 1842 117

Evidence of improved condition of the people 119

Continued high prices of foodstuffs 119

Repeal of the Corn Laws 12 1

Effect on prices 123

257] CONTENTS g

FAGK

Limitation of hours of labor in mines and factories 124

Reform in Poor Law administration 12?

Industrial depression of 1847 127

Changes in wages during the Chartist agitation 129

In factories . . • 129

In mines 130

In hand labor I30

In agriculture 131

The " golden age " of British agriculture 132

Commercial and industrial prosperity 133

Evidences of a rise in the standard of living among the working classes 134
Illustration of the effect of changes in wages and prices upon the intensity

of agitation for the Charter 136

XCHAPTERJj^-^''

j/A Discussion of the Causes of the'Decline of the Chartist Movement

Failure of 1848 rather a symptom than a cause of weakness 138

No new working-class movement in politics takes the place of Chartism . 141

Decline not a result of political concessions nor of governmental repression / 141 ^.^ii^

Internal weaknesses of the party , 142

Lack of direct representation in Parliament, due mainly to its class character 142 •— ■

Lack of a definite economic program 145

Lack of agreement on questions of policy 147

Ineffective leadership 149

"* Harmful influence of O'Connor *5^-^

Incessant friction and jealousy among party leaders 151

Loss of popular support not due to increased conservatism or to the progress

of popular education and political reform ^53 ""

•i Effect of remedial legislation 155 "^

^Eiifect of the triumph of the Anti-Corn Law League 156 '^

Unwise attitude towards middle-class radicalism 157 "-

Effect of the return of prosperity 160 """

Proof of the influence of economic factors 162 ^

Summary of most important causes 166 —

The Response of the Ruling Classes of Great Britain to the
Chartist Movement

The middle-class Radicals regain control of the movement for political dem-
ocracy 169 .S9*

Effect of Chartism as a demonstration of popular discontent 17c -^

10

CONTENTS [258

rAGB

Chartism but one phase of the general labor movement 171

Actiyities of the Christian Socialists 172

Patronage of the co-operative movement '74

Championship of the labor unions '75

Altered attitude of the ruling classes to social problems 177

The emigration movement ^7^

Alliance of the Hritish labor movement with the Irish nationalists broken

up by heavy Irish emigration 179

Attempts in Parliament to reform the franchise i^i

The accomplishment of the principles of the Charter 184

*)israeli and the Tory Democrats 186

bladstone and the new Liberalism 187

CHAPTER VII

The Permanent Influence of Chartism on the British Working Class

The working classes adopt " more quiescent means of elevation " .... 188

The CO operative movement absorbs many Chartists 189

Rapid development of trades unionism 192

Anticipation of Marxian Socialism in the Chartist movement 196

Effect of the movement in training the working classes in self-reliant action 198

Chartism as an educator I99

Interest of the Chartists in the liberal and revolutionary movements of con-
tinental Europe ^99

Chartism and the Crimean war 202

Chartist praise of the United States of America 204

Effect on the working classes during the American Civil War 206

Awakening of political interest of working women 206

The equal suffrage Chartists 207

What became of the Chartist leaders after the close of the movement . . . 208

Place of Chartism in history 209

Bibliography 211

Index 215

INTRODUCTION

The six demands of the People's Charter: manhood
suffrage, equal election districts, annual Parliaments, aboli-
tion of the property qualification for members of the House
of Commons, vote by ballot, and salaries for members of
Parliament, had all been long familiar to British reformers
before they attained such a degree of popular support
as makes it possible for us to speak of a Chartist movement.
The Chartists themselves claimed that their aim was but to
restore the ancient constitution of England as it existed
prior to the rise of the centralized Tudor monarchy. His-
tory does not justify their faith, but dates the Charter as a
political demand from the latter part of the eighteenth
century. Major John Cartwright urged four of its six
points in 1776, and Charles James Fox later advocated them
all. Even the name " Charter " for a political program
was no novelty. A pamphlet of 1832, entitled The People's
Charter^ besides recommending such political reforms as
universal suffrage, vote by ballot and annual Parliaments,
advocated numerous other reforms which it assumed would
result from political democracy, such as an untaxed press,
factory legislation, a militia instead of a standing army,
abolition of the kingship, and the further abolition of numer-
ous abuses; such as, sinecures and high salaries, the es-
tabHshed church, the bank monopoly, primogeniture, the
com laws, the poor laws. West Indian slavery, the national
debt, the peerage, the game laws, imprisonment for debt,

1 The People's Charter, an abstract from The Rights of Nations
(London, 1832).

259] II

12 THE DECLI.XB OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [260

and all tiixes except a graduated property tax. All of these

aims were congenial to the Chartists, but it seems, on the

whole, that the date of this pamphlet is more significant

than its title. It did not clearly recommend all of the six

points of Chartism and its elaborate detail is characteristic

of the doctrinaire radicalism of the years before the Reform

Act of 1832.

/» The germ of the Chartist party was the London Working-

[ men's Association, under the able leadership of William

/ Lovett. While the phrasing of the People's Charter varied

I somewhat at different periods, the text of the 1837 petition

y of the London Workingmen's Association ^ is typical of

later forms:

Equal Representation. That the United Kingdom be
divided into 200 electoral districts, dividing as nearly as possible
an equal number of inhabitants ; and that each district do send
a representative to Parliament.

Universal Suffrage. That every person producing proofs
of his being 21 years of age to the clerk of the parish in which
he has resided for six months, shall be entitled to have his
name registered as a voter. That the time for registering in
each year be from the ist of January to the ist of March.

Annual Parliament. That a general election do take place
on the 24th of June in each year, and that each vacancy be
filled up a fortnight after it occurs. That the hours of voting
be from six o'clock in the morning till six o'clock in the evening.

No Property Qualifications. That there shall be no property
qualifications for members ; but on a requisition signed by 200
voters, in favour of any candidate, being presented to the clerk
of the parish in which they reside, such candidate shall be put
in nomination. And a list of all the candidates nominated
throughout the district shall be stuck on the church door in
every parish, to enable voters to judge of their qualifications.

^ Bronterre's National Reformer, Feb. 11, 1837.

26l] INTRODUCTION 13

Vote by Ballot. That each voter must vote in the parish
in which he resides. That each parish provide as many ballot-
ing boxes as there are candidates proposed in the district, and
that a temporary place be fitted up in each parish church for
the purpose of secret voting. And on the day of election, as
each voter passes orderly on to the ballot, he shall have given
to him by the officer in attendance, a ballotting ball which he
shall drop into the box of his favorite candidate. At the
close of the day the votes shall be counted by the proper officers,
and the numbers stuck on the church doors. The following
day the clerk of the district and two examiners shall collect
the votes of all the parishes throughout the district, and cause
the name of the successful candidate to be posted in every
parish of the district.

Sittings and Payments to Members. That the members do
take their seats in Parliament on the first Monday in October,
next after their election, and continue their sittings every day
(Sundays excepted) till the business of the sitting is termin-
ated, but not later than the first of September. They shall
meet every day (during the session) for business at ten o'clock
in the morning, and adjourn at four. And every member shall
be paid (quarterly) out of the public treasury £400 a year.

That all electoral officers be elected by universal suffrage.

It will be seen that had the Charter become the law of the
land several incidental reforms would have been accom-
plished as well as the six points; such as the abolition of
plural voting, nominations by popular petition, a decrease
in the size of the House of Commons and a mandatory j/^
working week for the representatives of the people. In
1839 ^ the Chartist proposal increased the number of elec-
toral districts to three hundred and the remuneration of
members of Parliament to £500 a year. But no important
change was ever made in the Charter except that whereas

1 Chartist Circular, Oct. 5, 1839.

X4 THE DECUSE OP THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [262

during the first two or three years of the movement it was
customary to speak of the " five points," neglecting the
question of equal electoral districts/ during the period
covered by this study the word " f^harter " invariably stood
for all six of the fundamental reforms of the party.

Besides the text of the Charter itself, and the various
preambles to the successive petitions to the House of
Commons consisting for the most part of surveys of popu-
lar grievances, the best primary records of Chartism are the
pamphlets and newspapers of the party. Over fifty Chartist
pamphlets are listed in Gotthilf Dierlamm's Die Flugschrif-
tenlitcratur der Chartistcnhczvcgung (Naumburg, 1909);
over sixty periodicals more or less Chartist are given in
R. G. Gammage's History of the Chartist Movement
(Lx)ndon, 1894) or in other secondary sources. The non-
Chartist press devoted no little attention to the movement,
and a fairly complete — if not altogether unbiassed — history
of Chartism could be compiled from the London Times, the
Annual Register, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates and
similar external sources without any reference to Chartist
authorities. The memoirs or miscellaneous writings of the
Chartist leaders, such as William Lovett, Thomas Cooper,
J. Bronterre O'Brien, G. J. Holyoake, S. B. Bamford, W.
J. Linton and many others, are of course of great value ; but
it should always be remembered in reading them that no
movement was ever more torn by faction and internal strife
than the Chartist, and that it is in consequence hopeless to
seek a quite unprejudiced criticism of men and events.
Valuable sidelights are thrown upon the course of the move-
ment by the writings of sympathetic contemporary observ-
ers, such as Charles Kingsley, Benjamin Disraeli, Thomas
Carlyle, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

* The prayer of the petition of 1839 as given in Hansard, 3d series,
vol. xlviii, p. 227, does not mention equal electoral districts.

263] INTRODUCTION 1 5

We are not so well off for secondary sources of Chartist
history as for primary. R. G. Gammage's History of the
Chartist Movement is indeed the one book which is indis-
pensable to every student of the movement, as much so to-
day as when it was written in 1854. This is not only be-
cause it is a full and well-considered outline of the actual
events of the movement, not only because of much valuable
information assembled by the author, but because Gammage
was one of the party leaders and so was possessed of much
inside information which is unobtainable elsewhere. But
Gammage's book is not impeccable. The 1894 edition con-
tains letters by his fellow Chartists Thomas Cooper and
William Ryder correcting errors in his account, and the
author acknowledges the justice of many of their correc-
tions. In the Life of Thomas Cooper, by Himself (London,
1872), Cooper criticizes Gammage's History yet further,
adding, however, the consolatory remark (true even today)
that " I know no person living who could write a History
of Chartism without making mistakes." ^ More important
than a few minor and inevitable misstatements is the strong
partisan bias which Gammage shows on every page, though
to no greater a degree than other Chartists. But the chief
reason for regarding his work rather as a valuable source
than as a satisfactory history is that while an admirable
chronicle it is nothing more ; it does not give that economic
background which is essential to any understanding of the
causes of events. Many brief and well-balanced incidental
accounts of Chartism occur in general histories, such as
W. M. Molesworth's A History of England from the Year
18^0 (London, 1872), vol. ii; H. M. Hyndman's The His-
torical Basis of Socialism in England (London, 1883),
and, the best of all perhaps. The Rise of Democracy, by
J. Holland Rose (London, 1897).

1 Life of Thomas Cooper, p. 278.

l6 THE DECUXE OF THE CHARTIST MOFEMEST [264

Althoogb Chartism was a purely British movement,
the student will find secondary material comparatively
abundant in languages odier than Elng i is h . particularly in
German. The best and fullest account of the Qiartist
mo vement as a whole and also of many of its special
p>ta«a»^, sodi as its relation to the feminist movement,
is to be found in Hermann Schluter's DU Chariisten-
Btwegwtg (New York, 191 6). This work, which is
an dabofation of Die Chartistembewegwig in England
in the Sosid-Damokratucke BibUothek^ voL xvi (Zurich,
1887), is written entirely from the standpoint of ortho-
dox Marxian Socialism. Its only rival for ccnnplete-
ness and soc^ is Le Ckartisme, by £douard Dolleans
(Paris. 1912), which is in two vcdnmes and contains over
nine hundred pages. This w(Kk is rather vague and diffuse,
and, while it quotes freely, lades a biUic^Taphy. In German
wc have also a very vahiaUe study of the origins of the
movement in Die Entsiehung und die Okonomischen Grund-
saise der ChartistenbeTvegung, by Dr. John L Tildsley
(Jena, 1898) ; also Die FlugschriftenUteratur der Chartis-
tenbezcegung, op. cit.^ based in part cm Dr. Tildsley's woj^l,
and Die Englische Chartistenbewegung, by Lujo Brentano.
Preussische JahrbOcher, yoL xxxiii (Berlin, 1874). In
Russian there is a brief account, Chartistskoe dznzhenie, by
N. B. Kricbevsfci (St Peter^wrg. 1906).

CHAPTER I
centered it? h^e^ v: r :-t ?'?: t-': r3 :: :hT 7 r z.r i

rrl during the 5ecocc :_-r-rr : .rr r rT.T-r:. :r: "— r
: :: vas Ae only one to ir. : :zr.--i. : ". :^— r^r '-he /
still anenfraiidrised dasses. 7 r - : t :- ::' -^tt :- ^

of the Charter was to win f : r rrtrr : . ftr 1 ~i - r '
the Hoose of Camniofis : - r t: - i: : : -

'S Ae House of Commofii ~: t: r rr-.r-:

and that the king mi : t X :t : 1 ::.- : : r.: r:::re
resista working-CIS r rr:. :: : : : tr _ff :-^- r-fj
had been able to rt^; -. : 7 - 1 r:tv cf ~ : _ 7 : : t: -ra-
ers in that house in 1852.

Prior ic -.he ??::— 17 ?£ 1S52. the Kitish wtnkii^
dasses hi i re r: r-TTTi : : 5 li 2 ^parate party. The
violence c: t 1 : :7 —1; rrrs, the growth of

tradei .: "i :.: i : r rrr-i-f":^ :: r:r 7- ".itcated^ in-
deed th^ - - : :::rv t ladoper-
ativcf : T T ~ -;^ to alU d k
th? vin.ii' :: : :Iy of p: r: - oy the fandkxd
365] 17

)

l8 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [266

class. In 1832, there were two main political groups in
Great Britain, the reformers, including both the Whigs and
the Radicals, and the anti-reformers, or Tories. But the
victory of reform was followed by the division of the re-
formers into factions. The Whigs, or ministerialists, op-
posed further political change, at least until the country
should have fully recovered from its years of agitation.
The Radicals desired extensive changes in the civil and
criminal law ; the abolition of special privileges, such as
the Anglican Church enjoyed; complete free trade, and
an immediate extension of the franchise. Most of the
Radicals favored household suffrage, the ballot, abolition
of the property qualification for the House of Commons,
and shorter sessions of Parliament; some of them favored
every point of the Charter. They were not sufficiently
numerous in the House of Commons to form a ministry or
even to organize as a formally separate party, but they criti-
cized the government freely, contested Whig seats at elec-
tions, and frequently voted against the ministry on crucial
divisions. Their influence was far out of proportion to
their numbers, for their leaders included some of the ablest
men in Parliament, and had, besides, the moral weight of a
widespread popular support.'

Before the meeting of the reformed Parliament the Radi-
cals had not regarded themselves nor were they regarded
by the people as primarily representatives of the middle
classes. They were rather considered as the champions of
popular rights and the expounders of popular grievances
in general; their political and economic policies were un-
derstood to favor the interests of the laborers as well as
manufacturing and commercial interests. Some of the
earlier Radicals, indeed, specialized in reforms of interest
to the working classes. Francis Place, for example, de-
voted himself chiefly to securing liberty for the trades

//

267]

CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT

19

unions. William Cobbett, one of the older generation of
reformers, although new to Parliament, vigorously opposed
the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834/ But the Radical
leaders most prominent during the period of Chartist activ-
ity. Bright, Cobden, Hume, Roebuck and Lord Brougham,
were regarded with growing dislike and disfavor by many
of the artisans, while retaining the confidence of a large pro-
portion of the middle classes. (_There were two mam causes
for this growing political opposition between the working
classes and their employers : the fact that the Reform Bill
greatly increased the opportunity of the middle classes to
obtain representation in Parliament, while leaving the
workers practically without direct influence upon the parties
in the House of Commons; and the entrance of economic
issues, upon which the interests of the two classes were
opposed, into the sphere of practical politics. ) (The masses
of the people found that the Radicals were no longer repre-
senting them, and their discontent continued to grow until
it ripened at last into the Chartist movement.^

The Chartists, unlike the Radicals, must be reckoned
not only a separate political group but a separate political
party. They stood quite independent of the Whig and /
Tory organizations and maintained party machinery of [
their own. The general policies and tactics of the party
were determined in conventions of delegates chosen by
local Chartist associations, and their execution was left to I
a permanent executive committee and to paid lecturers and J
propagandist agents. The organization was the product^
of a merger between the London Working Men's Associa-C-^
tion, led by William Lovett and Henry Vincent; the Bir-
mingham Political Union, including Thomas Atwood and
John Collins ; and the political unions organized by Feargus

/ X

1 Cf. infra, p. 57-

A

^

20 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [268

O'Connor.' In 1840, these organizations took the common
name of the Natitmal Charter Association. Any person
taking out a card of membership, renewable quarterly for
the nominal fee of twopence, was admitted. The execu-
tive, elected by the whole membership of the association,
consisted of a secretary, a treasurer, and five other mem-
bers. The secretary and the treasurer each received two
pounds a week for their services, and the other members
thirty shillings a week during their sittings. The executive
had at its disposal half the funds of the association.^ Of
the many alternative forms of party organization proposed,
perhaps the most interesting was that by Dr. McDouall,
who suggested in 1841 ^ the organization of the party by
trades. There should be, for example, a Shoemakers' Char-
tist Association, not identified with any trade union but
representing the political interests of the shoemakers as an
industry.

The separate party existence of the Chartists is often
ignored because they were practically without representa-
yj tion in Parliament.* Yet the movement absorbed the larger
part of the politically active working class which had given
invaluable support to thV agitation for reform. The Char-
tists could not consistently support the Whig ministry,
since it was opposed to further popular agitation, but the
Radicals would have welcomed the aid of a politically active
working class which, even unenfranchised, would have lent
weight to their demands. If the Radicals had not lost the
confidence of the British working classes there might never

' Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, p. 15.
' Ibid., pp. 183-4.

* English Chartist Circular, vol. i, pp. 57-8.

* Meiny of the Radicals in Parliament, however, were in sym''^
with the Charter, and some of them, such as Thomas Duncomb^^"
■orously advocated it on the floor of the Commons. ades

,/

269] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 2 1

have been a Chartist movement; the poverty and dissatis-
faction of the people, no matter how great, would only-
have increased the number of unrepresented Radicals. Dur-
ing the decade following the Reform Bill, on the contrary,
the working class drew away from their old allies and
leaders, largely because of the attitude of the reformed
House of Commons and even the most active of the Par-
liamentary reformers towards the questions of social poli-
tics which most interested the people.

The Reform Bill of 1832 was a great disappointment to
Radicals and Chartists alike. At no time during the Char-
tist agitation did the number of electors in the counties and
boroughs of England and Wales amount to one million.
In 1853-4, the number of county electors was officially
reckoned at 520,729; the borough electors at 430,311.^
363,375 electors were qualified under the ten-pound house-
holder franchise; the rest representing older franchises.
The Reform Bill not only left political power in the hands
of a small minority of the nation, but superseded more
democratic systems which had existed in a few of the
boroughs. In the industrial borough of Preston, for ex-
ample, the franchise had been extended to most of the male
inhabitants ^ and the Reform Bill came there as a measure
of restriction of the suffrage. Gilbert Slater is even of
the opinion that as a result of these disfranchisements the
proportion of British workingmen eligible to vote was
smaller after 1832 than it had been before.^ In any case,
the new uniform borough constituencies were marked off
from the unenfranchised by a sharper class line than ever,

^Parliamentary Papers, 1854 (69), liii, 219.

*J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, 4 vols. (London, 1880),
J^-' i, pp. 109-10.

Slater, The Making of Modern England (Boston, 1915). P- 97-

/

22 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [270

since the new law enfranchised only the well-to-do and
excluded none but the relatively poor.

Both the Radicals and the reformers who were after-
wards Chartists were willing to accept the Reform Bill as
an instalment of justice. But a political system which
might be tolerated as temporary they regarded as unendur-
able if it were to be treated as a finality. Lord John Rus-
sell, as chief of the Whig ministry, during the debates on
the Reform Bill made it plain that he did not expect to see
any further extension of the franchise even after the vic-
tory of the Reform Bill,^ " because both those who sup-
ported and those who opposed it were alike determined to
go no further, but to use their best endeavors to preserve
the renovated constitution, entire and unimpaired ". As
soon as the Radicals became convinced that these words
were not merely an attempt to reassure timid supporters of
the measure, they accused the Whigs of betraying the
democratic cause. Lord Brougham replied to Lord John
Russell's defense of his course ^ by a vigorous attack in
which he declared his readiness to support franchise re-
form " even far beyond household suffrage ".^ But every
attempt made in Parliament to alter the basis of the suf-
frage, to introduce the ballot or to abolish the property qual-
ification for membership in the House of Commons met
with sharp ministerial opposition and was defeated by a
decisive majority.

The Chartists soon came to the conclusion that it was
harder to obtain their six points from the reformed House
of Commons than it would have been to win them had
there been no reform at all, for the very reason advanced

* Hansard, 3d series, vol. xiii, p. 462.
^Letter to the Electors of Stroud (1839).

* Reply to Lord John Russell's Letter to the Electors of Stroud
(1839), P- IS.

271] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 23

by Lord Russell that the newly enfranchised were in no
hurry to share their privileges, while the opponents of re-
form were more than ever determined to prevent changes
from extending further. In the opinion of the Chartists

The Reform Act admitted the middle classes to a share of that"
power which was formerly engrossed by the aristocracy .
but what is the consequence of the Reform Act to us, the^
people? Why, that the number of our opponents, of those
interested to uphold the monopoly of legislative abuse, is more
than doubled ; and, instead of having the middle classes on our
side, making common cause with us against the aristocracy,
we have to contend against a combination of the aristocrac}
and middle order.^

They were resolved never to work again for any extension
of the franchise short of manhood suffrage, lest they should
be deceived once more by the creation of a new privileged
class, the stronger because the more broadly based. In-
consequence they viewed the Radical efforts to obtain small
concessions with positive suspicion as so many attempts to
erect barriers against complete democracy. The favorite
Radical franchise measure was household suffrage and this
the Chartists strongly opposed. Two extracts from Char-
tist periodicals on this issue will serve to illustrate the gen-
eral Chartist attitude towards piecemeal reform :

It is plain it would be preferable to have the old Tory system
revived, to a £5 or Household Suffrage. By the former we
might expect to have our ranks filled with men who, rather
than have no extension, would demand Universal Suffrage;
while, by the latter, we have the gloomy prospect of increased
foes, and a decreased force to overcome them.^

^ Right and Expediency of Universal Suffrage (undated), p. 6.
2 Chartist Circular, Sept. 5, 1840, italics in the original.

v^-\

24 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [272

Six million non-electors could sooner wrest their rights from
800.000 electors, than four millions could from three. Indeed,
we should lose support, instead of gaining strength : now, great
numbers of the middle class, being unenfranchised, are with
us. because they want the vote — give them the vote, and having
all they want — we can calculate on their support no longer.^

j The Chartists not only refused to work with the Radicals
/ for a partial extension of the franchise but regarded any
V/ other political reforms which were not accompanied by
manhood suffrage as positive perils to democracy. The
ballot was approved as one of the six points of the Charter ;
standing by itself, it was considered a menace, since it de-
prived the unenfranchised masses of the indirect influence
they had been accustomed to exercise at election by cheer-
ing or groaning as the voters announced their choice. Be-
sides intimidation at the polls, the workers had another and
more potent means of control over elections, namely, the
boycott of tradesmen who failed to please their customers
by their votes. The aristocracy openly resorted to this
form of coercion at every election, and Chartists were ad-
vised to follow the example thus set them.^ The Chartists
regarded the unrestrained power of an enfranchised minor-
ity to vote as it chose without reference to public opinion
as comparable to secret balloting in Parliament.^ As the
Chartist Circular put the matter :

The franchise being limited, a power was vested by law in a
given number of individuals, to perform a certain duty not for
their own benefit — not according to their own pleasure, but
for the good of the whole community, — would it then be rea-
sonable to afford these men — men acting as agents for others,

^ Notes to the People, p. 32,

2 Ibid., p. 225.

' Bronterre's National Reformer, Jan. 15, 1837.

273] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 25

to perform that duty secretly — to remove themselves com-
pletely from the control of those for whose interests they
were, or at least ought to be, acting ? ^

The other points of the Charter were urged by the Char-
tists as much upon the basis of class interest as of demo-
cratic theory. The redistribution clauses of the Reform
Bill of 1832 had only touched the more glaring anomalies
of representation. According to a census taken on March
30, 1 85 1, the represented boroughs of Tower Hamlets,
Liverpool, Marylebone, Finsbury, Manchester (City),
Lambeth, Westminster (City), and Birmingham, with a
combined population of 2,651,915, sent only sixteen mem-
bers to Parliament, while an equal representation was ac-
corded to the boroughs of Wells (City), Evesham, Dart-
mouth, Harwich, Totnes, Thetford, Lyme Regis, Ashbur-
ton, Honiton, and Arundel, whose population totaled only
39,917.' Many important English boroughs were still
without any special representation ; among the metropolitan
districts, Chelsea and Kensington, among the provincial
towns, Birkenhead, Burnley, and Staleybridge, each with
more than twenty thousand population. The inequalities
in the counties were nearly as bad; the West Riding of
Yorkshire sent two members to the House of Commons
from a population of 794,779, while the population of Rut-
land, also returning two, was only 22,983. The distribu-
tion of seats in Parliament had a distinct class significance,
since the boroughs and counties which were without ade- V/A
quate representation were the centers of large industrial
populations, sure to be either Radical or Chartist in their
sympathies. The necessity, then, for a redistribution of
seats in accordance with population seemed as great, from

^ Chartist Circular, Oct. 26, 1839.

^ Parliamentary Papers, 1852 (441), xlii, 491 et seq.

26 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [274

the Chartist point of view, as the necessity for a widened
suffrage.

The prc^perty qualification for membership in the House
of Commons required for representatives of EngHsh and
Welsh counties an annual income from landed property
of six hundred pounds; members for boroughs, three hun-
dred pounds.* This restriction did not apply to Scotland,
nor to university representatives, and even in the English
counties and boroughs it was often evaded or openly flouted.
Nevertheless, this property qualification, taken in connec-
tion with the absence, of any remuneration for members
of Parliament, made it practically impossible for the Char-
tists to secure any representation without going outside
their own class for their leaders, and this they were very
reluctant to do. " Of what use," asked Lovett, " is the
'^ giving me the vote and freedom of choice if I can only
choose rich men ? " - The ballot was advocated by the
Chartists as a protection to the poor voter from coercion
by landlord or employer ; as we have seen ^ they cared noth-
ing for the ballot unless accompanied by manhood suffrage.
Annual elections for Parliament Avere deemed necessary to
keep the people's representatives from losing touch with
their constituents. The Chartists felt that each of the six
points was not only just in itself but could hardly fail to
s/ strengthen the radical and weaken the conservative forces
in British politics, always provided that their program was
enacted as a unit.
V The Chartists may have insisted too narrowly upon the

• By a law passed in 1838 (I and II Vict., c. 48), personal as well a£
real property qualified for membership.

* H. Solly, James Woodford, Carpenter and Chartist, 2 vols. (Lon-
don, 1881). The citation is from a letter of William Lovett to the
author, printed in the appendix of the book.

3 Cf. supra, p. 24.

^75] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 27

exact terms of their Charter, but they never fell into the (^
the error of treating political power as a sufficient goal for j
their efforts. The franchise they valued rather as an indis- _
pensable means for social and economic ends than for its /
own sake. Perhaps the most familiar illustration of this y
point of view of the leaders of the movement is from thef
speech of the Reverend J. R. Stephens, the Tory-Chartist,
at Kersal Moor, near Manchester :

The question of universal suffrage was, after all, a knife and*^
fork question. If any man asked him what he meant by uni- /
versal suffrage, he would tell him, he meant to say that every /
working man in the land had a right to have a good coat and ^
hat, a good roof over his head, a good dinner upon his table,
no more work than would keep him in health, and as much
wages as would keep him in plenty, and the enjoyment of
those pleasures of life which a reasonable man could desire.^ j

Ernest Jones asked with equal emphasis : " What do we
want political power for, except to grant free access to all
the means of labour, land and machinery ? " ^ Friedrich
Engels claimed in 1844 that there was no longer a mere
politician among the Chartists.^ Of course Engels may
have been prejudiced by his desire to identify Chartism
with international Socialism, but it would be difficult to '

bring any evidence against his statement.

Chartism was not only an economic movement, it was a . /
class movement. The London Working Men's Association " ^ '
of 1837, which would admit only laborers to its active
membership, printed on its membership card : " The man
who evades his share of useful labour diminishes the public

^Annual Register, vol. Ixxx (1838), p. 311.
^ Notes to the People, p. 301.

'F. Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844
(London, 1892; reprint from 1845), p. 235.

..J3

28 THE DECLIXE OF THE CllARriST MOVEMENT [276

Stock of wealth, and throws his own burden upon his
neighbour ".' Manhood suffrage was in the eyes of many
not a question of the enfranchisement of individuals but
of a hitherto unrepresented class? One Chartist paper
even declared tliat " a constituency equal to our present
one . . . might serve the purposes of good government as
well as one ten times as large, or as well as universal suf-
frage itself ", if it could only be arranged somehow that
the new electorate should be " fairly selected from all
classes of the community, in contingents proportional to
fheir respective numbers "." It is, then, as a class-conscious
'proletarian agitation, similar to modern Socialism in its
spirit if not quite so definite in its program, that Chartism
nust always be considered.
( The conservative opponents of Chartism were even more
explicit about the economic aims of the movement than
were its leaders. Their arguments were rarely directed
against the abstract principle of manhood suffrage, but
took, as a rule, one of two forms, that the Chartists were
visionaries who held the erroneous idea that the mere pos-
session of political power could alter the great unvarying
laws of political economy in their favor, or that they were
a party of revolutionists determined to use the six points
as a means to effect the confiscation of all property. Lord
John Russell, who took the former view of the agitation,
wrote in 1839:

Of the working classes who have declared their adherence to
what is called the People's Charter, but few care for Universal
Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, or Annual Parliaments. The greater
part feel the hardship of their social condition; they complain
of their hard toil and insufficient wages, and imagine that Mr.

^ R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, p. 9.
* Power of the Pence, Feb. 10, 1849.

^y'j-\ CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 29

Oastler or Mr. Fielden will lead them to a happy valley, where
their labor will be light, and their wages high.^

Other conservatives, usually of the Tory type, saw a more
definite and sinister purpose in the movement. In the opin-
ion of Blackwood's Magazine, " What is meant, under any
mystification of words we need not say, is — one universal
partition, amongst the nineteen millions in this island, of
the existing property, be its nature what it may, and under
whatsoever tenure ".* Two further citations from the
same periodical carry us further into the details of this
threatened general expropriation:

Within three weeks, were it merely to earn their wages, the
new house of legislators would have abolished all funded prop-
erty, under the showy pretence of remitting to the people that
annual thirty millions of taxes requisite for meeting the inter-
est. Their second step would be, what already they parade
as an " equitable distribution " of property.^

Repudiation of state engagements . . . confiscation of prop-
erty under the name of a graded income tax ; the abolition of \
primogeniture, in order to ruin the landed interest; the issue
of assignats, in order to sustain the state under the shock to
credit which such measures would necessarily occasion, might
with confidence be looked for.*

William Lovett and John Collins, writing from War-
wick gaol, admitted that the two chief arguments of their .
opponents had been the fear of the repudiation of the I
national debt,^ and the denial of property rights in gen-

* Letter to the Electors of Stroud, p. Z3-
' Blackwood's Magasine, Sept., 1842. ^

' Ibid.

* Ibid., June, 1848.

' Chartism, by Wm. Lovett and John Collins (London, 1841), p. r8.

\

30 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [278

eral,' and attempted to reassure their readers on these
points. That they were right in beheving that the real
objection to their propaganda was fear of the economic
consequences if it should succeed, is proved by the debate
in the House of Commons upon the question of consider-
ing the Chartist petition of 1842.^ Lord John Russell dis-
claimed any hostility to the principle of democracy as
such, saying:

I can well believe, that in the United States of America — the
only country which I should at all compare with this for the
enjoyment of liberty and the full fruits of civilization — 1 can
well believe, that in that country, where there is no monarchy,
where every office is elective, where there is no established
church, where there are not great masses of property, universal
suffrage may be exercised without injury to order, and with-
out danger to the general security of society.^

Thomas Babington Macaulay took a similar position, de-
claring that he would not oppose universal suffrage even
for the sake of preserving the existence of the crown and
of the House of Lords, for these institutions were after all
but means to an end, adding, however : " I believe that uni-
versal suffrage would be fatal to all purposes for which
government exists, and for which aristocracies and all
other things exist, and that it is incompatible with the very
existence of civilization. I conceive that civilization rests
V' on the security of property." * Then he proceeded to paint
a picture of the England of the future when property
rights would no longer be safeguarded by a suffrage limited
to men who had property of their own to protect :

1 Chartism, op. cit., p. 22.

2 Cf. infra, p. 61.

* Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ixiii, pp. 74-75,

* Hansard, op. cit., p. 46.

279] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 31

I do not wish to say all that forces itself upon my mind with
regard to what might be the result of our granting the Charter.
... A great community of human beings — a vast people would
be called into existence in a new position; there would be a
depression, if not an utter stoppage, of trade, and of all those •
vast engagements of the country by which our people were -
supported, and how is it possible to doubt that famine and
pestilence would come before long to wind up the effects of
such a system. The best thing which I can expect, and which
I think everyone must see as the result, is, that in some of
the desperate struggles which must take place in such a state
of things, some strong military despot must arise, and give some
sort of protection — some security to the property which may
remain.^

The conservative view of the Chartist movement no
doubt exaggerated both the intentions of the leaders and
^heir probable ability to carry their views into effect even
an a House of Commons chosen on the basis of the six
/points, but it was right in supposing that the mainspring-
jof the agitation was the desire of the working classes, es-
jpecially in the great industrial towns, to improve their v
[economic condition. To accomplish this, it is certainly true
I that the Chartist leaders without exception were in favor
I of legislation which would tend to secure " an equitable
'distribution of property", although some sought this read-
justment through the abolition of existing " class legisla-
tion ", while others proposed legislative programs more or.
less socialistic in character;.

One of the chief abuses which the Chartists ascribed to
the class character of the suffrage was the amount and kind
of taxation to which the masses of the English people were
subject. As the Edinburgh Review correctly stated the
position of the Chartists, " On one point they would prob-

1 Hansard, op. cit., pp. 50-51.

22 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOl'EMENT [280

ably all agree — one refomi they have long been taught by
their leaders to regard as the most important and unques-
tionable of all, — 7nc., a reduction in the amount, and an
alteration in the incidence, of taxation." ^ They objected
\/\ /particularly to the accumulation of the national debt. By
1842 the total debt, funded and unfunded, had increased by
Smore than ten million pounds during the decade of the
'reformed parliamentary regime, reaching a total of £791,-
'757,816.* Interest and other annual charges had increased
by that time to £29,300,1 12. In their " National Petition "
of 1842 the Chartists spoke of the national debt in terms
which caused more comment and alarm among the members
of Parliament than any thing else in the petition :

Your petitioners complain that they are taxed to pay the
interest of what is termed the National Debt — a debt amount-
ing at present to eight hundred millions of pounds — being only
a portion of the enormous amount expended in cruel and ex-
pensive wars for the suppression of all liberty, by men not
authorized by the people, and who, consequently, had no right
to tax posterity for the outrages committed by them upon
mankind.^

It would be unfair to assume from the mere fact that the
Chartists denounced the national debt that they were pre-
pared to outlaw it without compensation; although con-
servative fears were in a measure excused by the fact that
some of the party had expressed the hope that " the fund-
holder's title to draw interest " might one day be abolished.*

* Edinburgh Review, January, 1852.

'Parliamentary Papers, 1857-8 (443), xxxiii, 165 et seq.

' The whole text of the petition is given in Hansard, 3d series, vol.
xlii, pp. 1376-81.

* Chartist Circular, March 7, 1840.

28l] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 33

The Chartists were not at one as to the proper principles
pf national finance; but they all favored direct as opposed to
Indirect taxation and they all favored a use of the taxing \
ipower, not only in such a way as to raise the needed revenue
and to equalize the burden of governmental expenditure,
but also to lessen the existing inequalities in the distribution
I of wealth. A Chartist periodical put this intention with
remarkable frankness: "In theory, a property tax is the'^
most equitable one that could be desired. Its principles and "Y
meaning are to mulct the rich for the poor, to level wealth, \
and to produce social equilibrium." ^ Ernest Jones, in-
cidentally asserting the Marxian doctrine of the inevitable
centralization of wealth, expressed the same view : " Wealth
[in America] is beginning to centralize. It is in its nature
— all other evils follow in its wake. It should be the duty of
government to counteract that centralization by laws hav-
ing a distributive tendency." " William Lovett, the ac-
knowledged chief of the moderate or " moral force "
Chartists, also praised direct taxation and favored the ab-
sorption of the " unearned increment " of land values.'
J. Bronterre O'Brien, called by Feargus O'Connor " the
schoolmaster " of the Chartists, held that the land rental
*' would form a national fund adequate to defray all charges
of the public service . . . without the necessity for any
taxation." *

J. Bronterre O'Brien and Ernest Jones were zealous cham-
pions of the principle of co-operation, and promised them-
selves that a Parliament reformed on the basis of the

^ Power of the Pence, Dec. 23, 1848.

* Notes to the People, p. 2.

3 Lovett, Social and Political Morality (London, 1853), p. 191.

* Propositions of the National Reform League for the Peaceful Re-
generation of Society (1850).

34 THE DECLINE 01- THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [282

Charter would subsidize co-operative industry. Their pur-
A pose should be: "To put an end to profitmongering — to
I emancipate the working-classes from wages-slavery, by en-
,abling them to become their own masters; to destroy
I monopoly and to counteract the centralization of wealth,
by its equable and general diffusion." ^ O'Brien proposed
to establish the right of the people to " a share in the public
credit of the state, in the form of temporary loans or ad-
vances from the proceeds of the rents, mines, fisheries, and
other public property," in order that the people might " be
able to stock and crop the lands rented from the State, or
to manufacture on their own account." ^ Ernest Jones
turns aside from a bitter attack upon the ineffectiveness of
the attempts which had been made at co-operative produc-
tion to ask : " But how would it be, if they had political
pow'er to give them a start? If they had a House of
Commons to vote them £100,000,000 sterling, levied by di-
rect taxation on the rich?"^ He would, however, have
nothing to do with any co-operative enterprises which were
operated upon less than a national scale, believing that such
would only become new centers of privilege.

Then what is the only salutary basis for co-operative industry ?
A national one. All co-operation should be founded, not on
isolated efforts, absorbing, if successful, vast riches to them-
selves, but on a national union which should distribute the
national wealth. To make these associations secure and bene-
ficial, you must make it their interest to assist each other, in-
stead of competing with each other — you must give them unity
of action, and identity of interest.'^

' Notes to the People, p. 27.

* Labor's Wrongs and Labor's Remedy (undated pamphlet), p. 4.
Cf. National Regeneration League, op. cit., p. 3.

' Notes to the People, p. 603.

* Ibid., p. 30. The italics are in the original.

283] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 3-

IThe land monopoly was one of the chief grievances of the 7/
Chartists, although it cannot be listed as one of the causes v
of the movement since the enclosure of the common lands
was chiefly consummated about a generation earlier.^ This
may be illustrated by the successive decrease in the number
of acts of enclosure passed in each of the preceding de-
cades of the century.^

From 1800 to 1810 905

From 1810 to 1820 741

From 1820 to 1830 192

From 1830 to 1840 125

And yet the process of enclosure had by no means stopped.
In 1 84 1, twenty-two acts of enclosure were passed, and in
1842 twelve/ The total amount of land which passed to
private owners by these means from 1760 to 1843 was
probably nearly seven million acres.* Briefly, the economic
changes of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries
transformed England from a country remarkable for the
number of its independent peasantry, to one conspicuous
by their comparative absence. The British freehold farm-
ers have never recovered their former importance; and, as
late as the great land survey of 1874-1875, the total number
of independent holdings in England and Wales, exclusive of
wastes, common, house and garden plots of less than an acre,
was only 269,547, and half of the agricultural land of the
country was owned by a few more than two thousand
persons.^

1 For the beginnings of the enclosure movement, E. C. K. Conner,
Common Land and Inclosure (London, 1912).

^Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (325), xlviii, 467. ^ Ibid.

* A. Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution (London, 1884),
P-89.

^Report of the Land Enquiry Committee (London, 1913), vol. i,
introd. by Gilbert Slater, p. 83.

36 THE DECLIXE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [284

/^ It is true that Chartism was essentially an urban move-
pnent and drew its strength in overwhelming preponderance
\ from the industrial towns of Lancashire and the other
northern counties. But it Kad no such opposition to the
" agricultural interest " as was shown by the manufacturers
>«.nd their representatives in Parliament. On the contrary,
( the Chartists were among the strongest opponents of the
new industrial system and earnestly desired to get a large
proportion of the factory workers back to the land. It
was chiefly by taking advantage of the strength of this
feeling that Feargus O'Connor was able to commit the en-
itire movement to the success of his land plan.^ But while
the Chartists saw a common grievance in British landlord-
ism they were by no means agreed among themselves as to
the appropriate remedy. Some favored the nationalization
of the land; others wished to establish a peasant proprietor-
ship. The sharp divergence between these factions effec-
tively prevented any union of the party upon a land program.
It would not, however, be going too far to say that, however
Jhe Chartist leaders might differ upon the question of land
\ ownership, they were agreed that the land must be restored
I to the people, that the great estates must be broken up into
small farms, and that the principle of primogeniture in the
entailing of land must be abolished.

The attack on the land monopoly was not regarded as a
novel attack on property, but simply as a restitution of rights
once enjoyed and now unjustly withheld. The Chartist
periodicals ever kept before the mind of their readers the
idea that until the Tudor period almost all of the land of
England was held by the yeomanry, and that this had been
stolen from them bit by bit ever since through the class
legislation which was the inevitable result of the restriction

1 Cf. infra, pp. 84-93.

285] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 37

of the franchise. All of the acts of enclosure were regarded
as part of this program of theft. In speaking of the land
monopoly in Scotland, Ernest Jones concluded his attack:
" Behold evil and remedy. Down with the 7800 landed "->
monopolists. Restore the wages-slaves to those lands of {
which their forefathers were plundered. And behold the J
means in political power and in that alone." ^ The right of
access to the land was regarded not only as an historic right,
but as a natural right as well. " Every man who is willing
to cultivate land and render it productive . . . should be
allowed to possess a portion of land. . . . No man should
be allowed to keep land in his possession uncultivated." ^

Since the Chartists were convinced that the right to ex-
propriate the landlord was so clear, the only remaining ques- U
tion was the wisdom of this policy. Many economists of
the day believed not only that the small farm was doomed
to disappear in competition with the estate of the capitalist,
but that this change, so far from being reactionary, was the
way of progress. The enclosure movement had undeniably
been accompanied by much agricultural improvement. The
" gentleman farmer" invested heavily in the new machinery,
tried experiments in stock-breeding, and spent a great deal
in manuring and draining the soil. The theories of Arthur
Young, advocate of the " new farming," dominated British
economic thought. Chartism, in fact, was at its strongest
just when this contrast between the new farming and the
old was most marked, for the chief improvements of modem
farming were then both known and used, but the average
farmer had neither the capital nor the education to enable
;him to make use of them for himself. But the Chartists, in
, defiance of the regnant ideas of the time, championed the
I small farm system. They acknowledged that the weight of

' Notes to the People, p. 444.

* The Reformer's Almanac, by Joseph Barker (London, 1848), p. 17.

\A

38 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [286

contemporary authority was against them, but set down all
opposition as due to the prejudices of the privileged.
" There is amongst some,'' wrote Joseph Barker, " an outcry
against small farms; but we believe the outcry originates
with selfish men." * Ernest Jones estimated that an equal
division of the arable land in the United Kingdom would
give eleven acres to every family.'

The chief cause of the opposition to the institution of
primogeniture seems to have been that it was an artificial
means of maintaining the system of great estates which the
, Chartists believed to be so radically vicious. The question
was brought forcibly to the attention of the nation in the
fonnative year of the movement. Mr. Ewart had intro-
duced a bill into the House of Commons on the fourth of
April, 1837, making real property subject to the same laws
of entail as other private property. It was rejected by a
majority of thirty-three.^ The smallness of the^- v»te,
twenty-one to fifty-four, shows how far outside the field
of practical politics such a measure then was. The Chartists,
however, were willing to go even beyond the scope of the
measure rejected by Parliament and to favor legislation
which would compel the division of landed property at death.
William Lovett insisted that the testator " should not be
empowered to determine that his property should pass on
successively from heir to heir, to the prejudice of the
younger branches of the family." * Joseph Barker held it
was the law of entail and primogeniture that gave to the aris-
tocracy their power, and added that, compared with this one
evil, all other political evils were as nothing/

* Reformer's Companion to the Almanac (Wortley, 1848), p. 153.

' Notes to the People, p. iii. ,

' Hansard, 3d series, vol. xxxvii, p. 740.

■* Social and Political Morality, p. 165.

^ Companion to the Almanac, op. cit., p. 123.

]

287] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 39

But the agreement of the Chartist leaders as to the eco-
nomic purposes for which they valued the franchise was
wholly negative. All were opposed to a system of taxation
which bore more hardly upon the poor than upon the rich,
to the further accumulation of the public debt, to the land
monopoly and to the principle of primogeniture. But there
was no corresponding positive economic program. Some
Chartists favored free-trade; others were protectionist.
Some believed in peasant proprietorship and in voluntary co-
operation; others desired the nationalization of the land
and state ownership of industry. Some wished to work
hand in glove with the labor unions, the co-operative stores
and the Owenite Socialists; others dreaded the effect of an
alliance between the Chartist party and any parallel or
competing reform movement. Disregarding minor points .- _
of difference, we may distinguish three main factions with- (
in the party on the question of property in the means of ?
production and of distribution. ^

Ernest Jones was the intellectual leader of the extreme
collectivists of the party. Their aims were best phrased in
the resolutions adopted by the Chartist convention of 185 1,
at a time when the organized movement was completely in
the hands of this faction. These resolutions favored the
complete nationalization of the land by government re-
sumption of commons, crown lands and the lands of the
Church, and by purchase from private owners; the disestab-
lishment and disendowment of the Church of England ; free,
compulsory, secular education ; the founding of national co-
operative societies; the establishment of the right of the
poor to relief and employment; the placing of all taxes on
land or on property; the extinction of the national debt by
treating interest payments as installments of the principal;
the substitution of a militia for a standing army, and the
abolition of capital punishment.^

1 The Friend of the People, April 12, 1851.

40 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [288

As we have already seen, Ernest Jones was at once the
strongest advocate of co-operation on a national scale and
the bitterest opponent of the co-operative movement of the
time/ He viewed with equal suspicion the attempt to create
a peasant proprietorship by increasing the number of small
holdings, fearing lest a numerous body of small owners
would prove a bulwark for the protection of large land-
owners as well, since both would have an interest in up-
holding the principle of private property in land.^ " There
is nothing," he wrote, " more reactionary than the small
freehold system. It is increasing the strength of landlord-
ism." ^ In common with other Chartists, he held that the
small farm system was far superior to the English capital-
istic agriculture, but he regarded this as only a relative super-
iority. Better results than were obtainable by either of the
existing methods might be obtained if the land were na-
tionalized.* With that accomplished, " such a thing as
pauperism, in its real sense, could hardly exist." ^ It is
surprising, in view of his opinions, that Jones worked for
years as the closest ally of Feargus O'Connor whose pet plan
was to establish just such a class of freehold farmers a>
Jones had denounced.

Two of the most important and influential of the Chartist
leaders, opposed on almost every point of policy, led the

1 Supra, p. 34.

' It is worth notice that Charles Kingsley opposed O'Connor's land
plan on the ground that peasant proprietorship was a reactionary sys-
tem, tending to sink the peasant into an animal and slavish condition.
" For the town artizan ... to become a peasant proprietor would be, I
conceive, nothing but a fall." The Application of Associative Prin-
ciples and Methods to Agriculture (1851), p. 59.

*Notes to the People, p. 56. Italics are in the original.

* Ibid., pp. 256-7.

^ Ibid., p. 120.

289] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 41

individualist wing of the party. Feargus O'Connor wrote
in The Labourer, a periodical which he edited in conjunc-
tion with Ernest Jones in the interests of his land plan :

I ever have been, and I think I ever shall be, opposed to the
principle of Communism, as advocated by several theorists.
I am, nevertheless, a strong advocate of Co-operation, which
means legitimate exchange, and which circumstances would
compel individuals to adopt, to the extent that Communism
would be beneficial.^

" I am," he reassured the public, " even opposed to public
kitchens, public baking-houses, and public wash-houses." *
William Lovett was quite as outspoken. He thought that
land nationalization, or even ownership vested in the muni-
cipalities or other local bodies, would be not only unnec-
essary but positively harmful. " Were the land divided
into districts," he predicted, " and cultivated in common,
and governed by majorities (locally or generally), there
is reason for believing that the energies and virtues of the
industrious, skilful, and saving, would soon be sunk and
sacrificed for the benefit of the idle and extravagant." '
[ Lovett' s own inclination was always for social improve-
\ ment through voluntary effort, without waiting for the day
when the Charter should become law and the action of the
state on behalf of the people become possible. In the little
booklet Chartism,'^ he advocated the establishment of a
National Association to be supported by penny-a-week con-
tributions which should maintain places for public meeting,
schools, circulating libraries, public baths, play grounds,.

^The Labourer (1847-8), p. 149.
"^ Ihid., p. 157.

' Social and Political Morality, p. 163.
* Cf. supra, p. 29.

/"^

42 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [290

/•and the like. This preoccupation with popular education
I A (and general welfare was viewed with no little suspicion by

/some of Lovett's fellow. Chartists, who feared lest the

7 attention of reformers might be diverted from the all-

\ important matter of winning the Charter.

Perhaps a third school of economic theory might be dis-
tinguished within the movement. J. Bronterre O'Brien
cannot be wholly identified with the individualism of Lovett
and O'Connor nor with the collectivism of Ernest Jones.
He favored the nationalization of the land on the ground
that " the nation alone has the just power of leasing out
the land for cultivation and of appropriating the rents
therefrom ".^ To this end he advocated purchase by the
government of all private land upon the death of the
owner of each holding and its subsequent division into
small farms paying rent to the state.^ And yet he opposed
communism in anything hut land. O'Brien's cautious state-
ment that "if the means of acquiring and retaining wealth
are equally secured to all in proportion to the respective in-
dustry and services of each, I see no objection to private
property ",^ might seem to impose a rather stringent condi-
tion upon the institution of private property were it not for
his optimistic conclusion that this just distribution of private
wealth was by no means an impossibility. " I will never
admit," he continues, " that private property is incompatible
with public happiness, till I see it fairly tried. I never
found an objection urged against it. which I cannot trace
to the abuse, not to the use, of the institution." *

The explanation of O'Brien's position is the very sharp

' Bronterre's National Reformer, Feb. 25, 1837.

* Labor's Wrongs and Labor's Remedy, p. 4.
'English Chartist Circular (1841-2), vol. i, p. 71.

* Italics in the original.

V/'

291] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 43

distinction he drew between land and other forms of
weahh. Land, minerals, and other forms of natural wealth
ought to be nationalized, " because these are of God's and
not man's creation ",^ but we are not to fall into the " fatal
delusion " of communism in the products of industry.
Joseph Barker, another Chartist journalist of ability and
influence, held that taxation should rest only on land, since
" the land is not the produce of industry, but is itself wealth,
independent of industry ".^ Barker did not, however, draw
the conclusion from this principle that the land should be
nationalized or even that all its rental value should be ab-
sorbed by the state. In his view the state should impose
only such a land tax as might be necessary to meet the
current expenses of government. In the doctrines of
O'Brien and Barker it is easy to see foreshadowings of
Henry George and the theory of the Single Tax.

But however Chartists might differ as to the ultimate
aims which the Charter was to make possible, all were
agreed that political power was a certain means to achieve
the aims which each of them desired. It did not apparently
occur to any Chartist leader that a democratic House of
Commons could fail to enact all necessary reforms, although
the divisions of opinion within the Chartist party itself
should have warned the Chartists of possible disappoint-
ment. Neither did they believe it possible that an unre-
formed Parliament would ever enact any but class legis- ^' I
lation. " A parliament," insisted O'Brien, " which repre-
sents only those who thrive by labour's wrongs will never
recognize labor's rights, nor legislate for labor's eman-
cipation ".^ He did not believe that any considerable num-

* Power of the Pence, Jan. 27, 1849.

* The People (1849), vol. i, p. 115.

* O'Brien, The Rise, Progress and Phases of Human Slavery (Lon-
don, 1885; first edition in 1850), p. 119.

t/'l

v/V

44 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [292

ber of the working class could hope to acquire property
enough by their own efforts to entitle them to citizenship.
" Knaves will tell you that' it is because you have no prop-
erty that you are unrepresented. I tell you, on the con-
trary, it is because you are unrepresented that you have no
property ".^ S, B. Bamford summed up the party attitude
admirably : " Quoting scripture, we did, in fact say, first
obtain annual parliaments, and universal suffrage, and,
' Whatsoever thou wouldest shall be added thereto '." ^
/The Chartist movement resembled all modern proletarian
A movements in that its aims were economic, but it differed
jfrom more recent agitations by a unique belief in the effi-
l^cacy of political action as a means.

/" But the aims and theories of Chartist leaders do not
\suffice to determine the character of the movement. Not
only had all six points of the Charter been familiar to Eng-
\^'^ lish radicals for decades, but all of the economic and social
changes advocated or discussed in the Chartist press found
champions before Chartism was organized and ever since
it disappeared. The real question of the growth and de-
v^/^cline of Chartism is the question of the varying amount of
popular support afforded to the organization and its leaders.
Chartism gave the British operative a standard to which
to rally ; it was to him what Socialism is to-day, the political
party which seemed most adequately to express his griev-
ances and to offer the most plausible remedy for them.
The recruits of the Chartist movement were drawn from
the supporters of a number of previous popular agitations.
The chief of these have been summarized by Dr. Tildsley
as follows :

' Bronterre's National Reformer, Jan. 15, 1837.

* S. B. Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (London, 1844),
vol. i, p. II.

293] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 4-

The first of these movements was Owenism, the second the
movement for the attainment of the Ten Hour Bill, the third
sought the repeal of the New Poor Law, and the fourth . . .
desired the defeat of Peel's Currency Bill of 1819 and ex-
pressed itself in favor of the expansion of the circulating
medium. We can hardly add to these four movements as a
fifth that which aimed at the repeal of the Corn Laws, for in
1837 such a movement was not yet organized. But from that
time forth . . . there were few great workers' meetings in
which these laws were not openly attacked. Their opponents
increased and strengthened the Chartist movement.^

I One factor in the influence of Chartism among the un-
represented classes was the lack of othe r adequate outlet
for their discontent. While the suffrage remained re-
*iStricted they could have no share, other than agitation, in
the political life of the country, and labor was not at that
time sufficiently organized to make possible an effective
i struggle with capital in the economic field. The early years
I of Chartism were a period of great weakness among the
. labor unions. In 1841 the organization of the English
and Scottish stonemasons collapsed, the Lancashire textile
workers' organizations were inactive, the ironfounders, the
boilermakers, and the journeymen of the millwrights and
steam-engine makers were unable to maintain their unions
in the face of widespread unemployment. The Glasgow
workers had been particularly demoralized by the prosecu-
tions directed against their violent methods in 1839.^ Char-'^
tism profited by this discouragement of the workers withS
their efforts to win better conditions for themselves without^
a preliminary attainment of political power. The greater
number of trades-unionists declared for the Charter, al-

^ Die Entstehung der Chartistenbewegung, pp. lo-ii.
' Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade Unionism (London,
I9ii),p. 157-

46 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [294

though the trades unions never joined the movement in a
body as unions.^

But the strongest recruiting agent for the movement v^as
what Thomas Carlyle named " the condition of England
question "." Not only was the absolute degree of poverty
great, but the sharp contrast existing between the misery
and dependence of the masses and the opulence of the few
edged discontent with bitterness. A very naive confession
of the extent of this inequality was made by the ultra-
conservative Blackwood's Magazine in an article directed
against any extension of the franchise.^ " Out of nineteen
milhon heads in this island ", so ran the estimate, " not
three hundred thousand are connected with property suffi-
cient to ensure the conservative instincts and sympathies
of properties." The Chartist attitude towards the inequali-
ties which Blackwood's recorded so complacently, is well
shown in the bitter language of the petition of 1842:

That your petitioners, with all due respect and loyalty, would
compare the daily income of the Sovereign Majesty with that
of thousands of the working men of this nation; and whilst
your petitioners have learned that her Majesty receives daily
for her private use the sum of £164 17s. lod., they have also
ascertained that many thousands of the families of the labour-
ers are only in the receipt of 3^d. per head per day.*

It is hardly surprising that the Chartist agitation, with its
definite and attractive political program and its indefinite,
but equally attractive, promise of social and economic better-
ment, became the center of one of the most formidable popu-

1 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, op. cit., p. 158.

* T. Carlyle, Chartism (London, 1839), passim.
^ Blackwood's Magazine, Sept., 1842.

* Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ixxii, p. 1378.

295] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 47

lar movements in English history. It is more remarkable
that the British workingmen who took part in the movement
should have fought for the Charter without any considerable
body of allies from other ranks of society. The Radicals
had been the party of the people and they were, as a group,
sympathetic with the Chartist demand for complete political
democracy.^ But the Chartists not only refused to consider
themselves as a wing of the Radical party, they regarded the
middle-class Radicals as their most inveterate enemies and
lost no opportunity to criticize their activities in the House
of Commons and to oppose their candidates at elections.
Much of this opposition was due no doubt to mere class 1
prejudice, a feeling that it was impossible for the oper->*
atives to work in the same party with their employers. But\
the specific issues which brought the Chartists into antagon- j
ism with Radicals as well as with the Whig ministry, were y
three in number: the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834;
the negative attitude of the Radicals, as a party, to social
politics in general and to factory legislation in particular ;
and the anti-Corn-Law agitation, which competed for popu
lar favor with the six points of the Charter during the years
of greatest strength of the Chartist propaganda.

The attitude of the Chartists toward the activities of the
Anti-Corn-Law League is one that requires some explana-
tion, since the demand for cheaper food was made on behalf
of the industrial workers in the towns, the very class that
formed the bulk of the Chartist party. Gammage believed
that the Chartists who opposed the League might be divided
into three groups : the masses who simply distrusted their
employers and all the legislation favored by them ; Chartists,
like William Lovett, who favored free-trade but wished to
obtain the Charter first ; and the faction of Feargus O'Connor

1 Cf. supra, p. 18.

V

^ THE DECUXE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [296

and J, Bronterre O'Brien, who feared that free-trade meant
lower wages and greater power for the manufacturers/
Lovett and Hetherington^ in a letter to the Northern Star
of September 22, 1838, pointed out that the Charter would
without doubt be followed by an immediate abrogation of
the Corn Laws." John Mason, speaking at Leicester in
1840, charged the League with bad faith to the working
classes, saying: *' When we get the Charter we will repeal
the Corn Laws and all the other bad laws. But if you give
up your agitation for the Charter to help the Free Traders,
they will not help you to get the Charter . . . ' Cheap
Bread!' they cry. But they mean low wages." ^ The
second resolution of the executive committee in 1842 de-
clared :

That this meeting unreservedly condemns all taxes levied upon
bread and other necessaries of life, that it is of the opinion
that the monopoly of food depends upon the monopoly of the
Suffrage, that it has no confidence in any Government ap-
pointed under the present system, and despairing of the re-
moval of existing misery, is fully convinced that the total and
entire repeal of the Corn and Provision Laws, can only be the
act of a Parliament representing the interests and opinions of
the whole people of Great Britain and Ireland.*

Henry Vincent also held the view expressed in this resolu-
tion that it would be easier as well as better to obtain the
repeal of the Corn Laws through the medium of a Chartist
House of Commons than to agitate for it directly. Speak-
ing at Bath on December 20, 1841, he gave as his opinion
that nothing short of an agitation " almost bordering on

' Gammage, op. cit., pp. 102-4.

' Cited in E. Dolleans, Le Chartisme, vol. ii, p. 24.

' Life of Thomas Cooper, p. 136. '

* English Chartist Circular, vol. ii, p. 25.

297] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 49

a Revolution " could obtain a repeal of the Corn Laws, and
that " the same amount of exertion would obtain a perfect
control over the Government." ^ The free-trade Chartists,
then, regarded the activities of the Anti-Corn Law League
as a harmful, perhaps deliberately harmful, division of the /%
forces of reform which should be united upon the conquest

I of political democracy as a prerequisite to all economic

\ reforms.

Other Chartists, however, cannot be classified as free-
traders. Many believed with the Ricardian economists that
the amount of wages or the price of bread was a question
of little permanent importance, since wages would tend
in the long run to fall to mere subsistence.* At a meeting
in Manchester on March 19, 1841, the walls were covered
with placards reading : " Why do these liberal manufac-
turers bawl so lustily for the repeal of the Corn Laws?
Because, with the reduced price of corn, they will be enabled
to reduce the wages of the working men, in order that they
may compete with foreigners who live upon potatoes." *
Debates between the Chartists and the League were of fre-
quent occurrence and not seldom ended in riot and disorder.*
With the repeal of the Corn LaW'S the attitude of many
Chartists changed. Previously the majority of the party
promised themselves free-trade, at least in foodstuffs, as
one of the results of the winning of the Charter. Even
those who cared nothing for free-trade did not adopt a
protectionist theory, but contented themselves with the argu-
ment that the Anti-Corn Law League sought the benefit of

* English Chartist Circular, vol. i, p. 201.

* Tildsley, Die Entstehung der Chartistenbewegung, p. 84.

* Archibald Prentice, History of the Anti-Corn Law League, 2 vols.
(London, 1853). vol. i, pp. 192-3-

4 Cf. infra, p. 157.

-O THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [298

the manufacturers rather than that of the operatives. But
after the victory of the League the Chartists could no
longer contend that only' a Chartist Parliament would re-
peal the Com Laws, and it would weaken their propaganda
to admit that an economic reform which was carried by an
unrepresentative Parliament had been of great benefit to
the working people. In 1841 an influential party periodical
declared that the policy of the Chartists was " not to re-
duce, but to abolish the taxes on all articles which press
upon the industry of the laborer, and give cheap tea, tobacco,
coffee, wines, etc., at the same time with cheap bread, wood,
and sugar." ^ In 1848 another Chartist paper insisted
that, while direct taxation was the simpler and so the better
method, yet the worker in the end paid all taxes and could
gain little or nothing by abolishing the taxes which pressed
on industry"; "as to the 'taxes on industry,' as they are
called, a repeal of them never benefits the laborer, but
always the capitalist that employs him, or the fixed income
man, who consumes his produce." ^ " Free-trade," said
this paper, " without reciprocity, without a reduction of
rents and taxes, and without any guarantees to the working
classes, against non-employment and reductions in wages,
ivas and is a positive evil." '

The powerful influence of O'Connor was thrown against
^ free trade. He hated the Whigs and the manufacturers so
bitterly that he was almost willing to champion the " agri-
cultural interest " against them. This position was espec-
ially marked when he became interested in his land plan
for re-establishing a British peasantry. Naturally O'Con-
nor feared the effect of foreign competition upon his agri-

^ McDouall's Chartist and Republican Journal, May 29, 1841.

^ Power of the Pence, Nov. 11, 1848.

' Ihid., Jan. 20, 1849; italics in the original.

r^

299] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT gj

cultural venture, and he desired protection just as did other
English landowners. Like other Chartists, too, he seems
to have held the " home market" theory; considering that
the working classes of Great Britain should be the best cus-
tomers of the manufacturers of the nation, and viewing
with suspicion the uncertainties oi foreign trade. ^ Finally,
it was remembered by all Chartists that John Bright and
Richard Cobden, the most prominent representatives of free
trade theory to the country at large, were at the same time
the strongest opponents of factory legislation in the Houses, '^■''
of Commons. ^"^f^

I The question of governmental regulation of the hours
and conditions of labor brought the Chartists into sharpest L. a
conflict with the Radicals. The Radicals favored free
\ trade as a commercial policy and unrestricted rights of
I contract ^ in industry. The Chartists did not share the
I Radical faith in the philosophy of laissez-faire; they were
I not agreed as to the benefits of free trade but they were
I unanimous in upholding the right of the state to supervise
•industry for the protection of labor. Harriet Martineau,
writing as a Radical, thus scornfully characterized the
Chartist position : " The Chartists understood nothing of
the operation of the corn-laws against their interests; and
they were so far from comprehending their own existing
rights, while demanding others, that they permitted friends
to urge the legislature to take from them the command of
their only possession — their labor." ^ Miss Martineau was

^ Tildsley, op. cit., p. 89.

* Many of the Radicals drew a distinction between the labor of adults
and that of children and did not oppose state interference to protect the
latter, but even in child-labor legislation they were apt to be very con-
servative.

* H. Martineau, A History of the Thirty Years' Peace, 4 vols. (Lon-
don, 1877), vol. iii, p. 494.

52 THE DECLIXE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [30a

wholly correct in believing that the Chartists favored labor
legislation to protect adults as well as children. This is
proved by the language of their petition of 1842:

Your petitioners complain that the hours of labour, particu-
larly of the Factory Workers, are protracted beyond the limits
of human endurance, and that the wages earned, after un-
natural application to toil in heated and unhealthy workshops,
are inadequate to sustain the bodily strength, and supply those
comforts which are so imperative after an excessive waste of
physical energy.^

A few enlightened Tories such as Lord Ashley (later
Earl of Shaftesbury) and a few such Radicals as John
Fielden, were in full sympathy with the special interests of
the working class. But the general position of Parliament
during the earlier years of Chartist agitation was one of
obstinate opposition to any such state interference with in-
dustry as the Chartists desired. As leader of the Conser-
vatives, Sir Robert Peel opposed the attempt to limit the
hours of labor for women and children employed in the
textile factories to ten hours a day," although it is true that
he could not carry all of his party with him. John Bright^
perhaps the greatest Radical leader, characterized the Tea.
Hours bill as " one of the worst measures ever passed inl
the shape of an act of the legislature ".^ John Roebuck,
another influential Radical, offered a resolution in 1844:
" That it is the opinion of this House that no interference
with the power of adult labourers in factories, to make con-
tracts respecting the hours for which they shall be employed,
be sanctioned by this House ".* Still more extreme expres-

* Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ixii, pp. 1376-81.
' Ibid., vol. Ixxiv, pp. 1078-94.

^ Ibid., vol. Ixxxix, p. 1148.

* Ibid., vol. Ixxiv, p. 611.

30l] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 53

sions of the same attitude might be quoted. E. C. Tufnell
enhvened his official report on factory conditions with the
highly ingenuous remark that " the precise form of evil
which the Ten Hour Bill would assume it is impossible to
foresee, but certain it is, that nothing but evil could come
from its operation "/ The Marquis of Londonderry, who
had much property in coal mines, declared in the House of
Lords that he would never allow his property to be in-
spected. " As a coal owner, he should say to any inspector,
' You may go down into the pit how you can, and when you
are down, you may remain there '." ^

Although the Chartists, unlike most of the other factory
reformers, made no distinction between legislation for chil-
dren and for adults, for women and for men, they sup-
ported every attempt made in Parliament to limit the labor
of women and children. Besides the motives of humanity
and the fact that the abuses of the existing industrial sys-
tem appeared most clearly in the case of women and chil-
dren, the British workingman had a double reason for
favoring the proposed protective legislation. The cheap-
ness of child labor and the simplicity of factory machinery
endangered the workingman's own job, or at least his pre-
vious standard of wages, by forcing him to compete with
his own children in the labor market.^ In the second place,
as the opponents of state regulation never wearied of point-
ing out, women, children and young persons were com-
monly employed as " helpers " or auxiliaries to the men
who worked in the same establishment. A limitation of
their labor operated in practise as a limitation of the labor
of the men as well, and it was this limitation that the Radi-

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1834, pt. i (167), xix, 259 et seq.; p. 214.
' Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ixv, p. 891.

* On this point see Parliamentary Papers, 1833 (450), xx, i et seq.,
25.

v^

\J

54 run DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [302

cals were chicUy concerned to oppose and the Chartists to
defend.

j The other great issue between Radicals and Chartists
[was the Poor I-^w Amendment Act of 1834,^ superseding
the Ehzabethan law of 1601 ^ and much subsequent legis-
lation. J. H. Rose is of the opinion that in all probability
^ tlie People's Charter would never have been drawn up,
J I but for the blaze of discontent caused by the exorbitant
^ |/^stamp duty on newspapers and by the severity of the new
/Poor Law of 1834 "j'* and there is much contemporary evi-
dence to confirm his view. Lord Stanhope declared in
1839 that " He saw, alas! too much reason to expect that,
at a future and no distant period, a Radical Reformer —
perhaps some Chartist — would exclaim, with joy and exul-
tation . . . ' Without the new Poor Law we should never
have had universal suffrage '." * The purpose of the new
law was to decrease the burden of the poor rates which
threatened, under the old sytem of parochial relief, to
pauperize a large part of the English laborers, especially in
the country ; the method chosen to effect this was the prac-
tical abolition of outdoor relief and the consolidation of
parishes into " unions " for purposes of administration."^
Three commissioners were appointed to oversee the opera-
tion of the act throughout England and Wales generally, to
make yearly reports of the working of the new system, to
appoint minor officials, to issue instructions for the guid-
ance of the local poor law authorities, and to order unions
formed and workhouses built. Each parish in the union

' 4 and 5 William IV, c. 76.

* 43 Eliz., c. 2.

* Rose, The Rise of Democracy (London, 1897), p. 54.

* Hansard, 3d series, vol. xlviii, p. 806.

^ The New Poor Law is described in G. NichoUs, History of the Eng-
lish Poor Law, 2 vols. (London, 1898), vol. ii, pp. 272-81.

303] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 55

was liable for the support of its own poor, but aid was ex-
tended through the medium of the union. Migration of
labor was encouraged, in place of the penalization of the
old Law of Settlement devised to prevent parishes from
shifting their burdens onto each other. Two justices were
allowed to except persons unable to work from the require-
ment of residence in the workhouse imposed upon other
paupers. The regulations issued by the new commissioners
to the boards of guardians forbade relief to all persons in
employment, relief in money allowance to able-bodied
workers, payments of house rent and outdoor relief gen-
erally, except in cases of urgent necessity, to persons from
sixteen to sixty. ^ Within the unions paupers were separated
into seven classes : aged or infirm men, men and youths
over thirteen, boys from seven to thirteen, aged and infirm
women, women and girls over sixteen, girls from seven to
sixteen, and children under seven.^ Even relatives were
separated under this plan and allowed to meet only under
restrictions. Paupers could not leave the workhouse even
to go to church without going through all the formalities
of readmission on their return.*

The success of the New Poor Law from the standpoint
of its authors was great and immediate. In the year end-
ing Lady-day, 1834, the last year before the change of
system took place, £6,317,255 was spent for the relief of
the poor, an amount equal to 8s. 9^2 d. per capita of the
population of England and Wales.* The next year the
sum had fallen to £5,526,418, or 7s. 7d. per capita; while
in 1836-37 it was only £4,044,741, or 5s. 5d. per capita.
Afterwards the hard times increased the cost of poor relief

1 Nicholls, op. cit., p. 298, *Ibid., p. 301.

* NlchoUs, History of the English Poor Law, op. cit., pp. 31 1-2.

* Parliamentary Papers, 1852 (1461), xxiii, i et seq.

56 THE DHCLIXE OF THE CH.IKTJST MOIEMENT [304

somewhat, but never quite to the old level throughout the
entire period of Chartist agitation. Such stringent limita-
tion of public charity, however, could not but attract criti-
cism from many quarters. It was charged in Parliament
in 1838 that Assistant Commissioner Kaye had declared
that the intention of the authorities was " to make the
workhouses as like prisons as possible, and to make them as
uncomfortable as possible ", in order to terrorize British
workingmen from seeking relief.^ Fortunately for the
popular acceptance of the law it was passed during a period
of industrial expansion which permitted rural laborers to
find work in the industrial towns of the midland and the
north.- But, nevertheless, the first effect of the change was
to force many of the aged or infirm agricultural laborers
into the workhouses of the unions,^ and also, apparently,
to increase the labor of women and children in the rural
districts.'* With the coming of hard times in 1837 the
workmen in the towns felt the rigor of the new system,
and, both in town and in country, meetings of protest were
held. Richard Oastler, of Yorkshire, and in Lancashire
the Reverend Joseph Raynor Stephens, a Wesleyan min-
ister, counseled resistance to the enforcement of the law.
At Newcastle, on New Year's Day, 1838, Stephens told^
his hearers that rather than have the law continued he would/
prefer to see Newcastle " one blaze of fire with only one [
way to put it out, and that with the blood of all who sup-i
ported this abominable measure ".^

The Chartists found powerful allies outside their own

^ Hansard, 3d series, vol. xli, p. 1014.

*W. Hasbach, History of the English Agricultural Labourer (Lon-
don, 1908), p. 220.

* Ibid., p. 219.

* Ibid., p. 225.

* Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, pp. 55-9.

305] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 57

ranks in their struggle with the New Poor Law. The ad-
herents of factory reform, including the Tory Democrats
and the London Times, protested against the severity of
the law; partly, no doubt, from a genuine sympathy with
the poor, but partly because it was carried by a Whig min-
istry and a reformed Parliament. No one could forget the
exclamation of William Cobbett at the friendly reception
accorded to the hated measure by the House of Commons,
" Thank God ! The country still possessed a House of
Lords ; and while that tribunal existed the poor man had no
reason to despair of justice." ^ The Poor Law Amend-
ment Act passed the House of Lords without much diffi-
culty, but Cobbett's words were partly justified by a formal
protest printed by some of the Lords declaring the measure
" unjust and cruel to the poor ".^ The members of the re-
formed Parliament, such as Attwood and O'Connor, who
afterwards sympathized with Chartism, joined with Cob-
bett to oppose the Bill in all its stages. Attwood, at a later
period, declared the New Poor Law " more odious than any
measure which had been passed since the Norman Con-
quest." ^ But the leaders of both the Liberal and the Con-
servative parties steadily opposed all attempts to reopen the
questions which it was hoped that the law of 1834 had
settled.

To the Chartists, the New Poor Law was not only a
grievance but a breach of faith. They had come to look
upon the outdoor relief granted for so many generations
not as a charity to be extended or withdrawn at the whim of
a legislature in which they had no representation, but as ^
one of the historic rights of the English laborer. Cobbett

^ Hansard, 3d series, vol. xxiv, p. 387.
' Ibid., vol. XXV, p. 1098.
3 Ibid., vol. xlix, p. 223.

58 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [306

had declared that everyone ought to know " that the right
of the EngHsh poor to relief in cases of indigence was as
sound and as good a right as that of any gentleman or
nobleman to the possession of his lands." ^ This exactly
corresponded with the view expressed seven years later by
one of the Chartists :

I would undertake to prove that the poor had a better right
to such parochial relief as the old Act of Elizabeth provided,
than the landlord has to his conquered estate or the grinding
shopocrat to his fraud-begotten profits. . . I would go further
and prove that the legislature had no more right (except the
right of force) to pass such an act as the amendment act
(without giving the paupers and labouring classes compensa-
tion) than it had to rifle the silversmiths of Lxjndon of their
plate to make coin of it.^

. The workers suspected in the policy of the government a
capitalist plot to drive them to accept cheap labor by cutting
off their old alternative of poor relief.^ They also criti-
cized the meager dietary of the union workhouses, compar-
ing the pauper allowance with the payments to " national
out-door paupers " such as the royal family ; * and they de-
nounced the segregation of husbands and wives as a viola-
tion of the law of God. The emphatic attitude of the
Chartists on the question of poor relief is well illustrated
rby their petition of 1842, in which they take occasion to
^ denounce as " contrary to all previous statutes, opposed to
the spirit of the constitution, and an actual violation of the
Christian religion "

1 Hansard, 3d series, vol. xxiii, p. 1336.

^ McDouall's Chartist and Republican Journal, Aug. 21, 1841.

* Tildsley, Die Entstehung der Chartistenhewegung, p. 27.

* The New Black List, cited in Dierlamm, Die Flugschriftsnliteratur
der Chartistenhewegung, p. 23.

307] CHARTISM AS A CLASS MOVEMENT 59

the determination of your honourable House to continue the
Poor-law Bill in operation, notwithstanding the many proofs
which have been afforded by sad experience of the unconsti-
tutional principle of the bill, of its unchristian character, and
of the cruel and murderous effects produced upon the wages of
working men, and the lives of the subjects of this realm.^

The Chartist movement, if it did not take name and form
until three or four years after the Poor Law Amendment
Act was passed, synchronized exactly with the hard times
which caused the law to be felt as a great grievance, and,
in its earlier years, drew most of its attacks on existing con-
ditions from the complaints of those who suffered from
; the restrictions of the new system. If one cause was,
more important than any other in detaching the working
J; classes who followed the Chartist banner from th e general / \/\
\ forces of Radicalism with which tHey had previously been
associated, it was this Act and the defense of it by Radicals -
How complete the alienation of the two classes was, and
what bitterness it engendered, can be shown from J. Bron-
terre O'Brien's characterization of the conduct of the re-
formed Parliament and his estimate of the motives of its

leaders :

■•\

What was the first act of that Reformed Parliament? The /
Coercion Bill for Ireland. What was the last act of the first*
session ? . The New Poor Law for England. Why did that y
base Parliament pass both these acts? To place the laboringf y
classes of both countries at the feet of the rich assassins, who\
rob, brutalize, and enslave the populations of both. It is iny
the nature of things that the middle classes must be worse
than any other part of the community.-

' Hansard, 3d scries, vol. Ixii, pp. 1376-81.

^ McDouall's Chartist and Republican Journal, July 31, 1841.

CHAPTER II

The High Tide of Chartism

The strength of the Chartist movement at different times
is not easy to measure, for, Hke most popular agitations,
it had periods of intense activity varied by intervals of
comparative quiescence. On at least three occasions the
movement showed sufficient strength to alarm the govern-
ment and the conservative public. The first phase of the
agitation culminated in the attack by an armed band of
Chartists under John Frost and other leaders; the second
in the wholesale strikes in the manufacturing districts of
Lancashire and other northern counties in the summer of
1842 ; the third in the demonstration of April 10, 1848, when
London was garrisoned by a special army of police con-
stables to prevent disorder in connectioii with the presenta-
tion of the Chartist petition to Parliament. It need not
be assumed that the real strength of the movement was
greatest on these three occasions, but unquestionably it was

/ then most evident. Each of these periods coincided with a
more or less serious industrial crisis, just as the whole
m ovement fell in a p eriod of general ind ustri al depression.

' The strength of the movement in 1839 is evidenced by the
great petition of that year, which boasted 1,280,000 signa-
tures, collected in more than five hundred public meetings
held in 214 towns and villages of Great Britain.^ The
degree of public interest in Chartism revealed by this num-

1 Hansard, 3d series, vol. xlviii, p. 223.
5o [308

309] THE HIGH TIDE OF CHARTISM 61

ber of signatures was remarkable, for, after making all
reasonable deductions for fraudulent signatures and the
signatures of those who, as women, would not be enfran-
chised by the Charter, it is probable that the petition repre-
sented a far more numerous constituency than did the House
of Commons which refused to consider it/ But the two
years following 1839 were marked by comparative inactiv-
ity, due in part no doubt to the prosecutions instituted by
the government consequent upon the disorders of that year.
The Annual Register records that, in the earlier part of
1841, "the hopes or apprehensions of the public were no
longer excited by the prospect of any further extension of
political rights ; the outcry for the ballot, or an enlargement
of the suffrage, had almost ceased." ^ But as winter ap-
proached, agitation became intense and meetings were held
throughout Great Britain to collect signatures for another
great National Petition, demanding the six points of the
Charter and repeal of the legislative union with Ireland, and
setting forth a long list of popular grievances which seemed
to the petitioners to justify their demands.

The monster petition of 1839 was completely eclipsed
by the size of the on e presented in 1842. T hi&_petition
was signed by 3,315,752 persons,^ showing an increase of
nearly 160 per cent over the support accorded to- the Chartis t
cause in 1839. Thomas Duncombe presented it to the
House of Commons on May 2, 1842, and on the following
day the question of its reception was debated at great length.
In spite of the support of many of the Radicals, the request
for a hearing was denied by a majority of 238.* It seemed

1 Cf. supra, p. 21.

* Annual Register, vol. Ixxxiii, p. 2.

' Morning Herald, cited in Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ixiii, p. 29.

* Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ixiii, pp. 13-91, gives the text of the debate.

62 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [310

evident that the Chartists, could not by mere petitioning,
no matter in what numbers, win any of their demands from
the government. Whigs and Tories ahke remained un-
converted by the demonstration, and the Times spoke the
mind of the conservative portion of the British public when
it declared editorially that the size of the petition was quite
irrelevant :

We are content with the more simple belief that the great
question to be settled by the House of Commons, and by every
one else who has either authority or influence over the course
of legislation, is not how the people shall be fully represented,
but how they shall be well governed ; that governments do not
rest on the consent of the people, but simply on their own
established existence — that the powers that be have a claim
upon our allegiance because they are.^

The distribution of the signatures to the petition of 1842
shows very clearly in what parts of the nation Chartism
was strongest.^ London with its suburbs contributed about
200,000, Manchester nearly half as many (99,680), New-
castle and its suburbs about 92,000 or only a little fewer
than Manchester, other factory towns very much in propor-
tion to population. The country districts of Yorkshire
and Lancashire contributed their share, but the Chartists a s
a whole were shown to b e distinctly an urban class . Scot -
land was strongTy Chartist , at least i n the manufacturin g
districts . Glasgow and Lanarkshire produced 78,062 signa-
tures. Throughout Great Britain over four hun dred towns
.„or_yillages were" represented by sig natures to th e petition.
The number of~Uhartist '' local's " had grown with surpris-
ing rapidity. Northampton had nearly a dozen Chartist

■ Times, May 3, 1842, italics in the original.

* For the signatures to the petition by localities, see Hansard, 3d
series, vol. Ixii, p. 1375.

31 1 ] THE HIGH TIDE OF CHARTISM 63

associations in 1842, whereas in 1839 it had only two or
three ; '^ South Lancashire had eleven such organizations in
1840, and forty-five in 1842.^ Of course not all the sup-
porters of the petition were in the strictest sense active
members of the Chartist party, but Buncombe estimated
that " nearly 100,000 adults of the industrious portion of
the community lay aside one penny per week of their wages
for the purpose of carrying on and keeping up agitation in
favor of their claim to the elective franchise." ^

During the winter of 1841-2 the rise of Chartist agitation
was paralleled by the increasing misery of the working
classes. In spite of the efforts of the Poor Law commis-
sioners to reduce pauperism by stringent work-house regula-
tions, the amount expended for the poor increased annually
j from a minimum per capita rate of 5s. 5d. in the year 1836-7
I to 6s. i%d. in 1841-2 and 6s. S^d. in 1842-3.* The per-
centage of the population of England and Wales in receipt
of poor relief rose to nine and one-half in the year 1842-3.^
A study of the condition of the poor in individual districts
shows the same degree of destitution that is indicated by
the poor-rate for the country as a whole. In Stockport,
during the year 1842, eight shillings were paid for poor
relief to every pound paid in rental.^ In Leeds, accord-
ing to the London Sun "' men were trying to support them-
selves on iiy^d. per week. A private survey of 1003 work-

* Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, p. 213.
"^ English Chartist Circular, vol. ii, p. 95.
' Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ixiii, p. 20.
^Parliamentary Papers, 1852 (1461), xxiii, i et seq.
' Nicholls, History of the English Poor Law, vol. ii, p. 350.
' Engels, Condition of the Working Class, p. 87.
' Cited in Lester, Condition and Fate of England (New York, 1842'
vol. ii, p. 39.

64 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [312

ingnien's families at Bolton-le-Moors in December, 1841,
showed an average of less than is. 23/^d. per head per week
for food, clothing and all other expenses except rent/
More than half of these families had goods in pawn. In
Paisley fifteen thousand persons were in receipt of poor
relief." In the woolen districts of Wiltshire the indepen-
dent laborer received less than two-thirds the minimum sup-
port accorded to paupers in the workhouses.''

Indirect evidence of the poverty of the country is afforded
by a study of the statistics of emigration and of marriage.
The number of emigrants from the United Kingdom in-
creased from only 2)?i^^^^ "^ 1838 to 118,592 in 1841 and
128,344 in 1842.* The number of marriages suffered a
steady decline from 1589 per 100,000 in 1839 to 1473 i"
1842.° The significance of the decrease in the proportion
of marriages is well expressed in the report: " The number
of marriages in a nation perhaps fluctuates independently
of external causes, but it is a fair deduction from the facts,
that the marriage returns in England point out periods of
prosperity, present in part, but future, expected, anticipated,
in still greater part." *' If this contention is sound, then
from 1839 to 1842 the mass of the people were increasingly
apprehensive of future want.

Parliament and the ministry of Sir Robert Peel were far
from indifferent to the extent of the distress in the manu-
facturing districts. Even the royal address, which is al-
ways the most optimistic and conservative of sources for

^ Hansard, 3d series, vol. Ix, p. 259.

' Ibid., p. 178.

' Martineau, History of the Thirty Years' Peace, vol. iv, pp. 155-6.

* Nicholls, op. cit., p. 439.

''Parliamentary Papers, 1847-8 (967), xxv, i et seq., p. v.

' Ibid., p. xxiii.

313] THE HIGH TIDE OF CHARTISM 65

the economic condition of the United Kingdom/ stated in
February that Her Majesty had " observed with deep
regret the continued distress in the manufacturing districts
of the country," and added that the " sufferings and priva-
tions which have resulted from it have been borne with
exemplary patience and fortitude." " In May a formal letter
was sent by order of Her Majesty to His Grace the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, recommending, in view of the fact
that " many of the Working Classes have suffered and con-
tinue to suffer, severe distress," that " the Ministers in each
parish do effectually excite the parishioners to a liberal con-
tribution, which shall be collected the week following at
their respective dwellings by the Churchwardens or Over-

I seers of the Poor in each Parish." ^ Beyond the extension
of poor relief and the admonitions already mentioned to
the rich to be " liberal " and to the poor to endure their
I want with " patience and fortitude ", the government did
ilittle to relieve the situation, although Sir Robert Peel de-
Vcided that the time was ripe to make a slight revision of the
Corn Laws with a view to checking speculation in food-
stuffs, and also to make up a heavy deficit in the revenue
by the imposition of an income tax of seven pence in the
pound. This income tax was at first intended to be levied
for three years only, but it has been one of the sources of
British revenue ever since.

The revision of the duties on grain * was also chiefly
important in its relation to the future. It involved

* This is, obviously, because the address represents the views of the
ministry, whose policies would be held responsible for unusually hard
times.

* Annual Register, vol. Ixxxiv, p. 4.

* Parliamentary Papers, 1842 (383), xxvii, 57-8.

* By the 5 and 6 Vict., c. 14.

66 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [314

comparatively little change and it bitterly disappointed
the free-traders in Parliament, but it was the begin-
ning of the premier's concessions to the Anti-Corn Law
League. A comparison of the new wheat schedule with
the old will show something of the scope of the meas-
ure. The prin ciple of both laws was t he^ sliding scale, that
is, as grain advanced in price in England the duty upon im-
ported gr ain was decrease d. Under the old rate~when wheat
sold at less than sixty shillings the quarter a duty of twenty-
seven shillings was imposed on each quarter. For each
additional shilling in price the duty was lessened one shill-
ing until at sixty-seven shillings it was fixed at twenty shill-
ings and eightpence. Above this point, the duty was les-
sened more rapidly, so that when wheat sold for seventy-
three shillings, the duty was only two shillings and eight-
pence. If wheat sold for more than seventy-three shillings
a flat rate of one shilling the quarter was imposed. By the
new law the variation in the sliding scale was made more
gradual. A duty of twenty shillings was imposed when
wheat was less than fifty-one shillings the quarter, a nine-
teen shillings duty if from fifty-one to fifty-two shillings
the quarter, an eighteen shillings duty if from fifty-two to
fifty-five shillings the quarter, and from this point to sixty-
six shillings the quarter the duty lessened by one shilling
for each rise in price of equal amount. The duty was again
uniform for prices from sixty-six to sixty-nine shillings the
quarter, and then decreased more gradually till the price
stood at seventy-three shillings, above which point the old
one-shilling duty was retained.

As the summer in 1842 approached, discontent became
keener and its expression more violent. On June fifth a
meeting was held on Enfield Moor near Blackburn at which
many appeared with firearms, and Marsden of Bolton
threatened an armed deputation to Buckingham Palace to

315] THE HIGH TIDE OF CHARTISM 67

obtain the Charter/ But the great strike in August, which
was later " captured " by the Chartists and turned to politi-
cal purposes, began as a simple protest against wage reduc-
tions. The nailers near Wolverhampton had their wages
reduced by ten per cent and were, in addition, employed
only on a half-time basis." Similar conditions existed in
the collieries, where a strike or " turnout " followed upon
a reduction in wages of threepence a day.* In the neigh-
borhood of the Tyne the ship carpenters struck when their
pay was reduced early in August to twenty-one shillings a
week.* On the fourth and fifth of August a great strike
of spinners and weavers began at Ashton.^ During the fol-
lowing week armed mobs invaded Manchester and the other
big factory towns. ^ Wherever they went they " turned
out " the operatives, forcing even those who wished to re-
main at work to join them, put out the fires of steam engines,
drew plugs from the boilers, and intimidated the authorities.
Estimates in the Times placed the number of men thrown
out of work by the great turn-out as fr|«;i fifty to eighty
thousand. '^ Serious riots occurred at Stockport, at Preston
and in Staffordshire, but on the whole the strike, consider-
ing its extent, was remarkably orderly. A typical report,
from Rochdale on the fifteenth of August, states that " a
few boys have threatened and begged and entered some
shops, but they have been reproved by the men." ^ The

^ Annual Register, vol. Ixxxiv, pt. ii, p. 102.
' Times, July 28, 1842.
' Ihid., Aug. I, 1842.
*Ihid., Aug. 9, 1842.

* Annual Register, op. at., p. 133 et seq.

* Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, pp. 217-25.
■' Times, Aug. 12, 1842.

* Ibid., Aug. 17, 1842.

58 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [316

textile operatives on the twenty-fifth of the month published
a list of their demands, which included a wages schedule
similar to that existing in 1840, a ten-hour day " or less,"
the employment of men as well as women and children in
the weaving department, and weekly payments of wages.^

This industrial movement was quickly turned by the
Chartists into a political demonstration. As early as the
seventh of August a mass meeting on Mottram Moor had
resolved not to end the strike until the Charter was won.^
jt'hree hundred and fifty-eight labor delegates, chiefly from
the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and the West Rid-
ing of Yorkshire, met in Manchester oli the twelfth, and
three hundred and twenty of them voted to continue the
turnout until the Charter was the law of the land.^ It was
further resolved to make the strike general throughout the
country. The executive committee of the National Chart-
ist Association issued a fonnal proclamation to the striking
workers on August sixteenth, as follows :

Peace, law, and order have prevailed on our side ; let them be
revered until your brethren in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland,
are informed of your resolution; and when a universal holiday
prevails — which will be the case in eight days — then of what
use will bayonets be against public opinion? . . . Our ma-
chinery is all arranged, and your cause will in three days be
impelled onward by all the intellect we can summon to its aid.
Therefore whilst you are peaceful, be firm ; whilst you are or-
derly, make all be so likewise; and whilst you look to the law,
remember that you had no voice in making it, and are there-
fore slaves to the will, the law, and the price of your masters.
All officers of the Association are called upon to aid and assist

1 Times, Aug. 26, 1842.
' Gammage, op. cit., p. 217.
' Ibid., p. 218.

317] THE HIGH TIDE OF CHARTISM 69

in the peaceful extension of the movement, and to forward all
moneys for the use of the delegates who may be expressed
over the country.^

It is evident from the tone of the proclamation that the
Chartists were deteniiined not to let such an exceptional
opportunity as the great turnout afforded fail through any
ill-timed violence. Feargus O'Connor made this plain in
a public letter, in the course of which he advised : " Let no
blood be shed. Let no life be destroyed. Let no property
be consumed. Let us, in God's name, set an example to the
world of what moral power is capable of effecting." ^

In the latter part of August and throughout September
the striking workingmen returned, either without gaining
their aims or else compromising on local arrangements with
their employers. Before the end of September, the Stock-
port Chronicle reported that the whole of the turnout opera-
tives had returned to work.^ Four of the members of the
Chartist executive were arrested, because the address to the
striking workingmen issued by the NatioTial Chartist As-
sociation was regarded as treasonable.* McDouall, who
was probably its author, received warning in time and
escaped to France. O'Connor was among the leaders ap-
prehended by the authorities. As a final result of the
special commission in Staffordshire, fifty-four persons were
sentenced to transportation, eleven of these for life, the
rest for more than seven years; while 154 were sentenced
to various terms of imprisonment.^ The vigorous official
action after the political strike had subsided contrasts

^ Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, pp. 218-9.

* Times, Aug. 22, 1842.

' Cited in the Times, Sept. 29, 1842.

* Gammage, op. cit., pp. 228-31.

* Annual Register, vol. Ixxxiv, pt. ii, p. 163.

yo THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [318

Strongly with the inactivity of the authorities during its
course. To be sure, the government sent troops and artillery
to the manufacturing districts and a royal proclamation,
dated August 13, 1842, offered indemnity and a reward
of fifty pounds to informers.' But both the local magis-
trates and the military commanders seemed to feel that so
long as the strikers refrained from the destruction of life
and property it was better to permit them to stop the mills.
Complaints of this inactivity, such as the following report
from Bury, were not infrequent:

Notwithstanding the promise of the magistrates to give the
millowners protection, the mob was not interfered with either
by the police or the military, though there were no soldiers
in the place; and notice had been given to the magistrates of
the approach of the mob. No damage was committed by the
mob which entered Bury; and, after effecting their purpose of
stopping the mills, proceeded on to Bolton. -

,^ The failure gf the turnout of August 1842 to obtain
either the Charter or the desired wages schedules, seems to
I have been due to two main causes. In the first place, a bad
i time was chosen, after a prolonged industrial depression
I when the strikers were practically without reserve funds to
support themselves for any length of time and when em-
ployers were laying men off or working them only part
time. Indeed, many Conservatives believed that the sur-
/ prising weakness shown by the magistrates in the north of

/ England in dealing with the turnouts was due to the fact

that many of them were Whigs and free-traders who were
not at all sorry to see a big political demonstration which
would embarrass Sir Robert Peel's government and make it
difficult to refuse the popular cFamor for cheaper corn.

' Times, Aug. 15, 1842. ' Ibid., Aug. 20, 1842.

/

/

I

319] THE HIGH TIDE OF CHARTISM 71

Early in 1842 Cotxien had suggested a refusal of taxes and
i Bright a general closure of factories as possible means of
j coercing the government/ The manufacturers, who could
\ hope at best for little profit in such a year, were willing to
! let their mills and factories be closed for a few weeks, and
I they knew that the scanty resources of the strikers would
j hardly pennit them to prolong the turnout for a greater
I length of time. Many of the workingmen realized this,
\ and their consequent half-heartedness was the other import-
. ant source of weakness to the strike. The Times cleverly
compared the striking Chartists to any army of five hun-
dred, drawn up in hollow square around 4500 prisoners,
claiming to be a force of five thousand." Some of the
strikers desired only the restoration of the old wages, others
did not wish to strike at all and did so only from coercion.
The fact that the strikers had to go in large bands from
mill to mill forcing the operatives to leave their work, shows
that many would rather have remained as they were. The
majority of British workingmen would willingly have sub-
scribed to the principles of the Chartists, but only a minority
of them would ever have endangered their livelihood in
such a doubtful enterprise as a general strike for manhood
suffrage. As a demonstration the turnout was not in reality
a failure, for it showed the strength and numbers of the
discontented as they had neyer been shown before. The
Stockport Chronicle gave as its opinion that never before in
history had there been " a cessation of labor so extensive,
simultaneous, and protracted," ^ while the Times reported
that never since Chartism became known had it been so
completely organized.*

1 G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London, 1914), pp. 76-78.

2 Times, Aug. 22, 1842.

* Cited in the Times, Sept. 29, 1842. * Times, Aug. 12, 1842.

-^2 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [320

During a large part of the year 1842 the Chartist cause
■was much strengthened by the prospect of a good under-
standing with some of the middle-class Radicals. In Feb-
TVidsy one petition combined a demand for Corn Law repeal
with that for the Charter/ In April a conference was ar-
ranged at Birmingham between the Chartists and a middle-
class organization for " complete suffrage " led by the Rev.
Joseph Sturge." Among the Chartists who attended were
Lovett, Collins, Vincent and O'Brien. The Chartists
throughout the first day's session were inclined to suspect
the sincerity of their new allies, but, as the representatives
of the Complete Suffrage Association accepted one after
another of the six points, their enthusiasm increased until
on the second day (April 6, 1842) O'Brien volunteered the
information that he " had never been in any society, com-
posed even exclusively of working men, in which he had
found the democratic spirit more thoroughly developed." *
Not all of the points of the Charter were carried without
discussion. Some of the Complete Suffrage representa-
tives doubted the value of annual Parliaments,* of the ballot
and of the payment of members of the House of Commons
by the state. The absolute denunciation of the physical
force party and its methods called out some protest by the
Chartists,^ and O'Brien objected particularly to the attack
on the " Feargusites " or followers of Feargus O'Connor."

' Engels, Condition of the Working Class in 1844, p. 231.

' Report of the Proceedings at the Conference of Delegates of the
Middle and Working Classes, held at Birmingham, April 5, 1842, and
three following days (London, 1842).

' Ibid., p. 38.

* The Rev. T. Spencer made the interesting suggestion of the recall
as a possible substitute for annual Parliaments. Report of the Bir-
mingham Conference, p. 17.

^ Ibid., p. 7. * Ibid., p. 11.

32 1 ] THE HIGH TIDE OF CHARTISM 73

But the two factions in the conference reached substantial
agreement upon all questions of aim and policy until the
question of the name of the new organization arose/
Lovett and the other Chartists insisted that, having adopted
all the points of the Charter, the conference should adopt
the name as well; the Complete Suffragists wished some
other name to be chosen, regarding the old term as too much
associated with the physical-force methods of the past. The
delegates could reach no agreement upon the point, and
wisely determined to let the question remain unsettled until
December. Some practical rules and methods of action
were provisionally agreed upon, the conference adjourned,^
and the Chartists for the first and last time entered upon a
campaign with a considerable middle-class support.

The friendship subsisting between the Sturgeites and the
Chartists bore valuable fruit in the Parliamentary contests
of the summer. Joseph Sturge appeared as a candidate for
the borough of Nottingham in August. Vincent, Cooper,
O'Connor and " great numbers of operatives . . brought
in by the Chartist leaders from the neighboring villages,
and from more distant towns " ^ gathered to support his
candidacy. Both O'Connor and Vincent made speeches
in support of his nomination.* Sturge's opponent, a Mr.
Walter, who based his campaign chiefly upon his opposition
to the new Poor Law, was returned over Sturge by the
narrow margin of eighty- four votes. ^ At Southampton ®

1 Report of the Birmingham Conference, p. 55.

^ It may be noted, parenthetically, that a reading of the report of the
Conference leaves one with the irresistible impression that the debates
recorded therein compare favorably in quality with the Parliamentary
debates recorded in Hansard.

3 Times, Aug. 4, 1842. ■* Times, Aug. 5, 1842.

^ Walter, 1885 ; Sturge, 1801. Times, Aug. 8, 1842.

* Ibid., Aug. 9, 1842.

-4 THE DECLINE OF THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [322

and Ipswich ^ Chartist candidates polled heavy votes, and
at several elections the Chartists showed their real strength
aniong the unenfranchised by attending the polls in a body
and electing their candidates on the first show of hands,
although the official returns, of course, took no account of
these demonstrations. But in October the Chartists won a
positive, though small, success in electing sixteen police
commissioners out of seventy-two in the town of Dundee.^
In 1 84 1 they had been able to elect only seven.

In September Joseph Sturge suggested a basis for the
second conference between the Complete Suffrage party and
the Chartists.^ He proposed that electors and non-electors
should return equal numbers of delegates, that the smaller
towns should have two representatives apiece, the more
considerable boroughs (of five thousand and upwards popu-
lation) four apiece, while such important centers of radical
activity as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool,
Edinburgh and Glasgow, should each have six. His plan
was adopted, and Sturge himself was unanimously chosen
to preside over the conference when it met in Birmingham
on December 27, 1842.* Letters were read from W.
Sharman Crawford, M. P. and Daniel O'Connell. Both
expressed their approval of the Charter, but both declined
to enter the Conference — Sharman Crawford because he
could be of more service to the democratic cause as an
independent friend of the Chartists in Parliament than as a
member of the party, while O'Connell held aloof because of

1 Times, Aug. 17, 1842.

* Memoranda of the Chartist Agitat