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THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
In Its Social and Economic Aspects
BY
FRANK F. ROSENBLATT, A. M.
PART I
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
I9l6
ffD
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY
FRANK F. ROSENBLATT
KATHERINE GOLDING ROSENBLATT
IN APPRECIATION OF TRUE COMRADESHIP
THIS WORK IS DEDICATED
BY HBR HUSBAND
THE AUTHOR
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
Je ne propose rien,
je n' impose rien:
j' expose.
PREFACE
SOCIETY, like every individual, has a bias of its own:
while frequently ready to make a lasting sensation of one
social event, it is just as prone to ignore other phenomena
of no less historical importance. The study of the nature
and the causes of the social bias, in the broad sense of the
word, would be an interesting and grateful task for the so-
ciologist, while the analysis of the particular social event
must be confined, according to the nature of the latter, to a
distinct branch of the so-called Social Sciences.
The Chartist Movement is one of the tacitly ignored fac-
tors of the social evolution of the nineteenth century.
People have always spoken of the personal characteristics of
John RussenV-Disraeli, orjQlajdstpne, far more than of the
aspirations of several million men who believed in, strove
and suffered for the cause known as Chartism. By far^
more has been written of individuals like Robert Owen and
Richard Cobden than of the whole revolutionary movement
which embraced a period of more than a decade. The stu-
dent, indeed, knows from his history that Chartism was a
political movement; that the Chartists fought for "six
71 7
I
g PREFACE [8
points " which were embodied in the People's Charter. He
undoubtedly knows also the funny side of the story, and, to-
gether with the writer of his history, mocks those fraudulent
fellows, the Chartists, who affixed the signatures of Queen
Victoria and a few other high dignitaries to the petition
of almost one-fifth of the English nation. Incidentally,
one meets some attestation of Chartism as " the only genu-
' ine, earnest, serious, popular movement in England since the
1 and hears that "tbe_story of
the great Asocial-movement which is comprised in the history
i of Chartism is of greater importance than the disputes of
r~~the Whigs and Tories." l But it is a rather curious fact that,
excepting Gammage's History of the Chartist Movement,
""which lays no claim to any scientific analysis of the move-
ment and its causes, there is not a single work in the
English language devoted to the subject which might satisfy
the more earnest student.
The aim of this work is not only to give a fair and im-
partial presentation of the facts, but also to make an attempt
at their interpretation and to show their interrelation. The
social life of England during the first half of the last century
in all its important aspects will have to be brought into the
limelight. The political situation must, of course, serve as a
background for the picture of a movement carried on
ostensibly for political reform. But the study of none of\
the social and political conditions can be compared in weight/
with the analysis of the strictly economic state of that period. /
Indeed, whatever we may think of the Materialistic Con-/
ception of History as a general philosophy, there can hardly
be any doubt that in all the struggles of labor, the " bread
1 William Clarke, Political Science Quarterly, vol. Hi, 1888, p. 555.
2 Spencer Walpole, History of England from the Conclusion of the
Great War in 1815, London, 1886, vol. iii, p. 500.
J
9]
PREFACE
and fork question " is the very seed of historical causation.
Regarding theL._Chartist Movement primarily as a labor
movement and as the first compact form of class struggle,
_Jthe authorvEKerefore, deemed it necessary, after a succinct
survey of the political situation, to devote the first part of
his work to a careful examination of the economic condi-
tion in general and the labor condition in particular ~which
prevailed in "Merry England" immediately before and
during the period of the Chartist Movement.
The present monograph comprises only the first stages of
the movement. The original intention to publish an ex-
tensive study covering the whole period could have been
carried out only by going to England for the purpose of
collecting additional material. This design was frustrated
by the present war. It has therefore become necessary to
divide the work into two volumes, the second of which, the
author hopes, will appear at a later date.
In the preparation of this work, it was considered essen-
tial to guard against personal predilections and sympathies.
The material was collected with care f rom .Jirst-hand
sources ; the facts were presented without any design to fit a
pet theory ; and ffie'Iieroes of the story were allowed to intro-
duce themselves and to play their roles without any stage-
managing on the part of the historian. It is, perhaps, on
account of this impartiality and lack of prejudice that some
portraits vary materially from those which have been hither-
to drawn.
In conclusion, the author wishes to acknowledge his pro-
found gratitude to Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman both
for the interest he has always taken in this work and for
the privilege of using his invaluable collection of Chartist
literature and documents.
F. F. R.
APRIL 22, 1916.
CONTENTS
FACE
PREFACE j-g
CHAPTER I
. PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM
Chartism and the "six points " 2
- Distinct labor movement
v Expression of class consciousness
The Levellers and Cromwell 22
&>?>/>' of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights 22
Pitt, the Earl of Chatham 22
Reform bills introduced by William Pitt 22
Stanhope and Major Cartwright 23
The Whigs and aristocratic clubs 23
Reform bills introduced by the Duke of Richmond and Fox . . . 23-4
Society for Constitutional Information 24
Government coalition in 1783 24
Metamorphosis caused by the French Revolution 24
The Duke of Richmond's letter on equality 25
Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution 25
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man 26
The London Corresponding Society 26
Government policy of oppression 27
Suspension of Habeas Corpus act . 27
Radicalism revived after the Napoleonic war 27
The Corn Laws of 1815 27
William Cobbett and the Hantpden Clubs 28-30
Society of Spencean Philanthropists 31
Riots and new suspension of Habeas Corpus act 31
Benefit Societies and Botanical Meetings 32
The Manchester Massacre 32
The struggle for freedom 33
The Reform Bill and the National Political Union 33
CHAPTER II
THE WHIG RULE
Hopes inspired by the Reform Bill of 1832 34
Ricardo's theory of rent .... 34
li] ii
12 CONTENTS [ I2
PACK
Burden of taxes 34-5
Selfish motives of manufacturers 34
Reform Bill condemned by " Orator " Hunt and others 35
Lord John Russell, the hero of the Reform Bill 36
Thomas Attwood and the Birmingham Political Union 36-7
Political corruption and inactivity 37-9
Notorious Bedchamber Plot 40
Old Poor Laws 40
Competition between workingmen and paupers 41-2
New Poor Law of 1834 42
The "workhottse test" 42
Poor Law Bastiles 42
Opposition to the New Poor Law 43-5
Bill passed under protest 45
Stringency of administration 45-6
CHAPTER III
THE NEW POOR LAW
Philosophy of the new law 47
Negligence of children on the part of officers - . . 48
Cruelties perpetrated in workhouses 49
Lord Brougham's frankness 50
Cobbett's opinion of the new law 50
Bronterre's tribute to the " Money-monsters ". 50-1
Feargus O'Connor on excessive use of machinery 51
Brougham's hatred of charity 52-3
' ' Stepping stone ' ' to total abolition of relief 53
Carlyle's comments 54-5
Effects disguised for some time 55
The Irish famine 55
Distress in the Highlands and Islands 55
Emigration to industrial centres 56
Dwelling conditions in cities 57-8
CHAPTER IV
THE UNIVERSAL DISTRESS
General unemployment 59-60
Weavers first victims 60
Birmingham deputation b 61
Laissez faire policy 61
CONTENTS
MM
Condition in agricultural districts 61-2
"Not the time" plea against repeal of Corn Laws 63
Rise of prices of wheat 63
Distress among the workingmen 64
Scourge of industrial cities 65
Variation of mortality 65
Progress of crime 66-7
Proportion of commitments to population 67
Persons in receipt of outdoor relief 68
Workhouse inmates 68
Petitions for repeal disregarded 69
CHAPTER V
LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM
Whigs hostile towards labor legislation 70
Campaign against evils of factory system led by ultra-Tories . . . 70-1 *\
Freedom of contract and laissez faire doctrine 71
Ten Hour Movement 71
Nassau Senior's "last hour" argument 72 /
Government reports 72
Ashley and his followers 73 /
Employment of women and children 73-4
Attempts at trade unionism in the beginning of factory system . . 75
The Six Acts of 1819 75
Francis Place and his victory 76-7
New stratagem of labor leaders 77 \
Influence of Ricardian socialists . 77
Owenism and Trade Unionism 78
The manufacturers and the Government 79
Nassau Senior's view on combinations and strikes 79
Grand National Consolidated Trades' Union crushed 80
New fight for freedom 81
Apotheosis of political power 81
Bronterre's call for n grand national movement 82
CHAPTER VI
THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER
The London Working Men's Association and its objects 84-5
Exclusiveness of the Association 86
Source of social evil 87
" The Rotten House of Commons " 88-9
.
I 4 CONTENTS [ I4
FAGK
Missionaries on tour 89
The "Six Points" ($g)
Crown and Anchor meeting go
Roebuck and other radical members of Parliament 90-1
Committee of twelve 91
Prorogation of Parliament 91
Birmingham Political Union enters campaign 92
Correspondence between William Lovett and Lord John Russell . 92
Address to Queen Victoria 93
Address to American workingmen - 94
Preparation of bill by Lovett and Roebuck 95
Publication of " People's Charter " 95
Address on principles of Charter 95-7
CHAPTER VII
THE LEADERS
Most auspicious period 98
Two parties in Chartist ranks 98
Policy of moral force 99
Advocates of physical force welcomed 100
Class legislation condemned 100
Discord suppressed for a time 101
""William Lovett and his early career 102
First London Cooperative Trading Association 102
Follower of Robert Owen 103
Metropolitan Political Union 103
National Union of the working classes 103-4
Founder of London Working Men's Association 104
Personal characteristics 104-5
Feargus O'Connor's early career 105
Quarrel with Daniel O'Connell 106
Personal characteristics 107-8
Opposed to Communism 109
Machinery the source of all evil no
Inclined towards revolutionary policy no
Founder of London Democratic Association no-in
Repudiated terrorists in
Bronterre's early career 112
His account of himself 112-13
Literary activities 113
Admirer of Robespierre and Babeuf 113
Personal characteristics . 114
1 5] CONTENTS
His view on the franchise 114
Theory of nationalization of land 115
His view on private property 117-118
Failed to recognize laws of social evolution and role of the working
class 119-120
Thomas Attwood an advocate of moral force 120
Founder of Birmingham Political Union 120
Leader of Birmingham Currency School 120
Advocate of paper money and inflation of currency 120
Henry Hetherington, martyr for free-press cause 121
Poor Man's Guardian and Twopenny Despatch 121
Missionary of the London Working Men's Association 121
CHAPTER VIII
THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
Lovett, the apostle of moral force 122
O'Connor and Bronterre yielded to the inevitable 123
J. R. Stephens, the apostle of revolt 123
His early career 123
His oratory 124
Preached class consciousness and urged insurrection 124
Resistance to bad laws a virtue 125
His sermon at Newcastle I
Opposition to the New Poor Law
His allegiance to the Charter
Emphasized economic aspects of the movement 129
Attitude of the London Working Men's Association 129
His warning against abortive demonstrations 130-2
Lost his influence 132
C. J. Harney, agitator of physical force 132
Hailed the spirit of Marat 133-4
Henry Vincent, the English Demosthenes 135
His early career 135
Missionary of the London Working Men's Association 135
His popularity 135
John Frost and his early career 136
His imprisonment 136
Adherent of Cobbett 137
Advocate of municipal reform 137
Member of Newport town council 137
Mayor of Newport 137
1 6 CONTENTS [16
rM
Appointed borough magistrate 137
Poor Law Guardian . 137
Member of Newport Workingmen's Association 137
Chartist leader 137
His relations with people 137
CHAPTER IX
THE PEOPLE
State of ominous excitement 138
Underground societies 138
" Foreign Affairs Committee " at Birmingham 138
Demonstration at Glasgow 139
Thomas Attwood 139
Suggestion of a " sacred strike " 139
Provincial Scotch merchants and manufacturers 139
Newcastle manifestation 140
Defiant speeches 140
Feargus O'Connor 141
Reference to Brougham 141
Appearance of troops causes indignation 141
Meetings at Sunderland and Northampton 142
Addresses by Vincent and others 142
Birmingham demonstration 142
O'Connor and Attwood 142
Physical force notions introduced 142
Resolutions for National Petition and General Convention . . . 143
Anxiety among leaders of the London Working Men's Association 143
Palace Yard demonstration in London 143
Allusions to physical force 144
Birmingham call endorsed 145
Address of the London Working Men's Association to the Irish
people ... 145
Manchester demonstration 146
Threats of vengeance 146
O'Connor, Stephens and Fielden 146-7
Peep Green demonstration 147
Henry Vincent in the West 147
His supremacy in Welsh territory 147
Torch-light processions 148
O'Connor, Stephens and Harney chief speakers 148
People making arms 149
Stephens at the Hyde meeting 149
I7 ]
CONTENTS
Lord John Russell's letter declaring torch-light meetings Jillegal . 149
His address at Liverpool ..................... 149
Royal proclamation trampled under foot ............. 150
Chasm between workingmen and middle class .......... 150
Vincent and female organizations ................ 150
People invoked to prepare arms ................. 151
Military instructions ....................... 151
" Science of killing " extolled .................. 151
Agitation among soldiers .................... 152
CHAPTER X
THE PETITION, THE CONVENTION AND THE GOVERNMENT
Proposals emanated from the moral force group .......... 153
Equal representation omitted .................. 153
Petition lacking in vigor of expression and definiteness ...... 153
Influence of Thomas Attwood .................. 153
Generous response of men and women .............. 154
Opening of Convention ................. .... 154.
Objects of Convention .................... 154-5.
Presentation of National Petition postponed ........... 155
Variety of problems discussed .................. 156
Addresses on the general distress distributed broadcast ...... 156
First collision between opposing factions ............ 156
Lovett elected secretary ..................... I5
Missionaries of the Convention ................. 157
The London Democratic Association and Harney ........ 157
Resolutions submitted to Convention .............. 157
" Crown and Anchor " meeting cause of hostile criticism ..... 158
Resignation of three Birmingham delegates .......... 158-9
The " million of men" idea ................... 160
Vincent's exhortations to be prepared .............. 160
Resolution of Convention on the right to use arms ........ 161
Government spies ........................ 161
Lord Russell and John Frost .................. 162
Frost's defiant letter ..................... 162-4
Open hostility between the Government and the Chartists .... 164
Frost's name struck from the roll of magistrates ......... 165
Indictment of Stephens ..................... 165
Convention declared an illegal body ............... 165
Arrest of Vincent ........................ 165
National Petition and Attwood ................. 165
Convention adjourned to Birmingham .............. 166
1 8 CONTENTS
PAGE
Lord Russell's letter to magistrates 166
The Manifesto of the Convention 166-8
Simultaneous meeting s and " ulterior measures " 168-9
Advocacy of terror and insurrection 170
London police in Birmingham 171
Recommendations of the Convention to the simultaneous meetings. 172
Success of the simultaneous meetings 172
Reasons for the removal of the Convention to London 173
Resolutions on the sacred month and other measures adopted. . 173-4
CHAPTER XI
THE WRESTLING FORCES
The Bull Ring attack in Birmingham 175
The spirit of vengeance and terror 176
The resolutions of the General Convention 177
The arrest of Lovett and Collins 177
Prisoners subjected to indignities 178
Proclamation of martial law and wholesale arrests 178
The daily meetings at Holloway Head and other places 178
The Bull Ring riot 178
Public meetings and resolutions 179
The National Petition in Parliament 179
Attwood's speech 180
Lord Russell's reply 180-2
Disraeli's interpretation of the Chartist movement 182
The division on Attwood's motion 183
The effect of the defeat on the Convention 183
The sacred month resolution passed and rescinded 183
Bronterre's resolution on the sacred month , . 184
The recommendation of the committee of five 185
The national holiday a complete failure 186
The dissolution of the Convention 186
Arrests and trials for sedition 186
The theory of the Attorney-General . . 186
The trial of Lovett and Collins 186
The resolution of the Birmingham Town Council 186
The jury 187
Sergeant Goulburn's "opportunity" 187
Lovett's address to the jury 187
Comments of the Morning Chronicle on the defence 188
Conviction of Lovett and Collins 188
Convictions of Stephens and other Chartists 189
1 9 ] CONTENTS I9
PAGE
Public meetings and demonstrations 189
Lovett and Collins subjected to rigorous discipline 189
Petitions in their favor 189
Henry Vincent and his imprisonment 190
The jury 190
Remonstrances and protests by Welsh Chartists 190
The Newport Riot 190
CHAPTER XII
THE NEWPORT RIOT
The role of Frost 191
The plot to release Vincent by force 191
The plan of a rising in Yorkshire and Lancashire 191
O'Connor's late warning 192
Frost's last public letter 192-4
The plan of the Welsh Chartists . 194-5
Frost, Williams and Jones the chief commanders IQ5-6
Steps taken by the mayor 197
The progress of the rebels impeded by bad weather 197
The fight at the Westgate Hotel 197-8
George Shell's letter to his parents . . 199
The arrests of the rebel leaders 199
The mayor and constables rewarded 200
The Chartist Convention in London and the defence committees . 200
The Special Commission 200
The trials of Frost, Williams, Jones and others 201
The sentence 201
The decision of the Court of Exchequer 202
The anguish of the Attorney General 203
Death sentence commuted to transportation for life 204
Decoration of the graves of the Westgate.victims 204
Imprisonment of Bronterre, O'Connor, and others 205
The distribution of Chartist prisoners 205-6
The government victory 206
The new recruits 207
APPENDIX A
Petition agreed to at the "Crown and Anchor " meeting, February
28, 1837 208
APPENDIX B
The People's Charter 213
20 CONTENTS [20
FACE
APPENDIX C
The National Petition 234
APPENDIX D
Dialogue on war, between a moral force Whig and a Chartist, by
Bronterre 239
INDEX 245
CHAPTER I
Chartism means the bitter dis-
content grown fierce and mad.
... It is a new name for a
thing which has had many
names, which will yet have
many. Carlyle.
PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM
THE term Chartism was coined in_i837 to designate a
set of -principles which were subsequently embodied in the
famous " People's Charter/'. Universal suffrage, equal
representation, annual parliaments, no property qualifica-
tions, vote by Ballot, amT^Cyrffignt "To members these
formed the " six points " which for a number of years
eclipsed all other political and social creeds. At its inaugu-
ration the movement attracted a number of recruits from
the ranks of the middle class. In time, however. Chartism
! became .ever more crystallized as a .distinct labor struggle
for the reconstruction of society. The form of the de-
ji j ^IfFOTBO"" J
mands were purely political, but the object .was strictly ^
economic. Political equality was proclaimed as the only
weapon to secure equality of condition and the abolition of
class privilege. The concomitant social equality would
then pull down the mountains of wealth and fill up the
valleys of want. The task could be effected by the work- ^
ingmen only. Cooperation of the middle class was gener-
ally tabooed as spelling imminent treason and danger to the "
people's cause. It was this expression of class conscious-
ness and realization of class interests that distinguished i*-s^ _
Chartism both from Utopian socialism and from previous
democratic movements in England.
Long before the Chartist demands were framed in the
21] 21
22 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ 2 2
People's Charter, political reform, of one kind or another,
had been urged by the friends of the people. The spirit of
democracy, which had been quelled by Cromwell's defeat
of the Levellers, revived a century later. Indeed, some of
/ the Chartist "points" were promulgated as early as 1769
by the " Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights,"
which, among other parliamentary reforms, demanded equal
* representation and annual parliaments. Petitions were for
the first time presented to Parliament, protesting that its
members were not self -representing individuals, but trusted
delegates whose authority ceased the very moment they
disregarded the wishes and interests of their constituents.
Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, soon pronounced himself a con-
^ vert and professed that " the constitution intended that
there should be a permanent relation between the constit-
uents and representative body of the people." On the first
of May, 1771, he asserted that "the act of constituting sep-
tennial parliaments must be repealed. . . . Our whole con-
stitution is giving way, and, therefore, with the most delib-
erate and solemn conviction, I declare myself a convert to
triennial parliaments." * His son, William Pitt, went even
further, declaring that " the restoration of the House of
Commons to freedom and independency, by the interposition
of the collective body of the nation, was essentially necessary
to our existence as a free people "; that an equal represen-
tation of the people by annual elections and the universal
right of suffrage appeared to him " so reasonable to the
natural feelings of mankind, that no sophistry could elude
the force of the arguments which were urged in their favor."
The bills which he introduced in 1782, 1783 and 1785 pro-
vided for the extension of the franchise to householders,
and for the gradual extinction of all rotten boroughs.
William Pitt was far from being an extremist among his
1 Chatham Correspondence, edited by W. S. Taylor, Esq., and Cap-
tain John Henry Pringle, London, 1840, vol. iv, p. 174.
23]
PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM
\
colleagues. The writings of Stanhope and of Major John
Cartwright appeared as early as 1774 and 1776, respectively?
and demanded universal suffrage as a natural right. In his
Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated, Cart-
wright argued that " freedom is the immediate gift of God
to all the human species," and that the franchise is a pre-
requisite of freedom. " The very scavenger in the streets
has a better right to his vote than any peer to his coronet, or
the king himself to his crown; for the right of the peer and
of the king are derived from the laws of men, but the
scavenger's from the laws of God ". This idea became so
popular that the Whigs began to consider it advantageous
to identify themselves with the reformers. Aristocratic
clubs, such as the " Constitutional Society ", the " Whig
Club ", and the " Society of the Friends of the People ",
vied with each other in radicalism and in their emulation
of the idealistic maxims of Rousseau and the French En- v
cyclopedists. In 1780 the Duke of Richmond introduced a
bill for universal suffrage and annual parliaments. The
preamble contended that since the life, liberty and property
of every man is or may be affected by the law of the land
in which he lives, no man is, or can be, actually represented
if he has no vote in the election of the representative whose
consent to the making of laws binds the whole community.
The state of election of members of the House of Commons
was declared as a gross deviation from the " simple and
natural principle of representation and equality." In sev-
eral places members were returned by the property of one
man while the number of persons who were suffered to
vote did not amount to one-sixth of the whole community.
The great majority of the commoners were thus governed
by laws to which they had not consented either by them-
selves or by their representatives. 1 Triennial and septen-
1 Compare this with the preamble of the " People's Charter ". See
Appendix B.
\J
2 4 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [24
nial Parliaments were described as tending " to make the
representatives less dependent on their constituents than
they always ought to be ". The same year Charles James
Fox, the Whig leader and Chairman of the Committee of
Westminster Electors, recommended the very same " six
points " which were later embodied in the " People's Char-
ter ". The " six points " were also urged by the " Society
for Constitutional Information ", which included among its
leaders a number of the most distinguished members of the
English nobility, such as the Duke of Richmond, the Duke
of Bedford, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Effingham, the
Earl of Selkirk, Lord Mountnorris, and others.
The bright prospects of Major Cartwright and his adher-
ents, however, soon came to an end. The germs of radical
ideas, which had infected the nobility, began to spread also
among the lower strata. The alarmed government found
itself in a lurch, and its peace of mind had to be bought at
the price of coalition in 1783 between Lord North, the
representative of the government, and Mr. Fox, the spokes-
man of the Whigs. This coalition brought about a com-
plete metamorphosis in the attitude of the Whigs, which be-
came the more intense during the French Revolution. A
feeling of abhorrence swayed the professed reformers
against all societies which were suspected of revolutionary
ideas. All attempts at parliamentary reform were doomed
to crushing defeat The former illustrious advocate of re-
form, Edmund Burke, agreed in this matter with his rival
Pitt. In his great zeal he stigmatized the people as a
" swinish multitude ", and led the Whigs in their support of
the government policy of oppression.
The adhesion to the government on the part of the aris-
tocracy was the natural reaction of their optimistic ideal-
ism which evaporated when brought under pressure of active
life. They had believed that the doctrine of " natural, un-
25] PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM 2 tj
alienable and equal rights " could be disseminated among
the people with perfect safety to their own class and tradi-
tions. Some even went so far as to contend that "equality"
was a safeguard against "levellers". This view was eluci-
dated by the Duke of Richmond in the following extract of
his letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Sharman:
Another subject of apprehension is that the principle of al-
lowing to every man an equal right to vote tends to equality
in other respects, and to level property. To me it seems to
have a direct contrary tendency. The equal rights of men to
security from oppression, and to the enjoyments of life and
liberty, strike me as perfectly compatible with their unequal
shares of industry, labor and genius, which are the origin of
inequality of fortunes. The equality and inequality of men
are both founded in nature; and whilst we do not confound
the two, and only support her establishments, we can not err.
The protection of property appears to me one of the most
essential ends of society; and so far from injuring it by this
plan, I conceive it to be the only means of preserving it; for
the present system is hastening with great strides to a perfect
equality in universal poverty*
The French Revolution led some of the English aristoc/"^
racy to realize that abstract ideas of equality, and natural I
righTs meant absolutely nothing to the common people, un- I
less they went hand in hand with concrete equality in dis-
tribution of wealth. Moreover, they learned that the db-
... ^ II, !*"+* 1
stract idea of natural rights was the treacherous snake that \
goaded on the people to demand concrete equality, and they
determined to avert this at any cost. Burke's Reflections
on the French Revolution, published in 1790, preached a
crusade against Republican France, as well as against
French principles in England. The Reflections exerted a
1 The Right of the People to Universal Suffrage and Annual Parlia-
ments, August 15, 1783 (published in London, 1817).
2 6 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [26
deep influence on the men in power, but at the same time
gave an impetus to the counter activities of the radicals.
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, the exact antithesis
of the Reflections, gained a wide circulation among the
middle and lower classes. The arduous task of reform was
taken up by the " London Corresponding Society ", which
was founded by Thomas Hardy, a shoemaker. Counting
but four members at its inauguration, the first meeting in
1792 was attended by nine individuals, all personally ac-
quainted with each other. Encouraged by the endorsement
of the Duke of Richmond, the Society jealously began to
spread its tenets all over the United Kingdom and, within
a short period, ^attained importance and celebrity as one of
the largest radical organizations. The government, in its
alarm, was led to believe that " there were evil-minded per-
sons in the country, who, acting in concert with other per-
sons in France, designed to overturn our happy constitu-
tion, and introduce a system of bloodshed and plunder."
The war with France in 1793 was primarily a war against
Jacobinism, and Pitt, who was always seeing visions of
" thousands of bandits ", was logically compelled to combat
the foe within the country. Numerous spies were employed
to shadow the steps of every suspicious person, and on the
testimony of these spies, many were subjected to severe
penalties. A certain Mr. Frost, an attorney, was sentenced
to six months' imprisonment, to stand in the pillory and be
struck off the roll, because he had dared once in a coffee-
house to declare himself " for equality and no king ". A
well-known Mr. Ridgway was sentenced to four years' im-
prisonment and 200 fine for selling Thomas Paine's Rights
of Man. The former friends of the " London Correspond-
ing Society" began to see treason in its activities. Two dele-
gates sent by this society to Scotland in 1 793 were arrested,
tried, convicted, and transported for fourteen years. In its
27]
PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM
report of 1794, the Secret Committee of the House of Com-
mons claimed to have discovered seditious practices. It was
this report that was chiefly responsible for the suspension of
the habeas corpus act. 1 Pitt declared the matter urgent, and
the bill was passed at a special sitting the next day after its
introduction by the government. Fox openly accused the
ministers of a design to terrorize the people in order to
shield themselves from the condemnation for involving the
country in a disastrous war. The government became in-
exorable in its oppression of associations, as well as of
individuals. Reform bills were introduced only to encoun-
ter ignominious defeat. All reform societies were dis-
banded, all public meetings prohibited, and reformers were
rendered innocuous either through imprisonment or intimi-l *
dation. For nearly two decades the English people lived,
as it were, in a state of internal siege.
Radicalism had been crushed to revive again, however,
with much gTeafefTorce, after the war cloud, which hovered
over Europe for almost a quarter of a century, was dis-
persed at Waterloo. The war- made England a world-
monopolist. Foreign manufacturers, writhing under the
sword of Damocles in their own countries, invested their
capital in England which alone was safe from foreign in
vasion. By virtue of the complete monopoly of Great
Britain as a water-carrier, English .trade was carried on
in the remotest parts of the world. AjjJjjjjLiibfl^ged-WJth
the end of the Napoleonic career. The demand for English
manufactures suddenly shrank, capital was withdrawn, and
labor thrown out of employment. The disbanded militia
and discharged sailors greatly swelled the ranks of the un-
employed. Symptoms of discontent which were local in
the beginning, soon became universal and burst into violence
after the passage of the Corn Laws in 1815. Owing to the
1 Cf. Address to the Nation of 1797 by the " London Corresponding
Society," in the English Chartist Circular, vol. ii, no. 54.
28 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ 2 g
fajlurjsj3i_tbj&4iai i ve&l and -the-irigfr import duties, the price
of wheat during 1816 rose from 525. lod. to 1035. /d., and
jumped still higher during the first months of iSi/. 1 To
urban riots, many of which were not suppressed without
.bloodshed, and to machine-breaking were added peasant in-
surrections and incendiarism. Flags were hoisted with
ominous mottoes, like " Bread or Blood " ; " Willing to
work, but none of us to beg ". The distress assumed
threatening proportions. The attention of Parliament was
called to the fact that whole parishes had been deserted,
and the crowd of paupers, increasing in numbers as they
went from parish to parish, spread wider and wider this
awful desolation.
The failure on the part of the House of Commons to
alleviate the condition of the distressed revived the feeling
of hostility towards the government, and political agitators
' soon emerged from obscurity. Parliamentary reform was
* again urged, as. the panacea for all social evils. But this
time the demand emanated from a group of men entirely dif-
ferent from their predecessors, the reformers of the eight-
eenth century. They came not from the ranks of aristo-
cracy and they appealed not to aristocracy. They were
humble writers of " two-penny trash ", and their writings
were intended for the still humbler workingmen. The mem-
bers of the radical clubs of the eighteenth century, as Burke
aptly argued against them, conceived reform not as a means
of expediency and necessity, but as a means of advancing
justice. The later reformers cared very little for abstract
/ ideas; they demanded political equality as a necessary
weapon in the daily struggle for existence of the lower
classes, and their Hampden Clubs became the haunts of
courageous men. The writings of William Cobbett 2 be-
1 Cf. Thomas Tooke, History of Prices and of the State of the Cir-
culation from 1793 to 1837, vol. i, London, 1838, p. 390.
1 William Cobbett (1762-1835), one of the most prominent and bril-
29] PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM 2 Q
came the New Testament in almost every cottage in the
manufacturing districts. According to his contemporaries,
Cobbett's Political Register was read at " meetings of
people in many towns, and one copy was thus made to
convey the information to scores of persons."
liant journalists of the first half of the nineteenth century and one of
the most remarkable personalities, was a descendant of a humble family
and the son of a laborer, who came to have " laborers under him." >He
could not remember the time when he did not earn his own living. In
1783 he established himself as an attorney's clerk, but before long the
erratic lad began to feel himself shackled by the routine and drudgery
of his office. He enlisted in the 54th Foot, and sailed to America,
where he stayed with his regiment for seven years. After his discharge
he went for a short time to England. There he accused three of his
former officers of fraud, was courtmartialed and fled back to America.
He settled in Philadelphia, where he maintained himself and his wife by
teaching English to French immigrants. He founded a daily paper,
which he styled the Porcupine Gazette, and wrote abusive articles
under the pseudonym of " Peter Porcupine." He bitterly attacked the
American Republic and the most popular men of the country. His
journal soon brought him into trouble and he fled again, this time to his
native country, in order to escape the payment of a penalty of S,ooo
dollars for libel. In England he was welcomed by the Tories, and
with their aid published at first the Porcupine and, then, in 1802, the
Register, which led a guerilla warfare with the pillars of society, and
which before long obtained the most powerful influence all over the
country. The Tories became indignant with his behavior and waited
for an opportunity to get square with their former protege. For his
severe attack on the government for employing German soldiers to
flog English troops who participated in a mutiny, he was indicted for
libel, sentenced to two years' imprisonment and fined 2,000. This
sentence taught Cobbett a useful lesson of which he availed him-
self after his release: he learned how to advocate reforms without
giving the government prosecutor a probable chance of success. From
prison he emerged an extreme Radical and Revolutionist. He earn-
estly believed that the social evils would be remedied by political re-
forms and stopped short of nothing that aimed at the attainment of
these reforms. As a member of Parliament, to which he was elected
in 1830, he attacked the New Poor Law, and, with the exception of a
few eccentricities' which he displayed, as, for example, his prejudice
against' the Jews and his opposition to the Anti-Slavery movement, he
remained till the last, as Southey called him, "an Evangelist of the
populaee."
30 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [30
In justice to Cobbett, it must be said that originally his
idea was to make the people realize the want of reform
and to offer constitutional guidance, " combined with firm-
ness and temper." He hoped to inspire the masses " with
patience and fortitude " and avert their sporadic outbursts
of violence and machine-breaking. As to the Hampden
Clubs, they had great faith in " the noblemen and gentle-
men "of whom they were composed, and in the several hun-
dred petitions to Parliament, asserting that in such wise
they will " insure a redress of that intolerable grievance,
taxation without representation, which has been the true
cause of that universal distress which the nation now
suffers." 1
The government, however, felt great apprehension at the
activities of the clubs. Their perfect organization was in
itself something which could not be overlooked. The House
of Commons had great cause to be alarmed at the report of
its Secret Committee of the I9th of February, 1817, which
portrayed the Hampden Clubs as disseminators of rebellion :
It appears to be part of the system of these clubs to pro-
mote an extension of clubs of the same name and nature, so
widely as, if possible, to include every village in the kingdom.
The leading members are active in the circulation of publica-
tions likely to promote their object. Petitions, ready pre-
pared, have been sent down from the metropolis to all so-
cieties in the country disposed to receive them. The com-
munication between the clubs takes place by the mission of
delegates ; delegates from these clubs in the country have
assembled in London, and are expected to assemble again
early in March. Whatever may be the real objects of these
clubs in general, your Committee have no hesitation in stating,
from information on which they place full reliance, that in far
1 See the Political Register of Dec. 21, 1816; the Full Report of the
Proceedings of the meeting, convened by the Hampden Clubs . . . on
Saturday, the ijth of June, 1816; also Samuel Bamford, Passages in
the Life of a Radical, London, 1844, vol. i.
3 ! ] PRO TO TYPES OF CHARTISM 3 z
the greater number of them, and particularly in those which
are established in the great manufacturing districts of Lan-
cashire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire, and
which are composed of the lower order of artisans, nothing ./
short of a Revolution is the object expected and avowed.
As a matter of fact, however, the Hampden Clubs were
rather conservative in their demands and moderate in lan-
guage in comparison with the "Society of Spencean Philan-
thropists," which was instituted in 1816 for the discussion
of " subjects calculated to enlighten the human understand-
ing." Besides their opposition to machinery and their doc-
trine of communism in land, these " Philanthropists " en-
deavored to " enlighten " the people that " it was an easy
matter to upset government, if handled in a proper manner."
History repeated itself. To paraphrase the " Declara-
tion " of the Hampden Club, the want of reform made the
people feel, and misery made them speak. Meetings of
protest against the government and the notorious riot at
Spa Fields brought about the new suspension of the habeas
corpus act. As to what this meant, the following lines
of Samuel Bamf ord may bear witness :
The proscriptions, imprisonments, trials and banishments of
1792 were brought to our recollections by the similarity of our
situation to those of the sufferers of that period. It seemed
as if the sun of freedom were gone down and a ray less expanse
of oppression had finally closed over us. Cobbett, in terror
of imprisonment had fled to America ; Sir Francis Burdett had
enough to do in keeping his own arms free; Lord Cochrane
was threatened, but quailed not. Hunt was still somewhat
turbulent, but he was powerless. . . . Our Society became
divided and dismayed; hundreds slunk home to their looms,
nor cared to. come out, save like owls at nightfall, when they
would perhaps steal through bye-paths or behind hedges,
or down some clough, to hear the news at the next cottage. 1
1 Samuel Bamford, op. cit., vol. i, p. 44-
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
[32
The suspension of open meetings was followed by the
formation of various secret societies aiming at reforms
which again were almost identical with those for which
the Chartists subsequently fought on penalty of imprison-
ment or transportation. " Benefit Societies ", " Botanical
Meetings ", and similar ostensibly innocent associations
called for revolution as the only means for redress. The
suffering masses were assured that reform would produce
economy and consequently diminish taxation, which, in its
turn, would enable the workingman to increase his home
consumption. Taxation without representation again, as a
few decades before, was denounced as the root of all evil.
All petitions for reform were, as ever, rejected by the gov-
ernment. The wrath of the people, which for some_time
had been smoldering under the cover of secret meetings,
finally broke out in iSio/Jn a series of defiant public demon-
strations at Birmingham, Leeds, Stockport, Smithfield, and
other manufacturing districts, and culminated in the Man-
chester Massacre of August 16, 1819. A large demonstra-
tion, estimated at about eighty thousand persons, was indis-
criminately attacked by military forces. Unable to pene-
trate the compact mass of human beings, the cavalry plied
their sabres to clear a way for the yeomanry, who dashed,
wherever there was an opening, pressing, trampling and
wounding hundreds of men, women and children. The
massacre precipitated bitter protests from all over the land.
The authorities tried in vain to minimize the real signifi-
cance of the outrage by declaring it a mere accident. The
working class was overwhelmed with the feelings of re-
sentment and of revenge, which were admirably voiced by
Shelley in his " Mask of Anarchy " :
" And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain,
Tis to see the Tyrant's crew
Ride over your wives and you
Blood is on the grass like dew.
33] PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM 33
Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood and wrong for wrong
Do not thus when ye are strong."
Protests passed into action. The agitators declared the
Kingdom in a state of Civil War. The general disaffection
was attributed directly to the irritation of want and eco-
nomic injustice. 1 ^ Revolt and anarchy reigned supreme in
all manufacturing districts. The agitator Thistlewood
found many adherents to his plan to overthrow the govern-
ment. Executions for high treason became common events.
But nothing could curb the awakened slave, who, together
with Shelley, felt that his very life depended on "Freedom" :
" Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude
No in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be.
As in England now we see."
The workingmen were taught and led to fight for
" clothes, andjrjre, and food ", and to consecrate their very
lives to the cause of freedom, which they confounded with
1 i
uni versa! suffrage. Mis-government was considered the
source of all social evils, and the control of Parliament was,
therefore, looked to as the only remedy by which the whole
world might be relieved. The French Revolution of 1830
gave a fresh impetus to the popular discontent. The middle
classes promptly seized this opportunity to enroll the sup-
port of the National Political Unions of workingmen to
their Reform Bill. After the passage of the Reform Act
of 1832 the political agitation subsided for a few years
only to assume a more formidable aspect in the Chartist
Movement.
1 See Gracchus, Letter to Lord Sidmouth on the Recent Disturbances
at Manchester, London, 1819.
CHAPTER II
;
THE WHIG RULE
THE fourth decade of the nineteenth century was a period
of trial for the English nation and brought a series of bitter
disappointments to its lower strata. To begin with, the poli-
tical machinery of the Whig rule, which at its inauguration
had inspired great hopes, soon fell into a state of stagnation
and absolute incompetence. The people, who at the beginning
of the decade were all exalted with aspirations for social
justice, for equality and fraternity, saw themselves de-
\erted and their cause betrayed by their standardbearers.
The honeyed promises of the middle class, made through
their representatives in the beginning of the thirties, were
but the baits of politicians who turned recreant upon the
achievement of their object. *It became evident that their
aim had been simply to wrest the power from the landed aris-
1 tocracy, and to further their own interests. Their craving
for political power was in accord with the economic doctrine
of rent, which was promulgated by Ricardo, the first mouth-
piece of the capitalist class. According to this doctrine,
rent is a transfer of wealth from the capitalist to the land-
lord ; rent and profit fluctuate, therefore, on opposite scales,
the rise in the former necessarily causing a fall in the
latter. The scales were controlled by the landlords, and it
became a matter of prime importance to reverse this control.'
The Corn Laws were a thorn in the side of the manufac-
turers, and all taxes were attacked as a baneful burden on
industry. Sydney Smith gave expression to this sentiment
in his characteristic style:
34 [34
\\
35 ] THE WHIG RULE 35
The schoolboy whips his taxed top, the beardless youth man-
ages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road, and
the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine which has paid
7 per cent into a spoon that has paid 15 per cent, flings him-
self back upon his chintz bed which has paid 22 per cent, makes
his will on an 8 stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothe-
cary who has paid a license of 100 for the privilege of putting
him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed
from 2 to 10 per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are de-
manded for burying him in the chancel. His virtues are handed
down to posterity on taxed marble, and he will then be gath-
ered to his fathers to be taxed no more.
There were, indeed, few who during the fight for the
Reform Bill realized that the interest of the manufacturers
in the reform movement was actuated by selfish motives.
The organ of the radical group of the working class, the
Poor Man's Guardian, had on various occasions, in 1831 and
1832, warned the laborers that " the bill will only increase
the influence of landholders, merchants, manufacturers and
tradesmen ", and that it was the " most tyrannical, the most
infamous, the most hellish measure," as the poor " will be
starved to death by thousands if this bill pass, and thrown
on to the dunghill, or on to the ground, naked like dogs."
The national Union of the Working Classes denounced the
bill as a mere expedient " to deceive the people, and no ways
calculated to better the condition of the working people."
" Orator " Hunt z was even more emphatic in his condemna-
1 See " Last Warning on the Accursed Reform Bill," in the Poor
Man's Guardian, April u, 1832.
*" Orator" Henry Hunt (1773-1835), at one time the friend of Cob-
bett and a member for Preston, was a Somersetshire gentleman and a
liveryman of London. In his youth he was committed to the King's
Bench Prison for six weeks as a penalty for a duel which he had fought
with Lord Bruce. In prison the young Tory came in contact with
some discontented persons and listened to a great deal of inflammatory
36 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [36
tion of the bill, root and branch, as an instrument of restric-
tion and as an attack on the poor. But Hunt was de-
nounced as a " demagogue " and " egotist ", while Lord
John Russell, the hero of the Reform Bill, was almost uni-
versally applauded for his speech in favor of the bill. He
showed the absurdity and the crying injustice of the system
of election which had prevailed in England and which had
allowed a " green mound " or a " stone wall, with three
niches in it ", to send two members to Parliament, while
large flourishing towns, full of trade and activity, contain-
ing vast magazines of wealth and manufactures had no
representation. 1 The sympathies of the masses were de-
cidedly in favor of the bill. With the exception of a small
radical faction, the workingmen rallied round Thomas Att-
wood, the leader of the Birmingham Political Union, who,
according to Francis Place, 2 was then regarded " the most
influential man in England ", and who was credited with
having worked the hardest to carry the Reform Bill.
The secret, however, soon leaked out that the working
class had been hoodwinked. Before long the Whig leaders
began to speak of their old popular allies, " the Birming-
ham fellows ", with affected indifference and open hostility.
They hated to be reminded of the National Political Union,
talk, which decided his future activities, and he emerged a thorough rad-
ical. He was " the best mob orator of the day, as Francis Place puts it,
and his uncompromising views and actions gained him the name of
"demagogue " from his opponents, on the one hand, and of " champion
of liberty" from the lower classes, on the other. He played an im-
portant role in the riots of 1816, and was usually referred to as the
hero of Spa Fields and the Peterloo Massacre. His gigantic figure
and carriage, as well as his histrionic manner of talking, rendered him
an idol of the masses, and, while hated by the well-to-do people, he
found solace in the love and devotion of the oppressed and poor.
1 Cf. Lord John Russell's speech of the ist of March, 1831, in Han-
sard's Parliamentary Debates, third series, vol. ii, pp. 1061-1089.
2 Cf. infra, p. 76.
37] THE WHIG RULE 37
which had elevated them into power. Lord Melbourne
confessed his strong opposition to " any radical measure
or radical colleagues 'V The treachery on the part of the
Whigs was the more revolting because of the false expec-
tations they had raised :
It is painful, at this day, testifies a contemporary reformer
to look back upon the delirium of joy which followed the suc-
cess of this effort for real representation. That long, loud,
universal shout of gladness which shook the earth and rose
up to heaven, gave testimony to the hold which the idea had
taken of the nation's heart. Wisely was it concealed from
them at that moment of excitement, that they had scotched the
snake only, not killed. 2
The protest against the Act of 1832 was spontaneous on
the part of real reformers. It was assailed for having
opened up " a sluice gate of the most intolerable oppres-
sion ". The object of the bill was condemned together
with its sponsors. " The men who made the Reform Bill
were not fools; neither were the middle classes, for whom
it was made. The Whigs saw, and the middle classes saw,
that the effect of the bill would be to unite all property
against all poverty." 3 Thomas Attwood, who had exerted
the greatest influence to secure the passage of the Reform
Act, declared that he regretted that he had worked for the
reform which brought " troops of sycophants and time-
servers " to the legislative chamber. The Whigs were
stamped as a party for the dishonest, for the timid and for
the unscrupulously ambitious, and their rule as the suprem-
acy of the " hypocritical, conniving and liberty-undermin-
ing Whigs ".
1 J. T. Bunce, History of the Corporation of Birmingham, Birming-
ham, 1878, vol. i, pp. 128-9.
1 Tract published by the Complete Suffrage Union, The Rise and
Progress of the Complete Suffrage Movement, London, 1843.
3 Bronterre's National Reformer, Feb. n, 1837.
38 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [38
The attitude of the radicals towards the ruling party can
be seen from the characteristic picture drawn in one of the
Chartist papers under the caption " What is Whiggery?" *
A Whig is a political shuffler, without honor, integrity, or
patriotism. Dissimulation, selfishness, and baseness are his
prime moving principles. In private life he is a stately despot,
and a surly tyrant; cunning, hypocrisy, and falsehood are too
frequently familiar to his mind, and he sometimes treats his
workmen (if he has any) more like a gang of convicts than
a useful band of honest, independent mechanics. If, as some-
times happens, they refuse to submit passively to his injustice
and cruelty, they are persecuted and reviled, and compelled
to seek refuge from his malignancy beyond the limits of his
arbitrary authority. . . . When the Whig is a mighty poli-
tician, he courts public favor, smiles graciously on the people,
makes glorious promises of reform, cajoles and flatters them,
until he gets them to assist him in advancing his selfish schemes.
But he treats them with ingratitude and contempt, when they
afterwards remind him of his obligations and request him to
perform them.
The commissions of inquiry became a byword of political
corruption and inactivity:
Set them to make a report on any public subject, give them,
for example, a brief to fill up against the poor and the Poor
Laws, and they will do it to their employer's satisfaction ; it is
their vocation faithfully to serve those by whom they are paid,
or hope to be paid, and little of conscientious responsibility
to truth or justice is felt in the execution of the appointed task. 2
The rampant political favoritism was also strikingly satir-
ized by Sydney Smith, when he said that if you met a Whig,
1 The Chartist Circular, May -2, 1840.
1 The Black Book: AH Exposition of Abuses in Church and State,
Courts of Law, etc., London, 1835, appendix, p. 61.
39] THE WHIG RULE ^
whom you had never seen before, your doubt was " not
whether he was a commissioner or not, but what the depart-
ment of human life might be into which he had been ap-
pointed to inquire ". The hero of the Reform Bill, Russell
himself, who in 1831 accused the landlords of usurpation
of power in violation of the Constitution of the country,
according to which " no man could be taxed for the sup-
port of the State who had not consented, by himself or his
representative, to such tax ", soon became an accomplice to
such usurpation, derided the demand for universal suffrage
and went down in history with the well-deserved nickname
of " Finality Jack 'V
The Whigs became even more unpopular after their elec-
tion in 1835. They had come in on promise of retrench-
ment and, instead, they increased taxation ; they had vowed
reforms and, when in power, forced upon the people the
odious New Poor Law. The assertion that " Whigs and
Tories are the two thieves between which this nation has
been crucified " 2 was not the conviction of but one indi-
vidual. The Reformed Parliament discussed everything
except what Carlyle styled " the alpha and omega of all
questions ", " the condition-of-England question ". The
reformers were satisfied, as the bard Praed puts it :
To promise, pause, prepare, postpone,
And end by letting things alone.
In short, to earn the people's pay,
By doing nothing every day.
The ruling party was detested not alone by the radicals.
Ex-Chancellor Lord Brougham, who despised the latter,
. i
1 The nickname was derived from a phrase of his speech of June 23,
1837, in which he referred to the Reform Bill as a " final measure."
1 See R. W. C. Taylor, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Dis-
tricts of Lancashire, London, 1842, p. 271.
4 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [40
expressed the sentiment of many a conservative when he
said in 1839: " I have little thought to have lived to hear
it said by the Whigs of 1839, ' Let us rally round the
queen; never mind the House of Commons; never mind
measures; throw principles to the dogs; leave pledges un-
redeemed; but, for God's sake, rally round the throne'."
Disraeli also laid great stress on the irresponsibility of the
Whigs, although he exaggerated the significance of the
political causes in the Chartist movement. 1
The Whigs were crushed by their own incompetence and
treachery even as early as 1838. The notorious " Bedcham-
ber Plot ", which brought down a tempest of ridicule on
the heads of the chivalrous Whigs, gave them a chance for
shelter " behind the women's petticoats ", but only for a
short time. The people, disgusted with their perfidy, lost
all confidence in them and overwhelmingly defeated them
at the next election. Their rule, however, was the more
ignominious because of the great economic distress and
physical and moral degeneration which prevailed during
their administration without any serious attempt being
made by the government at alleviation. Indeed, so appall-
ing was the wretchedness as to be almost beyond credence,
were it not for official records of that period. This wretch-
edness was, to a great extent, the direct result of the New
Poor Law of 1834 and its administration by the Whigs.
The chicanery and bribery on the part of the landlords,
and the fraud and perjury on the part of the paupers,
fostered by the old Poor Laws, made their repeal impera-
tive. The industrial, as well as the agricultural districts,
were turned into headquarters of permanent pauperism
with all its revolting consequences. Riots, incendiarism, as-
sault and murder became common events. Under these
1 See Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, third series, 1839, vol. xlix,
pp. 246-251.
41 ] THE WHIG RULE 4I
laws the able-bodied and efficient pauper was denied the
right of voluntary choice of settlement. The kind of work
and his income were fixed by the magistrates, who could
very seldom ascertain the man's previous earnings. The
parish authorities were demoralized to the very marrow and
looked upon the parish as upon their prey. The pauper
had to be satisfied not only with the master they had chosen
for him, but also with the woman they had made him marry.
The injudicious provisions and application of the old
laws put a premium on laziness and pauperized not only
indigent men, but also the respectable classes of mechanics :
I am every week astonished by seeing persons come whom I
never thought would have come, reports Mr. Chadwick, one
of the Poor Law Commissioners. The greater number of our
out-door paupers are worthless people; but still the number
of decent people who ought to have made provision for them-
selves, and who come, is very great and increasing. One
brings another; one member of a family brings the rest of a
family. . . . Thus we have pauper father, pauper wife, pauper
son, and pauper grand-children frequently applying on the
same relief -day. . . . Indeed, the malady of pauperism has
not only got amongst respectable mechanics, but we find even
persons who may be considered of the middle classes, such as
petty masters, small master bricklayers. 1
The bulky volumes of the Report of the Commission, of
which Nassau Senior was a member, proved quite conclu-
sively that the very foundation of English economic life
was in jeopardy. Since every employer could choose be-
tween a workman solely dependent on his wages and a
pauper, whose earnings were supplemented by the parish
rates, it was but natural that only the latter should get em-
ployment, thus dragging down wages and increasing the
1 Reports from Commissioners, 1834, vol. xxvii, p. 26.
42 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [42
army of professional paupers. " The surplus labourer is
driven by the overseer into the market to compete with the
regular workman," writes an investigator, "his work is
offered at a reduced price, or he is even billeted, and his
pay entirely derived from the rates. With this cheap
laborer the regular one can stand no chance ; he is undersold
in his own market, and his only property, the work of his
hands and the sweat of his brows, is wrested from him "- 1
Furthermore, the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners
shows that a more or less self-respecting and industrious
laborer, who had managed to lay by a part of his wages
for a rainy day, was refused work, " till his savings were
gone ; and the knowledge that this would be the case, acted
as a preventive against savings ". Pauperism which reached
f. a menacing point in 1832, when one person out of every
seven was receiving relief, put the very life of the nation
at stake, and became most destructive of the family and of
society. 2 The repeal of the old laws was urgent also be-
cause the growth of industry and the development of the
factory system needed complete mobility of labor, which
the law of settlement made impossible. 3 Something had
to be done, some remedy had to be found, and the reforms
of 1834 were proclaimed the panacea for the social evil.
S The chief ingredient of the remedy has since become known
as the workhouse test. All relief, either in money or in
provisions to able-bodied persons, was declared illegal ex-
cept when rendered in public and well-regulated work-
houses, or, as the poor classes called them, " Poor Law Bas-
tiles 'i.
1 William Day, An Inquiry into the Poor Laws and Surplus Labor,
and their Mutual Reaction, London, 1832, p. 16.
* See Report from Commissioners, 1834, vol. xxvii, pp. 45 and 54.
s ;See in this connection the Extracts from Information received by
Her Majesty's Commissioners, as to the Administration and Operation,
of the Poor Laws, London, 1833, pp. 271-272.
43] THE WHIG RULE 43
The sudden change caused by the New Poor Law, which
was strenuously opposed, among other representatives, by
the friend of the poor, William Cobbett, and by the then
young and uninfluential politician Disraeli, naturally intensi-
fied the hatred of the poor toward the property-owners and
still more opened the eyes of the working classes to the
fathomless gulf between themselves and the Liberals, into
whose hands they had unsuspectingly put the reins of au-
thority. When the bill was still pending, the uncompromis-
ing Cobbett emphatically declared that the object of the
bill was " to rob the poor man to enrich the landowner ",*
and this opinion became current all over the vast stretches
of the misery-infested land. The glove which was cast to
the non-possessing classes, challenging them indiscrimi-
nately either to become prisoners or to starve, was picked
up with threatening air, first, in the House of Commons, by
a few friends of the people, and then by the people them-
selves. Representative Leech warned the House that the
new law would inevitably render the breach between the
rich and the poor wider than it had hitherto ever been, 2
while representative Hodges prophesied trouble with the
unemployed laborers. " To be sure, the discontented might
be put down if they were in the wrong ", he said ; " but
when they had justice on their side, and were goaded on by
their grievances, the recollection of any collision between
them and the police or soldiery to put them down would be
never effaced from their minds ".* Still more threatening
was the speech of Thomas Attwood in the House of Com-
mons on the nth of August, 1834:
The people had a right to claim relief if they did not obtain
1 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxiv, 1834, p. 1051.
1 Ibid., pp. 1059-1060.
1 Ibid., p. 1030.
44 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [44
employment, as good a right as the noble Lord had to the
hat on his head. If the people were prevented from living
honestly, they would be justified in living dishonestly. . . . For
the law said, and it was a principle of our Constitution, that
obedience was to be contingent upon protection, and that where
no protection was given no obedience could be exacted. 1
The indignation with the New Poor Law grew apace be-
cause of the stringency of administration which provoked
Mr. Harvey, representative for Southwark, to stigmatize
the new law as " one of the most cruel, heartless, and sel-
fish bills that ever was passed into a law ", and to declare
that the funds " were administered with the most barbarous
and heartless severity ". Another representative called it
the New Poor Law Murder Bill. Daniel O'Connell, the
famous Irish patriot, was so much impressed by the ac-
counts of the sufferings endured by the poor through the
New Poor Law that he concluded that the alleged remedy
was worse than the disease, and vigorously, though vainly,
fought its introduction in Ireland.
An amendment of the old Poor Laws was inevitable,
but the precipitate break with the established system
could not but entail disastrous results. The Poor Law
Commissioners, then known under the nicknames of
" bashaws of Somerset House " and " concentrated icicles ",
were apparently so dejected by the evils of an institu-
tion which threatened degeneracy to the whole nation,
that they could not avoid the unhappy but common
mistake of substituting one extreme for another. Repre-
sentative Robinson was perfectly right, when he attacked
the third reading of the bill on the ground that the " odious
and cruel measure " contained no single feature which held
out the least prospect or hope to the poor, no single provi-
1 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxv, p. 1224.
45] THE WHIG RULE 4 e
sion which would give additional employment to the des-
titute, and that it treated all able-bodied laborers alike. The
poor man, he argued, would be told, " you must either go
into the workhouse or we cannot give you relief ", and the
effect of such a system, which made no distinction whatever
between honesty and immorality, between the imbecile and
the able-bodied, would be perilous. 1 These voices of warn-
ing, however, fell on deaf ears. The bill was passed under
protest, 2 and hardly had the people time to realize what had
taken place in the Houses, when the local " Dogberries "
began to treat them with barbarous cruelty. The discipline
which was at once introduced in the workhouses fell like a
thumderbolt on many a wretched family. Aged men found
themselves separated from their wives and imprisoned in
the workhouse, where the inmate was never allowed to
forget that he was under strict orders, and where he was
compelled to live on a diet frequently insufficient for the
1 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxiv, 1834, p. 1042.
* The protest which was entered by some members of the House of
Lords against the passing of the Poor Laws' Amendment Bill con-
tained, among others, the following reasons :
" i. Because this Bill is unjust and cruel to the poor. It imprisons
in workhouses, for not working, those who cannot, by the hardest
labor, obtain wages sufficient to provide necessaries for their wives
and children, although the want of employment and the low rate of
wages have been occasioned by the impolicy and negligence of the
Government. . . .
"4. Because we think the system suggested in the Bill, of consoli-
dating immensely extensive unions of parishes, and establishing work-
houses necessarily at great distances from many parishes, and thereby
dividing families and removing children from their parents, merely be-
cause they are poor, will be found justly abhorrent to the best feelings
of the general population of the country; and especially inasmuch as it
introduces the children of the agricultural poor to town poorhouses,
it will conduce greatly to the contamination of their moral principles,
and be calculated to prevent their obtaining in youth those habits of
industry most likely to be beneficial to them in after-life."
See ibid., vol. xxv, 1834, pp. 1098-9.
46 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [46
bare sustenance of life. Mothers were dragged away, like
criminals, from their infants; sick men and women were
made to walk long distances for relief, some of them expir-
ing on the way. Tears and starvation became the poor
man's lot. 1 The unfortunate inmates of the poorhouses
were even denied the consolation of religion, being deprived
of the liberty of attending houses of worship^
Such were the reforms introduced during the Whig rule.
1 The literature of the day became permeated with expressions of
indignation, of which the following lines by Maurice Harcourt, written
in 1837, may serve as an example :
" Tears ! Tears are the portion of the Poor,
For the great ones fain would see how much they can endure;
And to prove their pity never fails,
They have built the wretched union gaols,
Where King Starvation reigns supreme,
And plenty is a pauper's dream !
And 'mid this mockery of life
Lingers the pale yet lovely wife,
Torn from her first and dearest tye,
In this abode of gloom to die."
CHAPTER III
Oh ! glorious was that mortal's skill,
Who first devised the Poor Law Bill,
To teach in this enlightened time,
That poverty's the vilest crime.
Maurice Harcourt.
THE NEW POOR LAW
THF philosophy of the New Poor Law, borrowed from
James Mill, was5ase^~u | ii the MaUllTisi^^onomicidoctrine.
To aid the people who did not reserve seats at nature's feast
meant to injure others who had better claims. The com-
missioners who were entrusted with the enforcement of the
New Poor Law thoroughly understood their mission which
was once stated by Dr. Kay at a public meeting. He said
bluntly : " Our intention is to make the workhouses as like
prisons as possible, and to make them as uncomfortable as
possible." * These intentions were, indeed, carried into ef-
fect with a faithfulness worthy of a better object. The im-
pression made by the description of the poorhouses is ap-
palling, and even Mr. T. W. Fowle, the ardent advocate of
the New Poor Law, vainly tries to conceal his confusion
in an array of words, and the following lines sound like
mockery : " Wise men will note with satisfaction that the
use of the rod is not forbidden in the case of naughty boys.
. . . The privilege of flogging enjoyed by children of the
upper classes is denied to paupers above the age of four-
teen." 2 The description given by Mr. Fowle of the effect
1 Hansard, vol. xli, p. 1014.
3 T. W. Fowle, The Poor Law, London, 1881, p. 139.
47] 47
48 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [48
of promiscuous aggregation on the poorhouse inmates and
especially on the children, restrained as it is, presents a
lurid picture of mental and moral contamination. 1 The
criminal negligence of children, who were maintained in the
workhouses, on the part of the officers was exposed by a
surgeon in his letter to Lord John Russell. 2 Emaciation was
evident in almost all the eighty children within the walls
of the workhouse of St. James :
The picture is almost too horrible to describe. I found the
children with large heads, tumefied bodies, shrivelled and
wasted limbs mostly in a sitting posture, with their legs crossed
and I found upon enquiring of the nurse . . . that any
change from this position occasioned them pain, and caused
them to cry. . . . They have, in short, become rickety from
the want of exercise and, I fear, an insufficient supply of
wholesome nourishment. . . . Languid and feeble circulation,
and other marks of general debility, are strikingly apparent.
. . . The sight was truly appalling. ... It is quite clear that
such an uniform character of disease among so many children,
the offspring of different parents, must be the result of the
particular manner in which these children have been nursed
and maintained. . . . They are unfortunately too young to
tell their own tale; but although their intellects are not suffi-
ciently matured to give this information, their appearance and
condition bespeak it but too powerfully. I do not hesitate to
declare my firm belief that their wretched condition is the
result of either an insufficient supply of food, or a supply of
improper food, and a want of exercise. . . . Either of these
1 Fowle, op. cit., pp. 142-144. See also on this point Sidney and Bea-
trice Webb, The Break-Up of the Poor Law: Being Part One of the
Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, London, 1909, chap. I.
2 On the punishment and treatment of children by the workhouse
authorities, see also speech of representative Ferrand in Hansard, 0(1.
cit., third series, vol. Ixvi, pp. 1226-1228.
49] THE N EW POOR LAW 49
causes, .or the combination of them, is adequate to the pro-
duction of the effects it has been my unhappiness to witness. 1
The cruelties perpetrated in various workhouses were di-
vulged by non-partisan men, such as the Rev. William Cams
Wilson, who submitted to the legislature his report on the
" wanton cruelty of the officers of the New Poor Laws." 2
These official statements and the accounts given by the
London Times and many local opposition newspapers of the
crimes committed by workhouse officials, together with the
imaginative pathetic pictures of* Oliver Twist and other
workhouse heroes of fiction, did not fail to provoke uni-
versal detestation of the new system of poor relief. * The
indigent actually shrank with fear at the thought of the
workhouse, and in many cases preferred to starve rather
than enter the " Bastiles." The net result was that
as a matter of fact (the large towns excepted) they (the work-
houses) do not contain in many cases half, in some not a
quarter of the inmates for which they were built, so that the
waste in keeping up large unfilled establishments, each with
an expensive staff of officers, is very great, indeed; thus the
salaries and rations of officers (including, however, that pro-
portion which is spent in the administration of out-relief) is
considerable over a million, while the total maintenance of in-
door paupers is only about a million and three-quarters. 1
The defenders of the New Poor Law did anything but en-
lighten the non-possessing classes on the real significance
and desirability of the new measure. In his long and ela-
1 T. J. Pettigrew, A Letter to the Right Hon. Lord John Russell, on
the Condition of the Pauper Children of St. James, Westminster, Lon-
don, 1836, pp. 11-12.
* William Carus Wilson, Remarks on Certain Operations of the New
Poor Laws, Kirkby Lonsdale, 1838.
3 Fowle, op. cit., p. 141.
50 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [50
borate speech which he delivered in the House of Lords on
July 21, 1834, the Chancellor Lord Brougham, the father
of the Bill, extolled the wisdom of Malthus and declared
with brutal frankness that the New Poor Law was intended
i as a preventive check on the unlimited increase of popula-
tion. 1 This declaration, coupled with his express hatred
of charitable institutions and his cynical denunciation of
hospitals for old age, called forth a storm of indignation.
As ever, the undaunted Cobbett came out with a character-
istic reply : " The great object of the Bill," said he,
was to teach the poor to live as man and wife, without having
any children. This was a base and filthy philosophy, and yet
a book had been published showing the means of carrying the
principles of Malthus into effect. Every farmer knew that
the effect of the Bill was to take away the poor rates from
the poor, and to put them into the pockets of the landlords. 2
^Cobbett's erroneous view that the Poor Law was enacted
for the benefit of the landlords was shared by many of his
radical colleagues. Their hatred of the landed aristocracy
rendered them utterly incapable of realizing the importance
and the advance of the new capitalist class. It was Bron-
terre, subsequently the " school-master " of Chartism, who
attacked the new law as an instrument of exploitation by the
manufacturers./ In the first number of his National Re-
former, dated January 7, 1837, he writes :
Our work-people, both agricultural and manufacturing, are
already ground down as low as commercial avarice can grind
them, without exterminating them altogether; yet the money-
monster is not half satisfied. As a last resource, this monster
has now passed a New Poor Law Act, to make the laborers
5 Hansard, op. cit., vol. xxv, 1834, pp. 211-251.
* Ibid., p. 1216.
5 1 ] THE NEW POOR LAW 5 x
live on coarser food, or on no food at all an Act which treats
the victims it has impoverished as other states treat convicted
felons an act which gives a felon's garb, a felon's fare, and
a felon's gaol to the broken-down man whose toil has en-
riched the monster, and whose only crime is that he did not
strangle the monster a century ago. . . . Yes, my friends, the
New Poor Law Act is the last rotten blood-stained prop by
which the money-monster hopes to sustain the tottering fabric
of his cannibal system of that merciless system, which first
makes you poor in the midst of wealth of your own producing,
and would then bastile and starve you for the fruits of its
own barbarity.
This view was subsequently elaborated by most of the
Chartist writers. Feargus O'Connor, the foremost Chartist
leader, attacked the new law on the ground that it was both
a result and a cause of the excessive use of machinery :
This act was framed by Lord Brougham, as the champion of
the middle classes, who were most strongly represented by the
steam producers, and it was framed purposely with a view to
seduce those into a delusive market who would have risen in
their might and annihilated any government that dared thus
violate their trust by the commission of wholesale plunder, had
it not been for the safe retreat promised to the abandoned in
the artificial market. It is the nature of man to use all means
to better his situation, and the poor countryman who gave up
his house and home under the compulsion of the Poor Law
Amendment Act, in the hope of going to a permanent situation,
was unconscious in the " hey-day " of manual labor, as then
applied to infant machinery, that each improvement in the one
would be a nail in the coffin of the other. Estates were cleared
of willing immigrants seduced by the spirit of the moment,
and when anticipation had failed, they then framed the strin-
gent rules under which the hellish law had placed them, when
they sought for an asylum in the parish of their fathers. *Had
it not been for machinery, the Poor Law Amendment Act
52 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [52
never would have passed nay, never would have been ventured
upon, because the whole force of popular indignation would
have been directed against the general plunder, while opposition
was much mitigated in consequence of the casual provision
which machinery offered as a substitute; thus has the Poor
Law Amendment Act been another direct effect upon ma-
chinery. 1
From the point of view of social causation, it is, indeed,
utterly irrelevant whether or not the advocacy of the New
Poor Law was prompted by personal or by class interests.
It must be conceded that, whatever the motives might have
been, the object of checking poverty and moral degradation
was commendable. The fundamental propositions of Lord
Brougham were mere truisms, " that men should be paid
according to the work they do " ; that men should be em-
ployed and paid " according to the demand for their labor
and its value to the employer," and that " they who toil
should not live worse than those who are idle." 2 However,
when one puts himself in the position of the poor contem-
poraries of the Lord Chancellor who, directly or indirectly,
were concerned in, and affected by, the new law, he must as-
sume a different attitude. Blinded by his extreme hatred of
charity, even assuming that this hatred was nurtured not
by a bad heart, but by sentiments of a public-spirited man *
the noble Lord displayed his feeling in a way which the
common people could not help but abhor. It must have
been brazen-headedness, if not hard-heartedness, to come be-
fore one army of destitute men and women who were dis-
1 English Chartist Circular, no. 64.
2 Hansard, op. cit., vol. xxv, 1834, p. 218.
s The Lord Chancellor was apparently afraid of passing into history
with the reputation of a hard-hearted and short-sighted man, and
grasped the opportunity at the next discussion to correct this impres-
sion. See Hansard, vol. xxv, p. 436.
53] THE NEW POOR LAW 53
placed, like so many useless tools, by the new machinery,
and before another still greater army of men who were
compelled by the order of the land to shun decency and
regard thrift and savings as a thing for which they would
be punished by the parish with unemployment, it must
have been fanatical blindness to come before the nation
with an argument like the following:
Sickness is a thing which a provident man should look forward
to, and provide against, as part of the ordinary ills of life.
. . . But when I come to hospitals for old age as old age is
before all men as every man is every day approaching nearer
to that goal all prudent men of independent spirit will, in the
vigour of their days, lay by sufficient to maintain them, when
age shall end their labor. Hospitals, therefore, for the support
of old men and old women, may, strictly speaking, be regarded
as injurious in their effects upon the community. 1
This speech brought forth an outburst of disgust and anta-
gonism, and was made most use of by the Tories as well '
as the Radicals.
The sponsors of the New Poor Law, however, treated
with cruel disregard all the protests and warnings of their
fellow members of Parliament and other antagonists. Far
from heeding the petitions of the people, they rejoiced at the
result achieved immediately after the enforcement of the
new provisions. The idea of the f ramers of the bill, which,
to use Cobbett's words, was meant " as a stepping stone to a
total abolition of all relief for the poor", 2 seemed to approach
realization, inasmuch as both the number of applicants for
relief and the amount of relief itself were at once con-
siderably reduced. It is true that the relief officers had to
quell many a riot in the new unions ; but this little dampened
1 Hansard, op. cit., vol. xxv, 1834, pp. 221-222.
1 Ibid., vol. xxv, 1834, p. 1216.
,
54 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [54
the hopes of the commissioners, since the suppression was
not a difficult task. 1 The stepping-stone proved to be of
great avail, as the reduction of the poor rates in thirteen of
the largest parishes reached twenty per cent the first year. 2
The expenditures for poor relief were fast sliding down-
ward, as may be seen from the following table : 3
RELIEF OF THE POOR
Year. Pounds.
1832 7,036,968
1833 6,790,799
1834 6,317,255
1835 5,526,4i6
1836 4,717,629
1837 4,044,741
* The commissioners, of course, could not deny that the
progress of the change had been highly favored by "the
prosperous state of the manufacturing districts and especi-
ally by the cheapness of provisions which marked the first
half of the decade. 4 Yet they had great faith in a
system which was shunned by the people from the very
start. In the Faringdon Union alone, for example, work-
house relief was offered to 240 able-bodied laborers, of
whom not more than twenty entered the house, and not more
than one-half of the latter remained there longer than a
few days. 5
These were good signs for the friends of the New Poor
Law, and, to use Carlyle's sarcastic comments on the Re-
ports of the Poor Law Commissioners, " a pleasure to the
friend of humanity ".
1 See First Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners for Eng-
land and Wales, 1835, pp. 35-36.
1 Ibid., p. 26.
* See Third Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, etc., 1837.
4 See Second Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, etc., 1836, p. 33.
5 See First Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, etc., p. 27.
55] THE NEW POOR LAW 55
One sole recipe seems to have been needful for the woes of
England : " refusal of out-door relief ". England lay in sick
discontent, writhing powerless on its fever-bed, dark, nigh des-
perate, in wastefulness, want, improvidence and eating care, till
like Hyperion down the eastern steeps, the Poor Law Com-
missioners arose, and said, Let there be workhouses, and bread
of affliction and water of affliction there ! It was a simple in-
vention; as all truly great inventions are. And see, in any
quarter, instantly as the walls of the workhouse arise, misery
and necessity fly away, out of sight, out of being, as is fondly
hoped and dissolve into the inane ; industry, frugality, fertil-
ity, rise of wages ; peace on earth and good will towards men
do, in the Poor Law Commissioners' Reports, infallibly,
rapidly or not so rapidly, to the joy of all parties, supervene. 1
r The effects of the new measure were more or less dis-
guised by -the general condition of prosperity. Before long,
however, they emerged to the surface. The^crisis of 18;
and the series jDfJM^hary^sJsJliat lollop a
period of the most ' abject misery. The notorious Irish
famine and the distress in the highlands (Scotland) could
not but augment the universal penury. After the^ropof 1836
hadvbeen entirely cut off, the inhabitants of the highlands
and the islands were left without potatoes, their staple article
of food, almost at the beginning of winter. The grain crops
could not ripen because of the general wetness of the soil,
while those which partially did ripen were destroyed by the
severe autumn gales and were rendered entirely useless even
for the cattle. It was reported, with the fear of being rather
" under the mark than of overshooting it ", that two-thirds
of the population " are now. or will be long before the com-
mencement of the next crop, without a supply of either kind
of food at home, and will have to look to foreign sources to
Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, London, 1840, p. 16.
56 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [56
prevent starvation." * The official report of the Agent-
General for TimTgration, dated July 29, 1837, stated expli-
citly that, owing to the decline of the fisheries and the break-
ing up of the kelp trade, by which the bulk of the population
lived, the majority of the people had become "a clear super-
fluity in the country." z
9 This superfluity of human beings had to emigrate from
their native places in order to avoid starvation. Ireland, in
the judgment of the commissioners of 1836, was one great
lazarhouse, and the Iqsh poor crossed over in crowds to
England, congested every large town, or rambled over the
country, offering their services on any terms which might
induce manufacturer or farmer to employ them, t Emigra-
tion also became a prominent feature among the English
peasantry. Man hunted for a refuge from the lurking
enemy hunger. Goaded on by the illusion that clings to dis-
tant places, people abandoned their hovels and turned
nomads. The characteristic attributed by Adam Smith to
man as being "of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be
transported," which was strikingly true even as late as 1837,
changed, as if by magic, under the severe economic pres-
sure of the subsequent year. In his report to the Secretary
of State for the Colonies, the Agent-General for Emigra-
tion from the United Kingdom relates that Dr. Galloway
had to travel over a considerable part of Wiltshire, Dorset-
shire, Hampshire, and the eastern part of Sussex, in order
to secure a sufficient number of passengers for a small public
1 Distress in the Highlands (Scotland). A letter addressed to Mr.
Fox Maule by Mr. Robert Graham, and communicated by Lord John
Russell's direction to the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury.
London, 1837; pp. 1-2.
* Report of the Agent-General for Emigration on Applicability of
Emigration to Relieve Distress in the Highlands, dated July 29, 1837,
London, 1841, p. i.
57] THE NEW POOR LAW 57
vessel which sailed in June, 1837. In the autumn of the
same year a vessel was allotted to the county of Norfolk,
but the whole party, with the exception of only three fami-
lies, changed their minds at the last moment. Circum-
stances were much changed in 1838. The government
agents found no difficulty whatsoever in filling four ships
from the county of Kent alone, and many applicants had
to be rejected for want of room. 1 Emigration filled all
channels and especially those leading to the industrial cen-
tres, which before long inevitably became infested with the
most noisome quarters.
In the very center of Glasgow, writes the superintendent of
the police of that city, there is an accumulated mass of squalid
wretchedness. . . . There is concentrated everything that is
wretched, dissolute, loathsome and pestilential. These places
are filled by a population of many thousands of miserable
creatures. The houses in which they live are unfit even for
sties . . . dunghills lie in the vicinity of the dwellings; and
from the extremely defective sewerages, filth of every kind
constantly accumulates. 2
In 1837 one-tenth of the Manchester and one-seventh of
the Liverpool population lived in cellars, and most of them
in courts with only one outlet. 8 In Bury, the population
of which was 20,000, the dwellings of 3,000 families of
workingmen were visited. In 773 of these dwellings the
families slept three and four in one bed; in sixty-seven,
five and six slept in one bed, and in fifteen one bed ac-
commodated six and seven persons. 4 In Bolton there
1 Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, from the Agent-
General for Emigration from the United Kingdom, 1838, p. 6.
2 Hansard, op. cit., 1843, vol. bcvii, p. 69.
8 Ibid., 1838, vol. xxxix, p. 383.
* Ibid., 1840, vol. li, p. 1226.
58 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [58
were, in 1840, 1,126 houses untenanted. In one case,
seventeen persons were found in a dwelling about five
yards square. In another, eight persons, two pairs
of looms and two beds were found in a cellar, four
by five yards, and six feet under the ground. 1 In
Rochdale, five-sixths of the population had scarcely a blan-
ket among them. 2 The chief commissioner of the police
force in Manchester stated that in one room, totally desti-
tute of furniture, three men and two women were found
lying on the floor, without straw, and with bricks for their
pillows. The stipendiary magistrate of the Thames Police
Office reported similar observations. The descriptions of
dwelling houses " with broken panes in every window-
frame, and filth and vermin in every nook, with walls black
with the smoke of foul chimneys, with corded bed-stocks for
beds, without water," 3 appears less shocking in comparison
with the statements made by other witnesses. The dwellings
in the rural districts were even worse than those in the cities.
In one place a father, mother, married daughter with her
husband, a blind boy of sixteen, a baby, and two girls, all
occupied one room.* In another place a man of about
sixty years of age was found living in a cow stable, without
windows, floor, or ceiling, where the rain dripped through
the rotten roof, and dung-heaps lay near his door.
1 Hansard, op. cit., vol. Iviii, pp. 31-32.
1 Ibid., vol. lix, p. 635.
* Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of
Great Britain, London, 1842, pp. 133-135.
4 Hansard, vol. Ixxiii, pp. 882-884.
\
CHAPTER IV
Child, is thy father dead ?
Father is gone:
Why did they tax his bread?
God's will be done.
Mother has sold her bed,
Better to die than wed ;
Where shall she lay her head ?
Home she has none.
Ebenezer Elliott.
THE UNIVERSAL DISTRESS
THE appalling living conditions of the poor was the im-
mediate result of the general unemployment that prevailed
in all parts of the country. The hand-loom weavers were
the first victims of the depression of trade. As early as
April 23, 1837, the Manchester Times recorded that " the
distress has now reached the working classes. In this town
and its neighborhood, many of the factories are working
only four days a week, and some thousands of hand-loom
weavers have been discharged". The investigation made
by the government showed that during the winter of 1837-
i&g8._an almost unprecedented number of looms had been
thrown into disuse not only .in- Ma4ichester^ but also in
Spitalfields and other manufacturing -centers. 1 ~ Another
commissioner reported that the applicants for relief were
mostly able-bodied men with families, and widows with
children, all of whom were driven to seek parish assistance
1 Report by Mr. Hickson on the Condition of the Hand-Loom Weav-
ers, Presented to Parliament by Her Majesty's Command, 1840, p. 4.
59] 59
60 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [60
through lack of employment^ Dr. Kay's Report of 1837
on the distresT~uf "ih^Spitalfields weavers stated that
out of the 14,000 looms, one-third were not used, while
the remaining number were only partially employed.
The manufacturers themselves estimated that the decrease
in the work executed amounted to one-half the quantity
ordinarily produced, and that the aggregate weekly wages
of the weavers shrank from 10,000 or 12,000 to 5,000 or
6,000. The~~efifcL pi this stagnation of trade can be real-
ized when -we bear in mind that even at their best, i. e. when
employment was constant and regular, the weavers were,
according to the report, so destitute of resources that the
employers had to advance them money from week to week
to defray the current expenses of their families. 8 The
wages of the luckier weavers who retained their places were
reduced from twenty-five to thirty per cenb The annual
loss to the poor in nominal wages in Bolton alone was esti-
mated in 1841 at i3O,ooo. 3 The unoccupied houses in
Preston numbered 1220, while in Oldham, out of the 7853
houses and shops, 1200 were empty as a result of total or
partial unemployment.*
The industrial depression spread like a plague from town
to town and from industry to industry, tightening its grip
on England for more than half a decade. 'In Birmingham
the labor aristocracy, the iron workers began to feel the
1 Report by Edward Gulson, respecting Nottingham, to Poor Law
Commissioners, 1837, p. 7.
* James Ph. Kay, Report, Relative to the Distress Prevalent among
the Spitalfields Weavers, to the Poor Law Commissioners, London,
J837, PP- 1-2. On the want of employment of the hand-loom weavers in
Scotland, see Assistant Hand-loom Weavers' Commissioners' Report
of 1839, pp. 8-9.
3 Hansard, op. cit., vol. Iviii, p. 31.
4 Ibid., pp. 593-594-
6l] THE UNIVERSAL DISTRESS fa
pinch of bad times in the early part of 1837. In March
of that year a deputation submitted to Lord Melbourne a
memorial, signed by " merchants, manufacturers and other
inhabitants " of Birmingham, in which " the serious and
immediate attention of His Majesty's Government " was
solicited to the " general state of difficulty and embarrass-
ment, threatening the most alarming consequences to all
classes of the community ". The government was advised
that " unless remedial measures be immediately applied, a
large proportion of our population will shortly be thrown
out of employment 'V JThe laissez-faire policy, however,
was not abandoned, and no serious attempt was made to
save the situation, with the result that by the end of 1842
there was hardly a single industry which was not in a
critical state3 Archibald Prentice testifies that in 1841
there were 20,936 persons in Leeds, " whose average earn-
ings were only elevenpence three-farthings a week. In
Paisley, nearly one-fourth of the population was in a state
bordering upon actual starvation. In one district, in Man-
chester, the RevT~Mr. Beardsall visited 258 families, con-
sisting of 1029 individuals, whose average earnings were
only sevenpence halfpenny per head per week."
^The agricultural districts could by no means boast of
better conditions. The investigation of the state of three
typical families of husbandmen in the union of Ampthill
revealed that the means of living had been reduced, in
money, from is. 8d. a head per week in 1834 to is. 2^d. in
1837, notwithstanding the fact that the work of these hus-
bandmen had been increased from an aggregate of 39 weeks
* Bronterre's National Reformer, March 18, 1837.
2 See Hansard, op. cit., vol. lix, p. 636, and vol. Ixiii, p. 1128.
8 Archibald Prentice, History of the Anti-Corn Law League, London,
1853, vol. i, p. 270.
62 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [62
in 1834 to 142 in 1837. Moreover, this does not tell the
whole story. \ The command that money had over bread in
these two years must be taken into consideration.* The
average price of wheat in 1834 was 465. 2d. per quarter,
while in 1837 it reached 553. oxi. The purchasing power
of the earnings of the three families (which in 1834 and
1837 numbered 17 and 21 souls respectively) was 32 quar-
ters of wheat, or 18^ pints per week for each person in
1834; whereas in 1837 their income could purchase only
2 3/ / 2 quarters of wheat, i. e., n pints per week for each per-
son. In other words, the actual wages fell 41 per cent in
comparison with the wages in 1834 which even then were
far from adequate for a decent livelihood. 1 The investi-
gation of the state of forty-eight families of husband-
men of the Ampthill union whose employment had been
irregular, showed, that, notwithstanding the 760 weeks
more work done in 1837 than in 1834, they suffered
a reduction in their weekly money income per head
of from is. io^d. during 1834 to is. 6d. in 1837,
or 20 per cent in nominal wages, and in the purchasing
power of the latter expressed in wheat, a weekly reduction
from 20^4 pints per head in 1834 to 13^ pints per
head in 1837, or a net reduction of 34 per cent. 2 The sur-
vey of thirty families of the same union, whose employment
in husbandry had been regular during the years 1834-1837,
revealed a similar result. The average weekly reduction in
their actual wages, expressed in terms of wheat, fell from
23 i-io pints to 17 3-10 pints per head, while the reduc-
tion of the income of ten of these families reached 32 per
1 See Twenty-third Report from the Select Committee on the Poor
Law Amendment Act, London, 1838, appendix B, pp. 34-35.
* See Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Reports -from the Select
Committee on the Poor Law Amendment Act, London, 1838, appendix
A, pp. 44-45.
63] THE UNIVERSAL DISTRESS 63
cent, and one family numbering seven persons had to subsist
on only i ^d., i. e., i 3-10 pints of wheat per day. 1
The Whigs came into power pledged to reforms which
they could hardly accomplish. The campaign for the Re-
form Bill of 1832 carried with it a promise for the repeal
of the Corn Laws which had been condemned as fostering
the monopoly of landowners. On his death-bed, Jeremy
Bentham rejoiced that the Reform Bill would assure the
triumph of free-trade. In spite of their pledges, however,
and in spite of the many petitions in favor of the repeal
of the Corn Laws, the reform Parliament and the reform
ministers put up the " not-the-time " plea and energetically
fought such repeal. Instead of ameliorating the condition
of the poor, the government continued its laissez-faire
policy, and allowed the misery of the working class to be
exceedingly aggravated by the relentless rise of prices of
wheat.
TABLE I
Year. Price of Wheat per Quarter.
1836 39*. Sd.
1837 52J. 6d.
1838 55*. 3d.
1839 6gs. 4d.
1840 68j. 6d.
The value of the imported wheat in 1836 was o.i per cent
of the whole import of Great Britain, whereas in 1839 wheat
was twenty per cent of the entire value of imports, reaching
1 Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Reports } op. cit., appendix B, pp.
46-47. Concerning the condition of six laborers in other parishes of
the same union, see Twenty-eighth Report from the Select Committee
on the Poor Law Amendment Act, London, 1838, appendix, pp. 24-25.
The subsequent Reports of the Committee endeavored to weaken the
impression produced by the former Reports, and sophisticated methods
were employed to discredit not only the conclusions but even the
veracity of Mr. Turner, a former member of the Committee.
64 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [64
a sum never exceeded before (10.5 million). This rise in
the price of wheat taxed the working population of Bolton,
for instance, as much as 195,000, which together with the
reduction in wages amounted to a net loss of 325,ooo. 1 t It
goes without saying that this sudden rise in the price of
wheat, due primarily to the high import duties, at the time
of a well-nigh universal state of unemployment, robbed
many families of the bare necessities of life. In one case a
man was seen standing over a swill tub, into which was
thrown the wash for the pigs, and taking several pieces
out and eating them with a voracious appetite. 2 A farmer
testified that about twenty females from Crompton and
Shaw, near Oldham, begged him to allow them to disinter
the body of a cow which had been buried a day and a half.
Upon his permission the women " disinterred the body, cut
it into pieces, took it to their respective families, who not
only ate heartily of the carrion, but declared the meat to be
the best they had tasted for many months past ". 3
In Johnstone mothers were witnessed who divided a
farthing salt herring and a half -penny worth of potatoes
among a family of seven; others mixed sawdust with oat-
meal in making their porridge, to enable each to have a
mouthful, while still other families lived for ten days on
beans and peas and ears of wheat stolen from the neigh-
boring fields. 4 Children wrangled with one another in the
streets for the offal which well-to-do people did not allow
their dogs to eat. Starving families seized the vilest sub-
stances which could protract for a few hours their miserable
existence. Half -dressed wretches crowded together to save
1 Hansard, op. cit., vol. Iviii, p. 31; vol. Ixiii, p. 1125.
2 Ibid n vol. Iviii, p. 595.
8 Ibid. See also affidavit to the same effect in vol. Ixiii, p. 26.
* Ibid., vol. lix, p. 759.
65] THE UNIVERSAL DISTRESS 6 5
themselves from the pain of cold. Several women were
found in the middle of the day imprisoned in one bed under
a blanket, because as many others who had on their backs
all the articles of dress that belonged to the party were out
of doors. 1 Colonel T. P. Thompson, describing in the Sun
the distress he witnessed in Bolton in 1841, says:
I think I know what is the minimum of help by which horse,
ass, dog, hog or monkey can sustain existence, and where it
must go out for want of appliance and means of living. But
anything like the squalid misery, the slow, moulding, putrify-
ing death by which the weak and the feeble of the working
classes are perishing here, it never befel my eyes to behold,
nor my imagination to conceive. 2
Such conditions being the rule and not the exception,
there is little wonder that various diseases took root in the
poor quarters and became the scourge of all industrial
cities. Consumption and febrile diseases of a malignant and
fatal character, together with plagues, prevailed in almost/
every house, and raised the mortality of the population to a
point threatening almost racial extermination. The Reports
of the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of
England, as well as the Parliamentary Reports, contain an
amazing mass of evidence to that effect.-^In Liverpool, for"\
example, the average longevity of the gentry and profes- )
sionals in 1840 was 35 years; that of business men and A
skilled mechanics, 22 years, while that of day-laborers, oper-_j
atives, etc., was only 15 years.*- The variation of mortality
in different districts of the metropolis in 1838 amounted,
according to the first annual report of the registrar-general,
to 100 per cent. The report of one of the medical officers
1 Report on Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of Great
Britain, 1842, p. 24.
2 Quoted by Archibald Prentice, op. cit., vol. i, p. 270.
66 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [66
stated explicitly that the dwelling condition in Liverpool
was the source of many diseases, " particularly catarrh,
rheumatic affections, and tedious cases of typhus mitior,
which, owing to the overcrowded state of the apartment,
occasionally pass into typhus gravior ". The cellars es^
pecially became hot-beds of epidemic diseases. In 1837!
the same medical officer attended " a family of thirteen!
twelve of whom had typhus fever, without a bed in the?
cellar, without straw or timber shavings frequent substi-\
tutes. They lay on the floor, and so crowded, that I could/
scarcely pass between them ". In another house, fourteen
patients were found lying on boards, and during their illness,
had never removed their clothes. 1 Nassau W. Senior testi-
fied that he had found in Manchester a whole street follow-
ing the course of a ditch, because in this way deeper cellars
could be had without the cost of digging, and that not a
single house of that street had escaped the cholera. 2 The
extent of the spread of diseases in industrial centers can
be realized from the fact that the total number of patients
admitted to the dispensaries in the Manchester district dur-
ing the six years ending in 1836 was 54,000, whereas the
total number of those admitted during the six years of dear
food ending in 1841 reached 169,000, an increase of over
200 per cent. 3
The opponents of the New Poor Law pointed out repeat-
edly that the new measure would propagate crime.
Cobbett was particularly emphatic on this point. Robbery,
murder and violence would become a matter of dire neces-
1 See Report on the Handloom Weavers, 1841, vol. x, p. 350; cf. also
Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of Great
Britain, 1842, pp. 17-25.
* Nassau W. Senior, Letters on the Factory Act to the Rt. Hon. the
President of the Board of Trade, London, 1837, p. 24.
3 IJansard, op. cit., vol. Ixiii, p. 1124.
6 7 ]
THE UNIVERSAL DISTRESS
6 7
sity, prophesied he. 1 " What remains for the laborer but
plunder?" protested another. "There is no law for a
starving man there is no tie of conscience or principle
binding on a famished wretch who hears a wife and chil-
dren clamorous for food." 2 The prophecies soon became
facts. Offenses of the most heinous nature spread with
epidemic rapidity over the whole country and especially in
the manufacturing districts. The total expense for suppres-
sion of crime in 1841 amounted to the enormous sum o
604,165, the expense for a single convict being equal to the
cost of education of one hundred and seventeen children.
The loss by plunder at Liverpool alone amounted in that
year to 700,000. 3 The progress of crime can be seen
from the following table :*
TABLE II
Year
Population of
England
and Wales
% of In-
crease each
year
Number of
commit-
ments
Proportion of
commitments
to population
% of In-
crease each
years
iftafi
14,909,000
15,105,000
15,307,000
15,511,000
15,718,000
15,927,000
16,141,000
20,984
23,612
23,094
24,443
27,187
27,760
31.309
in 710
in 639
in 662
in 634
in 578
in 673
in 516
1817 .
3
3
3
3
3
3
12.5
2.1
5-8
11.2
2.1
12.8
!}
if. id .
184 1 .
Total increase
during period
1,232,000
8-3
10,325
49.2
1 Hansard, vol. xxiv, p. 1052.
2 George Stephen, Letter to the Rt. Hon. Lord John Russell on the
Probable Increase of Rural Crime, London, 1836, p. 4.
8 Hansard, vol. Ixvii, p. 66.
4 See Official Report of 1846, no. 460, in vol. xxv. The increase of
population as deduced from Census returns is even smaller. Thus,
according to the Census reports, the total population in 1836 was 14,-
758,000, and in 1842, 15,981,000 an increase of 12,000 less than in our
table.
68
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
Of the commitments of 1842 not less than 8,591, or
nearly 28 per cent, were made in the two manufacturing
districts of Lancashire and Middlesex, including London,
although the population of those districts was far from
constituting such a large percentage of the total. The offi-
cial report of Lancashire showed that the increase of crime
in that district was nearly six times as great as that of the
population.
The Poor Law Commissioners could boast of the effect
of their measures which brought about an annual average
saving of a couple of millions in the expenditures for poor
relief. But England paid too high a price for these sterling
pounds by forcing multitudes of people into the " bastiles ".
The wretchedness of the situation can be gauged from the
growing number of workhouse inmates as shown in the fol-
lowing table. Bearing in mind that nothing but actual star*
vation could force the people to enteVr the relief-prisons, such
an increase tells a sorry tale. Within five years the workf
house population of England and Wales almost doubled.
TABLE 111
Persons in
Cumulative Cumula-
Persons
Cumulative
Cumulative
Difference
Year
receipt of
outdoor
relief
Increase
during the
period
live
per cent
of increase
in work-
houses
Increase
during the
period
per cent of
increase
in the per
cent of
increase
1839.-..
997,000
I4O,OOO
1840
1,030,000
33.ooo 3.3
169,000
29,000 ! 20.7
17.4
1841
I,lo8,000
111,000 n.o
192,000
52,000 37.0
26.0
1842....
1,196,000
199,000
20.0
223,000
83,000 59.3
39-3
i8 4 3----
1,300,000
303,000
30-3
239,000
99,000
70.7
40.4
Table III shows clearly that while the stringent adminis-
trators of the New Poor Law began to discern the hand-
1 This table is constructed on the basis of data given in Hansard,
op. cit., vol. Ixv, p. 367, vol. Ixvi, pp. 1178-1179, and in George Nichols'
History of the English Poor Law, London, 1854, vol. ii, p. 375.
69] THE UNIVERSAL DISTRESS 9
writing on the wall and granted out-door relief to a greater
number of applicants than immediately after the introduc-
tion of the new measure, their ideal means of succor was
still the workhouse. And all this in face of the universal
indignation which was manifested throughout the whole
country. There is no wonder, then, that Tory politicians,,
as well as radical friends of labor, were remorseless i
their denunciation of both the Whigs and their New POO
Law. The hatred displayed by the Tories was nurtured by
their instinctive fear of the newly-formed capitalist class)
which began to assert its power in quite an arrogant way.)
But it was this very acquisition of power by the middle class
that caused the apprehension of the radicals. Their name
was legion who believed with Bronterre, even as early as
1837, that the object of the New Poor Law was to reduce
labor " to the lowest rate of remuneration at which exist-!
ence can be sustained ". The new class was pictured as a
band of " the greatest tyrants over the people ", since " the
most formidable, as well as the most remorseless of all
despotisms, is the despotism of money 'V
The last session of Parliament in 1838 was bombarded
with petitions bearing the signatures of 269,000 persons
who requested the repeal of the new measure, whereas only
thirty-five petitions with 952 signatures were presented in
favor of retention of the New Poor Law. The people felt
themselves outraged and expressed their resentment at
public meetings, some of which were attended by crowds
whose numbers were estimated at 3OO,ooo. 2 The Whigs,
however, were not to be daunted, and the party in power
continued to remain brutally heedless to the desperate cry
of millions of men and women.
1 See Bronterre's National Reformer, January 28, Feb. n and March
18, 1837.
2 Hansard, op. cit., vol. xli, 1838, pp. 1005-1006.
CHAPTER V
Call Chartism by what name you
will, its principles have sprung from
the infant blood of English children;
and though you water them with the
blood of millions, yet, by the God who
made us all equal, I swear that I will
take the little children, their fathers,
and their mothers, out of your toils
and grasp, or die in the attempt!
Feargus O'Connor.
LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM
r
^ THE working class was keenly disappointed in the
Whigs for their hostile attitude towards labor legislation.
It was the ultra Tories, Richard Oastler, Michael Thomas
Sadler and Lord Ashley * who led the campaign against the
1 Richard Oastler (1789-1861), the "king of the factory children,"
was a Tory and an advocate of the abolition of slavery in the West
Indies. He led the agitation for the ten-hour day ffom 1830 on-
wards. In 1830 he began his series of fiery letters to the Leeds Mer-
cury, and afterwards to the Leeds Intelligencer, on the " Yorkshire
Slavery." He vigorously opposed the New Poor Law, and was im-
prisoned for debt in 1840; the Whigs repeatedly offered to pay his
debt and confer other favors upon him if he would give up his agita-
tion against the Poor Laws. He refused to make any deal with his
conscience, and for three years remained in prison, whence he pub-
;lished his Fleet Papers, in which he incessantly urged the need of fac-
tory reform and the abolition of the Poor Laws.
Michael Thomas Sadler (1780-1835), Tory, philanthropist and writer
on political economy, introduced a bill for restricting child labor in
1831. He was chairman of the Select Committee appointed to inquire
into the condition of the children employed in factories, and his solic-
70 [70
LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM ji
evils of the factory system and demanded the amelioration
of workmen's conditions. The Short Time Committee was
justly described as a curious " combination of Socialists,
Chartists and ultra Tories "/ but the Whig representatives
were at all times conspicuous by their absence from among
those who fought the people's battle. 2
fight was forced on the advocates of labor legisla-
tion by the condition of the men, women and children who
j
were employed in factories. \ It started at the time when
the employers' demand for freedom of contract was in com-
plete harmony with the laissez-faire doctrine of the econo-
mists. This doctrine proclaimed it a " natural law " that
employers and employees should be allowed to make what
arrangements they pleased between themselves, without in-
terference on the part of the government. It required a
kind of philosophical courage, besides a warm feeling for
the exploited, to oppose the then prevailing notions of
social justice. When the Ten-Hour Movement grew
stronger, the ethical and abstract ideas were left to take
care of themselves, and the opponents of the movement
began to promulgate the economic or commercial argument
for which Nassau Senior stood sponsor. The whole ques-
itous and unremitting work was said to have been a contributing cause
to his premature death.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury
(1801-1885), Tory, became interested in factory children in 1832 and
introduced a Ten j Hour Bill in 1833. He was the most zealous advo-
cate of labor legislation and an ardent social reformer.
1 The Leeds Mercury, March 23, 1844.
3 The most prominent leaders in the agitation against child labor, be-
sides Oastler, Sadler and Ashley, were the Rev. J. R. Stephens, the
Chartist leader; John Doherty, the general secretary of the Federation
of Cotton Spinners, a Chartist ; George Condy, the editor of the Man-
chester and Salford Advertiser; Philip Grant; and later the radical
Tohn Fielden, who took Lord Ashley's place during his temporary re-
tirement from the House in 1846.
72 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [72
tion was then presented from the point of view of economic
expediency. Starting with the assumption that in the
cotton manufacture " the whole profit is derived from the
last hour " , and that " if the hours of working were reduced
by one hour per day, net profit would be destroyed ; if they
were reduced by an hour and a half, even gross profit would
be destroyed ", Senior reached the ingenious conclusion
that it was in the interest of the working classes themselves
to oppose the reduction of the hours of labor, which would
be " attended by the most fatal consequences ". As to the
exertion and overwork, Senior thought that the work of
children and young persons in the cotton mills was " mere
confinement, attention and attendance ", and it was scarcely
possible to feel fatigue after " extremely long hours " of
work. 1
This last view of Mr. Senior was, to say the least, a pre-
posterous denial of actual conditions. The government re-
ports, as well as the accounts in contemporary newspapers
and magazines, tell quite a different story. Dr. Kay, him-
self an opponent of state interference with the hours of
labor, depicts the condition of the factory laborer in the
following lines : " Whilst the engine runs the people must
work, men, women and children are yoked together with
iron and steam. The animal machine breakable in the
best case, subject to a thousand sources of suffering, is
chained fast to the iron machine, which knows no suffering
and no weariness." 2 Another opponent of the factory
act, Mr. Roebuck, wrote from Glasgow in 1838 that he
visited a cotton mill where he saw a sight that froze his
blood.
1 Nassau William Senior, Letters on the Factory Act, London, 1837,
PP. 12-13.
1 James Philip Kay, Moral and Physical Conditions of the Operatives
Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, 1832, p. 24.
73] LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM 73
The place was full of women, young all of them, some large
with child, and obliged to stand twelve hours each day. Their
hours are from five in the morning to seven in the evening,
two hours of that being for rest, so that they stand twelve
clear hours. The heat was excessive in some of the rooms,
the stink pestiferous, and in all an atmosphere of cotton flue.
I nearly fainted. 1
The employment of women and children was attacked by
Ashley and his followers on the ground that it inevitably
breaks up the family. Of the 419,560 factory operatives in
Great Britain in 1839, for instance, 192,887, or 46 per
cent were under eighteen years of age; the 242,296 females
, included_ij[2,r92^girls under eighteen years of age. Only
96^569, or 23 per cent, were adult male operatives. 2 Women
were reported to return to the factory three or four days
after confinement and dripping wet with milk while at work.
The pestilent atmosphere and the inevitable contact
of many people in one work-room had a detrimental^
effect on the morals of the factory employees. In Man-
chester three-fourths of such employees at the age of
from fourteen to twenty years were reported unchaste. 3
An estimate of sexual morality, writes one of the commis-
sioners, cannot readily be reduced to figures; but if I may
trust my own observations and the general opinion of those
with whom I have spoken, as well as the whole tenor of the
testimony furnished me, the aspect of the influence of factory ^
. life upon the morality of the youthful female population is
most depressing. 4
1 R. E. Leader, Life of Roebuck, quoted by B. L. Hutchins and A.
Harrison in the History of Factory Legislation, Westminster, 1903, pp.
91-92.
2 See Ashley's Speech of March 15, 1844, in Hansard, op. cit., vol.
Ixxiii.
s Cf. Report from Commissioners Appointed to Collect Information
in the Manufacturing Districts, 1834, Cowell Evidence, p. 57-
4 Ibid., Hawkins' Report, p. 4-
74 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [74
The report of the Select Committee also brought to light
many facts in regard to the employment of children in
factories. Children of five years of age were very few, but
there was a considerable number of six-year-old and a
. still greater number of seven-year-old children ; the great-
lest number, however, consisted of children of from eight
jto nine years of age. The working-day frequently lasted
from fourteen to sixteen hours, and the children were under!
a cruel discipline of overseers who enforced authority by-
corporal punishment. The extremely long hours of worki
brought with them, Mr. Senior's assertion to the contrary
notwithstanding, most serious consequences not only from
the point of view of morality, but also from a purely physio-
logical standpoint. 1 The commissioners' report contains
abundant evidence of the horrible effect of the factory sys-
tem on the population. Children were deformed, often
seized naked in bed by overseers and driven with blows to
the factory ; women were made unfit for child-bearing ; men
were crippled ; whole generations afflicted with disease. It was
these monstrosities that roused the friends of the people to
exclaim against the factory system. The discontent of the'
laborers, crude and sporadic in the beginning of the Indus-
trial Revolution, assumed all the aspects of social war which
stratified the population of Great Britain with marvelous
rapidity. Criminal offenses against property were super-
seded by strikes, abortive and irresponsible in the beginning,
but becoming ever more organized and systematic, as the
divorce between the functions and interests of the employer
and those of the workman became more inevitable with
each stride of the capitalist regime.
1 Cf. ibid., Dr. Loudon Evidence, pp. 12, 13 and 16; Drinkwater Evi-
dence, pp. 72, 80, 146, 150 and 155; Power Evidence, pp. 63 and 66-69;
Sir D. Barry Evidence, pp. 6, 8, 13, 21, 44 and 55 ; Tufnell Evidence,
pp. 5, 6 and 16. \
75] LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM 75
Attempts at trade unionism were made even in the be-
ginning of the new factory system. Adam Smith had
already observed that " people of the same trade seldom
meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the
conversation ends in conspiracy against the public or in
some contrivance to raise prices "- 1 There certainly were
such " conspiracies " among the members of the working
class. As early as 1806 the government reported the ex-
istence of some kind of a national union of clothworkers
with a central committee at the head. 2 Benefit clubs and
other associations were formed at the end of the eighteenth
and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries both for the
purpose of carrying on parliamentary agitation against the
factory owners and for industrial combination and class
struggle. Parliament, of course, was persistent in its
laissez-faire policy and, in spite of the persevering demands
of the operatives for a minimum rate of wages and a legal
limitation of the number of apprentices, the House of
, Commons was more than once carried in the interests of
; members whose factories swarmed with children. Indus-]
trial combinations of workmen being legally forbidden andj
severely prosecuted during the first quarter of the nine-)^
teenth century, artisans were forced into a system of con-
spiracy against employers and of cruel treatment of non-
unionists. The attempt of the workingmen at organized
political agitation against the Combination Laws was imme- ^
diately crushed by the notorious "Six Acts" of 1819.
These laws suppressed well-nigh all public meetings, im-
posed a very high stamp duty on all labor publications and
stringently enforced the law on seditious libels, thus exposing
authors or publishers to the penalty of banishment from all
1 Wealth of Nations (McCulloch's edition, 1863), book i, chap, x, p. 59-
2 See Report of the Committee on the Woollen Manufacture, 1806,
p. 16.
76 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [76
parts of his Majesty's dominion or of transportation to
special places, if anything was printed which was not to
theJaste'oT'The government. There was, on the part oil/
the latter, an evident determination to resort to nothing) ''
but force. " They think of nothing else " protested
a member of Parliament, " they dream of nothing
else; they will try no means of conciliation; they will
make no attempt to pacify and reconcile; force force
force and nothing but force "- 1 Radicalism was repre-j
sented as a spirit, " of which the first elements are a rejec-j
tion of Scripture, and a contempt of all the institutions o>
your country, and of which the results, unless averted by a
merciful Providence, must be anarchy, atheism, and uni-
versal ruin ". 2 Radicals were accordingly branded and
treated as traitors. " Orator " Hunt and Cobbett, the her-
alds of the English labor movement, were abused, mal-
\ treated, and, therefore, driven to extremes. Even Francis
Place, 3 the champion political wire-puller and labor lobby-
1 Tierney in the House of Commons, as quoted in Walpole's History
of England, vol. i, pp. 516-517.
2 Walpole's History of England, vol. i, p. 426.
* Francis Place (1771-1854), a master tailor, was the son of a brutal
father, who, to amuse himself, used to knock his children down. In
1808 Place became acquainted with James Mill and Bentham, and soon
became their pupil, associate, and friend; with Bentham, he was on
affectionate terms. In their letters they used to address one another,
" My dear old father," and " Dear good boy," respectively. .Since 1818
he devoted all his time and energy to the agitation for the repeal of the
Combination Laws and to the Reform movement, and proved himself
a remarkable politician. His shop at Charing Cross was the center of
the radicals and reformers, and his " Civic Library " was a kind of
rendezvous for members of Parliament and social agitators of all
sorts. He was to a great extent responsible for the diffusion of the
Benthamite ideas among the English-speaking people. His role in the
repeal of the Combination Laws was that of an organizer and political
wire-puller. He was a great collector of social, economic and labor
facts, and his invaluable manuscript records are now in the possession
of the British Museum. A not inconsiderable portion of the economic
tracts collected and annotated by him is in the library of Professor
Edwin R. A. Seligman.
77]
LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM
77
ist, for a-long.JJmejiQuld hardly secure.a hearing in Parlia-
ment. But his victory in 1825, securing to the working
class the right of collective bargaining, proved mere sec-
tional combination ineffective as long as the government
machinery remained in the hands of the employers. Then
came the reform of 1832 which substituted one set of politi*
cal masters for another, and dampened the enthusiasm of
the working class for political reforms. For a time t
stratapernof the labor leaders was conducted on an _
sively^Tndustrial plan and the social war acquired a still
more formidable aspect. , Trade unionism became the battle-
cry of the friends of the laborers, and the employers were
thrown into a state of extreme apprehension. New hopes
were infused into the hearts of the lowly, and a new creed
was given them by Robert Owen and his followers- Palia-
tive remedies in the form of social legislation began to be
despised. There was a bigger thing for the working class
to do to reconstruct the whole society on a new basis.
The practical Utopia of Owen was backed by the theo-
retical doctrines of the then popular socialist writers.
Charles Hall's admirable work The Effects of Civilization
'
on the People in European States preached a social crusade,
Awhile William Godwin's Political Justice pointed to the
'system of private property as the root of all social evil.
The writings of William Thompson, Thomas Hodgskin,
John Gray, and the minor so-called Ricardian socialists,
taught the propertyless that labor was the only universal
measure and characteristic distinction of wealth and that
labor should, therefore, enjoy the whole produce of its ex- *~
ertions, while, on the other hand, every individual who did
not apply his own hands to the factors of production, all
merchants, manufacturers, clerks, shopmen, directors,
superintendents, was a direct tax upon the manual
78 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [78
\. laborer. 1 All these doctrines strongly tended to promote
the formation of Owenite societies.
~V
A characteristic description of the Owenite intoxication
of that period is given by Francis Place:
The nonsensical doctrine preached by Robert Owen and
others respecting communities and goods in common ; abundance
of everything man ought to desire, and all for four hours'
labor out of every twenty- four ; the right of every man to his
share of the earth in common, and his right to whatever his
hands had been employed upon; the power of masters under
the present system to give just what wages they pleased; the
right of the laborer to such wages as would maintain him and
his comfort for eight or ten hours' labor; the right of every
man who was unemployed to employment and to such an
amount of wages as has been indicated and other matters
of a similar kind which were continually inculcated by the
workingmen's political unions, by many small knots of persons,
printed in small pamphlets and handbills which were sold
twelve for a penny and distributed to a great extent had
pushed politics aside, . . . among the working people. These
pamphlets were written almost wholly by men of talent and of
some standing in the world, professional men, gentlemen,
manufacturers, tradesmen, and men called literary. The con-
sequences were that a very large proportion of the working
people in England and Scotland became persuaded that they
had only to combine, as it was concluded they might easily do,
to compel not only a considerable advance of wages all round,
but employment for every one, man and woman, who needed
it, at short hours. This notion induced them to form them-
selves into Trades Unions in a manner and to an extent never
before known. 2
The wage-earner, however, soon experienced a bitter dis-
1 See Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman, " On Some Neglected British
Economists," in the Economic Journal, vol. xiii, 1903.
1 'See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade Unionism, 1902,
pp. 141-142.
LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM 79
appointment which he felt the more because of his high
aspirations. Taught by the gospel of Utopia to despise
specific, regulative and immediate remedies, and to strive
for one which would apply to all social evils and to all in-
iquities, he acquired an aggressive and haughty attitude
towards the " unproductive " classes, provoking reciprocal
hatred and stringent opposition from the latter. The capi-
talists were naturally not loth to remove the " Day of Judg-
ment " to as remote a future as they possibly could, and
they saw to it that the new industrial organization, the
" New Moral World ", should not " come suddenly upon
society like a thief in the night ". In fact, their watch was)
so alert that the strongest trades unions came to grief as;
soon as they attempted to realize their humblest plans. The
aggressive policy of the laborers encountered a still more
, jdetermined opposition not only on the part of the employers
but also of the government. In this case the latter enjoyed
the fruit of the wisdom of Nassau Senior, who, as commis-
sioner appointed to inquire into the state of combinations
and strikes, recorded his conviction, which was based exclu-
sively on statements and hearsay gossip of employers, that
" the general evils and general dangers of combinations
cannot easily be exaggerated ", that " if a few agitators can
command and enforce a strike which first paralyzes the in-
dustry of the peculiar class of workpeople over whom they
tyrannize, and then extends itself in an increasing circle
over the many thousands and tens of thousands to whose
labor the assistance of that peculiar class of workpeople
is essential . . . that if this state of things is to continue,
we shall not retain the industry, the skill, or the capital, on
which our manufacturing superiority, and, with that super-
iority, our power and almost our existence as a nation, de-
pends 'V
1 Nassau W. Senior, Historical and Philosophical Essays, London,
1865, vol. ii, p. 171.
go THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [80
> The employers stopped short of nothing until they had
succeeded in defeating and crushing the labor organizations.
Even the most popular Grand National Cnni^lMjfltcd. Trades
Union which was started^ through the agitation of Robert
Owa^3lOj^34"-ttiid which enrolled withlrTirTew^weeks at
least half a million members, men and women of various
trades, was exterminated by the combination of employers
who resorted to lock-outs in order to force the laborers to
ibandon the union. The conviction of many strikers and
the barbarous sentences brought against them by the courts
were enough to chill the most ardent followers of the new
order. 1 Notice was served that a bill would be introduced
to make combinations of trades impossible. Many a trades
unionist began to suspect thattKe new moral world could
mot be ushered in without a hard struggle in the teeth of a
'hostile government, subservient commissioners and corrupt
jcourts. Conspiracies, intimidation and violence on the part
of workingmen began to show signs of something more!
< dangerous than the talk of some future Day of Judgment.
The capitalists, however, blinded by their easy victories,
were unable to read the handwriting on the wall. Union
after union was disbanded and crushed by the newly-formed
Chamber of Commerce, thus driving multitudes of people
into the very pit of revolution. " Back to politics!" became
the slogan of the bulk of laborers. Politics again became
the emblem of something which could give everything and
deprive of everything; Parliament began to be regarded
with awe as a new Almighty in whose word lay life and
death. And it was quite natural. The workingmen lost
their battle on the industrial field, and they lost it because
the machinery of government was turned against them.
The important point of stratagem appeared to lie in the
1 See George Loveless, The Victims of Whiggery, London, 1837.
LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM gl
capture of that machinery and its use against the capitalists.
The New Poor Law, the hostility and treachery of the gov-
ernment and the crushing defeat of labor organizations
brought, to use Cobbett's words on an earlier occasion, the
issue of the working class " to be a question of actual star-
vation or fighting for food ; and when it comes to that
point, I know that Englishmen will never lie down and die
by hundreds by the wayside." *
The apotheosis of political power brought again the issue
of universal suffrage to the foreground. The foremost
radical writers renewed their fight for " freedom ". Bron-
terre started his National Reformer on the 7th of January,
1837, with the declaration that the " money monster " must
be fought with his own weapons :
Government, Law, Property, Religion, and Morals, these
five words embrace everything that affects our happiness as
social beings, and consequently all that a reformer can have
to deal with. I place Government at the head, because upon
that do all the rest really depend. It is the Government that
makes the law. The law determines the property and on the
state of property depend the religion and morals, and (as a
consequence) the well-being and happiness of every people
in the world. . . . The parent cause (of the wretched condi-
tion of the people) being bad government, we must necessarily
begin with that and if the government be bad, because, as I
contend, it is wrongly constituted, our first attempt must be
to have it constituted rightly. Here, then, I am at once con-
ducted to my old ground, universal suffrage. A government
which does not represent the interests of all who are called
upon to obey its laws, is necessarily a wrongly constituted
government.
In his article on " Social Occupations " in the same issue
1 See the Political Register, October 20, 1815.
82 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [82
he dwells at some length on the same question and upbraids
the masses for their want of sufficient interest in universal
suffrage . Says he :
I know but one way of salvation for us but one way of
felling the monster without being buried underneath his ruins ;
t it is to smite him with the authority of the law, having first got
the law on the people's side. It is only by having first got the
law on his side, that he has been able to prostrate us. Why
should not we be able to do the same by him when we have
got the law on ours? . . . What right has he to exclude you
more than you to exclude him? ... I am, therefore, obliged,
reluctantly, but unavoidably obliged to conclude that your
exclusion is the work of your own ignorant and craven sub-
mission. You have made no bold efforts as a body no grand
demonstrations to obtain the franchise; you have occasionally
etitioned, it is true, but your petitions were " few and far
between ", they were also weak and desultory, seldom bold
and commanding never simultaneous and absorbing. You
talked in them about your paying taxes, and being liable to
serve in the militia, and all that sort of unconsequential rub-
bish, but you never put forward your claims resolutely, as men
who had an equal, and even a superior stake in the question, to
that of your oppressors namely, your very lives, which are
hourly threatened with destruction by the murderous money-
monster. Much less did you meet simultaneously, and in
millions, to demonstrate the absorbing interest you took in the
question. On the contrary, you were satisfied, even in your
best days, to abandon your case to the care of a few dema-
gogues, who, however honest and brave, could do nothing
for you without some grand national movement on your own
part.
The reproach of Bronterre came at a time when the seeds
of discontent had already begun to sprout to the surface.
The " grand national movement " was on its way. It was
but a short time after those lines had been penned that from
83] LABOR LEGISLATION AND TRADE UNIONISM 83
the ruins of trade unionism arose a magnificent tower
- fik
which, for over a decade, allured the misery-stricken lowly,
and illumined the way for millions of devoted and heroic
men and women.
The name of that tower was Chartism.
CHAPTER VI
Knaves will tell you that it is be-
cause you have no property you are
unrepresented. I tell you, on the con-
trary, it is because you are unrepre-
sented that you have no property.
Bronterre.
THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER
THE London Working Men's Association was organized
on the i6th of June, 1836, under the leadership of men who
for a number of years had been associated with various
phases of the labor movement. Henry Hetherington and
John Cleave, the champions of a free unstamped press, Wil-
liam Lovett, Henry Vincent, George Julian Harney and
other prominent members of trade unions, little thought then
that the movement which they inaugurated was destined to
play such a revolutionary role in the life of the English
working class. Humble, indeed, were the objects which
the association set for itself to achieve. Liberalis^BRadi-
calism, Trade Unionism, Socialism, Owenism and^fetund-
ism, were reduced to the following lowest common denomin-
ators : i
1. To draw into one bond of unity the intelligent and in-
fluential portion of the working classes in town and country.
2. To seek by every legal means to place all classes of society
in possession of their equal political and social rights.
3. To devise every possible means, and to use every exertion,
to remove those cruel laws that prevent the free circulation of
thought through the medium of a cheapand honest
1 See Address and Rules of the Working Men's Association, for
Benefiting Socially and Morally the Useful Classes, London, 1836.
84 [84
85] THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER 85
4. To promote, by all available means, the education of the
rising generation, and the extirpation of those systems which
tend to future slavery.
5. To collect every kind of information appertaining to the
interests of the working classes in particular and society in
general, especially statistics regarding the wages of labor,
the habits and condition of the laborer, and all those that mainly
contribute to the present state of things.
6. To meet and communicate with each other for the pur-
pose of digesting the information required, and to mature
such plans as they believe will conduce in practice to the welW
being of the working classes.
7. To publish their views and sentiments in such form and
manner as shall best serve to create a moral, reflecting, yet
energetic public opinion; so as eventually to lead to a gradual
improvement in the condition of the working classes, without *
violence or commotion.
8. To form a library of reference and useful information ; to
maintain a place where they can associate for mental improve-
ment, and where their brethren from the country can meet
with kindred minds actuated by one great motive that of bene-
fiting politically, socially, and morally, the useful classes.
In this address, calling upon the working class to form
similar societies, the association cautions " strictly to adhere
to a judicious selection of their members." The working-
men are exhorted to make " the principles of democracy as
respectable in practice as they are just in theory, by exclud-
ing the drunken and immoral from our ranks and uniting;
in close compact with the honest, sober, moral and thinking
portion of our brethren."
(^Therules of the association made only workingmen
eligible for rnemBefship.J The card issued by the associa-
tion "toltslnemBers eomairred the following maxim : " The
man who evades his share of useful labor diminishes the
public stock of wealth and throws his own burden upon
86 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [86
his neighbor."-^ Persons not of the " industrious classes "
were admitted only as honorary members and could par-
ticipate in the debates and discussions and attend all meet-
ings, but were debarred from holding any office or from
taking any part in the management of the organization^
(The exclusiveness of the association was the direct re-
sult of former experiences with radical representatives of
the middle class. J 1 Lovett tells only half of the story
when he attributes the fixed rule of exclusiveness to a desire
" to try an experiment," in order to evince the discrimina-
tion and independent spirit in the management of their poli-
tical affairs, in which the workingmen were found wanting.
' The masses and their political organizations were taught
to look up to great men (or to men professing greatness}
rather than to great principles. We wished, therefore, to es-
tablish a political school of self -instruction among them,
in which they should accustom themselves to examine great
social and political principles." *
The address published by the association, however, be-
trays the real cause :
t It has been said by some that our objects are exclusive, seeing
we wish to confine our association to workingmen.' We reply,
that judging from experience and appearance, the political
and social regeneration of the working classes must be begun
by themselves, and, therefore, they should not admit any pre-
ponderating influence of wealth or title to swerve them from
their duty. . . . Let not, however, the men of wealth imagine
that we have any ulterior designs inimical to their rights, or
views opposed to the peace and harmony of society. On the
contrary, we seek to render property more secure; life more
sacred ; and to preserve inviolate every institution that can be
made to contribute to the happiness of man. We only seek
1 William Lovett, Life and Struggles, pp. 91-92.
87] THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER g/
that share in the institutions and government of our country
which our industry and usefulness justly merit.
The address was signed by Henry Hetherington, treas-
urer, and William Lovett, secretary, but was apparently com-
posed by men of various creeds. It expressed no clear-cut
principle; it held forth no fixed ideal. While it consoled the
men of wealth with the assertion that the association had
no ulterior or sinister designs, that it did not intend " to get
a transfer of wealth, power or influence for a party," it also
vowed to probe social evils to their source and " to apply
effective remedies to prevent instead of unjust laws to pun-
ish." The source of social evils, not clearly visible in this
declaration, was revealed, however, in a subsequent address
V)f the association to the working classes of Belgium, issued
in November, 1836. Starting with the interesting assertion
that "the cause of those foolish dissentions between nations
lies in the ignorance " of the workingmen of their position
in society, me address continues :
Ignoj-ang. has caused us to believe that we were " born to
toil, and others to enjoy that we were naturally inferior, and
should silently bow to the government of those who were
pleased to call themselves superior; and consequently those
who have, governed us have done so for their own advantage,
and_not ours^ . . . Their laws have been enacted to perpetu-
ate their power, and administered to generate fear and sub-
mission towards self-constituted greatness, hereditary ignor-
ance"," or wealth, however unjustly acquired. . . . Our eman-
cipation, however, will depend on the extent of this knowl-
edge among the working classes of all countries, or its salutary
effects in causing us to perceive our real position in society
in causing us to feel that we, being the producers of wealth,
have the first claim to its enjoyment. 1
1 William Lovett, op. cit., p. 98.
88 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [gg
-^ The association recognized the importance of political
I power from the beginning and set forth its views in a three^
penny pamphlet The Rotten House of Commons. 1 The
pamphlet contained statistical information on the composi-
tion of Parliament. The tables were compiled from Parlia-
mentary returns and from the elaborate works of reputable
statisticians. They showed that t$ of the entire popu-
lation, or 1^ of the adult males above the age of twenty-
one, had the power of passing all the laws in the House of
Commons, which would be binding upon all inhabitants of
England. The proportion of registered electors who had
the vote to the number of males above twenty-one years off
age in the United Kingdom was aboufr; 1 fo~7/%;> The com.-
position O'f the reformed House of Commons was shown to
consist exclusively of members of the nobility, of the army
and navy, the barristers and solicitors and of the moneyed
classes.
The people of England were invited to reflect on the
question whether the working classes had fit representatives
in the great number of land-holders, money-makers, specu-
lators, usurers, lords, earls, and other honorables, as well as
in the number of military and navy representatives, barris-
ters, solicitors, etc.
Are the manufacturer and capitalist, whose exclusive monopoly
of the combined powers of wood, iron, and steam, enables them
to cause the destitution of thousands, and who have an interest
in forcing labor down to the minimum reward, fit to represent
the interests of working men? Is the master, whose interest
it is to purchase labor at the cheapest rate, a fit representative
for the workman, whose interest it is to get the most he can
for his labor?
1 The Rotten House of Commons, being an Exposition of the Present
State of the Franchise, and an Appeal to the Nation of the Course to
be Pursued in the Approaching Crisis, Hetherington, Strand.
89] THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER 89
The association .urged the .laborers to refuse to be the
tools of any party who will not, as a first and essential
measwr^T^rvQ to the working classes equal political and
social rights, so that they may send their own representa-
tives, from the ranks of those who live by labor,
to deliberate and determine along with all other interests, that
the interests of the laboring classes of those who are the \J
foundation of the social edifice shall not be daily sacrificed
to glut the extravagance of the pampered few. If you feel
with us, then you will proclaim it in the workshop, preach it in
your societies, publish it from town to village, from county to
county, and from nation to nation, that there is no hope for
the sons of toil, till those who feel with them, who sympathise
with them, and whose interests are identified with theirs, have
I an equal right to determine what laws shall be enacted or plans <&
i adopted for justly governing this country.
The association had Hetherington's weekly " Twopenny
Despatch " at its disposal. It was not satisfied, however,
with printed propaganda alone. Immediately upon its for-
mation, Hetherington, Vincent and Cleave were engaged to
make an agitation tour all over the country. They depicted
the wrongs of the toiling classes and fanned the passions ofj
the people into a flame. Within a very short time they were! {y
successful in organizing a great number of workingmen'a
associations. Encouraged by the general response of the
masses, the association published a petition for a new Par-
liamentary Constitution. The petition contained the essence
of the pamphlet The Rotten House of Commons, and was
commented upon by the radical writers as one of the most
important documents. Bronterre reprinted it in his Na-\
tional Reformer of February n, 1837, with the following
editorial remarks " to the unrepresented millions " :
I have seen few documents that comprise so many important
90 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [90
facts within an equal space ; I have not seen any which reflects
the mind of indignant industry with brighter effect ; or which,
as a clear and powerful exposition of the wrongs inflicted on
you, and of the rights withheld, is better calculated to chal-
lenge regard and sympathy in your behalf.
The petition was drawn up by William Lovett and con-
tained the nucleus of the subsequently famous People's
Charter. 1 The House of Commons was requested to enact
a law with the following " six points " :
(1) Equal Representation.
(2) Universal Suffrage.
(3) Annual Parliaments.
(4) No Property Qualifications.
(5) Vote by Ballot.
(6) Payments to Members.
On the 28 of February, 1837, a great public meeting was
held in London, at the Crown and Anchor, under the aus-
pices of the London Working Men's Association, at which,
after the petition was approved and signed by about three
thousand persons, a unanimous resolution was carried to
present it to Parliament. Having no representatives of
their own, the association entrusted the petition to J. A.
Roebuck, who was at that time considered the most staunch
advocate of democratic principles in the House of Commons.
On his advice, the association issued a circular to all radical
members of Parliament to meet at the British Coffee-house,
in Cockspur Street, on the 3rd of May, 1837, and at this
meeting, which was attended by several members of the
House, including Daniel O'Connell, Joseph Hume, Colonel
T. P. Thompson, W. S. Crawford, J. T. Leader and others,
Lovett introduced the subject on the part of the association.
1 See Appendix A.
9I ]
THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER
The discussions which lasted for two evenings resulted in
the unanimous adoption of four important resolutions. In
the first, the members of Parliament agreed to support
Representative Roebuck in his proposition for universal
suffrage. In the second, they pledged themselves to sup-
port and vote for any bill embodying " the principles of
universal suffrage, equal representation, free selection of
i representatives without reference to property, the ballot, and
! short parliaments of fixed duration, the limit not to exceed
three years." The third resolution bound them to support
and vote for a bill for such reform of the House of Lords
as shall render it responsible to the people. The fourth
resolution provided that a committee of twelve be appointed
to draw up a bill in a legal form embodying the above prin-
ciples and to submit it to another joint meeting. These
resolutions were signed by Daniel O'Connell, Charles Hind-
ley, W. S. Crawford, J. T. Leader, John Fielden, T.
Wakley, D. W. Harvey, T. P. Thompson, J. A. Roebuck,
and Dr. Bowring. The committee appointed to draw up
the bill consisted of O'Connell, Roebuck, Leader, Hindley,
Colonel Thompson, Crawford, Lovett, Hetherington, Vin-
cent, Cleave, J. Watson, and R. Moore, the last six being
members of the association.
The death of William IV led to the prorogation of Par-
liament. On this occasion, the association issued an ad-
dress to reformers on the forthcoming elections, urging that
only those candidates should be returned, who would pledge
themselves to universal suffrage and " all the other essen-
tials of self-government." It was in this address that
association for the first time referred to the " six points "
as the People's Charter.
The address was circulated among all workingmen's as-
sociations and political unions. It was at this juncture that
the famous Birmingham Political Union which had kept
0,2 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [g 2
aloof from the new political agitation declared itself in favor
of the petition. The Birmingham laborers were considered
the aristocrjacyof tjiAS"Sflnng~^ssyTlT? i ^p g 4itical union fn-l
joyed the reputation of having been greatly responsible for
the successful issue of the campaign for the Reform BilL
of 1832. The entrance of the Birmingham union into a-
new campaign for universal suffrage was, therefore, hailed
by the workingmen's associations as a singular victory for
their cause. Their satisfaction was particularly enhanced
after the publication by the union of an address, in which
it confessed its disappointment with the Whigs and attri-
buted the distress of the people to the discredited Reform
Bill:
The motive and end of all legislation is the happiness of the
universal people. Let us try the Reform Bill by that test.
. . . What do we find? Merchants bankrupt, workmen un-
employed and starving, workhouses crowded, factories de-
serted, distress and dissatisfaction everywhere prevalent. . . .
Were the people fully and fairly represented in Parliament,
would such things be?
After the accession of Queen Victoria, the London
Working Men's Association in conjunction with other or-
ganizations prepared an address to Her Majesty. An ex-
change of correspondence took place between Lovett and
Lord John Russell, then Secretary of State for the Home
Department. Lovett requested that a deputation of six per-
sons be presented personally to the Queen. Russell replied
that the deputation would have to wait until Her Majesty
held a levee, and that they must attend in court dress.
Lovett's retort was that they had " neither the means nor
the inclination to indulge in such absurdities as dress coats
and wigs ", and he expressed the hope that the day was not
distant, when some better means would be devised " for
93] THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER 93
letting the sovereign hear of the addresses and petitions of
the people." The address to the Queen, as well as the cor-
respondence between Lovett and Russell, caused much com- i
ment in the press. In the address the Queen was asked to ^
cause a bill to be introduced for the extension of the right,
of suffrage to all the adult population of the kingdom. The
address was couched in courteous but resolute terms, point-
ing to the " many monstrous anomalies springing out of the
constitution of society, the corruptions of government and
the defective education of mankind " as the cause of the
abnormal condition that the bulk of the nation were toiling
slaves from birth till death, that the middle classes were-
racked with the curse of business distrust, few being spared
from bankruptcy, and that but a trifling portion of the suc-
cessful few could be found " free from the disease of sloth
and cares of idleness and debauchery." The exclusive few
it was set out used all their means to retain within their
own circle all the legislative and executive powers in order
to protect themselves against the wrath of the suffering
multitudes and to perpetuate " their own despotic sway."
_The economic suffering: Qthe_jnasses is directly attri- 4
buted to the want of suffrage:
To this baneful source of exclusive political power may be
traced the persecution of fanaticism, the feuds of superstition,
and most of the wars and carnage which disgrace our history.
To this pernicious origin may justly be attributed the unre-
mitted toil and wretchedness of your Majesty's industrious
people, together with most of the vices and crimes springing
from poverty and ignorance, which in a country blessed by
nature, enriched by art, and boasting of her progress and
knowledge, mock her humanity and degrade her character.
. , . These exclusive interests, under the names of Whig and
Tory, have for many years past succeeded in making Royalty
a mere puppet of their will. In that name they have plun-
94 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [94
dered at home and desolated abroad. . . . But the superstitious
days of arbitrary dominion and holy errors are fast falling
away; the chief magistrate of an enlightened people must learn
to know and respect its delegated authority and must look
for power and fame to the welfare of the people. . . . We trust
that your Majesty will not permit either of the factions who
live on abuses, and profit at the expense of the millions, to
persuade you to any course of policy other than that of right
and justice. ... It is not just, that out of a population of
twenty-five millions of people, only eight hundred thousand
should have the power of electing what is called the Commons'
House of Parliament.
The naive faith of the association in political reform as
a panacea for all evil can be seen from the address, which
was sent in 1837 to the American " brethren ", extolling the
political liberty and institutions enjoyed by the workingmen
in the United States, and at the same time conveying deep
surprise at the fact that they had not progressed any further
after sixty years of freedom : *
Why are you, to so great an extent, ruled by men who
speculate on your credulity and thrive by your prejudices?
Why have lawyers a preponderating influence in your coun-
try ? . . . Why has so much of your fertile country been par-
celled out between swindling bankers and grinding capitalists
who seek to establish (as in our own country) a monopoly in
that land which nature bestowed in common to all her children ?
Why have so many of your cities, towns, railroads, canals, and
manufactories, become the monopolized property of those
" who toil not, neither do they spin " ? while you, who raised
them by your labors, are still in the position of begging leave
to erect others, and to establish for them similar monopolies?
In the general election of 1837, the most outspoken Liber-
1 Lovett, op. dt., pp. 130, 131.
95] THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER g$
als, S. Crawford, Colonel Thompson and Roebuck, were,
defeated by the united opposition of the Whigs and Tories.
Far from being discouraged, the London Working Men's'
Association called a meeting of the Committee of Twelve
which had been appointed to prepare the bill. The com-
mittee then authorized Roebuck and Lovett to draft the
I
document. With the exception of the preamble which was
written by Roebuck, the bill was prepared by Lovett, after
having consulted Francis Place as to its form and legal
technicalities. The original draft contained a provision for^
the suffrage of women. This was discarded as it was feared;
that such demand might retard the suffrage of men. After
some other changes were made, Lovett's Bill was finally
approved by the Committee of Twelve and then by the
London Working Men's Association. This bill zvas desig-
nated the " People's Charter "* Daniel O'Connell, who be-
fore long deserted the ranks of the Chartists, virulent in his
opposition till the day of his death, is credited with exclaim-
ing, while handing the bill to Lovett, " There, Lovett, is
your Charter; agitate for it, and never be content with
anything else."
The People's Charter was published on the 8th of May,
1838, and was sent broadcast together with an address,
which was signed by Henry Hetherington, Treasurer, and!
William Lovett, Secretary, and which contained a popular
exposition of the principles of the Charter and the plan for
obtaining it:
Having frequently stated the reasons for zealously espous-
ing the great principles of reform, we have now endeavored
to set them forth. We need not reiterate the facts and un-
refuted arguments which have so often been stated and urged
in their support. Suffice it to say, that we hold it to be an
1 See Appendix B.
96 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [96
axiom in politics, that self-government, by representation, is
*~the only just foundation of political power the only true
basis of constitutional rights the only legitimate parent of
good laws; and we hold it as an indubitable truth that all
government which is based on any other foundation, has a
perpetual tendency to degenerate into anarchy or despotism;
or to beget class and wealth idolatry on the one hand, or
poverty and misery on the other.
While, however, we contend for the principle of self-gov-
rnment, we admit that laws will only be just in proportion as
ic people are enlightened ; on this, socially and politically, the
appiness of aTTTrmst depend ; but, as self-interest, unaccom-
anied by virtue, ever seeks its own exclusive benefit^ so
ic exclusive and privilegM_jdasses.-OJ_s^ciety_eyer seek to
Derpetuate their power and to proscribe the enlightenment of
/the people. Hence we are induced to believe that the enlight-
enment of all will sooner emanate from the exercise of politi-
cal power by all the people, than by their continuing to trust
to the selfish government of the few.
A strong conviction of these truths, coupled as that con-
viction is with the belief that most of our political and social
evils can be traced to corrupt and exclusive legislation, and
that the remedy will be found in extending to the people at
large the exercise of those rights now monopolized by a few,
has induced us to make some exertions towards embodying
our principles in the Charter.
We are the more inclined to take some practicable step in
favor of reform, from the frequent disappointments the
cause has experienced. We have heard eloquent effusions
in favor of political equality from the hustings, and the senate-
house, suddenly change into prudent reasonings on property and
privileges, at the winning smile of the minister. We have seen
depicted in glowing language bright patriotic promises of the
future, which have left impressions on us more lasting than
the perfidy or apostacy of the writers. . . .
The object we contemplate in the drawing up of this bill is
to cause the Radicals of the kingdom to form, if possible, a
97] THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER ^
concentration of their principles in a practical form, upon
which they could be brought to unite, and to which they mightj
point, as a, Charter they are determined to obtain.
We intend that copies o.f it shall be forwarded to all the
Working Men's Associations and to all Reform Associations
in the kingdom to which we can have access, and we hereby
call upon them, in the spirit of brotherhood, to examine, sug-
gest, and improve upon it, until it is so perfected as to meet, as
far as possible, with general approbation. When it is so far
improved, and has received their sanction, we intend that it
shall j be presented to Parliament, and we trust that petitions
will not be wanting to show how far we are united in demand-
ing its enactment. We hope, also, that electors and non-
electors will continue to make it the pledge of their candidates ;
will seek to extend its circulation ; talk over its principles ; and
resolve that, as public opinion forced the Whig Reform Bill,
so in like manner shall this bill eventually become the law of
England
The publication of the People's Charter gave a fresh im-
petus to the enthusiasm of the universal suffragists. The*
best talents of the Working Men's Associations and other
radical societies joined in a gigantic effort to obtain the im-
mediate enactment of the Charter. The vague and ambigu-
ous phraseology of the London Working Men's Association
gave place to a determined expression of class consciousness.
The general press cautioned against the Chartist missionaries
who were branded as scoundrels, firebrands, plunderers,
knaves, and assassins. The people, however, paid little
heed to these warnings and eagerly demonstrated their '
" general approbation " of the Charter in a series of grand
meetings and parades.
I/
CHAPTER VII
THE LEADERS
the Chartist
and 1.
Mpvement.
Instigated by the
for
acute eco-
nomic distress, the people were in the mood to follow almost
anybody who could stimulate their indignation to activity.
..
The leaders seemed to have realized this and vied with each
other in their endeavors to gain the confidence of the work-
ing class. The response of- the, .people, however, was too
mtaneous, almost volcanic, to allow the establishment of
any efficient and responsible organization. As in every mass
movement, many a leader was swept off his feet in the whirl-
wind of universal protest against the existing regime. In-
.stead of leading, they were made to follow, and, at best, to
agitate. This for a time saved the ranks of the Chartists
from complete disruption, although it was an open secret
that there were " two parties in the Chartist ranks," and,
what is more, that they had " different objects in view,"
that these two parties were " decidedly hostile to each
other," and that no union could ever take place between
,the " honest or determined Chartists and the weak, vacillat-
ing and scheming Chartists." 1
The most essential difference, which was of prime import-
ance for the evolutionary period of the movement, lay^jn_the
mode_of_agitation. The People's Charter emanated, as we
have seen, from the London Working Men's Association,
1 The London Democrat, April 20, 1839.
[98
99] THE LEADERS 99
whose leaders designed a policy of moral force, of education, t
In its first address, the association marked its future task in
the following terms:
Who can foretell the great political and social advantages
that must accrue from the wide extension of societies of this
description acting up to their principles ? Imagine the honest,
sober and reflecting portion of every town and village in the
kingdom linked together as a band of brothers, honestly re-
solved to investigate all subjects connected with their interests,
and to prepare their minds to combat with the errors and
enemies of society setting an example of propriety to their
neighbors, and enjoying even in poverty a happy home. And
in proportion as home is made pleasant, by a cheerful and
intelligent partner, by dutiful children, and by means of com-
fort, which their knowledge has enabled them to snatch from
the ale-house, so are the bitters of life sweetened with hap-
piness.
Think you a corrupt Government could perpetuate its ex-
clusive and demoralizing influence amid a people thus united
and instructed? Could a vicious aristocracy find its servile
slaves to render homage to idleness and idolatry to the wealth
too often fraudulently exacted from industry? Could the
present gambling influence of money perpetuate the slavery of
the millions, for the gains or dissipation of the few? Could
corruption sit in the judgment seat empty-headed import-
ance in the senate money-getting hypocrisy in the pulpit
and debauchery, fanaticism, poverty, and crime stalk tri-
umphantly through the land if the millions were educated in
a knowledge of their rights ? No, no, friends ; and hence the
efforts of the exclusive few to keep the people ignorant and
divided. Be ours the task, then, to unite and instruct them;
for be assured the good that is to be must be begun by our-
selves.
At-the beginning the agitation was preeminently peaceful.
The London Working, Men's Association introduced a sys-
100 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
/tenroTnatibnal and internaFioITai -addresses- -a&-a~means. for.
enlightening the people on all social and political events of
importance. The addresses were well received by the better
elements of the working class, but failed to exert so great
an effect on the masses who felt impatient with the " moral,
i vacillating, scheming humbugs," and preferred "to take
their affairs in their own hands." It was no surprise, there-
fore, that the advocates of physical force and insurrection,
welcomed by the people from the very outset, soon gained
the upper hand in the movement. Indeed, rampant dis-
v satisfaction was displayed on more than one occasion, and
some of the leaders went even so far r as to withdraw their
active suppot^The fatal blight of discord was, however,
overcome during the first period. The masses were im-
bued with the hope that the People's Charter would bring
about complete salvation. The Charter contained, indeed,
only political reforms, but the people knew from the lead- J
ers that such reforms were the only instrument for the ex-
termination of all evils. The Chartist speakers, as well as
the Chartist writers, all agreed that fhe curse^of the country
layjn " class legislation^:
It has corrupted the whole government poisoned the press,
demoralized society, prostituted the Church, dissipated the re-
sources of the nation, created monopolies, paralyzed trade,
ruined half its merchants, produced almost national bank-
ruptcy, depressed the whole working classes, and pauperized
most of them. Consequently, the sooner we get rid of such a
monstrous system, it will be so much the better for all, ex-
cept for those who either live, or expect to live, by plunder. 1
masses believed, they were eager to believe in every-
thing which held out the promise of relief. > They took up
1 The Chartist Circular, April 18, 1840.
101] THE LEADERS
the rallying cry, " The_Charter^the whole Charter, and
nothing but the Charter," with a zeal characteristic of the
common people. -This rfi9f.ted Qfl {fag J^d^r^ and forced
their personal and theoretical differences to the background.
The differences were by no means given up. The leaders
merely buried their hatchets for a while, with the under-
standing that they would be picked up again at the oppor-
tune time after the Charter should have become a-aecom-
plished fact. Until then they were willing to let their eco-
nomic and social creeds take care of themselves. This was
made clear by Bronterrg even as early as 1837. In discuss-
ing his pet theory 01* nationalization of land, he cut himself
short :
Better, far better, it were to sink such questions_for the
present. When all shall -have votes, it will be in the power of
each to make knowahi&.seatiments respecting the land,, as well
as respecting everything else, and should a majority think with
him t his sentiments will become law without cavil or con-
straint. Till then, our theories, however just, are useless. 1
The good intentions of the leaders werf
There were too many points of friction in their mental con-
stitution as well as in their temperamental ^njajkenujx^.^^J:
the time of popular excitement, all were carried away_by
the torrent of general indignation, few stopping to soothe
their personal feelings. It was only after the movement
had met the strenuous opposition on the part of the gover
ment and had become paralyzed, that demoralization set in]
disrupting the Chartist army into a number of hostile squads.
The small coterie of leaders, who during the first period
stamped their personalities on the movement and directed
the destinies of millions of people, included men of excep-
1 The National Reformer, Feb. 25, 1837.
102 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ IO 2
tional character and mentality, who gave themselves like
martyrs to the cause.
William Lovett, the author of the People's Charter and
" the gentlest of agitators," was, according to the descrip-
tion of Francis Place, a tall, thin and rather melancholy
man, " soured with the perplexities of the world," but " hon-
est-hearted, possessed of great courage and persevering in
his conduct." He was born on the 8th of May, 1800, in
a little fishing town in the county of Cornwall. His father,
a captain of a small trading vessel, was drowned before
William was born. As a boy Lovett received some school-
ing in a rather suffocating religious atmosphere.
My poor mother, [he writes of his boyhood], like too many
serious persons of the present day, thought that the great power
that has formed the numerous gay, sportive, singing things of
earth and air, must above all things be gratified with the solemn
faces, prim clothes, and half sleepy demeanor of human beings ;
and that true religion consists in listening to the reiterated
story of man's fall, of God's anger for his doing so, of man's
sinful nature, of the redemption, and of other questionable
matters, instead of the wonders and glories of the universe. 1
In his early youth, he was apprenticed to a rope-maker
for a term of seven years. His master, however, soon
gave up his indentures, and Lovett turned to fishing
and other trades. On the 23rd of June 1821, he went
to London where, after some struggles and adventures,
he became a caiiinet-jaker. In 1828, he joined the
" First London Cooperative Trading Association " arid soon
afterwards accepted the position of store-keeper in this asso-
ciation. He was also a prominent member of the " Brit-
ish Association for Promoting Cooperative Knowledge."
1 William Lovett, Life and Struggles, pp. 7-8.
THE LEADERS
At that time he believed that the gradual accumulation of
capital, by means of cooperative trading associations,
ultimately enable the working classes to get the industries
and commerce of the country in their own hands. He also
accepted Robert Owen's doctrine of community of property :
The idea of all the powers of machinery, of all the arts and
inventions of men, being applied for the benefit of all in com-
mon, to the lightening of their toil and the increase of their
comforts, is one the most captivating to those who accept the
idea without investigation. The prospect of having spacious
halls, gardens, libraries, and museums, at their command; of
having light alternate labor in field or factory ; of seeing their
children educated, provided and cared for at the public ex-
pense; of having no fear or care of poverty themselves; nor
for wife, children, or friends they might leave behind them;
is one the most cheering and consolatory to an enthusiastic
mind. I was one who accepted this grand idea of machinery s s
working for the benefit of all. 1
In 1830, he was active in the formation of the " Metropoli-
tan Political Union," whose object was " to obtain by every
just, legal, constitutional and peaceful means an effectual
and radical reform in the Commons' House of Parliament."
He was also connected with the "unstamped" agitation which
originated the cheap political newspapers and pamphlets.
In 1831, he refused to serve in the militia, as he explained
it, " on the ground of not being represented in Parliament
and of not having any voice or vote in the election of those *
persons who made those laws that compelled me to take
up arms to protect the rights and property of others, while
my own rights and the only property I had, my labor, were
not protected." 2 ^The same year, he joined "The National
1 Lovett, op. cit., pp. 43-44.
1 Ibid., p. 66.
104 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ IO 4
Union of the Working Classes and Others," which declared
labor the " source of wealth " and aimed at " the protection
of the working men; the free disposal of the produce of
labor; and effectual reform of the Commons' House of
Parliament; the repeal of all bad laws; the enactment of a
wise and comprehensive code of laws; and to collect and
organize a peaceful expression of public opinion.^ This
association, also known as the Rotundists, was denounced
by the Tory and Whig press as consisting of " destructives,
revolutionists, pickpockets, and incendiaries; meditating an
attack upon every possessor of property, and the uprooting
of all law and order." The rapid success of the Trades
Unions in 1834, and especially of the Consolidated "National
LTrades Union, led to the dissolution of the National Union
of the Working Classes. After the trade union movement
was crushed by the manufacturers and the government,
Lovett, who enjoyed an enviable reputation among the
London reformers, succeeded, together with a number of
other radicals, in the effort to organize the London
Working Men's Association. He had at that time re-
nounced some of his ultra-radical ideas and adopted the
policy of Francis Place, the wire-puller. He was an able
organizer and, as its secretary, soon became the heart and
soul of the association.
As the author of the People's Charter, Lovett undoubt-
edly exerted an influence on the movement. At no stage,
however, was he regarded as a popular leader. For that
he lacked both intellect and pliability. He was an idealist,
ready to incur peril and obloquy for his principles, but his
mentality was of a static nature. In all his Chartist career
he never swerved from the path which the London Work-
ing Men's Association had laid out in 1836. Utterly in-
capable of being swayed by sentiment or emotion, he lacked
completely the instinct and the foresight of a born leader.
105]
THE LEADERS
Honest he was, indeed, and courageous, but it was the
honesty and courage of a fanatic. He scrupled to yield
to the popular clamor for physical force, but his scruples did
not spring from the source of moral opulence. Obscured
by men of greater power of leadership, he was ever full of
suspicion and when forced to make some compromise, he
begrudged it all his life. " His fault was," testifies one of
his admirers, " that he had too much suspicion of the
motives of others not taking his view of things." * He was
gentle and not spiteful, but he never bowed to anybody, nor
allowed himself to be treated as a common mortal. His
errors he attributed to the goodness of his heart and never
to the weakness of his mind. Such was the make-up of the
man who was considered by most writers the noblest ex-
ponent of the Chartist movement.
Feargus O'Connor was a man of a diametrically opposite
calibre. Loved and worshipped by millions, hated by many,
but despised by. none, he was a man who could fairly say
of himself : " It is my boast that neither the living denouncer
nor the unborn historian can ever write of Chartism, leaving
out the name of Feargus O'Connor." He was born July
16,1794, and was the son of Roger O'Connor, who suffered
imprisonment for his activity in the movement of the
" United Irishmen." He was always proud of his descent
which he traced to Roderick O'Connor, the last king of
Ireland. He attended grammar-school and Trinity College
at Dublin, but took no degree.
He was called to the Irish Bar, but lived with his
brothers on their father's estate, and was, as he says,
" on the turf in a small way." He appeared on the
1 George Jacob Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, London,
1900, vol. ii, p. 269.
2 The Laborer, 1847, vol. i, p. 176.
106 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [106
political scene at the age of thirty-seven. A barrister
by education, an orator of the first rank, and a man
of athletic physical strength, he was a great prize for
O'Connell's party in Ireland. He was elected to Parliament
in 1833 for the County of Cork. While in Parliament,
he repudiated the unscrupulous policy of his chief, Daniel
O'Connell, who, on his part, could not brook anyone who
was potentially fit to share his power or popularity.___O^Con-
nell frequently yielded to the Whigs with a view of secur-
ing a chance for his party. O'Connor denounced such tac-
ticlTand frequently went out of his way to frustrate the
plans of the Irish leader. He was re-elected in 1835, but
was unseated owing to his want of the necessary property
qualification. It was at that time that an open quarrel took
place between him and O'Connell, who made " a present of
him to the English radicals." The latter received him with
open arms. Coming as he did from a family of famous
Irish patriots, his name alone would have given great
prestige to any radical group. But O'Connor possessed, in
addition, a rich stock of personal qualifications for leader-
ship. A giant of over six feet in height, with features
which revealed great intellectual vigor, of aristocratic man-
ner and deportment, his whole countenance was such as to
strike awe into the masses. ^He was a man oi. unbounded
energy and, after he was unseated in 1835, he selected the
manufacturing districts for his agitation against the New
Poor Law and the Factory System. On his tour he
founded many political unions which ultimately associated
themselves with the Chartists. It was on account of that
tour that Francis Place characterized him as the traveling
leader of the Democratic Movement,' In 1836 he founded
the Central Committee of radical unions. In 1837 he was
wrought up by the invitation which the London Working
Men's Association had extended to Daniel O'Connell as one
I/
107]
THE LEADERS
107
of the radical Parliamentary members, 1 and he denounced
the association for its alleged readiness to leave the interests
of the workingmejiJnJLhe^ class./ On
November 1 8,; 1.837, he founded the most radical Chartist
weekly, the Northern Star, whose circulation soon reached
sixty thousand. This unusual circulation testifies to the
great popularity which O'Connor enjoyed among the masses.
He was literally worshipped by his followers and many
" would have gone through fire and water for him."
There was much that was attractive in him when I first knew
him [writes one of the Chartists]. His fine manly form and
his powerful baritone voice gave him great advantage as a
popular leader. His conversation was rich in Irish humor,
and often evinced a shrewd knowledge of character. The fact
of his having been in the House of Commons, and among the
upper classes, also lent him influence. I do not think half a
dozen Chartists cared a fig about his boasted descent from
" Roderick O'Connor, the king of Connaught, and last king
of all Ireland " ; but the connection of his family with the
United Irishmen and patriotic sufferers of the last century,
rendered him a natural representative of the cause of political
liberty. 2
In his career as a Chartist, O'Connor -displayed qualities
which, in the eyes of many contemporaries and historians,
branded him as a demagogue, a despot, a political denouncer,
a man who was looking solely for self-aggrandizement and
for personal interests. Lovett, who could hardly tolerate
the presence of O'Connor, once said to him, " You are the
great ' I am ' of politics." Bronterre nicknamed him
" the dictator " ; Roebuck called him " a cowardly and
malignant demagogue," "a rogue and a liar": Place said
1 Cf. supra, p. 90.
1 The Life of Thomas Cooper, written by himself, London, 1897, p.
179-
I0 8 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [108
of him that he would use every .mean.siie .cpuld to lead and
mislead the working people. Historians, too, characterize
him as an empty braggart and a typical demagogue. This
is as one-sided as it is unjust. It was as natural for him
." xlictate ' ', as it - -was -lor -others ..to .follow, jt^was his
great personality that impressed itself on others. BuTTie
was as large-hearted as any man could be. He"wasTasTie
himself testified, " of an enthusiastic and excitable disposi-
tion'." 1 At the same time he was the " most impetuous and
most patient of all the tribunes who ever led the English
Chartists." 2 A born leader, he possessed great power of
reading the minds of the people and of designing his plans of
action according to conditions and circumstances. This
often made him yield to popular clamor; but this is thVTof
of every great leader who can feel the pulse of the masses.
He was vain and lacked modesty when speaking of himself ;
but he was in no less a degree ready to exaggerate the
greatness of others. He could with a sense of self -detach-
ment say of himself that he " led the people from madness
to sanity," as he could speak of Bronterre's " gigantic tal-
ents." Holyoake acknowledges O'Connor's "great strength
of indifference to what any one of his rivals said against
him in his own columns of the Star." 3 He had a deep
passion for freedom and, on more than one occasion and in
various forms of self-sacrifice, he proved his genuine de-
votion to the cause. He was called the Lion of Freedom,
and the name was well merited.
During the first period of the Chartist agitation, O'Connor
cherished no special theories of his own. His Land Plan
came at a later stage. But even as early as 1835, he gave
notice of his intention to move in Parliament for leave to
bring in a bill
1 See English Chartist Circular, vol. i, no. 36.
2 See Holyoake, op. cit., vol. i, p. 106. 3 Ibid., p. 107.
109] THE LEADER s 109
tCLCompel landlords to make leases of their land in perpetuity
that is, to give to the tenant a lease for ever, at a corn rent;
to "faTce~liway the power of distraining for rent; and in all
cases where land was held upon lease and was too dear, that the
tenant in such cases should have the power of empaneling a
jury to assess the real value in the same manner as the crown
has the power of making an individual sell property required
for wHatls called public works or conveniences according to
the valuation of a jury. 1
He believed that " the law of primogeniture is the eld-
est son of class legislation upon corruption by idleness."
But unlike most of his Chartist colleagues, he was a strenu-
ous opponent of the current Socialist theories.
I have ever been, and I think I ever shall be opposed to the
principles 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 have generally found that the strongest
advocates of communism are the most lazy members of so-
ciety, a class who would make a division of labor, adjudging
to the most pliant and submissive the lion's share of work,
and contending that their natural implement was the brain,
whilst that of the credulous was the spade, the plough, the
sledge and the pickaxe. Communism either destroys whole-
some emulation and competition, or else it fixes too high a
price upon distinction, and must eventually end in the worst
description of despotism . . . whilst, upon the other hand, in-
dividual possession and cooperation of labor creates a whole-
some bond between all classes of society. 3
1 The English Chartist Circular, vol. ii, no. 67.
2 See Feargus O'Connor, The Remedy for National Poverty Impend-
ing National Ruin, 1841.
8 The Laborer, 1847, vol. i, p. 149.
IIO THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ IIO
As land was, in his opinion, the only source of all wealth
so was the unrestricted use of machinery the only source of
all social evil : 1
It opens a fictitious, unsettled, and unwholesome market for
labor, leaving to the employer complete and entire control over
wages and employment. As machinery becomes improved,
manual labor is dispensed with, and the dismissed constitute
a surplus population of unemployed, system-made paupers,
which makes a reserve for the masters to fall back upon, as a
means of reducing the price of labor. It makes character
valueless. By the application of fictitious money, it overruns
the world with produce, and makes labor a drug. It entices
the agricultural laborer, under false pretences, from the na-
tural and wholesome market, and locates him in an unhealthy
atmosphere, where human beings herd together like swine. It
destroys the value of real capital in the market, and is capable
of affecting every trade, business, and interest, though appar-
ently wholly unconnected with its ramifications. It creates a
i class of tyrants and a class of slaves. Its vast connection with
banks, and all the moneyed interests of the country, gives to
it an unjust, injurious, anomalous, and direct influence over
the government of the country.
f It was not, however, to the strength of his theories that
O'Connor looked for recognition. It was his harangues
.against the New Poor Law and the Factory System that
electrified the masses. Coming as he did in direct contact
with the masses and witnessing their distress in all parts of
the country, he was from the beginning of the Chartist
movement inclined toward a revolutionary policy. L^XoL
counterbalance the influence of the London Working Men's 1
Association which, according to O'Connor, consisted of
skilledjnechanics, he founded in 1837 the London Demo-
1 The English Chartist Circular, no. 62.
Hi] THE LEADERS
cratic Association^ appealing to the " unshaven chins, blis-
tejjecl. hands, and fustian jackets" for membership.f (The
objects, besides universal suffrage, included the agitation
for liberty of the press, the repeal of the Poor Law, an
eight-hour labor day, and the prohibition of child labor.
This association eventually became the mouthpiece of the
,;. physical force CHaffists"," disserhmating the spirit of revolt
all over the county " In the Democratic Association ",
^ ^1
it was subsequently stated in its official organ, " the Jacobin
Club again lives and flourishes, and the villainous tyrants
shall find to their cost, that England too has her Marats,
St. Justs, and Robespierres "- 1 O'Connor, however, never
identified himself with the extreme wing of the terrorists
and once he even repudiated the latter in his characteristic
vein., 2
I have always been a man of peace. I have always denounced
the man who strove to tamper with an oppressed people by any
appeal to physical force. I have always said that moral force
was the degree of deliberation in each man's mind which told
him when submission was a duty or resistance not a crime ; and
that a true application of moral force would effect every
change, but that in case it should fail, physical force would
come to its aid like an electric shock and no man could prevent
it; but that he who advised or attempted to marshal it would
be the first to desert it at the moment of danger. God forbid
that I should wish to see my country plunged into the horrors
of physical revolution. I wish her to win her liberties by peace-
ful means alone.
apprehension of a " physical revolution " did not,
nevertheless, in the least mitigate his contempt for those
who counseled inactivity and "education". He fully realized
JLXh&JLod4*-)emvrrtit,rio. 2, 1839.
1 The Nonconformist, June 8, 1842.
! j 2 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [
that there were two parties to the bargain ; that, besides the
poor fellow, there was also the rich man who was reluctant
to be " educated " in detriment to his personal interests.
In his speeches, as well as in his " Star," he repeatedly up-
braided the people for having borne oppression too long
| and too tamely, reminding them that " it is better to die
1 free men than to live slaves." (Professing his faith in the
moral power of the working class to establish the rights of
the poor maity he used his intrepid eloquence and sallies of
wit to bring the masses to the very pit of revolution.
James Bronterre O'Brien, widely known as Bronterre,
was born in 1805 and was the son of a wine merchant and
tobacco manufacturer. In childhood he displayed extra-
ordinary abilities and, at the age of ten, he knew Latin,
Greek, French and Italian, besides his native language. In
the private school which was conducted by Lowell Edge-
worth, a brother of the writer, on the monitor system, he
showed remarkable proficiency in mathematics and a fine
appreciation of literature and poetry. Walter Scott, who
had heard of the boy-prodigy, went to see him in school
and was filled with admiration. He also distinguished him-
self in Trinity College at Dublin, where he received the de-
gree of Bachelor of Arts, and at Gray's Inn in London
where he was qualifying himself for the bar. He was
twenty-five years of age when he was introduced by " Ora-
tor " Henry Hunt to the radicals of London as a young
gentleman of great abilities, whose sympathies were entirely
with the people. In the account which he gave of himself
in the first number of his " National Reformer," January
7, 1837, he says:
About eight years ago, I came to London to study law and
radical reform. My friends sent me to study law; I took
to radical reform on my own account. I was a very short
113] THE LEADERS
time engaged in both studies, when I found the law was all
fiction and rascality, and that radical reform was all truth and
matter of dire necessity. Having a natural love of truth, and
as natural a hatred of falsehood, I soon got sick of law, and
gave all my soul to radical reform. The consequence is, that
while I have made no progress at all in law, I have made
immense progress in radical reform, so much so, that were a
professorship of radical reform to be instituted in King's
College, I think I would stand candidate for the office. At all
events, I feel as though every drop of blood in my veins was
radical blood, and as if the very food I swallow undergoes, at
the moment of deglutition, a process of radicalization.
He started his literary career in 1830, over the signature
of Bronterre, in Carpenter's Political Pamphlets. His
articles soon attracted the attention of the radicals, and,
at the age of twenty-six, he became the chief editor of the
Poor Man's Guardian. He was a prolific writer and
during the thirties was an important contributor or editor
of many magazines, including the Midland Representative,
People's Conservative, Carpenter's Political Pamphlets and
Political Herald, Poor Man's Guardian, The Destructive.
Twopenny Despatch, London Mercury, National Reformer,
The Operative, Southern Star, Northern Star, and others.
In 1836 he translated Buonarroti's History of Babeufs Con-
spiracy for Equality, and, after his visit to Paris, published,
in 1837, The Life of Robespierre, in which, in defiance of
all prejudice, he depicted the great revolutionist as one of
the noblest and most enlightened reformers that the world
ever had. He remained all his life a great admirer of
Robespierre and Babeuf.
The talents of Bronterre were greatly exaggerated by
many of his followers, who ranked him as a genius, but they
were great enough to put him head and shoulders above
the average leader of workingmen. The title of " School
II4
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
Master" bestowed on him for his learning by O'Connor was
fully merited. As a leader, he combined many happy char-
acteristics. He was a dreamer and full of temperament.
less erratic than O'Connor and more pliant than Lovett.
Tall, somewhat stooping, with a fine intellectual cast of
head and features, forcible with his tongue not less than
with his pen, he exerted a great influence on the masses as
well as on the leaders. (>The goal which he set out to achieve
was " social equality for each and all." But in order to
obtain social equality, the people had first to get political
equality. Political supremacy was the foundation of the
\ whole economic structure. Social theories were, therefore,
" useless " until the Charter became the law of the land/
At the beginning of his radical career he referred to the
Houses of Parliament in the following terms : 1
They might abolish or remodel every institution in Church
and State ; they might change the whole system of commerce ;
they might substitute the labor note for the present vicious
currency and thus render usury impossible; they might agree
to work in common, and to enjoy in common; or they might
arrange to exchange their produce on equitable terms, through
salaried agents, without the intervention of base middlemen
who are the bane of society. By these and the like means they
might silently, but effectually, regenerate the world.
This view was elaborated by Bronterre in his writings
during the Chartist agitation. ^JThe acquisition of universal
suffrage was, therefore, imperative in order that the work-
ing class may reconstruct the whole basis of society { This
became his idee fixe :
Without the franchise you can have nothing but what others
choose to give you, and those who give to-day, may choose to
3 The Poor Man's Guardian, March i, 1834.
115] THE LEADERS
take away to-morrow. Every industrious man who produces
more (in value) of the goods of life than he needs for his
own or his family's use, ought to own the difference as prop-
erty. You are almost all in that condition, for there are few
of you who do not yield more value to society every day than
society gives you back in return. Why are you not masters of
the difference? Why is it not your property? Because cer-
tain laws and institutions, which other people make, take it
away from you. and give it to the law-makers. But if you
were represented as well as they, you would have quite other
laws and institutions, which would give the wealth to those
who earned it. 1
QBronterre \vas an ardent advocate of nationalization of
land^' In 1837 he advanced the basic points which he sub-
sequently developed into a theory of his own :
1. The absolute dominion, or allodial right to the soil, belongs ^'
to the nation only.
2. The nation alone has the just power o^leasing out^he * '.--<*
land for cultivation, and of appropriating the rents accruing
therefrom.
3. The size of farms, or the portion of soil to be allotted to
individuals or families; also the proportions to be devoted to
tillage, pasturage, etc. also the several other powers now pos-
sessed by individual owners, and exercised by them in the
granting of leases, etc. all these are matters which it also
belongs to the nation alone to determine in virtue of its rights
as absolute landlord of all.
4. Upon this theory every subject of the realm is a part
proprietor of the soil. The land being leased out by public
auction, whoever bids highest for a lot should get it, because
the nation would thereby be the gainer, and as population in-
creased, and the land became in consequence more valuable,
rents would increase also, and people's inheritance be made
greater. 2
1 Bronterre's National Reformer, January 15, 1837.
2 Ibid., Feb. 25, 1837.
U6 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
\ His hostility towards the middle class, the " money-
monster ", did not entirely blind him to the advantages of
machinery. Nor did he believe with O'Connor that land
was the only source of all wealth :V
The system I combat, and which I wish you to combat, is
that by which your profit-mongering oppressors have turned
you from agriculturists into manufacturers for all the world.
Now, I am not against manufactures, nor against the fine arts,
nor against even the largest possible extension and application
of both to the purpose of human economy, but I am against
the system which would first make these paramount to agricul-
ture, and then bestow all the advantages of both on an upstart
moneyed aristocracy, who, in drawing you from off the land,
have made you more abject slaves to their cupidity, than your
forefathers ever were to the feudal barons of the Middle Ages.
Agriculture is the most profitable of all pursuits, to a nation
considered aggregately ; even now, when scarcely any machin-
ery is applied to husbandry, it is a well known fact that one
laborer produces food for four persons. How much more he
might produce, I leave any one to infer, who has ever seen
the rich garden grounds about Chelsea, Fulham, Kensington,
and Hammersmith. Is it not monstrous, then, that with this
power of production, and with sixty millions of acres of land
in Great Britain and Ireland, of which not ten millions are
unsusceptible of cultivation, we should see thousands of arti-
sans in our great towns, either wholly destitute of employ-
ment, or eking out a miserable existence on starving wages, and
subject to all the brutalizing privations of health, air, and hap-
piness, to which their dependence on the profit-monger and
his foreign markets hourly subjects them? ... It is not gold
and silver, nor yet bank notes, as the paper-money schemers
would have us believe, that have given the prodigious impulse
we have witnessed, to improvements in America. It is the
abundance of food produced by its agricultural population,
that enables so great a number to be employed in constructing
117] THE LEADERS
canals, bridges, railroads, etc. The surplus of agricultural
produce is the real capital which sets the artisans and handi-
craftsmen to work, and covers the States with those embellish-
ments and stupendous works of art which astound the Euro-
pean traveler. 1
It was observations like the above that led him to con-
clude that land could never be a " legitimate subject of
property ", and that had it not been for individual owner-
ship of land, " we should have escaped ninety-nine hun-
dredths of all the woes and crimes that have hitherto made
a pandemonium of the world." 2 He put land in a class by
itself. All other property could be held by individuals in
perfect compatibility with public happiness and social justice.
If all men are placed equal before the law if the means of
acquiring and retaining wealth are equally secured to all in
proportion to the respective industry and services of each, I
see no objection to private property. Every man has a right
to the value of his own produce or services, be they more or
less. If one man can and will do twice the work of another
man, he ought certainly in justice to have twice the reward.
But if his superior strength or skill gives him the means of
acquiring more wealth than his neighbor, it by no means fol-
lows that he ought, therefore, to acquire a right or power
over his neighbor's produce as well as his own. And here
lies the grand evil of society it is not in private property, but
in the unjust and atrocious powers with which the existing
laws of all countries invest it. If a man has fairly earned a
hundred or a thousand pound's worth of wealth beyond what
he has consumed or spent, he has a sacred right to the ex-
clusive use of it, if he thinks proper; but he has no right
to use that wealth in such a way as to make it a sort of
sucking pump, or thumb-screw for sucking and screwing other
1 Bronterre's National Reformer, January 7, 1837.
a The Operative, vol. i, no. 4, 1838.
Il8 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
people's produce into his possession. Sir John Cam Hobhouse,
for example, . . . has no just right to employ his money in
usury or speculation. His money should not be allowed to
grow money as cabbage grows cabbage, or weeds grow weeds.
To employ money in that way is not to use the right of prop-
erty, but to practice robbery. . . . He takes advantage of his
* capital/ and the poverty that surrounds him. He says to
the hungry man, Come and labor for me, create fresh wealth
for me, and you shall have a small share of your produce to
keep you alive. . . . The laborer can stand anything before
hunger. Hence, Sir John grows richer and richer every day,
without earning any riches at all, while he who produces the
riches grows poorer and poorer, as age diminishes his strength,
till at last he dies in poverty and in the workhouse. . . . The
employers of labor and the exchangers of wealth are alone
considered in the laws. The producers and active distributors
are only thought of as slaves or criminals. Enormous fleets
and armies are kept up to protect the merchant's gains. Enor-
mous gaols and penitentiaries are kept up for the poor. Thus
are the laborers forced to pay, not only for the protection of
those who plunder them, but for the very instruments of their
own torture and misery. Buonarroti considers all these results
inseparable from private property. So did Babeuf so did
thousands of the French Democrats of 1793 so do Robert
Owen and his disciples of the present day. I think differ-
ently. I will never admit that private property is incom-
patible with public happiness, till I see it fairly tried. I never
found an objection urged against it, which I can not trace
to the abuse, not to the use of the institution. ... I assert that
such [enlightened] government would place commerce and
manufactures upon a totally different footing from the present,
and make the land the common property of all the inhabitants,
and that, without any real or material injury to the existing
proprietors. I hold, and I am sure I can prove, that such a
dispensation of things is within the power of an enlightened
legislature, fairly representing all classes. 1
1 The English Chartist Circular, vol. i, no. 18.
1 1 9] THE LEADERS
Radical and talented as Bronterre was, his strong pre-
dilections for the views of Robespierre and Babeuf entirely
blurred his vision of the evolutionary laws of society. In
the preface to his translation of Buonarroti's History of
Babeuf s Conspiracy for Equality, he cites, among others,
the following reasons for rendering the work into English.
Because Buonarroti's book contains one of the best exposi-
tions I have seen of those great political and social principles
which I have so long advocated in the Poor Man's Guardian
and other publications. . . . Society has been hitherto con-
stituted upon no fixed principles. The state in which we find
it is the blind result of chance. Even its advocates do not
claim for it any other origin. The right of the strongest
the only right acknowledged by savage man appears to be
still the fundamental charter of all " civilized " states
What the savage or uncivilized man does individually and
directly by the exercise of mere personal prowess, the civilized
man (so called) does collectively and circuitously by cunningly-
designed institutions. The effects of these institutions are
well depicted by Buonarroti. He shows, with admirable abil-
ity, how, in trying to escape the evils of savage life, man has
unconsciously plunged into another state far more calamitous
to wit, the present artificial state, which he terms that of
"" false civilization." He shows, that to correct the evils of
this latter state, without at the same time retrograding to the
former, was the grand problem sought to be resolved by the
first French Revolution, and, in discussing the principles and
institutions deemed necessary to that end by the leaders of
the Revolution, I was so forcibly struck by the coincidence
of Buonarroti's ideas with my own, that I immediately re-
solved to translate the book.
The omnipotence which he attributed to political rights
precluded his correct appreciation of the economic forces
of society. / The rise of the middle class forced his recog-
nition, but he ascribed it to the political importance of that
120 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [120
class, which in his mind was merely " the blind result of
chance," and he sought to crush the " money-monster " with
its own weapon political power. In this respect he was in
full accord with Lovett and his friends of the London Work-
ing Men's Association, never tiring of agitating for uni-
versal suffrage as the only remedy for social maladies.
The economic role of the working class as a factor in social
evolution he neither recognized nor understood^
Thomas Attwood was a valuable accession to the Chartist
leaders on account of his previous association with the
Birmingham Political Union. He was a Birmingham
banker, and his interest in currency reform led him into ac-
tive politics. At the beginning of his political career, he
looked with contempt upon the "poor wretches," the radicals,
who " clamor for Burdett and liberty meaning blood and
anarchy." After the defeat of his currency measures in
Parliament, he proclaimed himself a radical reformer, and
in December, 1829, together with fourteen others, he
founded the " Birmingham Political Union for the Pro-
tection of Public Rights " and rendered yeoman's service
in the agitation for the Reform Bill of 1832. He was ex-
tremely popular among all classes, and, as a politician, he
adopted a somewhat modern method of gaining support by
kissing the children and very often bestowing this token of
recognition upon the mothers of the children. At one elec-
tion he was credited to have kissed about eight thousand
women. ^ Among the Chartists, he belonged to the moral-
force group.j
As the leader of the Birmingham Currency School, he
attributed every trouble which befell England to the re-
sumption of specie-payment in 1819 and advocated the in-
flation of the currency by means of paper money, whose
standard should be regulated in accordance with fluctuating
I2 i] THE LEADERS I2 i
prices- His pamphlets on monetary questions made him
widely known, although he met with little sympathy in Par-
liamentary circles as well as among the radicals. Disraeli
described him as a provincial banker laboring under a
financial monomania. Cobbett accused him of desiring to
keep up " an army deadweight, sinecures, places and pen-
sions, the Stock Exchange in full swing and the infamous
borough-mongers in the height of prosperity." O'Connor
used to call his financial schemes " rag-botheration." An
official declaration of the Chartists referred to the "cor-
rupting influence of paper money " as the most " oppressive
measure," by which the workingmen were " enslaved "- 1
Attwood, however, never tired of his agitation in favor of
paper currency and worked the hardest for the People's
-Charter, harboring the belief that an "ideal monetary reform
would be enacted by a democratic Parliament.
<^Henry Hetherington was another man whose great popu-
larity lent considerable support to the moral-force group
of Chartists.) He was not an orator of any force or elo-
quence, but enjoyed an enviable reputation as the champion
and martyr of the battle for an unstamped press. Prisons
had no terrors for him, and for a period of five years 2
he published the Poor Man's Guardian in open "defiance of
law to try the power of right against might." In 1836 his
Twopenny Despatch took the lead in the courageous strug-
gle for a free and popular press. After the formation of
the London Working Men's Association he was one of the
missionaries who were sent out to organize similar bodies
all over the country. v As a Chartist he professed intimate
sympathy with the principles and policies of his friend
Lovettf
1 See Hansard, vol. xlix, 1839, p. 242; cf. also Bronterre's view,
supra, p. 1 1 6.
2 Dec. 25, 1830, to Dec. 20, 1835.
CHAPTER VIII
I am here to blow to the uttermost
ends of the earth that lie the impious
and blasphemous lie of the hirelings
that you are bound to obey laws with-
out knowing what they are. . . . Noth-
ing can be more wicked or diabolical
than that. Before you obey a law, you
must know whether it is good or bad.
Rev. I. R. Stephens.
THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
.
^_^ LOVETT was the apostle of Moral JForcfr^tte-^,.
had unbounded faith in the moral propensities of mankind.
[Since ignorance alone was at the root of all oppression, it
was necessary only to awaken the dormant faculties of mind
in order to assure the blissful regeneration of society. '; It
was natural, then, that he should inspire the London Work-
ing Men's Association not to " rely on the mere excitation
of the multitude to condemn bad men or measures, or to
change one despot for another." No force other than moral
suasion, backed by political ana social education, would
enable the people " to found their institutions on principles
of equality, truth, and justice// x
O'Connor and Bronterre made no religion of Moral
Fnrcf ti ,^ hpy aflYQCatcd.!! ll fc arf> and Gr?er 1r nol as a maxim,
but as a policy. When the temper of the people dic-
tated a different policy, they did not contradict it. they
1 See "Address to the Working Classes of Europe, and especially to
the Polish People," in Life and Struggles of William Lovett, pp. 150-
158. ,
'122 [122
123] THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
did noLjYn _apologize, -they ftinjply y 1 '^*** ^ fhf* in~
evitable. Physical Force as a philosophy and Revolt as an
apotheosis of justice were broached by a different, set joL*
men who exerted a dominant influence on the masses during
the first period of the movement.
Joseph Raynor Stephens, the apostle of revolt and the
only Chartist who at one time vied with O'Connor in popu- ; /
lanfyv was horn on the i8th of March, 1805, at Edinburgh,
where his father was a Methodist preacher. He made the
best of his elementary education when yet quite young.
After teaching school for two years, he became a Methodist
preacher in 1825, and the following year was appointed to
a mission station at Stockholm, Sweden. In 1829 he was
ordained as a Wesleyan minister and in 1830 was stationed
at Cheltenham. His JA^esleyan car^er^ended^ in 18.^4, wherv /
he wasudismissed for his association with Richard Oastler
in the agitation for the improvement of the condition of
factory laborers. The dismissal from the ministry raised
*
him in the estimation of the working men. But it was his
subsequent scathing attacks on the New Poor Law that
endeared him to the masses who before long erected for
him three chapels in the Ashton district. Besidesjiis regu-
lar Srmos- in -the chapels, he made use of the public market
to harangue big crowds and to teach them not to " care for
an Act of Parliament ", as it was only " waste paper ",
" treason ", and " blasphemy ", unless it tended to promote
happiness among men. He was never shy in the choice of
his epithets against the ruling classes, and it was for this
that Francis Place characterized him as a " malignant,
crazy man who never seemed exhausted with bawling
atrocious matter."
Stephens did not consider himself a radical, but, as " a
revolutionist by fire, a revolutionist by blood, to the knife,
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ I2 4
to the death," be joined the ranks of the Chartists, pro-
claiming the question of universal suffrage to be, after all,
" a knife and fork question. "f He was recognized as the
greatest Chartist orator. A master on the platform, he pos-
sessed personal magnetism, felicity of expression and a
singular style of oratory which, at his best, made him
; irresistible. Vehement inflammatory declamations inter-
\ /
woven with passages of classical beauty ; rugged expressions
of protest mingled with sentiments of love and devotion;
scenes of revolting despondency redeemed by prophetic pro-
mises of a happy life; curses sputtered in a voice that could
be distinctly heard by twenty thousand persons in the open
air soothed by intonations of musical cadence; stories of
every-day life, so near and familiar, followed by strange
but exalted citations from the Bible, all this rendered his
spell the more dominant because of the spectacular effect
produced by the black robe of a minister of the gospel. His
sermons were partly religious and partly political, but in
'all he exposed the crying injustice of the economic system.
His pictures of women bleeding to death from overwork in
factories, of children in mortal terror of the workhouse, of
old men and old women dying from starvation, produced
,a lurid effect on the minds of his hearers and made them the
more susceptible to his subtle allusions to force. He made
extensive use of the gospel to popularize his philosophy of
social justice. He preached class consciousness and or-
ganization as he preached religion. He urged insurrection
as he extolled the names of the Prophets. He inspired
courage in emulation of Christ :
Oh, my brethren, look neither to this man nor to that man, but
pray to God Almighty to raise up among you prophets like
unto Moses and Joshua and Hezekiah and Ezekiel and Mala-
1 See Annual Register, vol. Ixxx, 1839, p. 311.
125] THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
chi, and Amos and Jonah; pray to God to raise up apostles
like Peter and Paul and John ; pray God to raise up men filled
with his favor; men whose hearts are filled with love to their
brethren; pray God to send such men out, with their lives in
their hands, to launch his thunderbolts at the head of the op-
pressor, and to shed his blessing upon the heads of those who
in obedience, reverential, child-like obedience, love to follow
in the way of his commandments.
You will never have freedom or happiness in England ; this .
land will never be worth living in it is not worth living in
now, if it were not for the hope in God that it may be better ;
if there be a hell upon earth comparatively with other nations
of the world, it is England; if the devil has any seat of au-
thority any kingdom where he rules more infernally than in
any other part of the world, it is England at this moment.
Look where ypu will ; cast your eyes abroad from the political
head to the political foot, there is no soundness in us ; there is
nothing " but wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores," and
the only balm of Gilead, the only good physician is yonder
Good Physician he who laid down his life for the world.
Pray, then, for the spirit of God to be poured out ; pray for the
spirit of God to come down ; pray for the spirit of determined
and decided men once more to be imparted . . . ; pray that
God would fill you with his truth, that he would raise you up
and carry you far beyond the fear of man; and when your
own soul is let loose, when your own mind is free, when your
own heart is big and swollen, and entirely filled with the fear
of God, you will never be afraid of what men can say or do
unto you. You will say, " He that is for me, is greater than
all that are against me " ; and you will go on in the name, and
in the strength of God, and you will be a Christian Reformer.
We want in England Christian Reformers. 1
(^Resistance to bad laws is, according to Stephens, as
1 A Sermon Preached at Hyde, in Lancashire, on the i?th of Feb-
ruary, 1839.
126 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ I2 6
exalted a virtue as is obedience to good laws. Allegiance
per se is not an end; if the law affords no protection, it
must be disobeyed. His appeal for rebellion was direct]:
Are the Spitalfields weavers protected, when not one in a hun-
dred of them, after working twelve hours a day, can earn 125.
a week ? Are the handloom weavers of the north protected,
when they cannot, with all their toil, earn more than /s. a week?
I have known girls eight years of age working at the anvil, mak-
ing nails from six in the. morning until eight or nine at night,
and on Friday all night long, and, after all, could not earn
more than is. 6d. per week. The mother worked equal time,
and whilst she was at work, one of her children was burnt
almost to a cinder, and she could only earn 35. a week, whilst
the grandmother could get no more than is,, 6d__Do_lhQSje_
poor creatures owe allegiance to the laws ? Are they pro-
tected? Do the poor wretches of the factories the carders,
i "' "*
'1 the piecers, the scavengers, dressers, weavers, and spinners
do they owe allegiance to the laws? Does the agricultural
laborer, who can only earn 8s. a week, owe submission to the
riaws? The law, in establishing oppression, makes the op-
y pressed its deadly enemy. 1
Stephens dwelt little on the political aspects of the Char-
, ter. He aimed chiefly to impress the masses with the
^ realization of the iniquitous economic and social system.
' You see yonder factory with its towering chimney. Every
brick in that factory is cemented with tlje blood of women
and little children ", he said on one occasion. He always
warned his hearers against passiveness. On January i,
1838, referring to the New Poor Law, he admonished a
Newcastle audience that " sooner than wife and husband,
and father and son, should be sundered and dungeoned, and
1 A Sermon Preached in Shepherd and Shepherdess Fields, London,
on Sunday, May 12, 1839.
127] THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
fed on ' skillee ', sooner than wife or daughter should
wear the prison dress sooner than that Newcastle ought
to be, and should be one blaze of fire, with only one way
to put it out, and that with the blood of all who supported
this abominable measure." He recurred to this theme in
most of his sermons, and once he declared tersely :
I have never acknowledged the authority of the New Poor Law,
and so help me God I never will. I never paid my rates under
it, and so help me God I never will they may take every chair,
every table and every bed I have they may pull my house
over my head, and send me and my wife and my child wander-
ers on the heaths and the hills they may take all but my wife,
my child, and my life, but pay one penny I never will. If
they dare attempt to take them, and it becomes necessary to
repel force by force, there will be a knife, a pike, or a bullet
at hand, and if I am to fall, I will at least sell life for life.
I exhort you and all others to do the same. I do not mean
to flinch. I will recommend nothing which I will not do. I
tell you that if they attempt to carry into effect this damnable
law, I mean to fight. I will lay aside the black coat for the
red, and with the Bible in one hand and a sword in the other
a sword of steel, not of argument I will fight to the death
sooner than that law shall be brought into operation on me
or on others with my consent or through my silence .....
Perish trade and manufacture perish arts, literature and
science perish palace, throne and altar if they can only stand
upon the dissolution of the marriage tie the annihilation of
every domestic affection, and the vilest and most brutal oppres-
sion ever yet practiced upon the poor of any country in the
world. 1
The most salient feature in his sermons, besides their
I
inciting character,! was the subjection of politics to eco-
^**""*"
1 A Sermon Preached at Primrose Hill, London, on Sunday, May 12,
128 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ I2 g
J Contrary to well-nigh all Chartists, he never
/made universal suffrage synonymous with universal happi-
ness. He believed that every man without a home, or whose
home was " not all that God meant it to be," was robbed
and had, therefore, " a just cause for quarrel with society." x
He gave his allegiance to the People's Charter in so far as it
aimed to assure a happy home for every man " that breathed
God's free air or trod God's free earth." But at the same
time he realized, and endeavored to make the people realize
that the Charter would be of no avail without a strong,
organized, revolutionary movement for the purpose of ef-
fecting a complete change in the economic system:
There has already been too much of what is called political
reform, the juggling of the places from one to another, the
passing of the pea from one cup to another cup to amuse and
to deceive, and ultimately to destroy the people; and every
step you take is a step nearer to hell. All the laws in England
could not make Hyde one bit the better unless the people were
a changed people. An Act of Parliament cannot change the
hearts of the tyrants Ashton and Howard. These men have
made themselves rich by making you poor. They have swollen
with wealth by plundering you. Now, all the laws in England
could not change the hearts of those wicked men; and unless
their hearts were changed, and your hearts were changed,
what could the law do ? There would be a thousand ways of
breaking through it; a thousand ways of avoiding it and of
screening those who were detected, even after they had broken
the law. It could do no good. Your minds must be made
up. You, husbands ! unless your minds be made up that your
wives ought not and shall not work; that rather than kill
your wives by allowing them to work, you will allow God to
take their lives by gradual starvation. . . . But God Almighty
1 A Sermon Preached in Shepherd and Shepherdess Fields, London,
on Sunday, May 12, 1839.
129] THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT I2O/
is moving the working classes in the country, and therefore I
exhort you to give yourself to prayer. Pray God to sound
the alarm from one end of the land to the other ; and then, in
the spirit of self-denial, and self-sacrifice, and devotion, be
united as the heart of one man, and as one united and in-
dissoluble phalanx, God leading you by a pillar of fire by
night, and by a pillar of cloud by day, wend your way and
force your passage through the wilderness of the promised
land the land that flows with milk and honey. It is high
time there was some mighty movement. 1
\The emphasis which Stephens always laid on the economic
aspects of the movement, not less than his advocacy off /
physical force, precluded Lovett and his friends from re-lv/
cognizing him as a bona fide Chartist. ; In an Address to
the Irish People, published in August, 1838, in reply to
the Precursors, the London Working Men's Association
disclaimed all affiliation with Stephens, who was labeled as
a man " more known for his opposition to the New Poor
Law than for his advocacy of Radicalism ", and who " ridi-
culed our principles and publicly declared his want of con-
fidence in us." His sermons support the suspicion that in
his heart of hearts he probably never believed in the efficacy
of political agitation. It may have been the vanity of a
popular idol and the fear of losing his grip on the people
that restrained him from speaking his mind; he may have
felt reluctant to disillusion the masses in their faith in the
talismanic power of the Charter; he may have himself been
unconsciously caught in the maelstrom of universal agita-
tion, or he may have cast his lot with the Chartists simply
because the new movement afforded a wide field for the
dissemination of his revolutionary ideas. At any rate, his
1 A Sermon Preached at Hyde, in Lancashire, on the I7th of Feb-
ruary, 1839.
1 William Lovett, Life and Struggles, p. 195.
1 30 THE CHARTIST MO VEMENT [ 1 30
skepticism became the more pronounced the sterner the gov-
ernment, became in its hostility towards the movement. In
a sermon preached at Ashton on May 26th, 1839, he warned
the .people of the futility of abortive demonstrations and
desultory fighting and advised them to divide themselves into
little bands of five or ten in a company and to meet at each
other's houses, and " there over the hearthstone, without
books and papers, without speeches and resolutions, with-
out anything but talking and praying, tell one another what
they think, and ask one another whether they are right, and
whether their minds are made up to shed the last drop of
blood rather than live in bondage, and sell their wives and
children to the devil." And then in an ebullition of in-
dignation, he cried out:
Down with the House of Commons ; down with the House of
Lords; aye, down with the throne, and down with the altar
itself; burn the church; down with all rank, all dignity, all
title, all power ; unless that dignity, authority, and power will
and do secure to the honest industrious efforts of the upright
and poor man a comfortable maintenance in exchange for
his labor. / don't care about your Charter; it may be all very
right ; it may be all very good; you have a right to get it,
mind you, and I will stand by you in it; but I don't care about
it ; and I don't care about a republic. You have a right to
have it if you choose; and I will stand by you, in defending
your right to have it if you choose. I don't care about a
monarchy; I don't care about the present, or any other order
of things, unless the Charter, the republic, the monarchy, the
present order of things, or any other order of things that may
be brought to succeed the present, should, first of all, and
above all, and through all, secure to every son of the soil, to
every living being of the human kind .... a full, a suffi-
cient and a comfortable maintenance, according to the will
and commandment of God. That is what I go for; that is
what I talk for; that is what I live for; and that is what
131] THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
I will die for; for I will have it. I say now what I said
before; the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the
cattle upon a thousand hills; the gold and the silver; and he
has filled all things with plenteousness. There is nothing nig-
gardly from God. There has nothing come in stinging, close-
fisted niggardliness from God Almighty. It is all plenty.
There is plenty of soil there is plenty of water there is
plenty of sun there is plenty of rain there is plenty of dew
the winter throws a warm blanket of driven snow upon
the earth, to cover it and keep it warm: then He sends out
the sun to rule the day refreshing and reviving is the breeze.
. . . What have we to thank God for? What have we to
bless God for? Does God call upon us to thank Him for
nothing? Then what kind of a God is He? And what sort
of worshippers does He take us to be? Does He call upon
us to bless Him for curses? Then what kind of a Maker,
Preserver, and Redeemer, and Judge, is He ; and what kind of
workmanship of his Almighty hand are we ? No, my brethren,
the very thought of such a thing is impiety and blasphemy;
God does not ask us to thank Him for nothing; or to bless
Him for curses. Then what have we to thank and bless God
for? You have to thank and bless God for houses and for
lands, for food and for clothing, which He has given you,
but which others have taken from you. ... I thank God,
who gave me life and breath, and all things richly to enjoy.
And if any man asks me where they are, as a laboring man,
I answer, " God gave them, but wicked men have taken them
from me." But I not only thank God for having given
them to me; I not only bless God for having bestowed them
upon me, but I trust in God for strength to help me to take
them back again. I am alive, and therefore, I thank God, I
have the use of my understanding, and the understanding
shows me not only what things are, but what things ought to
be and I trust that God, who gave me life, and who still lends
me breath, and intrusts me with power of body as well as
power of mind I trust in that God, and I pray to that God,
that he would, if it be found that my rights cannot be got back
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [132
without it, and by any way short of it, " I pray God literally
to teach my hands to war, and my fingers to fight." .... I
preach a startling truth ; I preach a sweeping truth ; I preach the
truth, which will, if they choose to suffer it, set things right,
without hurting any body. If they will not suffer the truth
if they will neither have it, nor forbear from hindering it,
then I preach a truth which will be the means, I hope, of
destroying them root and branch. It is time the prisoners
were let loose ; it is time the dungeon was broken open ; it is
time the Bastile was burnt down ; it is time that every working-
man in England had the means, and there are the means, and
they are not far off him, and the Government is beginning to
find it out, and is arming the pensioners ; but, unluckily for
the devils who arm the pensioners, the pensioners are training
the people. . . . You have a right, every working man amongst
you has the right to as much for your labor as will keep
you and your families. 1
For some time the idol of the masses, Stephens, however,
lost his influence as soon as his criticism of the Chartist
demands became pronounced. It was his heresy in politics
that drove him to the Chartists and it was the same heresy
that barred him from their ranks. The chief protagonist
and pillar of insurrectionism, he was the first to be singled
out for persecution by the government and to be denounced
by the leaders of the movement. The cult of physical force,
however, always had more than one high priest.
George Julian Barney, unlike Stephens, devoted his
ubiquitous activity to the exclusive agitation for the Charter.
He was but twenty years of age when he plunged into the ['
tempestuous sea of the Chartist movement. He came with
a halo of martyrdom, having suffered imprisonment, when
yet quite a boy, for selling unstamped literature. Brought up
1 The London Democrat, June 8, 1839.
THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT ^33
under extremely adverse circumstances, he cultivated a
feeling of antagonism towards the powers that be. He
could not boast of a thorough education, but he possessed
great natural abilities. He was the man who better than any
other of the Chartist leaders could in time read the hand-
writing on the wall, displaying a deep understanding of the
social fabric and a keen insight into the role which the work-
ing class was destined to play. In many of his writings, he
foreshadowed the subsequent principles of scientific Social-
ism. \At the beginning of his career, however, he was the
most violent agitator of physical forced He was the secre-
tary of the " London Democratic Association " and, at the
age of twenty-two, was the chief writer for The London
Democrat which was started on the I3th of April, 1839, to
preach the gospel of insurrection. Assuming the name of
Friend of the People, he hailed the spirit of Marat with a
courage which only youth could inspire:
Hail ! spirit of Marat ! Hail ! glorious apostle of Equality ! !
Hail! immortal martyr of Liberty!!! All Hail! thou whose
imperishable title I have assumed; and oh! may the God of
Freedom strengthen me to brave, like thee, the persecution of
tyrants and traitors, or (if so doomed) to meet, like thee, a
martyr's death ! 1
His style, not refined as that of Bronterre nor as florid as
that of O'Connor, was more poignant than that of either of '
them. His exhortation to revolt was direct. Stephens
suggested that " Englishmen have the right not only to have
arms, but to take them up in defence of their lives, their
wives and children, for their homes and their hearths." 2
Harney made it his " arduous task " to urge war with
traitors, " war to the knife." In his paper he printed
1 The London Democrat, April 13, 1839.
1 A Sermon Preached at Primrose Hill, on Sunday, May 12, 1839.
I34 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [134
" Scenes and Sketches from the French Revolution," depict-
ing events and leaders of the movement, " in order that the
present generation may derive a lesson from the deeds of
the past," learn to avoid the errors, and, in the revolution
" which will speedily take place " in England, " imitate the
heroic, God-like deeds of the sons of republican France."
He called upon the poor and oppressed, the young and the
brave, " to strike the home blow, the final blow, the death
blow for old England and Freedom," and assuring them
that no army could withstand a million of armed men, he
exhorted the workingmen to be armed and prepared to
exercise their " first and holiest right, the sacred right
of insurrection " :
Men of the East and West, men of the North and South,
your success lies with yourselves, depend upon yourselves alone,
and your cause will be triumphant . . . Prepare ! Prepare ! !
Prepare ! ! ! Listen not to the men who would preach delay.
The man who would now procrastinate is a traitor, and may
your vengeance light upon his head. . . . Let me exhort you to
arm. . . . Arm to protect your aged parents, arm for your
wives and children, arm for your sweethearts and sisters,
arm to drive tyranny from the soil and oppression from the
judgment-seat. Your country, your posterity, your God de-
mands of you to arm! Arm!! Arm!!! . . . Come, then,
men of the North, from your snow-capped hills; come, then,
men of the South, from your sunlit valleys ; come to the gather-
ing; unite, fraternize, arm, and you will be free. 1
As a speaker, Harney was far below the mark. But he
always had a sufficient stock of " strong words ", which
were in great demand by the masses, and his role was more
of an agitator than of a leader. 2
1 The London Democrat, April 20, 1839.
*? Cf. R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, Newcastle-
on-Tyne and London, 1894, pp. 29-30.
THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
Henry Vincent, " the English Demosthenes ", was an-
other man who helped blow the embers of popular dis-
content into a consuming flame of revolt. The son of a
poor silver-smith, he was compelled to earn his livelihood
at the age of eleven. Unable to give him a good education,
his father inculcated in him, however, a love for freedom
and justice. Vincent became interested in politics in 1828,
when he was but fifteen years of age. He was subsequently
an active member of the Political Unions at Hull and Lon-
don and was one of the members who were deputed by the
London Working Men's Association to agitate for the
Charter. He was a popular orator of great skill and he
used his talents to rouse the passions of the people. Judg-
ing by the portrait drawn of him by one of the Chartists,
he was the most graceful and winning orator on the Char-
tist side:
With a fine mellow flexible voice, a florid complexion, and
excepting in intervals of passion, a most winning expression,
he had only to present himself in order to win all hearts over
to his side. His attitude was perhaps the most easy and
graceful of any popular orator of the time. For fluency of
speech he rivaled all his contemporaries, few of whom were
anxious to stand beside him on the platform. His rare power
of imitation irresistibly drew peals of laughter from the gravest
audience. His versatility, which enabled him to change from
the grave to the gay and vice versa, and to assume a dozen
various characters in almost as many minutes, was one of the
secrets of his success. With the fair sex, his slight hand-
some figure, the merry twinkle of his eye, his incomparable
mimicry, his passionate bursts of enthusiasm, the rich music
of his voice, and above all, his appeals for the elevation of
woman, rendered him a universal favorite. 1
1 Gammage, op. cit., p. n.
136 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [136
While the list of the leaders and agitators during the first
stages of the movement is by no means complete, special
mention must be made of John Frost, the " martyr magis-
trate ", who ventured to carry the propaganda of revolt
into practice and who subsequently won the hearts of all
liberty-seeking people.
The son of humble parents, Frost was born on the 25th
of May, 1786, at Newport. In his boyhood, he displayed
great abilities. His early education, however, was quite
limited, as he lost his father while he was yet in cradle and
was brought up by his grandfather, a boot and shoe maker,
who cherished the hope of making his grandson useful in his
business. After sending him to school in Bristol for a few
years, he indentured John to his business. The boy was
released, however, through the interference of an uncle, and.
at the age of sixteen, was apprenticed to a tailor. Later
he became an assistant to a woolen draper in Bristol. At
the age of twenty, he went to London, where he worked
at the latter trade. At the solicitations of his mother, he
returned to Newport and established himself as a draper
and tailor. In 1822 a certain Mr. Protheroe, an influential
politician of Newport, sued Frost's uncle for an alleged
debt of 150. The suit was decided in favor of Protheroe.
As bail for his uncle, Frost threatened to expose Protheroe
unless his loss were refunded to him. This threat was
construed by the court as an attempt at extortion, and to
avoid the payment of 1000 damages awarded against him,
Frost sold his whole stock, paid all his creditors, with the
exception of one relative who had him arrested for a debt
of 200. He then surrendered himself as insolvent. In
the meantime, an action for libel was brought against him
on the ground that he had alluded to the jury as having been
' packed ' and to the witnesses as perjurers. For this, he
paid the penalty of six months' confinement in Goldbath
THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT
Fields Prison at London. Popular opinion was, however,
in favor of Frost. After his release from prison, he was
met on the road, three miles out of Newport, by about
fifteen thousand persons with flags and bands of music. He
was drawn in the carriage by his townspeople until they
reached the bridge, when he was taken out, placed in a
chair and carried on men's shoulders in triumph around
town.
In his youth, while in London, Frost used to attend meet-
ings of political clubs at which the writings of Thomas
Paine and other radicals were discussed. It was then that
he became imbued with radical ideas which he cherished all
his life. An avowed adherent of Cobbett, he entered the
political arena of his native town in 1817. He was an in- /
defatigable advocate of universal suffrage long before tho/
Charter was formulated by the London Working Men's
Association. In recognition of his work for municipal re-
form, he was elected in 1831 to the town council of New-
port. In 1836, he was appointed by the Secretary of State
to the position of borough magistrate. At the same time
he was also a Poor Law Guardian. In 1837, he was elected
mayor of Newport. In all these offices, Frost distinguished
himself for his ability, efficiency, and justice. As Poor
Law Guardian, he exerted all his powers to counteract the
cruelties of the law. He joined the Newport Working
Men's Association in 1838 and took an active part in the
proceedings and plans of the organization. The miners,
colliers and iron workers were proud of their friend, the ^
magistrate, and accorded him all the honors of a leader.
In his relations with people, Frost was always liked for
his kind disposition, mild manners and benevolence. Yet
it was not for these personal attributes that he won the
affection of the masses. His Chartist career, however,
forming as it does an integral part of the history of the
movement, must be deferred to a later chapter.
CHAPTER IX
The people's voice is heard around,
And martyr's blood cries from the ground;
Demanding justice for the brave,
And freedom for the British slave.
On ! on ye sons of dear-bought fame,
Your long-lost rights you must regain.
Make tyrants crouch, and traitors see
That Britain's sons shall yet be free.
William Aitken.
THE PEOPLE
THE first period of the Chartist movement was marked
by a state of ominous excitement in all parts of the coun-
try. The agitators for the " six points " joined .hands with
v the antagonists of the New Poor Law and the factory
; system and spread the spirit of discontent, until the response
of the masses was as great as their distress. Within a very
short time after its publication, the People's Charter gained
millions of adherents. The temper of the people, could not
be mistaken. Illegal underground societies with sinister
objects sprang up alongside of Chartist organizations. An
authentic description of one of those societies is given by a
contemporary radical who in 1838 was invited to join a
" Foreign Affairs Committee " at Birmingham :
The object of the society I found to be to cut off Lord
Palmerston's head. Things were bad among workmen in
those days, and I had no doubt somebody's head ought to be
cut off, and I hoped they had hit upon the right one. The
secretary was a Chartist leader named Warden, who ended by
cutting his own head off instead, which showed confusion of
138 [138
139] THE PEOPLE I39
ideas by which Lord Palmerston profited. Poor Warden cut
his own throat. 1
The first important public demonstration in favor of the /
Charter was held at Glasgow on the 28th of May, 1838, '"
under the auspices of the Working Men's Association. In
order to render the demonstration most effective, the Bir-
mingham Political Union sent a fraternal delegation headed
by Thomas Attwood. The procession of about two hun-
dred thousand working men and women was arranged with
great pomp. Forty bands of music were placed at equal
distances, and over two hundred flags and banners with
various devices were carried along the line of the march. The
Birmingham delegates were met with an outburst of enthu-
siasm and were accorded great honors, in appreciation of the
prestige they lent to the demonstration. Of the speeches,
the most characteristic was that of Thomas Attwood, who
explained the objects of the Charter and~3eveloped a plan
of petitioning Parliament. Regarding the movement as
purely political, he warned the people that they had against
them " the whole of the aristocracy, nine-tenths of the gen-
try, the great body of the clergy, and all the pensioners,
sinecurists, and bloodsuckers that feed on the vitals of the
people." t But he spoke in a most hopeful strain of his own
class, declaring that if Parliament refused to concede the
popular demands, the workingmen, together with their
friends of the middle class, should proclaim a " sacred
strike." VAttwood's expectations of support from the middle
class was strengthened by the fact that prominent members
of that class participated in the demonstration. The pro-
vincial Scotch merchants and manufacturers were not yet
1 George Jacob Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, Lon-
don, 1900, vol. ii, p. 77.
V
I4 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [140
conscious of the real causes which spurred the working
class to the struggle. Assurances of the peaceful designs
of the leaders were also given by a delegate from the Lon-
don Working Men's Association, and the middle_.ciass was
fairly represented at the banquet which took place in the
evening.,}
Things did not run so smoothly at the manifestation in
Jewcastle-on-Tyne which was held by about eighty thou-
md persons on the 2/th of June, 1838, the date of the
:oronation of Victoria. To begin with, the inscriptions on
the banners were not of a conciliatory character. One of
them expressed exaltation of "Freedom" in Byron's words :
When once more her hosts assemble,
Let the tyrants only tremble ;
Smile they at this idle threat?
Crimson tears may follow yet.
Another motto, taken from the same poet and characteristic
of a number of others, referred to " Revolution " :
I've seen some nations, like o'er-loaded asses,
Kick off their burdens, meaning the high classes.
The speeches were delivered in a rather defiant strain. One
of the speakers, a working man, declared that the people
would use " every means, not every legal means, mark !
but every means for the attainment of universal suffrage."
He adverted to the coronation of the Queen in no conven-
tional style :
They had the representative of the despot Nicholas, and of
the sleek tyrant Louis Philippe, and the representatives from
all their brother tyrants, assisting to crown sovereign of a
great nation a little girl who would be more usefully and
properly employed at her needle; but the people would be no
longer led away by their gaudy trappings; they would look
to themselves and to their families, for if they saw the
I 4 l] THE PEOPLE I4I
gewgaws of royalty on the one side, they would see the damn-
able Bastile on the other.
Feargus O'Connor was one of the star speakers. With
his characteristic wit and sarcasm he assailed the New
Poor Law:
Harry Brougham said they wished no poor law as every
young man ought to lay up provision for old age; yet, while
he said this with one side of his mouth, he was screwing the
other side to get his retiring pension raised from 4,000 to
5,000 a year. But if the people had their rights they would
not pay his salary. Harry would go to the treasury, he would
knock, but Cerberus would not open the door, he would say,
" Who is there ? ", and then luckless Harry would answer, " It's
an ex-chancellor coming for his 1,250, a quarter's salary";
but Cerberus would say, " There have been a dozen of ye
here to-day already, and there is nothing for ye." Then Harry
would cry, " Oh ! what will become of me ! what shall I do ! "
and Cerberus would say, " Go into the Bastile that you have
provided for the people ! " Then when Lord Harry and Lady
Harry went into the Bastile, the keeper would say, " This is
your ward to the right, and this, my lady, is your ward to the
left ; we are Malthusians here, and are afraid you would breed,
therefore you must be kept asunder." If he witnessed such a
scene as this he might have some pity for Lady Brougham,
but little pity would be due to Lord Harry. 1
While O'Connor was speaking, a body of dragoons, a
line of cavalry and a column of infantry appeared near the
meeting. This caused great indignation among the crowd. \J
O'Connor expressed his regret that the men were not in a
condition to repel force by force. He warned the " brats
of aristocracy " to take care " lest they dared the people to
assemble and bring their arms too they would find there
1 R. G. Gammage, op. cit., p. 26.
I4 2
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
were gallant hearts and virtuous arms under a black coat
as well as under a red one." The troops were apparently
determined to provoke the people to resistance, but the dis-
cretion of the people averted a riot, and the meeting was
concluded in perfect order.
Public meetings were also held with distinct success in
Sunclerland and Northampton. The addresses by Vincent
and others were received with great enthusiasm. The Whig
rule was contrasted with the honeyed promises made by the
party before it came into power. Unanimous resolutions
in favor of the People's Charter were carried with shouts
of joy and defiance. These meetings were followed on the
6th of August by a great demonstration at Birmingham.
Arranged under the auspices of the famous Political Union
of that city, the parade attracted the workingmen of the
whole manufacturing district. About two hundred thou-
sand persons were said to have participated in the proces-
sion. The Birmingham division was followed by six others
from Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Halesowen, War-
wick and Studley.
/ The trades were represented with their flags and banners
inscribed with appropriate mottoes. Feargus O'Connor
was introduced amidst loud cheers, as representing six
towns in Yorkshire. Thomas Attwood, who presided at
the meeting, reiterated his moral force policy, but at the
same time threatened the House of Commons that should
the Charter not be speedily granted, the people would be
forced to exercise a little gentle compulsion. He again
suggested a general strike of one week as a means of im-
pressing the government. It was at this meeting that O'Con-
r for the first time introduced his physical force notions.
he people yearned for a strong word, and he knew how to
please them. The whole tenor of his speech was in har-
mony with the exhortation to " flesh every sword to the
143] THE PEOPLE 143
hilt.". While the crowd demonstrated its approval of
O'Connor's sentiments, the local leaders could hardly re-
press, their feelings against the speaker. The meeting,, how- /
ever, was concluded in perfect peace. Important resolutions ^
were adopted calling upon all workingmen to sign a Na-
tional Petition for the enactment of the Charter and to elect
delegates to a General Convention of the Industrious
Classes. x
O'Connor's allusion to physical force caused unfavorable
comment in the press and great anxiety among the leaders
of the London Working Men's Association. As the I7th
of September was fixed for a grand demonstration in Lon-
don, the Association seized the opportunity to repudiate
O'Connor by instructing its speakers " to keep as closely as
possible to the two great questions of the meeting the
Charter and the Petition and as far as possible to avoid
all extraneous matter or party politics, as well as every
abusive or violent expression which may tend to injure our
glorious cause." 2
Apprehensive of fostering the sentiments created by the
Birmingham manifestation, the London Working Men's
Association endeavored to have the metropolitan meeting
arranged with as little pomp and display as was possible
under the circumstances. In order to invest the proceedings
with some air of authority, the high bailiff of Westminster
was requested to convene the meeting. It may have been
due to these circumstances that the Palace Yard demonstra-
tion, although represented by delegates from eighty-nine
towns, was attended by a comparatively small assembly of
about thirty thousand persons. Practically every speaker
cautioned against violence. But this very fact betrayed
1 Cf. infra, ch. x.
1 William Lovett, op. cit., p. 181.
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
the alarm which was felt by the leaders. It was evident
^ that the mood of the masses was beyond control. One of
the speakers, a delegate from Newcastle, referred to the
right of the people to assert their own independence in no
ambiguous terms :
The men of the north are well organized. The men of New-
castle would dare to defend with their arms what they utter
with their tongues, as the military would have learned on the
coronation day had they made any attack upon the meeting.
We are willing to try all moral means that are left, we are
willing to try a throne, so long as it is conducive to the happi-
ness of the people ; we are willing to have an aristocracy, so
long as they behave themselves civilly; but we think we have
a right to have a reciprocity of rights, and if not, we are pre-
pared to go against the throne and the aristocracy. The men
of the Tyne and the Wear would not draw their swords until
their enemies draw upon them, but having once put their hands
to the plough they would never look back. 1
O'Connor, who appeared as a representative of forty or
fifty towns in Scotland and England, delivered one of his
wittiest speeches. The people, he said, were called pick-
pockets. There was, however, a striking difference between
a poor pickpocket and a rich pickpocket : " the poor man
picked the rich man's pocket to fill his belly, and the rich
man picked the poor man's belly to fill his pocket." He
proclaimed that the people did not want the obsolete con-
stitution of tallow and wind, but a constitution " of a rail-
road genius, propelled by steam power and enlightened by
the rays of gas." Every conquest which was called honor-
able had been achieved by physical force, but the Chartists
did not want it, because " if all hands were pulling for uni-
versal suffrage, they would soon pull down the stronghold
1 Gammage, op. cit., p. 49.
145] THE PEOPLE 145
of corruption." O'Connor was followed by several speak-
ers who alluded to physical force in similar vein. A dele-
gate from Manchester expressed his conviction that the
people had a right to arm in defence of their liberties and,
if the Petition failed, he defied " the power of any govern-
ment or any armed Bourbon police " to put down the armed
people. 1
The meeting which lasted over five hours adopted Lovett's
resolution in favor of the People's Charter and responded
to the Birmingham call by collecting about sixteen thou-
sand signatures to the National Petition and appointing
eight delegates to the General Convention which was to
meet in London " to watch over the presentation of the
Petition and to obtain, by all legal and constitutional means,
the enactment of the People's Charter."
In order to avoid an open rupture with O'Connor and,
at the same time, to counteract the effect of the " physical
force swagger ", the London Working Men's Association,
immediately after the Palace Yard demonstration, prepared
an Address to the Irish People, imploring " the co-operation
of rich and poor, male and female, the sober, the reflecting,
and the industrious " to carry forward the principles of
moral force:/
We are not going to affirm that we have been altogether guilt-
less of impropriety of language, for when the eye dwells on
extremest poverty trampled on by severe oppression, the heart
often forces a language from the tongue which sober re-
flection would redeem, and sound judgment condemn. But
we deny that we are influenced by any other feelings than a
desire to see our institutions peaceably and orderly based
upon principles of justice. We believe that a Parliament com-
posed of the wise and good of all classes, would devise means
1 Gammage, op. cit., pp. 50-53.
I4 6 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
of improving the condition of the millions, without injury to
the just interests of the few. We feel that unjust interests
have been fostered under an unjust system, that it would be
equally unjust to remove without due precaution; and, when
due, individual indemnification. We are as desirous as the
most scrupulous conservative of protecting all that is good,,
wise and just in our institutions, and to hold as sacred and
secure the domain of the rich equally with the cottage of the
poor. But we repeat that we seek to effect our object in peace,
with no other force than that of argument or persuasion. 1
Regardless of the fact that the Address was signed " on
behalf of one hundred and thirty-six workingmen's and
radical associations ", actual events showed that the influ-
ence of the London Working Men's Association was on the
wane. The meetings began to assume a formidable aspect
even as early as the autumn of 1838. The Manchester
demonstration of September 25th was arranged on a
gigantic scale. There was scarcely a village in the Lan-
cashire district that did not contribute its quota to the as-
sembly of about three hundred thousand persons who
demonstrated their determination to have the Charter be-
come the law of the land. Practically all workshops and
factories throughout the district were closed. The hun-
dreds of flags and banners had various devices and mottoes
of a threatening character. " Murder demands justice "
was the comment inscribed under a picture of the Peterloo
massacre. Another banner represented a hand grasping a
dagger and bore the gruesome inscription : " Oh, tyrants t
will you force us to this ?" A spirit of enthusiasm pervaded
the line, and the warnings of vengeance brought forth deaf-
ening cheers of the crowds. O'Connor and Stephens, who
were among the speakers, received a royal reception. The
1 William Lovett, op. cit., pp. 188-9.
THE PEOPLE I4 7
meeting which was presided over by John Fielden, the
popular advocate of factory reform and opponent of
the New Poor Law, adopted a resolution in favor of the
Charter and elected eight delegates to the Convention.
The Manchester demonstration was followed on the I5th
of October by one in the west of Yorkshire, Peep Green
having been selected as the fittest place between Leeds and
Huddersfield. The gathering comprised about two hun-
dred and fifty thousand persons, who enjoyed all the attrac-
tions of the other manifestations, including bands of
music, banners, flags, inscriptions, and addresses by O'Con-
nor and other stars. Similar demonstrations were subse-
quently held in Liverpool and in a number of other cities
all over the country, which adopted resolutions in favor of
the People's Charter and elected representatives to the Gen-
eral Convention.
The people of the West were agitated by their favorite
orator, Henry Vincent. He kept the workingmen of Bris-
tol. Bath, Bradford, Cheltenham and other cities in a state /
of constant excitement. A great pet of the women, he v
organized a number of radical female associations, and
hundreds of names were enrolled every day in favor of the
Charter. He also succeeded in establishing his supremacy
in the Welsh territory. This was a distinct victory for the
young and ardent orator. On account of the relatively high ^
wages paid to the operatives in the coal and_iron districts,
the Welsh workingmen had been considered immune from
all radicalism. Vincent, however, roused the dormant dis-
content of the wage-earners and within a short time, in
Eite of the urgent appeals made by high personages against
e Charter, gained the unflinching support of the masses
id actually prepared them for the " death-dance of revo-
lution."
The frequent manifestations in favor of the Charter
I4 8 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ I4 8
fostered the spirit of revolt. The six points were repre-
sented as tantamount to the sum total of human happiness,
and the working people decided to win the Charter at all
hazards. \ As the demonstrations by day incurred loss of
time during working hours and as the authorities started
to thwart indoor meetings by refusing the use of the com-
modious town halls, the leaders seized the opportunity of
fanning the passions of the people by arranging a series
of torcli-iight processions in a number of cities, including
the industrial centres of Bolton, Ashton, Stockport, Staley-
bridge, Hyde and Leigh. The meetings proved a great suc-
cess, attracting in each case tens of thousands of working
men and women who pledged their lives in allegiance to
the cause. The processions usually passed the principal
streets of each city cheering the leaders and denouncing
those newspapers, magistrates and manufacturers who had
shown antagonism to the movement. Bands of music pre-
ceeded the march, while banners of various sizes and colors
and bearing revolutionary devices were carried in the blaz-
ing stream of torch lights. " For children and wife, we'll
war to the knife! "; " He that hath no sword, let him sell
his garment and buy one " ; " Remember the bloody deeds
of Peterloo ", and " Tyrants, believe and tremble ", these
were common mottoes at the demonstrations. The meet-
ings were always attended by one or more of the lions of.
the movement, O'Connor, Stephens, and Harney being the
chief speakers. At the torch-light meeting which was held
on the I4th of November, 1838, at Hyde, Stephens, sur-
rounded by a large number of men wearing and carrying
. upon poles red caps of liberty, branded the manufacturers
) as a gang of murderers whose blood was required to satisfy
the demands of public justice. He advised every one of
his hearers to get a large carving knife which might be
used to cut either a rasher of bacon or the men who op-
posed their demands.
I 49 ] THE PEOPLE I49
The agitators of physical force found the field ready. ^-As
a matter of fact, thousands of men in all parts of the coun- 1 /
try were at that time secretlyjmaking arms. The Man-
chester delegate to the Palace'Yard demonstration in London
declared that the people of Lancashire were armed, that he
himself had seen the arms hanging over the mantlepieces
of the poor. 1 } At the torch-light meetings, weapons were
brandished and frequent discharges from firearms were
made for no other purpose than to impress the authorities
with the fact that the people were armed. At the Hyde
meeting Stephens asked his hearers if they were ready to
resist force by force. The loud firing of arms and the
forest of hands raised in response to his question satisfied
the agitator that it was all right, that the people knew how
to repel the enemy in a way which would tell sharper tales
than their tongues. 2
The excitement grew even more intense after the publica-
tion of a letter which Lord John Russell sent on the 22nd
of November, 1838, to the Lancashire magistrates, re-
questing them to announce the illegality of torchlight meet-
ings and to use all means to prevent and disperse such gath-
erings. Lord Russell was denounced as the tool of the
middle class particularly because only a few weeks before
he had given expression to sentiments of a diametrically
opposite nature. Speaking at a dinner given in his honor
by the civic authorities of Liverpool and referring to the
public demonstrations in favor of the Charter, he said :
There were some, perhaps, who would put down such
meetings; but such was not his opinion nor that of the Gov-
ernment with which he acted. He thought the people had a
right to meet. If they had no grievances, common sense would
1 Gammage, op. cit., p. 52.
1 Ibid., p. 97.
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ I5 O
speedily come to the rescue and put an end to those meetings.
It was not from free discussion, it was not from the unchecked
declaration of public opinion that government had anything to
fear. There was fear when men were driven by force to
secret combinations. There was the fear, there was the
danger, and not in free discussion. 1
The people, in their indignation, defied the government
and publicly trampled under foot the royal proclamation
>f the middle of December which, on penalty of imprison-
ment, enjoined all persons to desist from participating in
torch-light meetings. rThe chasm between the workingmen
JV^Y and the middle class became ever wider. ]^ If a workingman
failed to abuse the middle class, he was himself vilified and
4^ denounced^ The bearing of jirms b^came_more_general.
Holyoake witnessed in Birmingham that those who had no
better weapons " sharpened an old file and stuck it in a
haft." 2 The Dundee Advertiser of April 12, 1839, de-
clared that " a number of infatuated individuals " had com-
menced drilling and intimated that the authorities were
keeping an eye over them : " Shackles in place of pikes will
shortly be the upshot to those who engage in such danger-
ous pastime." Even women started to organize themselves
and in several instances procured arms. 3 This was par-
ticularly striking in Welsh towns where Vincent had perfect
control over the situation and where he had organized a
number of female Chartist associations. At a public meet-
ing in Pentonville he invoked the people to swear that they
would be ready to 1 act if their demands were rejected by the
government, and he called upon all who were prepared to
turn out to hold up their arms. His appeal was answered
1 Cf. Hansard, op. cit., vol. xlix, 1839, p. 455.
1 Holyoake, op. cit., vol. i, p. 83.
* Cf. Richard Marsden in The London Democrat, May 11, 1839.
151] THE PEOPLE I5I
by thunderous shouts, "We swear! We swear!" and a
majority of those present readily raised their arms. 1
The arrest of Stephens, the first Chartist victim, for at-
tending illegal meetings and using violent language, in-
creased the excitement to an alarming extent. The masses
were not satisfied with the mere possession of arms and
sought practical advice on military operations. The widely
circulated Defensive Instructions to the People by Colonel
Macerone was supplemented by special articles on Military
Science by Major Beniowski in The London Democrat.
Extolling the " science of killing " as the most useful and
the most sublime of all sciences, small bands of men were
instructed how to resist the attacks of a more numerous
enemy and how to render offensive operations most advan-
tageous for strategical and tactical purposes. 2
The military science is, simply, that which teaches you how
to maim and kill as many of your enemies as possible, and also
how to protect yourselves against a similar propensity of your
opponents. If those who first reduced this " glorious " whole-
sale murder to rules had no end in view but to gratify the
beastly passions of the few, they were abominable monsters,
whom it would have been the duty of every honest man to
smother at their birth. But if their intention was the de-
fence of the enslaved, oppressed, and starving millions, to
curb ambition or to oppose the claims of incomprehensible
rights, mankind ought to erect altars to their memory. In this \
last case, the science of killing and destroying is the most
1 The Chartist Riots at Newport, November, 1839, 2d ed., Newport,
1881, p. 15.
2 The attitude of the Chartists towards war and armaments was
practically identical both in spirit and expression with the ante bellunt
professions of the modern socialists. In view of the general interest
in the present war, it was considered not amiss to reprint a character-
istic dialogue between a moral force Whig and a Chartist, giving the
"school-master's" view of the subject. See Appendix D.
152
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
N/
useful and necessary of all the sciences ; it is, in fact, the only
one which, if universally known by the people at large, could
prevent homicide at all. Unhappily this terribly sublime
knowledge is not to be attained without difficulty. ... It is
only by a continual, active, and concentrated application of an
undivided mind, prompted by a peculiar natural disposition^
or inflamed by extraordinary events, that any man can attain it. 1
The extraordinary events were in the process of realiza-
tion. The talk of preparedness and resistance impelled the
physical force advocates to attempt a wide agitation among
the soldiers. The Chartists were urged to impart all in-
formation about the movement to the men in the barracks
and were assured that the soldiers were " on the right
scent ", that they read O'Connor's Northern Star and that
even the London Democrat " found its way into the army ".
Discussing the question as to what the soldiers would do in
the coming struggle, a correspondent of the physical force
weekly 3 expressed his belief, which was based on personal
observations, that they would not defend " the citadel of
corruption " by cutting the throats of their fathers, their
brothers, their mothers, their sisters and sweethearts, but,
on the contrary, would " supply the places of the moral-
force men " who would turn traitors to the cause. Whether
or not the people shared this belief, the " extraordinary
events " ran into a different channel.
1 The London Democrat, April 27, 1839.
1 Ibid., May 4, i8ap.
CHAPTER X
THE PETITION, THE CONVENTION ^ND THE GOVERNMENT
PetitioX as well as the plan of a
*
..jgngingLted
withthe Birmingham Political Union. Nothing can be
farther from the truth than the " historical " assertion that
the Petition and the Convention were undertaken in simu-
lation of the tactics of the French Revolutionists. ,,Both
proposals emanated from the moral force group at the Bir- /
mingham demonstration of August 6, 1838, but once ^
adopted they were made most use of by the preachers of
revolt.
The National Petition is credited to the pen of R. K..
Douglas, the editor of the Birmingham Journal. It de-
mands the enactment of but five points that of equal rep-
resentation having been omitted probably because it was
confounded with universal suffrage. The petition is
couched in terms far from revolutionary. It is lacking hot
only in vigor of expression, but also in definiteness of aim.
The author apparently took extreme caution not to offend
any class or any group of individuals. The influence of
Thomas Atl^vpod^ is seen throughout the petition, par-
ticularly in the demand to abolish " the laws which make
food dear, and those which, by making money scarce, make
labor cheap ". (JNot a word is said about the New Poor
Law or about factory legislation; not a hint is given of the **'
unjust distribution of wealthA On the contrary, repeated
references are made to the burden imposed on the capitalist
153] 153
I54 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [154
class, and the House is told " that the capital of the master
must no longer be deprived of its due reward "- 1 The peti-
tion complains against the load of taxes which affects capi-
tal as well as labor, and alludes to other matters which, in
previous petitions, were labeled by Bronterre as " uncon-
sequential rubbish ". 2 Lit would have been amazing to see
the working class agitated by the Petition, had that agita-
tion not been the expression of a much deeper cause. It
was the idea of the Petition and not its contents that con-
tained the promise of the holy land and that animated the
people^J It is on this account that the National Petition must
be considered one of the most remarkable documents in
the history of the English labor movement. The call for a
national subscription for the petition received a generous
response. Men and women devoted night after night to
the collection of funds and signatures and submitted good-
humoredly to every sort of reply to their solicitations. The
contributions were necessary in order to defray the cost of
the campaign and to support the members of the Conven-
tion.
The opening of the General Convention of the Indus-
trious Classes took place on the 4th of February, 1839, at
the British Coffee House, Cockspur Street, London. The
subsequent sessions were held at the Hall of the Dr. John-
son Tavern, Fleet Street. Of the fifty-three delegates rep-
resenting various cities from all parts of the kingdom, three
were magistrates, six newspaper editors, two clergymen,
two physicians, while the others were shopkeepers, trades-
men and laborers. The objects of the General Convention
were declared to be as follows :
i. To collect the signatures already appended to the National
1 See Appendix C.
2 Cf. supra, p. 82.
155] PETITION , CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
Petition in different parts of the Kingdom, and to use every
possible exertion to cause it to be signed by every reformer in
these realms.
2. To use the most efficient means and choose the most fit-
ting time for introducing the National Petition into the Com-
mons' House of Parliament.
3. To select such members of Parliament as the majority of
the delegates may deem proper, for introducing the bill en-
titled the People's Charter into both Houses of Parliament
and enforcing its adoption.
4. To wait upon the members of the House of Commons
(and, if necessary, upon Her Majesty and the Peers of these
realms) and individually and collectively enforce upon them
the claims of the industrious millions to their just share of
political power and the necessity and justice for complying
with their demands by supporting the National Petition and
voting for the People's Charter.
5. To create and extend, by every constitutional means, an
enlightened and powerful public opinion in favor of the above
objects, and justly and righteously impress that opinion upon
the legislature, as the best means of securing the prosperity
and happiness of our country and averting those calamities
which exclusive legislation and corrupt government will neces-
sarily produce.
(Notwithstanding this peaceful declaration, the delegates
repeatedly proclaimed the Convention the only representa-
tive and legally elected body, assumed functions of a legis-
lative-body, and adopted a set of rules and regulations, in-
cluding those relating to future elections of delegates and
the duties of the constituencies, i The presentation of the
-mW
National Petition was postponed until the 6th of May, in
order to procure a larger number of signatures. Mission-
aries were sent out to various towns to agitate for the
Charter and to collect signatures to the Petition. In the
interim, the delegates in London busied themselves with a
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [156
variety of problems. The " grievances of Ireland ", " the
suffering in the manufacturing districts ", " the factory
system ", " the New Rural Police Bill ", were but a few of
the subjects that gave rise to long and heated discussions.
" In fact," Lovett confesses, " the love of talk was as
characteristic of our little house as the big one at West-
minster." x ^Of more immediate interest was the question
of " ulterior measures " to be adopted if the petition were
rejected on thelTth of May.* Care was taken that the dis-
cussions and proceedings of the Convention be reported in
a way to excite the passions of the masses. The addresses
of the delegates dwelling at length on the distress and mis-
ery of the people were printed and distributed broadcast
among the industrial and agricultural wage-earners. The
speech of delegate Richard Marsden of Preston attracted
particular attention because it was not an elaborated state-
ment of a social investigator or an embellished picture of
a professional agitator. It was the cry of actual despair
that pierced the hearts of all who heard or read his narra-
tive. As an illustration of the effects of the factory sys-
tem, Marsden presented the case of his own wife and chil-
dren who were entirely destitute of the bare necessities of
life. With an infant at her breast, his wife was so ema-
ciated in consequence of lack of nourishment that when
the baby tried to nurse, it drew the mother's blood. 2
IjThe division in the ranks of the Chartist delegates was
evident from the beginning, t The first collision between
the moral force adherents and the followers of the Marat
policy took place at the very opening of the Convention. At
the first few sessions the London Working Men's Associa-
tion had the upper hand. /Lovett was elected secretary in
1 Lovett, op. fit., p. 204.
2 This statement was subsequently confirmed to Gammage by Mrs.
Marsden. See Gammage, op. cit., p. 108.
I57 ] PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
spite of the strong opposition on the part of the physical
force advocates.^ The missionaries who were sent out of
the Metropolis to obtain signatures to the National Peti-
tion were instructed " to refrain from all violent and un-
constitutional language and not to infringe the law in any
manner by word or deed." The spirit of enthusiasm that
pervaded the Convention did not last long, however. Some
delegates soon tired of formal speeches and grew impatient
with the counselors of a policy of peaceful waiting. In
allegiance to the London Democratic Association, they
created discord within and without the Convention assem-
bly. Harney was most emphatic in his condemnation of
the cowardice and imbecility of the Convention and urged
the people to prepare for the approaching struggle. At
Smithfield he appeared at an open-air meeting wearing a
red cap of liberty in imitation of the French Revolution-
ists. The London Democratic Association, of which he
was secretary, adopted three resolutions :
1. That if the Convention did its duty, the Charter would
be the law of the land in less than a month.
2. That no delay should take place in the presentation of the
National Petition.
3. That every act of injustice and oppression should be
immediately met by resistance.
These resolutions were submitted to the Convention on
the 4th of March and caused several motions to be made
condemnatory of the conduct of the extreme Chartists.
One delegate censured Harney for making use of French
revolutionary expressions and French emblems. Another
demanded an apology from Harney and his followers, on
penalty of expulsion, for addressing the resolutions to the
Convention. Even Bronterre recorded his opinion that the
Convention must be on guard not to prejudice the govern-
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [158
ment against the Petition, while Lovett's close friends,
Hetherington, Cleave, and others, protested against the use
of all emblems which might compromise the Convention
and thus injure the cause. In the language of Lovett,
Harney and two other delegates " deemed it advisable to
make the apology required." x It was, however, after a
lapse of but a few days that the censured agitators suc-
ceeded in establishing their supremacy. V^On the nth of
March, 1839, Harney, O'Connor, Frost, Bronterre, and
others addressed a crowded meeting which was called under
the auspices of the Convention, at the Crown and Anchor,
and at which they publicly attacked the inactivity of the
Convention and exhorted the Chartists to arm themselves
for the approaching crisisj Bronterre declared that the
only reason he did not advise the people to arm themselves
was because the law did not let him. pHe was only a his-
torian, he said, and merely reported the'" fact " that all the
people of Leeds and of Lancashire hgid j^ocureil^arjnsJ
While he could not urge his hearers to do likewise, he was
certain that the Petition would be helped along, if all the
people of England followed the example of his friends in
the North. He accordingly appealed to them to organize,
to put themselves in such a position of defense that if an
attempt were made to suspend the laws and the constitu-
tion of the country, they should be able to send the traitors
to eternity. The enthusiastic cheers of the audience at
every allusion to physical force left no doubt that the
metropolitan workingmen endorsed the sentiments of the
speakers.
The speeches stirred up a great deal of hostile criticism
in the press which provoked three Birmingham delegates
to tender their resignations "because the Convention was
1 Lovett, op. cit., p. 204.
I59 ] PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
not guided by principles of peace, law and order."
act on the part of the moral force delegates branded them
in the eyes of the people as traitors and gave a new impetus
to the physical force agitation^ -It was then that the Lon-
don Democrat was established to launch a systematic cam-
paign for preparedness and to preach insurrection as the
only means for the people to obtain the Charter.") All legal
and constitutional efforts inspired little hope for the imme-
diate success of the National Petition, and the workingmen
were urged to lose no time in organizing and preparing
themselves for the coming struggle, " such as the world
has not yet witnessed." The Chartists were advised to
inscribe on their banners the mottoes : " Liberty or death ",
" the People's Charter and no further delay ", " the Peo-
ple's Charter peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must ",
and the people were reminded that their tyrants would
never concede justice till they were compelled, till they were
overcome by fire and sword and exterminated from the face
of the earth.
The Chartists foresaw the possibility of a prorogation
of Parliament before the presentation of the Petition on
the 6th of May, or before the House could be tested
respecting the Charter. In case of such a contingency,
Harney supported Bronterre's recommendation that, on
the day appointed by the Queen's proclamation for a new
election, the people of each county, city and borough
should assemble at the proper places and nominate men
pledged to the Charter. He was certain that the universal
suffrage candidates would be elected in nineteen out of
every twenty cases. He realized that the election of repre-
sentatives without enabling them to take their seats in the
House of Commons would present " the veriest farce im-
aginable ". It was, therefore, necessary that each elected
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
representative should be furnished with a bodyguard of
sturdy sans-culottes :
By the time the whole of the representatives arrived in the
environs of the metropolis, they would have with them not
less than a million of men. This would soon settle the matter.
" The million of men," with their representatives, would en-
camp for one night on Hampstead-heath, and the following
morning march upon London, where myriads would hail with
songs of joy their march through Parliament, safely conduct-
ing their representatives past the Horse-guards, should the
shopocratic-elected scoundrels be fools enough to have pre-
viously seated themselves in the tax-trap. The voice of the
people crying, " Make way for better men," would scatter
them like chaff before the wind; or, should they hesitate to
fly, the job will soon be settled by their being tied neck and
heels and flung into the Thames. As to resistance on the part
of the soldiery, the idea is not to 'be entertained. What army
-could withstand a million of armed men? For, of course,
every man would come prepared for the worst; and even
should the tyrants be mad enough to provoke a conflict, can
the result be doubtful? No; within a week not a despot's
breath would pollute the air of England. 1
[ The missionaries did not carry out the instructions of
the Convention to refrain from all violent language. Vin-
cent especially exhorted the people to be prepared to resist
the government. At several meetings in Welsh towns, he
called upon the working class to be ready to act after the
6th of May, and that every hill and valley should be pre-
pared to send forth its army, if required by the Conven-
tion. At Newport he concluded his speech with the invo-
cation : " To your tents, O Israel ! and then with one voice,
one heart, and one blow, perish the privileged orders!
Death to the aristocracy! " In Pentonville he attacked the
1 The London Democrat, April 27, 1839.
!6i] PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
government as an atrocious and cannibal system : it doomed /
men, women and children to toil in factories from morning V
till night in a state approaching starvation, for the purpose
of increasing the wealth of the aristocracy. 1
Far from rebuking its missionaries, the Convention
acted in harmony with the prevailing spirit of the masses
and, after a long discussion, adopted a resolution to the
effect " that it was admitted by the highest authorities, be-
yond the possibility of doubt, that the people had the right
to use arms." 1
In the meantime the government kept a vigilant eye on
the movements of the members of the Convention and the
active Chartists. Venomous newspaper reports of the
Chartist meetings provoked the government to introduce a
wide system of espionage. The spies simulated great de-
votion to the cause and instigated the masses to " speak
out " and to " prove to the government that the people were
in earnest/] Zealous to produce proof to the government
of their usefulness and of their alertness to " discover "
all Chartist plots, they adopted a favorite scheme of teach-
ing the credulous workingmen how to destroy property
and strike terror into the hearts of the " despots ". One
of these provocateurs, Holyoake writes, produced an
explosive liquid which, he said, could be poured into the
sewers and, when ignited, would blow up the whole city of
London. " This satanic preparation was tried in a cellar
in Judd Street, while I was taking tea in the back parlor
above. I did not know at the time of the operation going
on below, or it might have interfered with my satisfaction
in the repast on which I was engaged." 2
1 Cf. The Chartist Riots at Newport, 2nd ed., Newport, 1889, pp. 15-
16; also The Rise and Fall of Chartism in Monmouthshire, London,
1840, p. 25.
* Lovett, op. cit., p. 205.
3 Holyoake, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 4.
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [162
The activities of magistrate John Frost, the Welsh dele-
gate to the Convention, caused much public discussion, and
Lord John Russell was taunted from many quarters for
the appointment he had made. Russell then sent Frost a
letter inquiring whether he was a delegate to the Conven-
tion, as well as whether he had attended a public meeting
at Pontypool, at which inflammatory language was used,
and notifying him that such actions, if true, must cause
his name to be erased from the Commission of the Peace
for the county of Monmouth. The answer which Frost
sent to Russell gained him unanimous praise from his col-
leagues who paid him due tribute at a dinner given in his
honor in London. His letter, dated at Newport, January
19, 1839, contained a spirited rebuke of the Secretary of
State. Its haughty defiance was characteristic of the
period of unrest. He writes : 1
In your Lordship's letter of the i6th, there is a mistake. I
am not a magistrate for the county of Monmouth, but for the
borough of Newport, in the county of Monmouth. In the
spring of 1835 the council of the borough recommended me as
a proper person to be a justice of the peace. I was appointed,
and I believe that the inhabitants will bear honorable testimony
as to the manner in which I have performed the duties of that
office. Whether your Lordship will retain my name, or cause
it to be erased, is to me a matter of perfect indifference, for I
set no value on an office dependant for its continuance, not
according to the mode in which its duties are performed, but
on the will of a Secretary of State.
For what does your Lordship think it incumbent to get my
name erased from the commission of the peace? For attend-
ing a meeting at Pontypool, on the 1st of January? If the
public papers can 'be credited, your Lordship declared that
1 See Rise and Fall of Chartism in Monmouthshire, London, 1840,
pp. II-I3-
PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
such meetings were not only legal but commendable. But
" violent and inflammatory language was used at that meet-
ing." . . . There was a time when the Whig Ministry was
not so fastidious as to violent and inflammatory language
uttered at public meetings.
By what authority does your Lordship assume a power over
conduct of mine unconnected with my office ? By what author-
ity does your Lordship assign any action of mine, as a private
individual, as a justification for erasing my name from the
commission of the peace? Am I to hold no opinion of my
own, in respect to public matters ? Am I to be prohibited from
expressing that opinion, if it be unpleasing to Lord J. Russell?
If, in expressing that opinion, I act in strict conformity to the
law, can it be an offence? If I transgress, is not the law
sufficiently stringent to punish me ? It appears from the letter
of your Lordship that I, if present at a public meeting, should
be answerable for language uttered by others. If these are to
be the terms on which Her Majesty's commission of the peace
are to be holden, take it back again, for surely none but the
most servile of men would hold it on such terms.
Is it an offence to be appointed a delegate to convey to the
constituted authorities the petitions of the people? ... I was
appointed a justice of the peace to administer the laws within
the borough of Newport. Was the appointment made, that
the inhabitants might benefit by the proper exercise of the
authority intrusted to me? Or was it made to be recalled at
the will of your Lordship, although the inhabitants might be
perfectly satisfied with the performance of the duty? Your
Lordship receives a very large sum of money for holding the
office of Secretary of State, paid, in part, out of the taxes
raised on the inhabitants of the borough. Does your Lordship
owe them no duty ? For what is your Lordship invested with
authority? To be exercised merely at the caprice of your
Lordship, regardless of the effects that may follow? I have
served the inhabitants for three years, zealously and gra-
tuitously, and the opinions which I have formed as to the
exercise of public authority, teach me that they, and not your
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
Lordship, ought to decide whether I ought to be struck off
the commission of peace.
Filling an humble situation in life, I would yield neither to
your Lordship, nor any of your order, in a desire to see my
country powerful and prosperous. Twenty years' reading and
experience have convinced me that the only method to produce
and secure that state of things is a restoration of the ancient
constitution. Deeply impressed with this conviction, I have
labored to obtain the end, by means recognized by the laws
of my country petition ; and for this your Lordship thinks I
ought to be stricken off the commission of the peace ! Violent
and inflammatory language indeed! I am convinced that in
my own neighborhood, my attending at public meetings has
tended to restrain violent language. . . .
Probably your 'Lordship is unaccustomed to language of this
description ; that, my Lord, is a misfortune. Much of evils of
life proceed from the want of sincerity in those who hold
converse with men in authority. Simple men like those best
who prophesy smooth things. . . .
The Chartists rejoiced at the humiliation which Lord
Russell received at the hands of one of their leaders. For
several months they had brooded over their resentment
against the Secretary of State, not so much on account of
his suppression of torch-light meetings as on account of
this offer of arms to any association of the middle class that
would be formed ostensibly for the protection of life and
property, but in reality for putting down Chartist assem-
blies.^ The policy of Russell, however, was rather vacil-
lating. The meeting of March nth at the Crown and
Anchor, at which Frost was in the chair, was the landmark
for both the terrorists and the government. The systematic
campaign of the press against the principles of the Charter
as tending to robbery and destruction of society was turned
with effective force against the representatives of the gov-
ernment who were charged with being, in their cowardice,
!65] PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT 165
abettors of sedition. This made Lord Russell cast aside
the painful attitude of strained indulgence, on the one
hand, and masqued oppression, on the other. A state of
open hostility now established itself between the govern-
ment and the Chartists. The authorities left no doubt as
to their determination to handle the situation in a disciplin-
ary way. Russell's order, about the end of March, to strike
the name of Frost from the Commission of Peace for at-
tending Chartist meetings, was followed, in April, by the
indictment of Stephens and the declaration that the Con-
vention was an illegal body, and, in May, by the arrest in
London of Vincent who was conveyed to Newport and,
together with several other Chartists, committed to Mon-
mouth gaol. The Mayor of Newport had collected evi-
dence against the young orator and his followers in the
hope that, if a conviction took place, Chartism in Mon-
mouthshire " would be reckoned among the things that
were." x The strength of the movement was, however,
greatly underestimated. Far from being dismayed, the
Chartists challenged their adversaries on more than one
occasion.
On the 6th of May, 1839, the National Petition, con-
taimng^about one million two hundred and eighty-three
thousand signatures, was taken to the residence of Thomas
Attwood, who had promised to present it to Parliament..
By that time/ however, Attwood's allegiance to the Char-
tist cause underwent a marked change. It may have been
due to the aggressive policy of the Convention or to the
fact.. that at all times the issue of paper money was more
important to him than the People's Charter. Be it as it
may, he gave little encouragement to the delegation, ex-
pressing his doubt whether, on account of the expected
1 Cf. Rise and Fall of Chartism in Monmouthshire, 1840, p. 18.
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [166
resignation of Lord Russell from the ministry, he would
be able to present the Petition in the near future and re-
fusing to move for leave to bring in a bill entitled the Peo-
ple's Charter.
This circumstance, as well as the enmity of the govern-
ment, made the leaders realize that the Charter would not
" be the law of the land in less than a month." The Con-
vention carried O'Connor's motion to adjourn to Birming-
ham, where the surroundings were thought more favorable
because of the general excitement which prevailed both on
account of the conduct of the local authorities in suppress-
ing public meetings and of Lord Russell's letter to the
magistrates offering arms to the middle class. On the I3th
of May the Convention was welcomed in that city by a
vast assemblage and resumed its sessions in a buoyant
spirit. (_O n the following day, after some discussion, the
Manifesto of the General Convention .nf^the^lndustrious
Classes was adopted, and ten thousand copies were ordered
to be printed for circulation.
The language and the object of the Manifesto' render it
the most remarkable Chartist document. There is no sign
of the previous overtures to the middle class, and due
respect is paid to the " menaces of employers " and the
" power of wealth "r The distinct class interests of the
working men and women are put in the foreground. Be-
ginning with the declaration that " the government of Eng-
land is a despotism and her industrious millions slaves " ;
that her forms of " justice " are subterfuges for legal
plunder and class domination; that the " right of the sub-
ject " is slavery, without the slave's privilege, and that the
Whigs and the Tories are united in their despotic deter-
mination to maintain their power and supremacy at any
risk, the Manifesto continues :
J6;] PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
Men and women of Britain, will you tamely submit to the
insult? Will you submit to the incessant toil from birth to
death, to give in tax and plunder out of every twelve hours'
labor the proceeds of nine hours to support your idle and in-
solent oppressors? Will you much longer submit to see the
greatest blessings of mechanical art converted into the greatest
curses of social life? to see children forced to compete with
their parents, wives with their husbands, and the whole of
society morally and physically degraded to support the aris-
tocracies of wealth and title? Will you allow your wives and
daughters to be degraded; your children to be nursed in
misery, stultified by toil, and to become the victims of the vice
our corrupt institutions have engendered? Will you permit
the stroke of affliction, the misfortunes of poverty, and the in-
firmities of age to be branded and punished as crimes, and
give our selfish oppressors an excuse for rending asunder man
and wife, parent and child, and continue passive observers till
you and yours become the victims?
Perish the cowardly feeling; and infamous be the passive
being who can witness his country's degradation, without a
struggle to prevent or a determination to remove it ! Rather,
like Sampson, would we cling to the pillars which sustain our
social fabric, and, failing to base it upon principles of justice,
fall victims beneath its ruins. Shall it be said, fellow-country-
men, that four millions of men, capable of bearing arms and
defending their country against every foreign assailant, allowed
a few domestic oppressors to enslave and degrade them ? That
they suffered the constitutional right of possessing arms, to
defend the constitutional privileges their ancestors bequeathed
to them, to be disregarded or forgotten till one after another
they have been robbed of their rights, and have submitted to
be awed into silence by the bludgeons of policemen ? . . .
Men of England, Scotland, and Wales, we have sworn with
your aid to achieve our liberties or die! And in this resolve
we seek to save our country from a fate we do not desire to
witness. If you longer continue passive slaves, the fate of
unhappy Ireland will soon be yours, and that of Ireland more
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [168
degraded still. For, be assured, the joyful hope of freedom
which now inspires the millions, if not speedily realized, will
turn into wild revenge. The sickening thought of unrequited
toil their cheerless homes their stunted, starving offspring
the pallid partners of their wretchedness their aged parents
pining apart in a workhouse the state of trade presenting to
their imaginations no brighter prospect these, together with
the petty tyranny that daily torments them, will exasperate
them to destroy what they are denied the enjoyment of. ...
Both Whigs and Tories are seeking, by every means in their
power, to crush our peaceful organization in favor of our
Charter. They are sending their miscreant spies to urge the
people into madness; they are arming the rich against the
poor, and against his fellow-man. . . . We trust, brethren,
that you will disappoint their malignity, and live tojsgain our
rights by other means, at least, we trust you will not com-
mence the conflict. We have resolved to obtain our rights,
" peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must " ; but woe to those
who begin the warfare with the millions, or who forcibly re-
strain their peaceful agitation for justice at one signal they
will be enlightened to their error, and in one brief contest their
power will be destroyed. . . .
The Chartists were called upon to organize simultaneous
public meetings for the purpose of petitioning the Queen
" to call good men to her councils ", and, in order to ascer-
tain " the opinions and determination of the people in the
shortest possible time ", a series of questions, or " ulterior
measures ", was to be submitted at each meeting. Remind-
ing the Chartists that the motto of the Convention was
Union, Prudence and Energy, and assuring them that after
ascertaining the expression of organized public opinion
that body will immediately proceed to carry the will of the
people into execution, the time for the simultaneous meet-
ings was limited to the ist of July.
The " ulterior measures " proposed by the Manifesto and
PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
V$
subsequently submitted to the consideration of the simi4-
taneous assemblies were as follows :
1. Whether they will be prepared, at the request of the Con-
vention, to withdraw all sums of money they may individually
or collectively have placed in savings' banks, private banks, or
in the hands of any person hostile to their just rights ?
2. Whether, at the same request, they will 'be prepared im-
mediately to convert all their paper money into gold and silver?
3. Whether, if the Convention shall determine that a sacred
month will be necessary to prepare the millions to secure the
charter of their political salvation, they will firmly resolve to
abstain from their labors during that period, as well as from
the use of all intoxicating drinks?
4. Whether, according to their old constitutional right a
right which modem legislation would fain annihilate they
have prepared themselves with the arms of freemen to defend
the lams and constitutional privileges their ancestors bequeathed /*
to them?
5. Whether they will provide themselves with Chartist can-
didates, so as to be prepared to propose them for their repre-
sentatives at the next general election ; and if returned by show
of hands such candidates to consider themselves veritable rep-
resentatives of the people to meet in London at a time here-
after to be determined on ?
6. Whether they will -resolve to deal exclusively ntf^^^^tr^.,
tists, and in all cases of persecution rally around and protect
all those who may suffer in their righteous cause ?
7. Whether by all and every means in their power they will
perseveringly contend for the great objects of the People's
Charter, and resolve that no counter agitation for a less meas-
ure of justice shall divert them from their righteous object?
8. Whether the people will determine to obey all the just
and constitutional requests of the majority of the Convention?
The " ulterior measures " did not satisfy all the mem-
bers of the Convention. They were concocted as a compro-
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [170
mise program by the various factions. One can easily dis-
cern the influence of Attwood's followers in the first three
" measures ". The abstinence proposal was denounced by
Harney and his friends as savoring of humbug, believing
as they did that nothing but the extremest measures would
be of any value. (The radicals carried their recommenda-
tions to ascertain whether the people were ready to resist
the authorities and to take matters in their hands, to elect
and seat their own candidates, 1 to boycott opponents by
dealing exclusively with Chartists, and to protect all who
may suffer in the cause. Lovett, who, as secretary of the
Convention, signed the Manifesto, 2 confesses that he " did
an act of folly in being a party to some of its provisions ",
but extenuates this " folly ", as it was committed for the
sake of union and for the love and hope he had in the
cause. 8 \
While the Manifesto counseled not to " commence the
conflict", the London Democrat was untiring in its cam-
paign for insurreclioii--as--a-J^rimary measure ". Terror
was advocated as the only means by which the " aristocratic
and shopocratic factions " could be induced to do justice to
the people. The idea of a " bloodless triumph " was dis-
pensed with as mere " chatter and nonsense ", as the " ven-
geance of blood is the only means of striking terror to the
hearts of tyrants, especially the relentless tyrants of Eng-
land the callous-hearted money-mongers."
It won't be the organized: masses that will carry the victory.
Oh, no! That depends upon the poor, outcast, friendless
beings who have no home to go to, no food to satisfy the
1 Cf. supra, p. 159.
2 The Manifesto was signed on behalf of the Convention by Hugh
Craig, Chairman, and William Lovett, Secretary.
3 Cf. Lovett, op. cit., pp. 208-9.
PETITION, CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
cravings of hunger, no covering to keep them warm, or even
to make them look decent, no wherewithal to render their
lives worth preserving. The battle . . . will be fought and
won by those whom poverty and degradation have rendered
outcasts from society by those who hide themselves from the
gaze of the world, through the cruel operation of unjust and
partially-executed laws. The battle will be fought and won
by the brigands, as they are called. As for premature out-
breaks, indeed, a great deal of stuff and nonsense has been
rung in the ears of the people concerning popular commotions.
Is the present movement a real one? If it is, then too many
outbreaks cannot take place. Premature outbreaks, as they
are called, are only fatal to sham movements; but, at a time
like this, the more the better. . . . What are outbreaks? Are
they not ebullitions of popular feeling? Then if numerous
outbreaks take place, does it not prove that the people are
ready ? Then, hurrah for a leader ! Hurrah for the man who
has the energy and courage to unfurl the banner of freedom
and lead the people on to victory or death. . . . Government
looks upon all parties in the Chartist ranks alike. Neither
party can find favor in the eyes of exclusive legislators. Sham
radicals, timid radicals, trading radicals, as well as honest and
determined democrats, will all alike be persecuted and crushed
if " the step " be not now taken if the blow be not now
struck. . . . We are all embarked in the same vessel, and a
shipwreck would be as fatal to the one party as the other.
Let honest men then unite, and the victory is safe, sure and
speedy. 1
The relations of mutual distrust between the government
and the Chartists became ever more pronounced. Alarmed
at the enthusiastic reception which the Birmingham peo-
ple accorded the Convention, the government complied with
the request of the local authorities and sent a number of
1 The London Democrat, May 18, 1839. Cf. also issues of May 25,
et seq.
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [172
the London police force to that city. This, in its turn,
created ill-feeling in the assembly, and it was due primarily
to the timely warnings of O'Connor and Bronterre not to
carry arms to the meetings that the " People's Parliament "
was saved from police intervention.
On the 1 7th of May the Convention adjourned to the
1st of July after having passed Broateaa^sjtresolutions : ist,
That peace, law, and order shall continue to i>e the motto
of the Convention, so long as the " oppressors " will act
in the same spirit towards the people; otherwise, it shall
be deemed a sacred duty of the people " to meet force with
force and repel assassination by justifiable homicide " ; 2nd,
That the Chartists who may attend the simultaneous meet-
ings shall avoid carrying offensive weapons about their per-
sons and treat as enemies of the cause any person who may
exhibit such weapons, or who " by any other act of folly
or wickedness, should provoke a breach of the peace " ;
3rd, That the officers who may have charge of the arrange-
ments for the simultaneous meetings shall in all cases con-
sult with the local authorities; and 4th, That should the
authorities be instigated by the " oppressors in the upper
and middle ranks " to assail the people with armed force,
the " oppressors " would be held responsible, " in person
and property, for any detriment that may result to the
people from such atrocious instigation ".
The simultaneous meetings were held in a great number
of cities, towns, and villages with distinct success. Conser-
vative estimates of the assemblies at some places were in
the hundreds of thousands. Thus the demonstration at
Kersall Moor was reported to have been made up of not
less than three hundred thousand; at West Riding of two
hundred thousand; at Glasgow of one hundred and thirty
thousand, and at Newcastle-on-Tyne of one hundred thou-
sand persons. The meetings were addressed by members
173] PETITION > CONVENTION AND GOVERNMENT
of the Convention, including O'Connor, Bronterre, Har-
ney, Frost, and other Chartist celebrities. In several in-
stances the demonstrations were held in defiance of the
authorities, who not only refused the requests of the ar-
rangement committees to convene the meetings, but caused
proclamations to be posted warning the people against at-
tending illegal gatherings. Everything went off peace-
ably, although the speakers were by no means timid in the
expression of their sentiments. At the West Riding demon-
stration, O'Connor declared that if the "tyrants" attempted
to put down the meeting by force, the people should repel
attack by attack. Bronterre did not mince words at any of
the meetings, always impressing the people with the neces-
sity of being prepared to do something effective for uni-
versal suffrage. He upbraided the people for supporting
" the whole tribe of landholders, fundholders, and two
millions of menials and kept mistresses, together with one
hundred thousand prostitutes in London alone ". The
speeches by the other agitators were in similar vein.
The Convention reassembled at Birmingham on the ist
of July and immediately took up the question of adjourn-
ing-ta London, as the Birmingham authorities were evi-
dently determined to interfere with its business, having
sworn in three hundred special constables that very day.
Another reason for the removal was the alleged precarious
condition of the Bank of England, which made it strategi-
cally advisable for the Convention to be in close touch
with the situation in order to avail itself of the embarrass-
ment on the part of the government. On the next day,
after a long discussion, it was agreed that the sessions be
removed to London on the loth of that month.
The reports of the delegates on the results of the simul-
taneous meetings showed that, notwithstanding the popular
enthusiasm for the Charter, the " ulterior measures " were
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
not approved en bloc by the people. (The " sacred month "
proposition met with decided opposition in all parts of the
country. There seemed to be diversity of opinion on this
question even among the leaders.} In spite of that, how-
ever, unanimous resolutions were adopted approving ex-
clusive dealing with Chartists, a run on the banks, absolute
abstinence from excisable drinks, and, in view of the ex-
pected division on the National Petition which was to take
place in Parliament on the I2th of July, it was decided that
the members of the Convention meet on the I3th, " for
the purpose of appointing a day when the sacred month
shall commence, if the Charter has not previously become
the law of the land ".
CHAPTER XI
THE WRESTLING FORCES
Though tyrants and minions reject our prayer,
And sneer at the evils we patiently bear,
And laugh us to scorn when we humbly ask,
How soon they may have another task!
At last a smothered fire forth may break,
And a nation in knowledge of freedom awake.
Alfred Owen Fennell.
THE simultaneous meetings and the subsequent adoption
by the Convention of the " ulterior measures " were fol-
lowed by a new series of events, in which both the Chartists
and the government displayed a mood to fight to the bitter
end, and which culminated in temporary victory for the
latter.
The first serious encounter between the people and the
authorities took place on the 4th of July, 1839, at Birming-
ham. Since the days of the agitation for the Reform Bill,
the people had been accustomed to assemble in vast multi-
tudes in the Bull Ring, where they not only aired their
grievances but also listened to the reading of newspapers
and discussed political eventSy^JThe simultaneous meetings
struck terror to the hearts of the middle class, and the
mayor undertook to restrain the masses from holding public
meetings in the city, and particularly in the popular Ring.^
The resentment of the workingmen against this infringe-
ment upon their rights was on a par with their hostility
towards the newly-introduced metropolitan police. Never-
theless, no open conflict occurred until the mayor attempted
to enforce his proclamation. On the evening stated, a squad
i75] i75
I7 6 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
of the metropolitan police, headed by the mayor and a
magistrate and supported by several detachments of dra-
goons, invaded the Ring where an assembly of workingmen
listened to the reading of a newspaper, and, without any
provocation on the part of the people, commenced an indis-
criminate attack. In the confusion, men, women, and chil-
dren were thrown down and trampled upon, the police
belaboring them right and left. One man had his teeth
knocked out, and several were carried away with broken
heads and arms and other severe injuries. After the first
moments of panic, the people rallied their strength and
compelled the police to flee. But the latter soon returned,
reinforced, and renewed the attack. The mayor then read
the Riot Act, ordered the dragoons to disperse the crowds,
and placed military guards at all the avenues leading to the
Bull Ring in order to prevent any new gathering there.
The fight lasted from nine to half -past ten in the evening.
About midnight the dispersed crowds gathered again, sing-
ing the Chartist anthem, " Fall, Tyrants, Fall," and amidst
deafening cheers proceeded for Holloway Head, in the out-
skirts of the city, where they swore vengeance against the
assailants. They then marched to St. Thomas's Church,
where they tore down about seventy feet of railing and
turned it into weapons. A rush to the scene of the con-
flict, which might have proven fatal to many, was averted
by two popular members of the Convention, Dr. Taylor
and McDouall, who induced the incensed people to throw
down their improvised arms.
A spirit of terror and vengeance pervaded the city, the
fury of the people clashing with the severity of the author-
ities. About six o'clock the following morning, Dr. Tay-
lor, together with ten other Chartists, was committed to
Warwick jail. It goes without saying that the "People's
Parliament " deemed it its duty to express indignation over
I 7 7] THE WRESTLING FORCES
the conduct of the authorities, and the following resolu-
tions were adopted and ordered to be placarded on the walls
of the city : *
1. That this Convention is of opinion that a wanton,
flagrant, and unjust outrage has been made upon the people of
Birmingham, by a blood-thirsty and unconstitutional force
from London, acting under the authority of men, who, when
out of office, sanctioned and took part in the meetings of the
people; and now, when they share in the public plunder, seek
to keep the people in social and political degradation.
2. That the people of Birmingham are the best judges of
their own right to meet in the Bull Ring or elsewhere; have
their own feelings to consult respecting outrage given, and are
the best judges of their own power and resources to obtain
justice.
3. That the summary and despotic arrest of Dr. Taylor,
our respected colleague, affords another convincing proof of
all absence of justice in England, and clearly shows that there
is no security for lives, liberty, or property, till the people have "
some control over the laws they are called upon to obey.
No sooner had the resolutions been posted about the town
than the printer was arrested. He was, however, liberated
immediately after naming John Collins, a Birmingham local
preacher and a member of the Convention, as the person
who had ordered the printing. Lovett, who, as secretary,
had signed the resolutions, and Collins were speedily
arrested and brought up for examination. Both refused
to incriminate any other person and were committed for
trial at the next assizes. Pending the production of un-
usually high bail of 1000 each, they were kept for nine
days in the county jail of Warwick, the magistrates rais-
1 See The Trial of William Lovett for a Seditious Libel, London, 2d
edition. Cf. also Hansard, op. cit., vol. xlix, 1839, pp. 109-10, and pp.
375-6.
I7 8 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
ing every possible objection to the bail offered, and were
subjected to the discipline and indignities of convicted
felons. 1
The ire of the masses was intensified by the proclamation
of martial law and the conduct of the police, who paraded
the streets and dealt brutally with every person that aroused
their suspicion. Far from intimidating the workingmen,
the wholesale arrests provoked utmost defiance. Nlnstigated
by advocates of physical force, 2 large crowds met daily at
Holloway Head and other places, serious collisions with
the police and military forces resulting^ The desultory
fights continued for a whole week, and culminated in the
second Bull Ring riot on the I5th of July. A number of
houses belonging to men who had made themselves obnox-
ious to the masses were set afire. In their fury, the people
entered shops, carried the goods to the Bull Ring, and com-
mitted them to the devouring flames. The police and the
military were utterly helpless. But not for a minute did
the rioters forget the real object of their revolt.
Amid all these desperate proceedings, Gammage testifies,
the people exhibited a disinterestedness worthy of all imita-
tion. Not even the most costly goods for a moment tempted
their cupidity. They even trod under foot the splendid silver
plate of Mr. Horton, proving that, however great their pro-
vocation, plunder was not their object. They were at war
with the ruling classes, but they scorned to avail themselves
of the common privileges of warriors. That they had become
desperate was not their fault; their vices belonged to their
1 Referring to these indignities, Lord Brougham stated and reiterated
in the House of Lords that the facts were verified " by a most re-
spectable individual, whose cross-examination he would trust as much
as that of any man not connected with the legal profession." See Han-
sard, op. cit., vol. xlix, pp. 438-9 and 984-5.
2 Holyoake writes that he saw Harney "daily in the riot-week stand-
ing at the door openly." See Holyoake, op. fit., vol. i, p. 85.
179] THE WRESTLING FORCES
oppressors, their virtues were their own. Meetings continued
to be held, to which the people flocked in crowds. The process
of trade was stopped, and a large number of gentry fled the
town; even the valiant mayor was terrified into flight. 1
The conduct of the metropolitan police and the conse-
quent riots in Birmingham were the objects of parliamen-
tary enquiries in both Houses, 2 in which the government
was severely criticized. The physical- force agitators also
did their best to kindle the passions of the people. Public
meetings were held in a large number of cities, and hundreds
of resolutions were adopted and printed in the Chartist
papers, charging the authorities with high treason to the
Constitution. The Northampton resolution threatened the
Whig government that it would " be held responsible for
the consequences, even if the suffering people . . . should
leave at midnight their miserable homes in a blaze, and the
destructive element communicating with everything around,
reduce to one common ruin and desolation the mansions of
the rich and the hovels of the poor." *
In the meantime, amidst these disquieting circumstances,
the Parliamentary battle for the National Petition was lost
by Attwood and his supporters. 4 On the I2th of July, Att-
wood brought forward his motion that the House resolve
itself into a committee for considering the prayer of the
National Petition which he had presented on the T^trT^f
June. The anticipation of pungent discussion attracted
large crowds. According to Disraeli, " the Tories, suppos-
ing Chartism would be only a squabble between the Whigs
and Radicals, were all away, while the ministerial benches
1 Gammage, op. cit., p. 135.
2 See Hansard, op. cit., vol. xlix, pp. 109-111, 410-411 and 441-442.
3 Gammage, op. cit., p. 138.
4 See Hansard, op. cit., vol. xlix, pp. 220-256.
!8o THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ Z 8o
were crowded all the ministers, all the Whigs, and all the
Radicals "in their seats. 1
True to himself, Attwood expounded the Petition from
the point of view not only of the working class, but also of
the merchants, manufacturers, tradesmen and farmers. He
based his appeal on ancient practice of common justice and
humanity, as well as actual grounds of utility. Alluding to
the petitioners as the elite of the working class, he cautioned
the House, however, not to treat the prayer as representing
the sentiments merely of that class, for he was certain that
the feelings of nine out of every ten persons of the middle
class were in full accord with the objects of the Petition.
There was, no doubt, " some property " left in England,
but, generally speaking, the merchant and the manufacturer,
being on the brink of bankruptcy, were not less discontented
than the laborers. The people were desirous of a change,
and nothing would satisfy them but some large and gen-
erous measure. This measure was proposed in the People's
Charter. He had always deprecated violence, but he con-
sidered it his duty to tell the House that " if the hands of
the people were not to be set free from their trammels, if
they were not to have the benefit of earning their bread by
the sweat of their brow, and hundreds of thousands were
compelled to beg for labor and then to be denied bread, it
was his rooted conviction that the people of England would
not submit to it and that there was no army in the world
capable of putting them down."
~XThe philanthropic but characterless speech of Attwood
/ made the reply of his principal opponent, Lord Russell, ap-
/ pear far more convincing. As the Lord viewed the matter,
the whole movement had been promoted by persons who
had been going through the country and, in the most revo-
^w I, '-'
1 See Lord Beaconsfield's Correspondence with his Sister, 1832-1852,
edited by Ralph Disraeli, 2d edition, 1886, p. 132.
THE WRESTLING FORCES
lutionary language, " not exceeded in violence and atrocity
in the worst times of the French Revolution," exhorted
the people to subvert the laws by force of arms. Having
scored on this point of fact which no one could deny, but
offering no explanation for the generous welcome which the
people had accorded those agitators, he proceeded to de-
molish the fundamental principle of the Charter. He
scorned the idea that universal suffrage or any legal pro- \J
vision relating to representation would establish general
welfare " in a country depending very much upon com-
merce and manufactures " and prevent that state of low
wages and consequent distress which occur in every com-
munity of that kind. Even the United States, where the
people enjoyed universal suffrage, had not been altogether
free from alternate fluctuations from prosperity to distress,
notwithstanding the immense tracts of wild fertile land in
which the population that could not subsist in towns might
easily find refuge and a mode of living. He denied that
the Petition which had only about one million two hundred
thousand signatures was a national petition and that it rep-
resented the sentiments and opinions of a majority of the
people. On the contrary, the great majority of the nation,
including the working class, would be alarmed at the pros-
pect of having the principles of the Charter enacted into
law. He further referred to the increase of small deposits
in savings' banks as proving the absolute want of truth in
the statement of the Petition that the home of the arti-
ficer was desolate and the manufactory deserted. He
did not deny that there were many industrious and sober
workingmen whose means were exceedingly scanty and
whose situation could not be looked upon without com-
miseration. But he was utterly relentless in showing up
the " complete delusion " of those who believed that the
adoption of universal suffrage would place the laborers in
182 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
a state of prosperity. Referring to Attwood's pet theory
that the alteration in the standard of value and an increase
in the quantity of paper money would assure general pros-
perity, the speaker did not fail to point out, not without
ill-concealed sarcasm, that the Chartist leaders and members
of the General Convention had denounced the influence of
paper money as one of the most abominable weapons in the
hands of their oppressors. He stated and reiterated his
opinion that the Petition contained the exhortations chiefly
of " very designing and insidious persons, wishing not the
prosperity of the people," but seeking to arouse discord and
confusion, " to produce a degree of misery, the consequence
of which would be to create a great alarm that would be
fatal, not only to the constitution as it now exists, not only
to those rights which are now said to be monopolized by a
particular class, but fatal to any established government."
Disraeli put it remarkably well when in the course of his
retort to Russell he remarked that " the noble Lord had
answered the speech of the honorable member for Birming-
ham, but he had not answered the Chartists." Jjt was his
opinion that Attwood had made a very dexterous speech " in
nivor of the middle classes,*' but that actual facts led to a
:ry differ ent ^^ conclusion. He found among the Chartists
ic greatest hostility to the middle classes. Stanch Tory
lat he was, he discovered that the people " complained only
of the government by the middle classes. They made no
attack on the aristocracy none on the Corn Laws but
upon the newly-enfranchised constituency, not on the old
upon that peculiar constituency which was the basis of the
noble Lord's government." Not committing himself on the
real issues of the Charter, he called to account the Minister
of the Crown for his nonchalant attitude towards the " re-
markable social movement " and for despising the one mil-
lion two hundred and eighty thousand fellow-subjects who
183] THE WRESTLING FORCES
had signed the Petition because of their discontent with the
existing conditions. He saw " social insurrection " at the
very threshold, and, much as he disapproved of the Char-
ter, he sympathized with the Chartists, who formed a great
body of his countrymen and who labored under great
grievances. 1
The debate, in which several other members participated,
concluded with the division of forty-eight votes in favor :
as over against two hundred and thirty-seven in opposition
to Attwood's motion.
This division greatly disheartened the Chartist leaders.
The Convention, which had reconvened in London on the
loth of July, fully realized how serious a blow the cause had
received, as well as its own impotence which resulted from
the arrest and resignation of many of its members. On the
day after the defeat of Attwood's motion, being of the
opinion that it was utterly useless to expect anything from
the House by way of petitioning, and that the people would;
not get liberty until they took it, the question of a general 1
strike, or a sacred month, was again brought up for con-
sideration. After lengthy discussions, a resolution was
finally passed on the i6th that it was the opinion of the
Convention " that the people should work no longer after
the 1 2th of August next, unless the power of voting for
members of parliament, to protect their labor, is guaran-
teed to them." This resolution was, however, subsequently
rescinded on the motion of Bronterre, who stated that strict
enquiries of the leaders in various districts had convinced
him that the people were not prepared to carry out a gen-
eral strike. Letters to the same effect were also read from
Frost and other leaders. The painful consciousness of lack
1 Disraeli himself called this " a capital speech " and seemed to have
taken pride in the fact that the Whig government did not like it. See
the same letter quoted above.
!84 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
of authority on the part of the Convention was revealed in
the following resolution which was introduced by Bronterre
and carried by a vote of twelve against six, the remaining
seven members present refusing to commit themselves : x
That while the Convention continues to be unanimously of
opinion that nothing short of a general strike, or suspension
of labor throughout the country, will ever suffice to re-estab-
lish the rights and liberties of the industrious classes, we never-
theless cannot take upon ourselves the responsibility of dictat-
ing the time or circumstances of such strike, believing that we
are incompetent to do so for the following reasons:
ist: Because our numbers have been greatly reduced by the
desertion, absence, and arbitrary arrests of a large portion of
our members.
2nd: Because great diversity of opinion prevails amongst
the remaining members, as to the practicability of a general
strike, in the present state of trade in the manufacturing
districts.
3rd : Because a similar diversity of opinion seems to prevail
out of doors, amongst our constituents and the working classes
generally.
4th: Because, under these circumstances, it is more than
doubtful whether an order from the Convention for a general
holiday would not be a failure.
5th: Because, while we firmly believe that an universal
strike would prove the salvation of the country, we are at the
same time equally convinced that a partial strike would only
entail the bitterest privations and sufferings on all parties who
take part in it, and, in the present exasperated state of public
feeling, not improbably lead to confusion and anarchy.
6th: Because, although it is the duty of the Convention to
participate in all the people's dangers, it is no part of our duty
to create danger unnecessarily, either for ourselves or others.
1 Gammage, op. cit., p. 1416.
185] THE WRESTLING FORCES ^5
To create it for ourselves would be folly to create it for
others would be a crime.
7th: Because we believe that the people themselves are the
only fit judges of their right and readiness to strike work, as
also of their own resources and capabilities of meeting the
emergencies which such an event would entail. Under these
circumstances, we decide that a committee of three be ap- ?
pointed to reconsider the vote of the i6th instant, and to sub-
stitute for it an address, which shall leave to the people them-
selves to decide whether they will or will not commence the
sacred month on the I2th of August, at the same time explain-
\ ing the reasons for adopting such a course, and pledging the
Convention to co-operate with the people in whatever measures
they may deem necessary to their safety and emancipation.
The committee provided for in the resolution was ex-
tended to five members, and included Bronterre and O'Con-
nor. The evidence collected with reference to the expedi-
ency of a general strike convinced them that such a step
would be fatal to the movement, and they unanimously
recommended the abandonment of the project of a sacred
month. On the 6th of August a resolution to the same
effect, moved by Bronterre and seconded by O'Connor, was
accordingly passed by the General Council of the Con-
vention, recommending at the same time the cessation of
work for two or three days " in order to devote the whole
of that time to solemn processions and solemn meetings."
The resolution embodied a strong appeal to all the trades
to cooperate as united bodies in making a grand national
moral demonstration on the I2th of August, as otherwise
" it will be impossible to save the country from a revolu-
tion of blood, which after enormous sacrifices of life and
property will terminate in the utter subjection of the work-
\ ing people to the monied murderers of society 7*
"*H The lack of organization and centralized leadership was
!86 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
keenly felt at this critical period, and the " national holi-
day " turned out a complete fiasco, causing some disturb-
ances in several towns, but generally unobserved throughout
the country. Its original self-confidence and aggressiveness
having disappeared, the Convention could hardly expect to
have its mandates respected by the Chartists at large. The
" People's Parliament " .thus lost its raison d'etre. Bron-
terre's motion on the 6th of September for tKe dissolution of
the body, however, met stringent opposition, and the mem-
bers being equally divided eleven against eleven it was
carried only by the deciding vote of the chairman. The
division was by no means on party lines, some of the ex-
treme revolutionists voting with the most devoted followers
of Lovett.
The dissolution of the Convention came at a time when
the government policy of persecution and terror had as-
sumed unparalleled proportions. Hundreds of Chartists
had been arrested and tried for sedition, and no relaxation
was in view. Severe sentences were imposed on national
and local leaders, in accordance with the theory of the
Attorney-General that there was danger in allowing those
men of talent to be at large. The government first showed
its mettle on the 5th and 6th of August, at the trial of
Lovett and Collins for seditious libel. The attack on the
Bull Ring assembly had been made, as, Lovett said in his
defence, " the subject of reprehension and censure from
one extremity of the kingdom to another." The public en-
quiry of the Town Council of Birmingham showed that the
universal condemnation was well founded. In its resolu-
tion the Council used practically the same terms for which
Lovett and Collins were tried. The enquiry " proved that
a brutal and bloody attack had been made upon the people
of Birmingham, and that it was their opinion that if the
police had not attacked the people, no disorder would have
187] THE WRESTLING FORCES
occurred, and they considered the riot was incited by the
London police." x
Notwithstanding these facts, the Government did its
utmost to convict Lovett and his colleague, ostensibly for
the resolutions on the Bull-Ring outrage but in reality for
the role which these victims had played in the General Con-
vention. The prosecutor dwelt at length on the document
which Lovett had signed by order of the Convention "with
all the form and solemnity of a proclamation by Her Maj-
esty Queen Victoria," and said bluntly that " the Attorney-
General would have neglected his duty if he had not selected
for prosecution Mr. Lovett, who was a man of very con-
siderable powers. He was a man who, if he willed to do ill,
had the capacity to do it." 2 The men selected to serve on
the jury were decidedly hostile to the defendants, two of
them having previously avowed their conviction that " all
Chartists ought to be hanged." The objection of Lovett
to those men was of no avail. Collins was defended by
Sergeant Goulburn, a prominent Tory, who saw in his task,
as he expressed it, " a glorious opportunity of having a
slap at the Whigs." Lovett conducted his own defence,
disregarding the adage quoted to him by his friends that
" he who defends himself has a fool for his client." He
delivered a masterly address to the jury in a manner which
strongly contrasted with the political speech of the profes-
sional advocate Goulburn. Surveying the history and the
causes that had led to the Chartist movement, he asserted
in a dignified and convincing way the constitutional right
of public meetings, of free discussion, and of public peti-
tioning. The Chartist movement, as all other movements
in favor of the oppressed, necessarily occasioned great un-
1 Lovett, op. cit., p. 220.
1 The Trial of William Lovett for a Seditious Libel, 2d edition, Lon-
don, pp. 5 and 19.
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
easiness among those who would be deprived of unjust
power and corrupt privilege. Far greater culpability was
on the side of those who instigated the Bull Ring disorder
than on the part of the people who merely repulsed the fla-
grant and unconstitutional attack. The resolutions which
he had signed were perfectly justified by the circumstances.
He refuted the charge of criminal intention on his part,
and quoted many authorities, political and legal, to substan-
tiate his arguments as to the lack of guilt from a technical,
as well as from a moral, point of view. In its comments
on the trial, the Morning Chronicle of August 8, 1839, said :
The speeches of Mr. Sergeant Goulburn, in defence of John
Collins, and William Lovett in his own defence, present an
edifying contrast of tone and temper of taste and judgment.
The learned sergeant's argument, had he made it out, could
have little profited his client, or served the ends of justice.
Had that of Mr. Lovett been better supported by facts, it must
have secured his acquittal. The one is a misplaced ebullition
of party virulence; the other a temporate and talented plead-
ing, which elicited strong commendation from the counsel for
the prosecution. And yet the one of these men, independently
of his professional standing, was long deemed one of the
principal supporters of his party in the House of Commons,
while the other has not even a voice in the election of a repre-
sentative to sit in that House. Is it strange that Mr. Lovett
should be a discontented man ? We condemn the language for
which he has been convicted; we should also condemn him
were he satisfied to belong to what Mr. Hume emphatically
calls the " slave class." His defence at least demonstrates
his qualification for the franchise.
Lovett's appeal for a favorable verdict was an impas-
sioned plea for the rights of man. But it fell on deaf ears.
It took the jury but two or three minutes of deliberation to
return a verdict of " guilty," and the defendants were each
189] THE WRESTLING FORCES tfg
sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. This singular
victory of the government prosecutor was followed by a
number of others. The prediction of the terrorists came
true, and the authorities looked " upon all parties in the
Chartist ranks alike." Adherents of either wing were
seized and punished severely for most trivial offences.
iEven Stephens, who at his trial, on the I5th of August, re-
pudiated all radicalism, was sentenced to imprisonment for
a period of eighteen months. Four Chartists were sen-
tenced to death for participation in the Bull Ring outbreak,
and it was only after strong representations to the govern-
ment that their punishment was commuted to transporta-
tion for life. Within a very short period there was hardly
' a leader who was not committed to jail or not bound to
' appear for trial.
The breaking-up of the Convention did not in the least
affect the mood of the ardent supporters of the Charter. 3
Public meetings and open demonstrations gave place to
more dangerous vehicles of agitation within narrow circles
of revengeful conspirators. The ill-feeling of the work-
ingmen grew ever more ominous because of the inexorable
rigor and discipline to which the Chartist prisoners were
subjected. Lovett and Collins, the least offensive of the
agitators, soon found out that it was impossible for them
to preserve their health on the kind of food allowed to them
and begged, but in vain, to be permitted to purchase a little
tea, sugar and butter, and occasionally a small quantity of
meat. The magistrates also refused to allow them, without
specific authority from the Secretary of State, the use of
writing materials and books. Petitions and memorials in
their favor were presented by the Working Men's Associa-
tion, the people of Birmingham, Francis Place, and mem-
bers of Parliament. But, as Lovett states, whenever the
magistrates were applied to for any little mitigation of their
1 90
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
severities, "they invariably contended that they had no
power without the sanction of the Secretary of State; and
when he was memorialized, he referred us to the visiting
magistrates." i Other Chartists, without the powerful in-
fluence exerted on behalf of Lovett and his colleague, were
entirely at the mercy of the wrathful prison authorities,
and some of the victims subsequently died in jail from dis-
eases contracted there.
The policy of retaliation pursued by the government
towards the Chartist prisoners caused particular resentment
I in the case of Henry Vincent, the idol of the Welsh miners,
who was tried on the 2d of August, and sentenced to im-
, prisonment in Monmouth county jail for a period of twelve
months. The open hostility of the jury, one of whom had
been heard to declare that he would give nine-pence to buy
a halter for hanging the defendant without judge or jury,
and the severe punishment, caused much acrimony against
the authorities. The treatment of the prisoner like a com-
mon felon still more irritated his admirers. Frost himself,
on the 28th of September, wrote to a former colleague, a
magistrate of the county, exhorting him to obtain a miti-
gation, of Vincent's treatment. All remonstrances and pro-
tests, however, were of no avail. It was then that the
Welsh Chartists conceived the idea of releasing Vincent by
force and began to perfect plans which culminated in the
Newport Riot of November 4, 1839, when thousands of
W men " rushed like a torrent from the hills," armed with the
gun, the pike, and the bludgeon, " to lay in ruins the com-
mercial emporium of their county."
1 Lovett, op. cit., pp. 229-231.
CHAPTER XII
THE NEWPORT RIOT
THE stories of the events leading to the Welsh rising
are utterly conflicting. The biographer of John Frost de-
nies the existence of any previous plan of organization :
Those who have said that Mr. Frost was long engaged in
organizing the people for the Newport outbreak, must here-
after hold their peace, or be content to have attached to them
the imputation of uttering against a man who has it not in
power to defend himself, an injurious allegation, which there
exists no evidence to establish . . . The gathering on the eve
of the riots had no direct object laid down, and that, until a
very few hours previous to their meeting, the assembly was
not even agreed upon. 1
Lovett, on the other hand, gives what seems to be a
more authentic account, obtained " from a person who took
an active part in matters pertaining to it." It appears that,
having failed in his endeavors on behalf of Vincent, Frost
came to London and confided to two or three members of
the Convention his great difficulty in restraining the Welsh
jChartists from attempting to release the prisoner by force, i
One of the conferees then gave assurance that if the Welsn
effected a rising in favor of Vincent, the people of York-
shire and Lancashire would join in a rising for the Charter.
The parties decided not to take any steps before consulting
the local leaders in their respective districts. Shortly after-
wards a meeting was held at Heckmondwick which was
1 The Life of John Frost, Esq., London, 1840, p. 7.
191] 191
c
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
attended by about forty delegates, including three members
of the Convention, and which expressed a determination to
aid the intended rising in Wales by a simultaneous outbreak
in the North. O'Connor was requested by a special York-
shire delegate to lead them, and was apparently mis-
understood by the latter, who reported the leader's readi-
ness to head the rising. Finding that the people were in
earnest, he immediately sent one representative to York-
shire and Lancashire and another to Wales to caution the
leaders against the rising. When found by O'Connor's
envoy, Frost informed him that the message came too late,
that the people were resolved on releasing Vincent from
prison, and that he might as well blow his own brains out
as try to oppose them or shrink back. He urged him to go
back to the North and inform the leaders of the Welsh
preparations. The riot, however, was precipitated before
any outside aid could be rendered. 1
The activities of Frost before the outbreak in no way
tended to allay the spirit of strife. His last public
letter, dated at Newport, October 22, 1839, and addressed
to the farmers and tradesmen of Monmouthshire, assumes
particular significance in the light of the subsequent tragic
insurrection. Assuring his " fellow-countrymen " that, un-
less the Charter be speedily enacted, " there will be no
security for person or property," the author seeks to im-
press the people with the realization of the cause of such
unsaf ety :
In all countries, where great discontent has existed, there
1 Cf. Lovett, op. cit., pp. 239-241. In his enmity towards O'Connor,
Lovett never fails to impeach the conduct and motives of the latter.
In this case, he insinuates that O'Connor misleadingly induced "the
poor fellow," the Yorkshire delegate, to believe that he would head the
insurrection, as well as that he " set about to render the outbreak in-
effectual."
193] THE NE WPORT RIOT
always must have been a cause, and that cause always was the
oppression and cruelty of men in authority. What is it which
has rendered the laboring classes of this country so discon-
tented? What has produced that deep and powerful feeling
which a spark would now ignite from one end of the country
to the other? /A deep sense of wrong a thorough convic-
tion of the injustice with which they are treated.^ Their labor
is taken from them by the means of the law ; it is given to a
set of idle and dissolute men and women; those who produce
not, are clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously
every day, while the laborer is fed with the crumbs which fall
from the table of the rich. The working-men have petitioned
for justice; their petitions were treated with contempt, and
their leaders imprisoned and treated with greater severity than
felons; they ask for a reduction of taxation, and the answer
is, a rural police.
The proceedings of the last Quarter Sessions, are well
worthy your serious attention. One oppressive act follows
the other. Sometime ago we had a Poor-law Amendment Act,
by which the management of your own money was completely
taken out of your own hands, and placed in the hands of the
landlords. Here's a pretty law, by which poverty is made a
crime and punished by confinement, by a separation of man
and wife, and parent and child. To support this oppressive
law we are now to have a rural police! armed men all over
the country to suppress discontent by force, and the murmur-
ings of poverty by the bludgeon! And this, too, in England
in the land formerly of freedom in the land in which, at one
time, the constable's staff, and the sheriff's wand, were quite
sufficient to preserve peace. . . .
Suppose the farmers and tradesmen were to ask themselves
how is this likely to end? It must produce one of two states
of things. Every year will add to the oppression and poverty
of the people. Tyranny has no cessation ; every desperate act
must be supported by one more violent, the preservation of
the tyrants renders this necessary. We are fast approaching
the state of France, previously to the first revolution. We
THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT
[ IO/4
have spies watching all public proceedings; every word will
very soon be weighed in the balance of the despot, and con-
strued at the will of those in authority. This will produce
a sullen discontent which will be evinced in a way to render
property and life insecure. This will be a pretty state of
society when every farmer will come to market with a brace
of pistols in his pocket when every man in authority will
be looking for an enemy in every one he meets. This is no
imaginary picture, it will be a state of society, the natural ef-
fects of taxation, of poverty, of misery, and of crime.
Look at the other side of the picture; suppose that the
working-men, driven to despair, should follow the example
of our own, and of other, countries. Here would be a state
of suffering ! All the angry passions in full scope resentment
for past injuries, hatred public and private. Where, in such a
case, would be the voice that, under those circumstances,
would be listened to? The French people, previously to the
revolution, were led by some of the most benevolent men in
the world; they sought for a change in the most oppressive
laws that ever existed. The government fancied that if it
could destroy the leaders, that all would be well. In many
instances it succeeded ; and what was the consequence ? Lead-
ers ten times more violent. It appears to be the opinion of
the authorities in this country, that if they could imprison
or destroy the leaders of the movement, that all would be well.
Never was there a greater mistake. Could they succeed, they
would exchange benevolent men for cruel ones. Stopping the
movement is out of the question, unless by altering a system
which is the cause of all the evils of which the people com-
plain. 1
The plan of the Welsh Chartists, as brought out at the
subsequent trials, was to have the members of the various
lodges throughout the district assemble, fully armed, and
then march towards Newport in three divisions. A copy of
1 The English Chartist Circular, no. 27.
195] THE NEWPORT RIOT
the directions produced at the magistrates' examination?
gave the details of the scheme : *
Let us form into sections, by choosing a good staunch inde-
pendent brother at the head of each section; that is to say,
each section to be composed of ten men, who are known to
him to be sincere, so that the head of each section may know
his men. Thus five sections will comprise 55 men and offi-
cers. Then these five officers such as corporals will choose
a head officer, so that he may give his five officers notice; so
these 50 men are to be called a bye-name; then three fifties
will compose a company, and the three officers will choose a
proper person to command the 165 in company, officers and
all, such as a captain. Then three companies will compose 495
men and officers, which officer will be such as a brigade-gen-
eral. So three brigades will choose a chief, which will be
1485 men and officers, which chief officer is to be in the
style of a conventional-general. So that by these means the
signal " W. R." can be given in two hours' notice, within
seven miles, by the head officer noticing every officer under
him, until it comes to the deacons or corporals to notice their
ten men; the officers to have bye-names not military names.
It was decided that the first division, starting from Black-
wood, should be headed by Frost ; the second, composed of
men from Brynmawr and Ebbw Vale, should leave the
latter place under the command of Zephaniah Williams;
while the third division, consisting of the Chartists from
Blaenavon, Abersychan, and neighboring places, should
leave Pontypool under the leadership of William Jones.*
1 The Chartist Riots at Newport, November, 1839, 2d edition, 1889,
pp. 19-20.
2 Zephaniah Williams, a keeper of a beerhouse in a little town near
Newport, was one of the most enthusiastic followers of Vincent and
Frost, and during the Chartist agitation exercised great influence
among the workingmen of his district.
William Jones, or William Lloyd Jones, as he designated himself in
later years, was the illegitimate son of a tradesman at Bristol. In his
196 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ I9 6
The three divisions were directed to meet on Sunday, No-
vember the third, at midnight, at a place several miles from
Newport. Thence they would march into the town, which
would be reached about two o'clock in the morning, attack
the troops who were expected to be caught unprepared in
the absence of any suspicion of danger, break down the
bridge across the Usk, stop the mail-coaches and the traffic,
and take possession of the town. The delay of the mail was
to be a signal to Birmingham, and then to the whole North,
to rise in arms.
The plan was carried out only in part. On the Sunday
preceding the attack, all villages in the district were in a
state of mobilization, and, in spite of the heavy rain, men
of all ages, fathers and sons, gathered at the appointed
places, armed with weapons of every description. Those
who had known nothing of the plot were struck with
terror and hid themselves in the recesses of their dwellings
or in the neighboring woods. Many houses are re-
ported to have been searched, and men dragged from bed
and forced to join the march. The center of all action was
in Blackwood, where the commander-in-chief, John Frost,
issued orders and received reports from his subordinates.
About seven o'clock a messenger presented himself to Frost,
saying that he had come from Newport ; that " the soldiers
there were in the barracks; that they were all Chartists;
that their arms and ammunition were all packed, and that
they were all ready to come up on the Hills, only they were
waiting for the Chartists to go down to fetch them." x
youth he gave up his trade of watchmaker and became a strolling actor.
In 1833 he was made the manager of a watchmaking business in Ponty-
pool, and then, after his marriage, started the same business on his
own account. His attractive personality and histrionic talents rendered
him a commanding figure among the Pontypool Chartists. In the
movement he distinguished himself as one of the most zealous advo-
cates of physical force.
1 The Chartist Riots at Newport, p. 21.
197] THE NEWPORT RIOT
This was evidently a spurious report. As a matter of
fact, the news had by that time reached Newport that the
Chartists were scouring the Hills in all directions and gath-
ering great forces. The mayor, Thomas Phillips, imme-
diately summoned five hundred special constables and
stationed them in various places. Messengers and scouts
were sent out in all directions to watch and report the
progress of the Chartist movements. In his intense alarm
at the news imparted to him by the spies, the mayor also
despatched a request to Bristol that a reinforcement of
troops be sent at once to Newport. In the course of the
evening special constables paraded the streets and arrested
all suspicious persons.
The severity of the weather and the incessant torrents of
rain during the whole night greatly impeded the progress
of the several divisions, which more than once had to seek
shelter. Thus the original plan of invading Newport at
night was completely upset. It was morning when the
gathered forces reached the outskirts of the town, and the
news of their approach reached the mayor in time for him
to station himself with a military detachment and fifty con-
stables in the Westgate Hotel, where a number of prisoners
taken during the night were detained. About nine o'clock
the head of the Chartist body, under the command of Frost,
appeared, cheering and shouting, at the gates of the West-
gate Hotel. The men were armed with " guns, pistols,
blunderbusses, swords, bayonets, daggers, pikes, bill-hooks,
reaping-hooks, hatchets, cleavers, axes, pitch-forks, blades
of knives, scythes and saws fixed in staves, pieces of iron
two and three yards in length, sharpened at the one end, blud-
geons of various length and size, hand and sledge-hammers,
mandrils in fact, every weapon that could be at all made
available." 1 The leading ranks made an attempt to enter
1 The Rise and Fall of Chartism in Monmouthshire, p. 4.
198 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ I9 8
the stable-yard, but finding the gates strongly barred, they
proceeded to the portico of the Hotel. One of the leaders
ascended the steps and demanded the surrender of the pris-
oners, to which a special constable replied, "No, never!"
The firing of the first gun, however, dissipated the courage
of the constables, who were armed only with staves. Most
of them fled, some to the cellars, some to the roof, and
others to the yard and other places of security, leaving a
few of their wounded comrades to the mercy of the in-
vaders. Within a few moments the house was blockaded
by the rebels, who fired frequent shots through the broken
windows into the various rooms of the building. It was
then that the mayor, slightly wounded, ordered the soldiers
to use their guns. The well-aimed volleys soon proved
effective. The piercing shrieks of scores of dying and
wounded men created a panic which destroyed all discipline
in the rear as well as the front ranks. The rebel army,
variously estimated between ten and twenty thousand men,
recoiled in horror before a mere handful of defenders,
scattering their weapons and even their garments as they
scampered away in all directions. After ten or fifteen min-
utes of steady and deadly firing by the soldiers, even the
most reckless conspirators fled from the place, which pre-
sented a most gruesome sight :
Many who suffered in the fight, crawled away; some ex-
hibiting frightful wounds, and glaring eyes, wildly crying for
mercy, and seeking a shelter from the charitable: others, de-
sperately maimed, were carried in the arms of the humane
for medical aid ; and a few of the miserable objects that were
helplessly and mortally wounded, continued for some minutes
to writhe in torture, crying for water, and presenting, in their
gory agonies, a dismal and impressive example to any of the
political seducers, or the seduced, who might have been within
view, and a sickening and melancholy spectacle for the eye
of humanity. 1
1 The Rise and Fall of Chartism in Monmouthshire, p. 43.
199] THE NEWPORT RIOT
Inside the Westgate five dead bodies and a number of
severely wounded men were found weltering in their blood.
One man, who was discovered under the portico of the
mayor's house, where he had crept, after receiving a
gun-shot wound, expired exclaiming, " The Charter for
ever!" Altogether twenty-two bodies were gathered and
subsequently interred in St. Woolos churchyard. A char-
acteristic expression of the zealous faith in the cause which
impelled the actions of those men even to the extent of
martyrdom is found in the letter which one of the victims,
a cabinetmaker from Pontypool, a youth barely nineteen
years of age, wrote to his parents on the eve of the riot : *
Dear Parents:
I hope this will find you well, as I am myself at present. I
shall this night be engaged in a struggle for freedom, and
should it please God to spare my life, I shall see you soon ; but
if not, grieve not for me. I shall fall in a noble cause. My
tools are at Mr. Cecil's, and likewise my clothes.
Yours truly,
GEORGE SHELL.
In the consternation that followed this attack the author-
ities did not lose time in taking- steps to bring the conspir-
ators to justice; A reward of 100 was offered for the
capture of any of the three chief commanders. Frost was
taken into custody before the close of the evening. When
apprehended, he appeared fatigued and depressed, and sur-
rendered without protest He handed from his pockets
three new pistols, a flask nearly full of powder and about
fifty bullets. Jones was arrested about a week after the
attack, and Williams eluded capture for ten days. The
three leaders and ten other Chartists were committed, and
subsequently indicted for high treason, while about thirty
1 The Chartist Riots at Newport, p. 45.
200 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ 2 OO
others were held on lesser charges. The attitude of the
government left no doubt that the fate of the principal
actors was sealed. On the 9th of November, the mayor of
Newport received a letter from the Secretary of State for
the Home Department, conveying the Queen's approval of
his conduct, and this expression of thanks was followed on
the 1 3th with an offer of knighthood for the mayor. The
several constables who had been wounded in the affray were
rewarded with pensions of 20 per annum each for life.
Vincent's paper, The Western Vindicator, which had a large
circulation among the Welsh_workingmen, was seized wher-
ever it could be found, and was suppressed until it disap-
peared. The Chartists, on the other hand, took up the
cause of the prisoners in quite a practical way. A conven-
tion represented by many delegates met in London and
decided to try all available means to secure a favorable
verdict for their comrades, and the appeals for funds by
the defense committees throughout the country received
generous response.
The Special Commission, which was headed by the Lord
Chief Justice Nicholas Tindal, opened its sittings on the
loth of December, 1839, in the Crown Court at Monmouth.
The town was in a state of intense excitement. Constab-
ulary and military forces were stationed near and within
the court-house, and, in apprehension of all possible con-
tingencies, loop-holes were pierced in the structure in such
positions as to enable troops to fire upon any person ap-
proaching. The Chief Justice charged the grand jury and
defined the law relating to high treason. The next day
Frost and twelve of his associates were placed at the bar
and informed that a true bill of high treason had been
found against them by the grand jury. The indictment
comprised four counts, the substance of the charges being
that the defendants had broken their faith and true alle-
201] THE NEWPORT RIOT
2OI
giance to the Sovereign and levied war against the Queen
within her realm with intent to compel her to change her
measures. The trial commenced on the 3ist of December,
when the prisoners pleaded " not guilty," and resolved to
sever in their challenges. The trial of Frost came first.
Both the Attorney-General and the counsel for the defense
contested the case with distinct dexterity and resolve. The
effect of the damaging evidence given by most of the- thirty-
seven witnesses could not, however, be destroyed by the
counsel, and on the 8th of January, 1840, after half an
hour's deliberation, the jury brought in a verdict of
" guilty," accompanied by a recommendation of the pris-
oner " to the merciful consideration of the court." Zeph-
aniah Williams was put on trial on the gth of January, and
on the 1 3th the jury returned a verdict of "guilty" with
the same recommendation. The court then proceeded with
the case of William Jones, and an identical verdict was re-
turned on the 1 5th of the same month. On the following
day the three prisoners were brought in to receive sentence.
Frost appeared calm and resigned; Williams was ghastly
pale and leaned for support against the dock; but Jones
remained firm and dignified to the very last, apparently little
impressed by the solemn import with which the Lord Chief
Justice, holding out no hope of mercy, addressed the con-
victed Chartists. The latter retained their equanimity even
after the sentence had been pronounced in the following
appalling words :
That you, John Frost, and you, Zephaniah Williams, and
you, William Jones, be taken hence to the place from whence
you came, and be thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of
execution, and that each of you be there hanged by the neck
until you be dead; and that afterwards the head of each of
you shall be severed from his body, and the body of each,
divided into four quarters, shall be disposed of as her Majesty
202 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ 2 O2
shall think fit. And may God almighty have mercy upon your
souls. 1
A similar sentence was subsequently passed upon five
other rioters, who had pleaded guilty to the charge of high
treason, on the understanding that their lives would be
spared. The Chief Justice accordingly intimated to them
that, as they had not been the contrivers of the treason,
their punishment would be commuted to transportation fo:r
life. Of the other prisoners, eighteen were sentenced to
various terms of hard labor, while a larger number were
either traversed to the assizes or acquitted.
The news of the conviction of the Welsh chieftains wa>
received by the Chartists with an ebullition of wrath. Nu-
merous spontaneous meetings were held throughout the
country, protesting against the sentence as a perversion oi
justice and an act of vengeance, and petitioning both House?
of Parliament to save the lives of the convicts. Memorial >
praying for mercy were also presented to the Queen. Thu
serious outbreaks in Sheffield, Bradford, and other towns,
threatened to spread to the large industrial centers. Rumor;
of incendiarism began to circulate from town to town. Tho
government, however, seemed not to waver from its deter-
mination to carry out the sentence. The possibility of miti
gating the penalty caused Sir John Campbell, the Attorney
General, keen mental anguish. He appeared personally to
argue against the validity of the objection which had beei
raised at the trials by the counsel for the defense, and whicl
the Lord Chief Justice had submitted for consideration t<
the Court of Exchequer, namely, that the lists of witnesse -
and the jury had not been delivered to the prisoners in pur
suance of the Act of Parliament. The case was argued b;
both sides on the 25th, 2/th and 28th of January, and th :
1 The Rise and Fall of Chartism in Monmouthshire, p. 82.
203] THE NE WPORT RIOT 203
Court decided that the objection, although valid, had not
been taken at the proper time. The state of mind of Sir
Campbell is revealed in the following remarks which he
entered in his diary after the conclusion of the trials : 1
I have passed a very anxious day, as if I myself had been
on trial. To my utter astonishment and dismay, Tindal
summed up for an acquittal. What he meant, the Lord only
knows. No human being doubted the guilt of the accused,
and we had proved it by the clearest evidence. Chief Justice
Tindal is a very honorable man, and had no assignable reason
for deviating from the right course. Yet from the beginning
to the end of his charge, he labored for an acquittal.
The execution of the three convicts was fixed for Satur-
day, February i, 1840. The executioner, the heads-man,
the scaffold, and the implements of death were kept in
readiness, when a respite for the prisoners reached Mon-
mouth on the 3Oth of January. This, however, inspired
but little hope, as it was immediately followed by an official
announcement of the High Sheriff that the sentence would
be carried out on the 6th of February. On January 3ist,
Sir Frederick Pollock, the chief counsel for Frost, for the
sixth time headed a deputation to Lord Melbourne endeav-
oring to prevail on him to mitigate the severity of the
punishment. The Premier remained inflexible, although Sir
Pollock had conveyed to him the urgent personal entreaty
of Lord Brougham. When informed of the result, the
latter persuaded Sir Pollock to try once more. The seventh
interview proved successful. Rumors had it that in this
decision the government gratified the personal wishes of
the Queen. On the 1st of February a respite during Her
Majesty's pleasure was read to the prisoners, and secret
orders were given to the governor of the jail to be pre-
1 The Chartist Riots at Newport, pp. 66-67.
204 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [204
pared for immediate departure with the convicts. On Sun-
day night, the 2d of February, Frost, Williams and Jones
were removed from Monmouth jail and, under military
escort, conveyed to Chepstow and placed on a steamer
which was bound for Portsmouth. All efforts to save the
victims from banishment proved futile, the Secretary of
State holding that he could not, consistently with his public
duty, advise the Queen to grant the prayers. On the 24th
of the same month the three Welshmen, together with two
hundred and ten other prisoners, embarked in a convict vessel
at Spithead, destined for Van Diemen's Land. The motion
which Representative Leader brought forward on the loth
of March, for an address to the Queen praying for a free
pardon, was supported only by seven members. 1
While the doom of the banished leaders continued to agi-
tate the minds of the Chartists, sincere sympathy was every-
where expressed to the relatives of the men slain at the
Westgate. On Sunday, April 12, 1840, the graves of the
victims were decorated with flowers and laurels, sur-
mounted with the following lines :
May the rose of England never blow,
The Clyde of Scotland cease to flow,
The harp of Ireland never play,
Until the Chartists gain the day.
1 The repeated agitation on behalf of the three martyrs finally led the
government, in 1854, to grant them conditional pardons, forbidding re-
turn to the United Kingdom. Frost went to the United States, where he
resided for two years. The numerous memorials from Newport, Shef-
field, and other towns, finally won him unconditional pardon. In
August, 1856, he returned to Newport, and was received with great
enthusiasm. The Town Council, however, refused to comply with his
demand to have his name restituted in the list of freemen of the bor-
ough. He then took up his residence at Stapleton. After years of
seclusion, he died on the 28th of July, 1877.
Williams, who had become a wealthy coal owner, died on the 8th of
May, 1874, in Tasmania.
Jones pursued his occupation of watchmaker at Launceston, Austra-
lia, having no desire to go elsewhere. He died there in December, 1873.
205] THE NE WPORT RIOT 205
The onslaught of the government was not confined to
Wales alone. The prosecutions of the Chartists filled the
chronicles of well-nigh every town in the United Kingdom.
The outrages of the police and the spies became a public
nuisance. One after another the active men in the move-
ment were apprehended and convicted. Most of the leaders
conducted their own defense, and their addresses to the
jury, some of them lasting five, six and even ten hours, be-
came a singular feature at these trials. Severe penalties
were imposed on Bronterre, O'Connor, the veteran radical
William Benbow, and other leaders, and all were subjected
to the most humiliating treatment by the prison authorities.
The following table shows the distribution of the Char-
tist prisoners confined for various terms for seditious libel,
for riot, for attending illegal meetings, for possession of
arms, and other political offences, from January I, 1839, to
June i, 1840 : l
CHARTIST CONVICTS IN ENGLAND
Number of
County. Where Confined. Convicts
Chester County Gaol 29
Durham County Gaol 3
Kent House of Correction, Canterbury I
Lancaster Lancaster Castle 5
County Gaol and House of Correction,
Kirkdale 135
House of Correction, Preston 3
Lincoln Lincoln Castle i
Middlesex House of Correction 14
Gaol of Newgate 8
Westminster Bridewell 13
Monmouth County Gaol 63
House of Correction, Usk 4
Northumberland . .House of Correction, Newcastle 19
1 Based on returns to an order of the House of Commons. Cf. The
English Chartist Circular, no. I.
206 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT [ 2 o6
Nottingham County Gaol 23
House of Correction, Southwell 12
Somerset County Gaol, Ilchester 3
Surrey Queen's Bench Prison 2
Warwick County Gaol 28
Wilts County Gaol 8
House of Correction, Devizes I
Worcester Gaol and House of Correction 3
York York Castle 69
East Riding, House of Correction 2
North Riding, House of Correction 12
West 'Riding, House of Correction 19
Total for England 480
CHARTIST CONVICTS IN WALES
County. Where Confined. Number of
Convicts.
Brecon County Gaol and House of Correction 12
Glamorgan House of Correction, Swansea i
Montgomery Gaol and House of Correction 50
Total for Wales 63
Total for England and Wales 543
The wholesale arrests and the ruthless persecution of the
Chartists seemed to have crushed the movement. The
Whig press had apparent cause to rejoice at the govern-
ment victory. The excitement caused by the Newport riot
and the subsequent trials was gradually waning; public
meetings became less frequent and less aggressive, and a
large portion of the Chartist press went out of existence.
There were all the symptoms of an early death of the mon-
ster movement. Yet even then all but those blinded with
conceit and self-delusion could see the new weapons that
were being forged by the workingmen against their enemies.
Carlyle voiced the truth when he said that it was the " chi-
mera of Chartism " and not the reality that was put
207] THE NEWPORT RIOT 207
down. 1 The causes of discontent remaining unhampered,
the hydra-headed " chimera " could not be crushed. In-
deed, the government prosecutor had not completed his task
of heaping vengeance on the organizers of the movement
when a new force of recruits appeared on the battlefield
ready to fight and to win.
But this begins a new chapter in the history of Chartism.
1 Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, London, 1840, p. 2.
APPENDIX A
PETITION AGREED TO AT THE " CROWN AND ANCHOR " MEET-
ING, FEBRUARY 28TH, 1837
" To the Honorable the Commons of Great Britain and Ire-
land. The Petition of the undersigned Members of the Work-
ing Men's Association and others sheweth
" That the only rational use of the institutions and laws of
society is justly to protect, encourage, and support all that can
be made to contribute to the happiness of all the people.
" That, as the object to be obtained is mutual benefit, so
ought the enactment of laws to be by mutual consent.
" That obedience to laws can only be justly enforced on the
certainty that those who are called on to obey them have had,
either personally or by their representatives, a power to enact,
amend, or repeal them.
" That all those who are excluded from this share of polit-
ical power are not justly included within the operation of the
laws ; to them the laws are only despotic enactments, and the
legislative assembly from whom they emanate can only be
considered parties to an unholy compact, devising plans and
schemes for taxing and subjecting the many.
" That the universal political right of every human being is
superior and stands apart from all customs, forms, or ancient
usage ; a fundamental right not in the power of man to confer,
or justly to deprive him of.
" That to take away this sacred right from the person and
to vest it in property, is a wilful perversion of justice and
common sense, as the creation and security of property are the
consequences of society the great object of which is human
happiness.
" That any constitution or code of laws, formed in violation
208 [208
209] APPENDIX A 209
of men's political and social rights, are not rendered sacred
by time nor sanctified by custom.
"That the ignorance which originated, or permits their
operation, forms no excuse for perpetuating the injustice; nor
can aught but force or fraud sustain them, when any consider-
able number of the people perceive and feel their degradation.
" That the intent and object of your petitioners are to pre-
sent such facts before your Honorable House as will serve to
convince you and the country at large that you do not repre-
sent the people of these realms; and to appeal to your sense
of right and justice, as well as to every principle of honor, for
directly making such legislative enactments as shall cause the
mass of the people to be represented ; with the view of secur-
ing the greatest amount of happiness to all classes of society.
" Your petitioners find, by returns ordered by your Honor-
able House, that the whole people of Great Britain and Ire-
land are about 24 millions, and that the males above 21 years
of age are 6,023,752, who, in the opinion of your petitioners,
are justly entitled to the elective right.
" That according to S. Wortley's return (ordered by your
Honorable House) the number of registered electors, who have
the power to vote for members of Parliament, are only 839,-
519, and of this number only &/ 2 in 12 give their votes.
" That on an analysis of the constituency of the United
Kingdom, your petitioners find that 331 members (being a
majority of your Honorable House) are returned by one hun-
dred and fifty-one thousand four hundred and ninety-two
registered electors!
" That comparing the whole of the male population above
the age of 21 with the 151,492 electors, it appears that ^
of them, or T ^ of the entire population, have the power of
passing all the laws in your Honorable House.
" And your petitioners further find, on investigation, that
this majority of 331 members are composed of 163 Tories or
Conservatives, 134 Whigs and Liberals, and only 34 who call
themselves Radicals ; and out of this limited number it is ques-
tionable whether 10 can be found who are truly the represen-
tatives of the wants and wishes of the producing classes.
210 APPENDIX A [ 2 io
" Your petitioners also find that 15 members of your Honor-
able House are returned by electors under 200 ; 55 under 300 ;
99 under 400; 121 under 500; 150 under 600; 196 under 700;
214 under 800; 240 under 900; and 256 under 1,000; and
that many of these constituencies are divided between two
members.
" They also find that your Honorable House, which is said
to be exclusively the people's or the Commons' House, contains
two hundred and five persons who are immediately or remotely
related to the Peers of the Realm.
" Also that your Honorable House contains i marquess, 7
earls, 19 viscounts, 32 lords, 25 right honorables, 52 honor-
ables, 63 baronets, 13 knights, 3 admirals, 7 lord-lieutenants,
42 deputy and vice-lieutenants, I general, 5 lieutenant-generals,
9 major-generals, 32 colonels, 33 lieutenant-colonels, 10 majors,
49 captains in army and navy, 10 lieutenants, 2 cornets, 58
barristers, 3 solicitors, 40 bankers, 33 East India proprietors,
13 West India proprietors, 52 place-men, 114 patrons of church
livings having the patronage of 274 livings between them;
the names of whom your petitioners can furnish at the request
of your Honorable House.
"Your petitioners therefore respectfully submit to your
Honorable House that these facts afford abundant proofs that
you do not represent the numbers or the interests of the mil-
lions ; but that the persons composing it have interests for the
most part foreign or directly opposed to the true interests of
the great body of the people.
" That perceiving the tremendous power you possess over
the lives, liberty and labor of the unrepresented millions
perceiving the military and civil forces at your command the
revenue at your disposal the relief of the poor in your hands
the public press in your power, by enactments expressly ex-
cluding the working classes alone moreover, the power of
delegating to others the whole control of the monetary arrange-
ments of the Kingdom, by which the laboring classes may be
silently plundered or suddenly suspended from employment
seeing all these elements of power wielded by your Honorable
21 1 ] APPENDIX A 2II
House as at present constituted, and fearing the consequences
that may result if a thorough reform is not speedily had re-
course to, your petitioners earnestly pray your Honorable
House to enact the following as the law of these realms, with
such other essential details as your Honorable House shall
deem necessary:
" A LAW FOR EQUALLY REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE OF GREAT
BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
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 proof of his being 21 years
of age, to the clerk of the parish in which he has resided 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 PARLIAMENTS
" 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 for 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 mem-
bers; but on a requisition, signed by 200 voters, in favor of
any candidate being presented to the clerk of the parish in
which they reside, such candidate shall be put in nomination.
And the 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 qualification.
212 APPENDIX A [ 2I2
VOTE BY BALLOT
" That each voter must vote in the parish in which he re-
sides. That each parish provide as many balloting boxes as
there are candidates proposed in the district; and that a tem-
porary 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 balloting 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 terminated, but not later than the ist of Sep-
tember. They shall meet every day (during the Session) for
business at 10 o'clock in the morning, and adjourn at 4. And
every member shall be paid quarterly out of the public treas-
ury 400 a year. That all electoral officers shall be elected by
universal suffrage.
" By passing the foregoing as the law of the land, you will
confer a great blessing on the people of England; and your
petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray."
APPENDIX B
THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER
Being a bill to provide for the just representation of the people
of Great Britain and Ireland in the Commons' House of
Parliament. (Published on the 8th of May, 1838).
WHEREAS to insure, as far as it is possible by human fore-
thought and wisdom, the just government of the people, it is
necessary to subject those who have the power of making the
laws to a wholesome and strict responsibility to those whose
duty it is to obey them when made.
And, whereas, this responsibility is best enforced through
the instrumentality of a body which emanates directly from,
and is itself immediately subject to, the whole people, and
which completely represents their feelings and their interests.
And, whereas, the Commons' House of Parliament now ex-
ercises, in the name and on the supposed behalf of the people,
the power of making the laws, it ought, in order to fulfill with
wisdom and with honesty the great duties imposed on it, to be
made the faithful and accurate representation of the people's
wishes, feelings, and interests.
Be it therefore enacted:
That, from and after the passing of this Act, every male
inhabitant of these realms be entitled to vote for the election
of a member of Parliament; subject, however, to the follow-
ing conditions :
1. That he be a native of these realms, or a foreigner who
has lived in this country upward of two years, and been
naturalized.
2. That he be twenty-one years of age.
213] 213
214 APPENDIX B [214
3. That he be not proved insane when the lists of voters
are revised.
4. That he be not convicted of felony within six months
from and after the passing of this Act. 1
5. That his electoral rights be not suspended for bribery at
election, or for personation, or for forgery of election certi-
ficates, according to the penalties of this Act.
ELECTORAL DISTRICTS
I. Be it enacted, that for the purpose of obtaining an equal
representation of the people in the Commons' House of Par-
liament, the United Kingdom be divided into 300 electoral
districts. 2
II. That each such district contain, as nearly as may be, an
equal number of inhabitants.
III. That the number of inhabitants be taken from the last
census, and as soon as possible after the next ensuing decennial
census shall have been taken, the electoral districts be made
to conform thereto.
IV. That each electoral district be named after the prin-
cipal city or borough within its limits.
V. That each electoral district return one representative to
sit in the Commons' House of Parliament.
VI. That the Secretary of State for the Home Department
shall appoint three competent persons as commissioners, and
as many sub-commissioners as may be necessary for settling
the boundaries of each of the 300 electoral districts, and so on
from time to time, whenever a new decennial census of the
people be taken.
VII. That the necessary expenses of the said commissioners,
1 "The People's Charter," as revised at a conference held at Bir-
mingham, December, 1842, reads: "4. That he be not undergoing the
sentence of the laws at the time when called upon to exercise the elec-
toral right."
2 There are, say, 6,000,000 of men eligible to vote. This number,
divided by 300, gives 20,000 to each member.
215] APPENDIX B 215
sub-commissioners, clerks, and other persons employed by them
in the performance of their duties, be paid out of the public
treasury.
REGISTRATION OFFICERS
Be it enacted, that for the purpose of procuring an accurate
registration of voters, for finally adjudicating in all cases of
objections made against persons claiming to be registered, for
receiving the nominations of Members of Parliament and Re-
turning Officers, and declaring their election; as well as for
conducting and superintending all matters connected with regis-
tration, nomination, and election, according to the provisions
of this Act, the following officers be appointed :
1. Returning Officers for each electorial district.
2. Deputy-Returning Officers for each district.
3. A Registration Clerk for every parish containing
number of inhabitants, or for every two or more parishes, if
united for the purpose of this Act.
RETURNING OFFICER, AND HIS DUTIES
I. Be it enacted, that at the first general election after the
passing of this Act, a returning officer be elected for every
electoral district throughout the kingdom, and so in like
manner at the end of every three years. 1
II. That, at the end of every such period, the returning
officer for each district be nominated in like manner, and
elected at the same time, as the Member of Parliament for the
district ; he shall be eligible to be re-elected.
III. That vacancies occasioned by the death, removal, or
resignation of the returning officer, shall in like manner be
filled up as vacancies for Members of Parliament, for the un-
expired term of the three years. 2
IV. That every returning officer shall appoint a deputy re-
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " at the end of every year."
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " for the unexpired term of the
year."
2l6 APPENDIX B [216
turning officer, for the day of election, for every balloting place
within his district, and in all cases be responsible for the just
fulfilment of the duties of such deputies.
V. That it be the duty of the returning officers to appoint
a registration clerk for every parish within his district con-
taining number of inhabitants, or for every two or more
parishes if united for the purposes of this Act ; and that in all
cases he be responsible for the just fulfilment of the duties of
such clerks.
VI. That he also see that proper balloting places, and such
other erections as may be necessary, be provided by each parish
(or any number that may be united) and that the balloting
boxes be made and provided according to the provisions of
this Act.
VII. That he receive the lists of voters from all the parishes
in his district, in which lists shall be marked or specified the
names of the persons who have been objected to by the regis-
tration clerks or any other persons.
VIII. That between the first of April and the first of May
in each year, he shall hold open courts of adjudication at such
a number of places within his district as he may deem neces-
sary, of which courts (place and time of meeting) he shall
cause due notice to be given in each parish of the district, and
at the same time invite all persons who have made objection.^,
and who have been objected to. And, after hearing the state-
ments that may be made by both parties, he shall finally ad-
judicate whether the voters' names be placed on the register
or not.
IX. That the returning officer shall then cause to be made
out alphabetical lists of all the registered voters in all the
parishes within his district ; which lists, signed and attested by
himself, shall be used at all elections for the district. Such
lists to be sold to the public at reasonably low prices.
X. That the returning officer receive all nominations for
the member of his district, as well as for the returning officer
of his district, and shall give public notice of the same accord-
ing to the provisions of this Act ; he shall also receive from the
217] APPENDIX B 217
Speaker of the House of Commons the orders for any new
election, in case of the death or resignation of the member of
the district, as well as the orders to superintend and conduct
the election of any other district, in case of the death or resigna-
tion of the returning officer of such district.
XL That the returning officer shall also receive the returns
from all the parishes within his district, on the day of election ;
and on the day following the election he shall proclaim the
state of the ballot, as directed by this Act, and perform the
several duties appertaining to his office, as herein made and
provided.
XII. That the returning officer be paid for fulfilling the
duties of his office, the sum of per annum, as herein-
after mentioned.
XIII. That, upon a petition being presented to the House
of Commons by at least one hundred qualified electors, against
any returning officer, 1 complaining of corruption in the exer-
cise of his office, or of incapacity, such complaints shall be
inquired into by a committee of the House, consisting of seven
members ; and, on their report being read, the members present
shall then determine whether such returning officer be or be
not guilty, or be or be not incapacitated.
XIV. That, for conducting the first elections after the pass-
ing of this Act, a returning officer for each district be tem-
porarily appointed by the Secretary of State, to perform the
duties prescribed by this Act. He shall resign his office as
soon as the new one is appointed, and be paid as hereinafter
mentioned. See Penalties.
DEPUTY RETURNING OFFICER, AND HIS DUTIES
I. Be it enacted, that a deputy returning officer be appointed
by the district returning officer to preside at each balloting
place on the day of election, such deputy to be subject and
responsible to his authority, as well as to the provisions of
this Act.
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " at least one hundred qualified elec-
tors of the district, against any returning officer of the same."
218 APPENDIX B [ 2I g
II. That it be the duty of the deputy returning officer to
provide a number of competent persons, not exceeding ,
to aid him in taking the ballot, and for performing the neces-
sary business thereof,
III. That the deputy returning officer shall see that proper
registration lists are provided, and that the ballot begin at six
o'clock in the morning precisely, and end at six o'clock in the
afternoon of the same day.
IV. That the deputy returning officer, in the presence of
the agents of the candidates, examine and seal the balloting-
boxes previous to the commencement of the balloting ; he shall,
in like manner, declare the number of votes for each candidate,
and shall cause a copy, signed by himself, to be forwarded to
the returning officer of the district, and another copy to the
registration clerk of the parish.
V. That the deputy returning officer be paid for his services
as hereinafter mentioned. See Penalties.
THE REGISTRATION CLERK, HIS DUTIES
I. Be it enacted, that a registration clerk be appointed by
the district returning officer for every parish within his dis-
trict containing inhabitants; or for every two or more
parishes that may be united for the purposes of this Act ; such
clerk to be responsible to his authority, as well as to the pro-
visions of this Act.
II. That for the purpose of obtaining a correct registration
of all the voters in each electoral district, the registration clerk
of every parish, as aforesaid, throughout the kingdom, shall,
on or before the ist of February in each year, take or cause
to be taken round to every dwelling house x in his parish, a
printed notice of the following form :
Mr. John Jones, you are hereby required, within six days from the
date hereof, to fill up this list with the names of all male inhabitants
of your house, of 21 years of age, and upwards; stating their respec-
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " to every dwelling-house, poor-
house, or union-workhouse in his parish."
219]
APPENDIX B
219
tive ages, and the time they have resided with you; or, in neglect
thereof, to forfeit the sum of one pound. 1
A. B., Registration Clerk.
NAME.
ADDRESS.
AGE.
TIME OF
RESIDENCE.
JOHN JONES.
6 Upper North Place.
21 years.
3 months.
N. B. This list will be called for at the expiration of six days from
this date.
III. That, at the expiration of six days, as aforesaid, the
registration clerk shall collect, or cause to be collected, the
aforesaid lists, and shall cause to be made out from them an
alphabetical list of all persons who are of the proper age and
residence to qualify them as voters, according to the provisions
of this Act.
IV. That if the registration clerk shall have any just reason
to believe that the names, ages, or time of residence of any
persons inserted in the aforesaid list are falsely entered, or not
in accordance with the provisions of this Act, he shall write
the words " objected to " opposite such names ; and so in like
manner against the names of every person he may have just
reason to consider ineligible, according to the provisions of
this Act.
V. That on or before the 8th of March in each year, the
registration clerk shall cause the aforesaid alphabetical list of
voters to be stuck against all church and chapel doors, market-
houses, town-halls, session-houses, 2 and such other conspicuous
places as he may deem necessary, from the 8th of March till
the 22nd. He shall also cause a copy of such list to lie at
his office, to be perused by any person without a fee, at all
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " the sum of one pound for every
name omitted."
1 The revised " Charter " added : " poor houses, union workhouses."
220 APPENDIX B [ 22 O
reasonable hours; and copies of the said list shall be sold
to the public at a reasonably low price.
VI. That, on or before the 25th of March, the registration
clerk shall take, or cause to be taken a copy of the aforesaid
list of voters to the returning officer of his district, which list
shall be signed by himself, and be presented as a just and
impartial list, according to his judgment, of all persons with-
in his parish who are eligible according to their claims, as well
as of all those who have been objected to by himself or
other persons.
VII. That the registration clerk shall attend the court of
adjudication, according to the notice he shall receive from the
returning officer, to revise his list, and shall perform all the
duties of his office as herein provided.
VIII. That the registration clerk be paid for his services in
the manner hereinafter mentioned.
ARRANGEMENT FOR REGISTRATION
I. Be it enacted, that every householder, as well as every
person occupying or having charge of a dwelling-house, 1 who
shall receive a notice from the registration clerk as aforesaid,
shall cause the said notice to be correctly filled up with the
names, ages, and time of residence of every male inmate or
inhabitant of his or her house, of twenty-one years of age and
upwards, within six days of the day of the date of such notice,
and shall carefully preserve the same till it is called for by the
registration clerk, or his proper officer.
II. That when the list of voters is made out from these
notices, and stuck on the church doors, 2 as aforesaid, any
person who finds his name not inserted in the list, and who
believes he is duly qualified as a voter, shall, on presenting to
the registration clerk a notice in the following form, have
his name added to the list of voters:
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " poor house, or union workhouse ".
2 The revised "Charter" added: "and places."
22 1 ] APPENDIX B
I, John Jones, carpenter, residing at in the district of
being twenty one years of age, and having resided at the above place
during the last three months, require to be placed on the list of voters,
as a qualified elector for the said district.
III. That any person who is qualified as a voter in any
electoral district, and shall have removed to any other parish
within the said district, on presenting to the registration clerk
of the parish he then resides in, his voter's certificate as proof
of this, or the written testimony of any registration clerk who
has previously registered him, he shall be entitled to be placed
on the list of voters as aforesaid.
IV. That if an elector of any parish in the district have any
just grounds for believing that any person disqualified by this
Act has been put upon any parish register within the said
district, he may, at any reasonable hour, between the ist and
the 2Oth day of March, cause the following notices to be de-
livered ; the one at the residence of the registration clerk, and
the other at the residence of the person objected to; and the
registration clerk shall, in like manner, send notice of the
ground of objection to all persons he may object to, as afore-
said:
To the Registration Clerk.
I, William Smith, elector of the parish of in the district
of object to A. B. being on the register of voters, believing
him to be disqualified.
Dated this day, etc.
To the person objected to:
Mr. A. B. of I, William Smith, elector of the parish
of in the district of object to your name being
on the register of voters for the following reasons: (here state the
reasons) and I will support my objections by proofs before the Re-
turning Officer of the District.
Dated this day, etc.
V. That if the person thus objecting neglect to attend the
court of the returning officer at the proper time, to state his
222 APPENDIX B [ 2 22
objections, he shall be fined ten shillings for every such neglect,
the same to be levied on his goods and chattels, provided he is
not prevented from attending by sickness or accident, in which
case his medical certificate, or a certificate signed by ten voters
certifying such fact, shall be forwarded to the returning officer,
who shall then determine whether the claim to be put on the
register be allowed or not.
VI. That if the person objected to fails to attend the court
of the returning officer at the proper time, to substantiate his
claim, his name shall be erased from the register, provided he
is not prevented by sickness or accident ; in which case a certi-
ficate shall be forwarded, and the returning officer shall deter-
mine, as before directed.
VII. That if it should be proved before the returning officer,
in his open court of adjudication, that any person has frivo-
lously or vexatiously objected to any one being placed on the
list of voters, such person objecting shall be fined twenty shill-
ings, the same to be levied on his goods and chattels. 1
VIII. That, as early as possible after the lists are revised as
aforesaid, the returning officer shall cause a copy of the same
to be forwarded to every registration clerk within his district.
IX. That the registration clerk of every parish shall then
correctly copy from such lists the name, age, and residence
of every qualified elector within his parish or parishes, into a
book made for that purpose, and shall place a number opposite
each name. He shall then, within days, take, or cause
to be taken, to all such electors, a voter's certificate of the
following form, the number on which shall correspond with the
number in the aforesaid book:
No. 123. This is to certify that James Jones, of is eligible
to vote for one person to be returned to Parliament (as well as for
the iReturning Officer) for the district of for one year from
the date hereof.
Dated
Registration Clerk.
1 The revised " Charter " provides for a fine of " twenty shillings
and expenses, the same to be levied on his goods and chattels, and paid
to the person objected to."
223 ] APPENDIX B
X. That if any person lose his voter's certificate by fire, or
any other accident, he shall not have a new certificate till the
next registration; but on the day of any election, if he can
establish his identity, on the testimony of two witnesses, to the
satisfaction of the registration clerk, as being the qualified
voter described in the registration book, he shall be allowed
to vote.
XL That the returning officer is hereby authorized and com-
manded to attach any small parishes to any adjacent parish 1
within his district for the purposes of this Act, and not other-
wise ; and in like manner to unite all extra-parochial places to
some adjacent parish. See Penalties,
ARRANGEMENT FOR NOMINATIONS
I. Be it enacted, that for the purpose of guarding against too
great a number, who might otherwise be heedlessly proposed,
as well as for giving time for the electors to inquire into the
merits of the persons who may be nominated for members of
Parliament, as well as for returning officers, that all nomin-
ations be taken as hereinafter directed.
II. That for all general elections of members of Parliament
a requisition of the following form, signed by at least one hun-
dred qualified electors of the district, be delivered to the re-
turning officer of the district, between the ist and loth day of
May in each year; and that such requisition constitute the
nomination of such person as a candidate for the district :
We, the undersigned electors of the district of recommend
A. B. of as a fit and proper person to represent the people
of this district in the Commons' House of Parliament, the said A. B.
being a qualified elector of these realms.*
Dated, etc.
Signed.
III. That the returning officer of every electoral district
1 The italicized phrase was omitted in the revised " Charter."
* The revised " Charter " reads : " the said A. B. being qualified to
be an elector according to the provisions of this Act.
224 APPENDIX B [224
shall, on or before the I3th of May in each year, cause a list
of all the candidates thus nominated to be stuck up against all
church and chapel doors, market-houses, town-halls, session-
houses, 1 and such other conspicuous places within the district
as he may deem necessary.
IV. That whenever a vacancy is occasioned in any district
by the death, resignation, or other cause, of the member of
Parliament, the returning officer of that district shall, within
three days after the receipt of his orders from the Speaker
of the House of Commons, give notice thereof in all the
parishes of his district in the manner described for giving
notices, and he shall at the same time request all nominations
to be made as aforesaid, within ten days from the receipt of his
order, and shall also appoint the day of election within eighteen
days from the receipt of such order from the Speaker of the
House of Commons.
V. That if, from any circumstances, no person has been
nominated as a candidate for the district on or before the loth
of May, persons may then be nominated in the manner de-
scribed as aforesaid at any time previous to the 2Oth of May,
but not otherwise. 2
VI. That at the first election after the passing of this Act,
and at the expiration of every three succeeding years, the
nomination of candidates for the returning officer be made in
the same manner as for the members of Parliament, and
nominations for vacancies that may occur in like manner.
VII. That if two or more persons are nominated as afore-
said for members to serve in Parliament for the district, the
returning officer shall, at any time between the I5th and 3ist
of May, (Sundays excepted), appoint such times and places
(not exceeding ) as he shall think most convenient
to the electors of the district for the candidates to appear be-
1 In the revised " Charter," " poor-houses, and union workhouses "
were added.
2 The revised " Charter " reads : " but not after that date."
8 The revised " Charter " reads : " at the expiration of every year."
225] APPENDIX B 225
fore them, then and there to explain their views and solicit
the suffrages of the electors.
VIII. That the returning officer see that the places above
described be convenient for the purpose, and that as many such
erections be put up as may be necessary; the same to be paid
for by the returning officer, and charged in his account as
hereinafter mentioned.
IX. That for the purpose of keeping good order and public
decorum, the returning officer either take the chair at such
meeting himself, or appoint a deputy for that purpose.
X. That, provided only one candidate be proposed for a
member of Parliament for the district by the time herein
before mentioned, the returning officer cause notice to be given,
as hereinafter mentioned, that such candidate is elected a
member for the district ; and if only one candidate be proposed
for the returning officer, he shall in like manner be declared
duly elected.
XI. That no other qualification shall be required for mem-
bers to serve in the Commons' House of Parliament, than the
choice of the electors. 1 See Penalties.
ARRANGEMENT FOR ELECTIONS
I. Be it enacted, that a general election of members of
Parliament, for the electoral districts of the United Kingdom,,
take place on the first Monday in June in each year ; and that
all vacancies, by death or otherwise, shall be filled up as nearly
as possible within eighteen days after they occur.
II. That a general election of returning officer for all the
districts take place at the expiration of every three years on
the first Monday in June, and at the same time members of
1 The revised " Charter " provides : " XI. That no other qualification
shall be required than the choice of the electors, according to the pro-
visions of this Act ; providing that no persons, excepting the cabinet
ministers, be eligible to serve in the Commons' House of Parliament
who are in the receipt of any emolument derivable from any place or
places held under Government, or of retired allowances arising there-
from."
226 APPENDIX B [226
Parliament are to be elected; and that all vacancies be filled
up, as nearly as possible, within eighteen days after they occur.
III. That every person who has been registered as aforesaid,
and who has a voter's certificate, shall have the right of voting
in the district in which he has been registered, and in that only,
and of voting for the member of Parliament for that district,
and the returning officer for the district, and for those only.
IV. That, for the purpose of taking the votes of the quali-
fied electors, the parish officer in every parish of the district
(or in every two parishes if united for that purpose) shall
cause proper places to be privided, so as to admit of the
arrangements described in Schedule A, and so constructed
(either permanently or temporarily as they may think proper)
that the votes may be taken with due despatch, and so as to
secure the elector while voting from being inspected by any
other person.
V. That the parish officers of every parish in the district
provide a sufficient number of balloting-boxes, made after a
model described in Schedule B (or made on one plan by per-
sons appointed to make them, as was the case with weights and
measures), and none but such boxes, duly certified, shall be
used.
VI. That immediately preceeding the commencement of the
balloting, each ballot-box shall be opened by the deputy re-
turning officer (or otherwise examined, as the case may be),
in the presence of an agent appointed by each candidate, and
shall then be sealed by him and by the agents of the candidates,
and not again be opened until the balloting has finally closed,
when notice shall be given to such of the agents of the candi-
dates as may then be present to attend to the opening of the
boxes and ascertaining the number of votes for each candidate.
VII. That the deputy returning officer preside in the front
of the ballot-box, and see that the balloting is conducted with
strict impartiality and justice; and that the various clerks,
assistants, and parish constables properly perform their re-
spective duties, and that strict order and decorum be preserved
among the friends of the candidates, as well as among all per-
227] APPENDIX B 227
sons employed in conducting the election; and he is hereby
authorized and empowered to cause all persons to be taken into
custody who interrupt the proceedings of the election, seek to
contravene the provisions of this Act, or fail to obey his
lawful authority.
VIII. That during the time the balloting is going on, two
agents of each candidate may be in the space fronting the
ballot-box, and immediately behind the deputy returning officer,
in order that they may see that the election is fairly conducted ;
such persons to be provided by the deputy returning officer with
cards of admission, and to pass in and out by the entrance as-
signed them.
IX. That the registration clerk of every parish in the dis-
trict, who has been appointed for the purposes of registration,
be at the balloting place, in the station assigned him, previously
to the commencement of the balloting, and see that no person
pass on to the balloting place till he has examined his certifi-
cate and seen that it corresponds with the registration list.
X. That the parish constables and the officers stationed at
the entrance of the balloting place, shall not permit any person
to enter unless he shows his voter's certificate, except the per-
sons employed in conducting the election, or those persons who
have proved the loss of their voter's certificate.
XL That at the end of every three years, 1 or whenever the
returning officer is elected at the same time as the member
for the district, a division shall be made in the balloting places,
and the boxes and balloting so arranged as to ensure the can-
didates the strictest impartiality and justice, by preventing the
voter from giving two votes for either of the candidates.
XII. That on the day of election, the balloting commence at
six o'clock in the forenoon and terminate at six o'clock in the
afternoon of the same day.
XIII. That when any voter's certificate is examined by the
registration clerk, and found to be correct, he shall be allowed
to pass on to the next barrier, where a balloting-ball shall be
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " at the end of every year."
228 APPENDIX B [228
given him by the person appointed for that purpose; he shall
then pass on to the balloting box, and, with all due despatch,
shall put the balloting-ball into the aperture opposite the name i
of the candidate he wishes to vote for, after which he shall,
without delay, leave the room by the door assigned for the
purpose.
XIV. That, at the close of the balloting, the deputy return-
ing officer, in the presence of the agents of the candidates and
other persons present, shall break open the seals of the ballot-
ing-boxes, and ascertain the number for each candidate; he
shall then cause copies of the same to be publicly posted outside
the balloting place; and immediately forward (by a trusty
messenger) a copy of the same, signed by himself and the
agents present, to the returning officer of the district ; he shall
then deliver a similar copy to the registration clerk, who shall
carefully preserve the same, and produce it if necessary.
XV. That the persons employed as assistants, for inspecting
the certificates and attending on the balloting, be paid as here-
inafter mentioned.
XVI. That all the expense of registration, nominations and
election, as aforesaid, together with the salaries of the return-
ing officers, registration clerk, assistants, constables, and such
other persons as may be necessary, as well as the expense of
all balloting places, balloting-boxes, hustings, and other neces-
saries for the purposes of this Act, be paid out of an equitable
district rate, which a District Board, composed of one parochial
officer chosen by each of the parishes in the district, or for any
two or more parishes, if united for the purposes of this Act, are
hereby empowered and commanded to levy on all householders
within the district.
XVIII. That all expenses necessary for the purposes of this
Act incurred within the district be paid by the District Board
as aforesaid, or their treasurer ; that the salaries of all officers
and assistants required for the purposes of this Act, be fixed
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " into the box of the candidate."
229] APPENDIX B 22Oy
and paid by the said Board, according to the expenses and
duties of the various localities. 1
XVIII. That all accounts of receipts and expenditure for
electoral purposes shall be kept distinct, and be audited by
auditors appointed by the District Board, as aforesaid; copies
of which accounts shall be printed for the use of the respective
parishes in the district.
XIX. That all canvassing for members of Parliament, as
well as for returning officers, is hereby declared to be illegal,
and meetings for that purpose during the balloting, on the day
of election, are hereby also declared to be illegal. See
Penalties.
DURATION OF PARLIAMENT
I. Be it enacted, that the Members of the House of Com-
mons, chosen as aforesaid, shall meet on the first Monday in
June in each year, and continue their sittings from time to
time as they may deem it convenient, till the first Monday in
June following, when the next new Parliament shall be chosen ;
they shall be eligible to be re-elected.
II. That during an adjournment they be liable to be called
together by the executive in cases of emergency.
III. That a register be kept of the daily attendance of each
member, which, at the close of the session, shall be printed
as a sessional paper, showing how the members have attended.
PAYMENT OF MEMBERS
I. Be it enacted, that every member of the House of Com-
mons, be entitled, at the close of the session, to a writ of ex-
1 The Committee having considered that, as the duties and expenses
of all these various offices will greatly vary, according to their local-
ities, it will be unwise to have a sum fixed by Parliament and paid out
of the treasury. Believing, moreover, that a just system of representa-
tion will soon purify the local corruptions that exist, they think that
the united expenditure will be much less under the immediate superin-
tendence of the local authorities, when responsible to the people, than
under the management of government and their subordiate agents.
230 APPENDIX B [230
penses on the Treasury, for his legislative duties in the public
service, and shall be paid 500 l per annum. 2
PENALTIES
I. Be it enacted, that if any person cause himself to be
registered in more than one electoral district, and vote in more
than one such district, upon conviction thereof before any two
justices of the peace within either of such districts, he shall
incur for the first offence the penalty of three months' im-
prisonment, and for the second offence twelve months' im-
prisonment.
II. That any person who shall be convicted as aforesaid
of wilfully neglecting to fill up his or her notice within the
proper time, or of leaving out the name of any inmate in his
or her notice, shall for the first offence incur the penalty of
five pounds, and three months' imprisonment for the second
offence. 3
III. That any person who shall be convicted as aforesaid
of forging any name, age, or time of residence on any notice,
shall for the first offence incur the penalty of three months'
imprisonment, and for the second offence be deprived of his
elective rights for five years.*
IV. That any person who shall be convicted as aforesaid,
of having in any manner obtained the certificate of an elector
1 The amount was omitted in the revised " Charter."
2 The Committee understand that the daily payment of members of
Parliament has operated beneficially in Canada ; but they fear that such
mode of payment holds out a motive for lengthening the sessions un-
necessarily; and if the time of sitting is limited by law, it may lead to
too hasty legislation, both of which evils are obviated by an annual
payment.
3 The revised " Charter " reads : " the penalty of one pound for
every name omitted, and for the second offence, incur the penalty of
three months' imprisonment, and be deprived of his electoral rights for
three years."
4 The revised " Charter " reads : " and for the second offence three
months' imprisonment and be deprived of his elective rights for three
years."
231] APPENDIX B
other than his own, and of having voted or attempted to vote
by means of such false certificate, shall for the first offence
incur the penalty of six months' imprisonment, and for the
second offence six months' imprisonment, and be deprived of
his elective rights for five years. 1
V. That any person who shall be convicted, as aforesaid,
of having forged a voter's certificate, or of having forged the
name of any person to any certificate; or having voted or at-
tempted to vote on such forged certificate; knowing such to
have been forged, shall for the first offence incur the penalty
of twelve months' imprisonment, and for the second offence
twelve months' imprisonment, and be deprived of his elective
rights for five years. 2
VI. That any person who shall be convicted as aforesaid,
of having forged, or caused to be forged, the names of any
voters to a requisition nominating a member of Parliament or
a returning officer, shall for the first offence incur the penalty
of three months' imprisonment, and twelve months for the
second offence. 3
VII. That any person who shall be convicted as aforesaid
of bribery, in order to secure his election, shall be subject for
the first offence to incur the penalty of two years' imprison-
ment, and for the second offence shall be imprisoned two
years, and be deprived of his elective rights for five years.
VIII. That any agent of any candidate, or any other per-
son, who shall be convicted, as aforesaid, of bribery at any
election, shall be subject for the first offence to incur the
penalty of twelve months' imprisonment, and for the second
1 The revised " Charter " fixes a penalty of three months for the first
offence, and three months' imprisonment and the loss of elective rights
for three years for the second offence.
8 In the revised " Charter " the term of imprisonment in both cases
is reduced to three months, and the loss of elective rights to three
years.
8 The revised " Charter " reads : " and for the second offence three
months' imprisonment, and to be deprived of his elective rights for
three years."
232 APPENDIX B [232
offence twelve months' imprisonment, and be deprived of his
elective rights for five years.
IX. That any person who shall be convicted, as aforesaid,
of going from house to house, or place to place, to solicit in
any way votes in favor of any member of Parliament x or re-
turning officer, after the nomination as aforesaid, shall for
the first offence incur the penalty of one month's imprisonment,
and for the second offence two months'.
X. That any person who shall be convicted as aforesaid
of calling together, or causing an election meeting to be held
in any district during the day of election, shall for the first
offence incur the penalty of three months' imprisonment, and
for the second offence six months.
XI. That any person who shall be convicted, as aforesaid,
of interrupting the balloting, or the business of the election,
shall incur the penalty of three months' imprisonment for the
first offence, and six months' for the second.
XII. That if any messenger, who may be sent with the
state of the ballot to the returning officer, or with any other
notice, shall wilfully delay the same, or in any way by his
consent or conduct cause the same to be delayed, on conviction
as aforesaid, shall incur the penalty of six months' imprison-
ment.
XIII. That any returning officer who shall be convicted, as
aforesaid, of having neglected to appoint proper officers as
directed by this Act, to see that proper balloting places and
balloting boxes are provided, and to give the notices and per-
form the duties herein required of him, shall forfeit for each
such neglect the sum of 20.
XIV. That if any returning officer be found gulty by the
House of Commons of bribery or corrupt practices in the
execution of any of the duties herein assigned to him, he
shall incur the penalty of twelve months' imprisonment, and
be deprived of his elective rights for five years. 2
1 The revised "Charter" reads: "in favor of any candidate for Par-
liament."
* The italicized words were omitted in the revised "'Charter."
233] APPENDIX B 233
XV. That if any deputy returning officer be convicted, as
aforesaid, of having neglected to perform any of the duties
herein assigned him, he shall forfeit for such neglect three
pounds.
XVI. That if any deputy returning officer be convicted, as
aforesaid, of bribery or corrupt practices in the execution of
the duties of his office, he shall incur the penalty of six months'
imprisonment, and the deprivation of his elective rights for
five years. 1
XVII. That if any registration clerk be convicted, as afore-
said, of having neglected to perform any of the duties herein
assigned him, he shall forfeit for each such neglect five pounds.
XVIII. That if any registration clerk be convicted, as afore-
said, of bribery or corrupt practices in the execution of the
duties of his office, he shall incur the penalty of six months'
imprisonment, and the deprivation of his elective rights for
five years. 2
XIX. That if the parochial officers in any parish neglect or
refuse to comply with any of the provisions of this Act, they
shall forfeit for every such neglect the sum of $o. s
XX. That all fines and penalties incurred under the pro-
visions of this Act, be recoverable before any two justices of
the peace, within the district where the offence shall have
been committed, and in default of payment, the said justices
shall issue their warrant of distress against the goods and
chattels of the offender ; or in default of sufficient distress, he
shall be imprisoned three months. 4
N. B. All Acts and parts of Acts relating to registration,
nominations, or elections, as well as duration of Parliament
and sittings of members, must be repealed. 5
1 The revised " Charter " reads : " three years."
2 The revised " Charter " provides for deprivation of rights for three
years.
3 The revised " Charter " reads : " or, in default of payment, twelve
months' imprisonment."
* The revised " Charter " reads : " shall be imprisoned according to
the provisions of this Act."
5 The revised " Charter " reads : " are hereby repealed."
APPENDIX C
" NATIONAL PETITION
" Unto the Honorable the Commons of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled, the
Petition of the undersigned, their suffering countrymen,
" HUMBLY SHEWETH,
" That we, your petitioners, dwell in a land whose merchants
are noted for enterprise, whose manufacturers are very skil-
ful, and whose workmen are proverbial for their industry.
" The land itself is goodly, the soil rich, and the temperature
wholesome; it is abundantly furnished with the materials of
commerce and trade ; it has numerous and convenient harbors ;
in facility of internal communication it exceeds all others.
" For three-and-twenty years we have enjoyed a profound
peace.
" Yet, with all these elements of national prosperity, and
with every disposition and capacity to take advantage of
them, we find ourselves overwhelmed with public and private
suffering.
" We are bowed down under a load of taxes ; which, not-
withstanding, fall greatly short of the wants of our rulers;
our traders are trembling on the verge of bankruptcy; our
workmen are starving; capital brings no profit, and labor no
remuneration; the home of the artificer is desolate, and the
warehouse of the pawnbroker is full; the workhouse is
crowded, and the manufactory is deserted.
" We have looked on every side, we have searched diligently
in order to find out the causes of a distress so sore and so
long continued.
" We can discover none in nature, or in Providence.
234 [234
2 3 5] APPENDIX C
" Heaven has dealt graciously by the people ; but the fool-
ishness of our rulers has made the goodness of God of none
effect.
' The energies of a mighty kingdom have been wasted in
building up the power of selfish and ignorant men, and its
resources squandered for their aggrandisement.
' The good of a party has been advanced to the sacrifice of
the good of the nation ; the few have governed for the interest
of the few, while the interest of the many has been neglected,
or insolently and tyrannously trampled upon.
" It was the fond expectation of the people that a remedy
for the greater part, if not for the whole, of their grievances,
would be found in the Reform Act of 1832.
" They were taught to regard that Act as a wise means to
a worthy end; as the machinery of an improved legislation,
when the will of the masses would be at length potential.
" They have been bitterly and basely deceived.
" The fruit which looked so fair to the eye has turned to
dust and ashes when gathered.
" The Reform Act has effected a transfer of power from ,
one domineering faction to another, and left the people as^
helpless as before.
" Our slavery has been exchanged for an apprenticeship to
liberty, which has aggravated the painful feeling of our social
degradation, by adding to it the sickening of still deferred hope.
" We come before your Honorable House to tell you, -with
all humility, that this state of things must not be permitted to
continue; that it cannot long continue without very seriously
endangering the stability of the throne and the peace of the
kingdom ; and that if by God's help and all lawful and consti-
tutional appliances an end can be put to it, we are fully re-
solved that it shall speedily come to an end.
" We tell your Honorable House that the capital of the
master must no longer be deprived of its due reward; that
the laws which make food dear, and those which by making
money scarce, make labor cheap, must be abolished ; that taxa-
tion must be made to fall on property, not on industry; that
236 APPENDIX C [236
the good of the many, as it is the only legitimate end, so must
it be the sole study of the Government.
" As a preliminary essential to these and other requisite
changes; as means by which alone the interests of the people
can be effectually vindicated and secured, we demand that
those interests be confided to the keeping of the people.
" When the state calls for defenders, when it calls for
money, no consideration of poverty or ignorance can be
pleaded in refusal or delay of the call.
" Required as we are, universally, to support and obey the
laws, nature and reason entitle us to demand that in the mak-
ing of the laws, the universal voice should be implicitly
listened to.
" We perform the duties of freemen ; we must have the
privileges of freemen.
" WE DEMAND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.
" The suffrage, to be exempt from the corruption of the
wealthy and the violence of the powerful, must be secret.
" The assertion of our right necessarily involves the power
of its uncontrolled exercise.
" WE DEMAND THE BALLOT.
" The connection between the representatives and the people,
to be beneficial, must be intimate.
" The legislative and constituent powers, for correction and
for instruction, ought to be brought into frequent contact.
" Errors which are comparatively light when susceptible of
a speedy popular remedy, may produce the most disastrous
effects when permitted to grow inveterate through years of
compulsory endurance.
" To public safety as well as public confidence, frequent
elections are essential.
" WE DEMAND ANNUAL PARLIAMENTS.
" With power to choose, and freedom in choosing, the range
of our choice must be unrestricted.
" We are compelled, by the existing laws, to take for our
representatives men who are incapable of appreciating our
difficulties, or who have little sympathy with them ; merchants
237] APPENDIX C
who have retired from trade, and no longer feel its harassings ;
proprietors of land who are alike ignorant of its evils and
their cure; lawyers, by whom the honors of the senate are
sought after only as means of obtaining notice in the courts.
" The labors of a representative who is sedulous in the dis-
charge of his duty are numerous and burdensome.
" It is neither just, nor reasonable, nor safe, that they
should continue to be gratuitously rendered.
" We demand that in the future election of members of your
Honorable House the approbation of the constituency shall be
the sole qualification ; and that to every representative so
chosen shall be assigned, out of the public taxes, a fair and
adequate remuneration for the time which he is called upon
to devote to the public service.
" Finally, we would most earnestly impress on your Honor-
able House that this petition has not been dictated by any
idle love of change; that it springs out of no inconsiderate
attachment to fanciful theories; but that it is the result of
much and long deliberation and of convictions, which the
events of each succeeding year tend more and more to
strengthen.
" The management of this mighty kingdom has hitherto
been a subject for contending factions to try their selfish ex-
periments upon.
" We have felt the consequences in our sorrowful experi-
ence short glimmerings of uncertain enjoyment swallowed up
by long and dark seasons of suffering.
"If the self-government of the people should not remove
their distresses, it will at least remove their repinings.
" Universal suffrage will, and it alone can, bring true and ^
lasting peace to the nation ; we firmly believe that it will also
bring prosperity.
" May it, therefore, please your Honorable House to take
this our petition into your most serious consideration; and to
use your utmost endeavors, by all constitutional means, to have
a law passed granting to every male of lawful age, sane mind,
and unconvicted of crime the right of voting for members of
238 APPENDIX C [238
Parliament; and directing all future elections of members of
Parliament to be in the way of secret 'ballot; and ordaining
that the duration of Parliaments so chosen shall in no case
exceed one year; and abolishing all property qualifications in
the members ; and providing for their due remuneration while
in attendance on their Parliamentary duties.
" And your petitioners, &c."
APPENDIX D
A DIALOGUE ON WAR, BETWEEN A " MORAL FORCE " WHIG,
AND A CHARTIST, BY BRONTERRE *
QUID NUNC: Well, Bronterre, so we are going to have
a war at last.
BRONTERRE : To have a war ! You talk of war as if it were
a possession, an acquisition, or a means of acquisition. But
how do you know we are going to have a war ?
QUID NUNC: Why, all the newspapers say so; but you, it
seems, don't like war.
BRONTERRE: Don't like war! Why the deuce should I like
war? Why should I like murder and robbery, for murder
and robbery's sake ; and what is war but murder and robbery ?
But whom are we going to war with?
QUID NUNC: Ah! that is not yet decided on. It may be
with Russia, or with Canada, or with France, or for that
matter, with all three. I only wish it may be with some of
them, and soon: for allow me to say, I think differently of
war from what you do. Wars are often just and necessary;
or why be at the expense of maintaining fleets and armies?
Besides, a war is wanted just now, to give a stir, a fillip, a
new impetus to the country. We never had such prosperity
as during the American and French wars. Can you deny that ?
BRONTERRE: You perfectly astonish me! You who pro-
fess to be a thorough-going liberal, a moral force man,
a march of intellect man, a greatest happiness principle man.
and so forth, you! to talk thus of war, as if it were mere pas-
time, or a mere paltry commercial question of pounds, shill-
1 McDouall's Chartist and Republican Journal, nos. 21 and 22, 1841.
239] 2 39
240 APPENDIX D [ 24O
ings and pence. Hang me, my good friend, if I can at all
comprehend your slaughtering liberality. As for the broken
arms and broken legs the bursting of bombs scattering death
all around the sacking and burning of whole towns and
villages, and ravishing of wives and virgin daughters whole
fields strewn with dead bodies hospitals crowded with agon-
ized and dying wretches, and their hardly less wretched sur-
vivors, exposed to every imaginable hardship and privation
exposed to the war of elements as well as the war of bombs
and muskets and often obliged to feed on cats, rats, and
stinking horse-flesh; and as for these and the like pretty
incidents of war, they evidently form no item of your profit-
and-loss account. You are too liberal, I suppose, or too much
a man of the world to regard trifles of that sort, more es-
pecially as you can afford to keep your own carcase out of the
way of the howitzers. But tell me, my good friend, how it
happens, that you, being a disciple and admirer of Joseph
Hume, make no distinction between fighting against Canada,
and fighting against France or Russia? Do you mean to say
it is quite indifferent to you with whom we go to war, pro-
vided only that we give a " new fillip or impetus to the coun-
try ? " Do you
QUID NUNC: Are you done?
BRONTERRE: Go on.
QUID NUNC: By jingo, Bronterre, if I did not know you so
well, and if you did not use " hell " and the " devil " so often,
I should almost fancy you to be a Quaker, you have such a
pious horror of war. But what use is there railing at what
neither you nor I can prevent? There cannot be war, of
course, without killing and wounding, but as there were wars
before you and I were born, so believe me, there will be wars
after you and I are dead. Now for your question, (and mind
that you answer mine in turn) , you ask why I, a liberal, make
no distinction between fighting against Canada, and fighting
against France and Russia? I do make a distinction. On
political grounds, I should be sorry to see a war against the
241 ] APPENDIX D
Canadian insurgents, because I approve their cause; but I
desire one on my brother's account, who being a saddler and
harness maker, had recently a Government contract for the
supply of saddles and harness for our Canadian troops, and
who is promised another job or two if the war goes on.
Now, having frankly answered your question, do you as
frankly answer me those three: ist. If our Indian possessions
be attacked by Russian intrigue and Russian arms, is it not
your duty, and the duty of all true patriots to assist in de-
fending them, and by war, if necessary? 2nd. If our Mexican
trade be similarly endangered by France, or our Mediterranean
trade by the same power, are we not similarly justified in
defending both against France, and by war, if necessary? 3rd.
If, in both these cases, you disapprove of war, in what case
would you approve of it; or would you, in all possible cases,
and under all circumstances, dissuade the working classes from
participating in war ? No declamation, now ! But straight-
forward answers.
BRONTERRE: Well, then, I shall be as frank as you have
been. To your first question I reply, Let all who have pos-
sessions in India, or all who profit by what you call our
" Indian possessions ", be off to India, and fight a thousand
battles for them, if they like. Let the proprietors of the East
India Stock, let the owners of East India merchantmen, let
those English and Irish merchants and brokers, and writers
and underwriters, and governors and judges, and naval and
military officers, and liver-colored nabobs, and all such other
aristocrats and commercial speculators as have either wrung,
or are now wringing, fortunes out of Hindoo sweat and
misery let all such persons go and fight for our "Indian
possessions ", but let them not mock our degradation by asking
us, working people, to fight along with them, either for our
" possessions " in India, or anywhere else, seeing that we do
not possess a single acre of ground, or any other description
of property in our own country, much less colonies, or " pos-
sessions ", in any other, having been robbed of everything we
242 APPENDIX D [242
ever earned, by the upper and middle classes. Let the parties
I have described go and fight their own battles against Russia,
who, for all we care, may seize " our Indian possessions "
tomorrow if she likes. We, the working people of Great
Britain and Ireland, have no interest whatever in defending
those " possessions ", nor any colonial possessions, nor any
other description of possessions belonging to men who have
robbed us of our political rights and franchises. On the con-
trary, we have an interest in prospective loss or ruin of all
such " possessions ", seeing they are but instruments of power
in the hands of our domestic oppressors. Yes, yes, by all
means, let Russia seize them, if she can, and we shall but
thank God and Russia for the seizure.
To your 2nd question, my reply is I care not how soon
France engrosses or destroys " our Mexican trade ", nor to
what extent her Algerine conquests may operate to the pre-
judice of our commerce in the Levant or elsewhere. I should
rather see the whole of that commerce utterly extinguished,
than see one solitary working man lose a leg or an arm, in
war, to defend it. As commerce is now conducted, it is not
only without profit, but it is absolutely ruinous to the pro-
ductive classes of this country. When England had hardly
any foreign commerce at all, (in the year 1495), an English
laborer's weekly wages would buy 199 pints of wheat, and an
artisan's weekly wages 292 pints of wheat. We have now
more foreign trade than any other three nations in the world,
and, at least one hundred times more of it than we had in
1495 ; yet an English laborer's weekly wages will not bring
him, in this present year, more than 80 or 90 pints of wheat,
and an artisan's hardly 1 50 pints ; not to speak of the difficulty
of getting employment, a difficulty unknown in 1495. Talk
of our foreign trade, indeed ! And fighting for it, too ! Let
those who profit by it go and fight for it. Let the merchants
and shipowners, and big manufacturers and capitalists, who
gain rapid fortunes by it, let these persons go and fight for it.
Or let our aristocracy, to whom it brings tropical fruits, and
oriental perfumes, and rich furs and cashmeres, and pearls
243] APPENDIX D
and pieces, and shells and turtle, and delicious wines, and
cordials, and ivory and lace, and silks and satins, and turkey
carpets, and Chinese ornaments, and birds of paradise, etc., etc.,
let these parties go and fight for it. To us, the working
people, it brings next to nothing in exchange for the forty or
fifty millions' worth of goods we are every year sending
abroad. The only commodities the working class want from
abroad are necessaries, and these are excluded by our Corn
Laws. No, no, Mr. Quid Nunc! If Englishmen are to fight
now-a-days, it must be for something better than you imagine.
But no fighting for " our foreign trade " ! No fighting for it
at any rate until we have obtained our political rights and
reformed our commercial system. I am no enemy of com-
merce, if commerce means what it ought to mean; but perdi-
tion, eternal perdition to the system which, under that name,
is now impoverishing and brutalising the largest and best part
of the human family.
To your 3d question my reply is I have so inveterate and
mortal an antipathy to war (regarding it as but another name
for murder and robbery on a large scale), that only the direst
necessity could induce me to be, under any circumstances, its
advocate; yet, there is one great barbarous Power in Europe
against which I should gladly see a war got up even this
very day.
QUID NUNC: You mean Russia?
BRONTERRE: Softly, my good Sir. I mean a power more
barbarous and barbarising than all other living despotisms put
together, that of Russia included.
QUID NUNC: By the ghost of Nicholas! that is impossible;
but name it.
BRONTERRE: I will neither name it nor describe it. You
being a disciple of Hume and Grote, and I being the very
antipodes of that school, we cannot possibly understand one
another. Were I simply to name it you would laugh out-
right, and to describe it I am incapable. But, as I perceive
244 APPENDIX D [ 244
your curiosity is on the rack I will leave a copy of the last
week's Northern Liberator, and from its leading article you
may possibly be able to form some faint idea of the power I
allude to. Farewell !
The article referred to describes the English ruling classes
as " more despotic than despotism." Enumerating the evil
effects of the Corn Laws, the New Poor Law, the factory
system, the lack of universal suffrage, and the like, Bronterre
concludes his philippic in his characteristic style :
Could despotism do more than fill the country with starva-
tion, poverty, tears, and blood; could despotism do more than
cover it with prisons, police houses, correction houses, peni-
,^ tentiaries, and Poor Law bastiles, where cruelties the most
atrocious and crimes the most unnatural are perpetrated upon
the wretched people by the horrid officials of these dens ; could
despotism the most devilish do more than treat a people thus,
and then systematically refuse to listen to their complaints,
and treat their tears with menaces and their cries with abusive
calamities; in short, could the despotism of Nero, Tiberius,
Helagabalus and Herod, joined in one, do more than invert
and remorselessly carry into execution such a system as now
exists in England? . . . Men of England, and of Scotland,
and of Ireland! will you ever again shed your blood in de-
fence of such a system? If you do, you deserve more than
you have already suffered. But I wrong you by the question.
I forget, at the moment, that by recent demonstrations in favor
of Chartism you had virtually sealed the doom of that system.
Your long and bloody anti- Jacobin war against France was
the last you will ever engage in to uphold exclusive govern-
ment. Henceforth if you go to war, it shall be to fight for
yourselves. No more anti- Jacobin wars! No coalition min-
istry! No Tory-strong government! That's the ticket.
INDEX
Aitken, William, 138
Ashley, Lord, 70, 71, 73
Attwood, Thomas, leader of Birming-
ham Political Union, 36, 120; his
view of the Reform Act, 37; opposi-
tion to New Poor Law, 43, 44; life
and views, 120, 121, 180, 182; his
plan of a sacred month, 139; and the
National Petition, 153, 165, 179, 180,
183; and the Manifesto, 170
Babeuf, 113, 118, 119
Bamford, Samuel, 31
Bank of England, 173
Bedchamber Plot, 40
Benbow, William, 205
Benefit clubs, 32, 75
Beniowski, Major, 151
Bentham, Jeremy, 63
Birmingham Currency School, 120
Birmingham Journal, The, 153
Birmingham Political Union, 36, 91, 92,
120, 139, 142, 153
Birmingham Town Council on the Bull
Ring attack, 186
Botanical meetings, 32
Bo wring, Dr., 91
Boycott, 170
British Association for Promoting Co-
operative Knowledge, 102
Bronterre on the Reform Bill, 37; on
the New Poor Law, 50, 51, 69; on
universal suffrage, 81, 82, 84, 114;
on the petition of the London Work-
ingmen's Association, 89, 90; on
theoretical differences, 101 ; and
O'Connor, 107, 108; life and views,
1 1 2- 1 20, 123: Nationalization of
land, 115; and Lovett, 114, 120; and
Harney, 133, 159; on previous peti-
tions, 82, 154; and the General Con-
vention, 157: on physical force, 158,
172; at public demonstrations, 172,
173; on the sacred month, 183, 185;
sentenced, 205
Brougham, Lord, on the Whig rule, 39,
40; and the New Poor Law, 52, 53,
141; on behalf of Lovett, 178; on
behalf of John Frost, 203
245]
Bull Ring, 175, 176, 1 86, 187; riot*
176, 178, 1 88, 189
Buonarroti, 113, 118, 119
Burdett, Francis, 26, 120
Burke, Edmund, 24, 25, 28
Byron, 140
Campbell, John, Attorney-General, 202,
203
Carlyle, Thomas, 21, 30, 54, 55, 206
Carpenter's Political Pamphlets, 113
Cartwright, John, 23, 24
Central Committee of radical unions,
106
Chamber of Commerce, 80
Child Labor, 73, 74, in
Cleave, John, 84, 89, 91, 158
Cobbett, William, 28-31; opposi-
tion to New Poor Law, 43, 50, 53,
66, 67; maltreated, 76; on the issue
of the working class, 81; and Att-
wood, 121 ; and Frost, 137
Collective bargaining, right of, 77
Collins, John, 177, 186-9
Combination Laws, 75
Communism, 109
Consolidated National Trades Union,
104
Constitutional Society, 23
Cooper, Thomas, 107
Corn Laws, 27, 34, 63, 182
Crime, 66, 67, 74
Cromwell, 22
Crawford, W. S. 90, 91, 95
Crown and Anchor meetings, 90, 158,
164
Demonstrations, 32, 139, 140, 142, 143,
146-149, 153, 172, 173, 189
Destructive, The, 113
Disraeli on the Whig rule, 40; opposi-
tion to New Poor Law, 43; on the
National Petition, 179, 182, 183
Distress, 28, 55-69, 93, 98, 138
Douglas, R. K., 153
Duke of Richmond, 23-6
Dundee Advertiser, The, 150
Dwelling conditions, 57, 58, 66
245
246 .
Edgeworth, Lowell, 112
Elliot, Ebenezer, 59
Emigration, 56, 57
Fennell, Alired Owen, 175
Fielden, John, 91, 147
Foreign Affairs Committee, 138
Fowle, F. W. 47
Fox, Charles James, 24, 27
French Encyclopedists, 23
French Revolution, 24, 25, 33, 134, 153,
157, 181, 193
Frost, John, life and views, 136-137;
and the Crown and Anchor meeting,
158, 164; and Lord Russell, 162-165;
and public demonstrations, 173; on
the sacred month, 183; seeking miti-
gation of Vincent's treatment, 190,
191; and the Newport Riot, 191, 192,
195-7, 199; last public letter, 192-
194; trial and sentence, 200, 20 1,
204; pardoned, 204
General Convention of the Industrious
Classes, 143-186
General Council of the Convention, 185
General strike, see sacred month
Godwin, William, 77
Goulburn, Sergeant, 187, 188
Grand National Consolidated Trades
Union, 80
Gray, John. 77
Habeas corpus act, 27, 3 1
Hall, Charles, 77
Hampden Club, 28, 30, 31
Harcourt, Maurice, 47
Hardy, Thomas, 26
H a r n e y , George Julian, prominent
member of trade unions, 84; his life
and views, 132-134; at torch light
meetings, 148; and the General Con-
vention, 157; at the Crown and
Anchor meeting, 158; on Chartist
elections, 159, 160; on the ulterior
measures, 170; at public demonstra-
tions, 172; in the riot- week, 178
Harvey, D. W. 91
Hetherington, Henry, 84, 87, 89, 91,
95, 121, 158
Hindley, Charles, 91
Hodgskin, Thomas, 77
Holloway Head, 178
Holyoake, George Jacob, 105, 108, 139,
150, 161, 178
House of Lords, reform of, 91
INDEX
Hume, Joseph, 90
Hunt, Henry, 32, 35, 36, 76, 112
Industrial Revolution, 74
Irish famine, 55; emigration, 56
Jacobinism, 26, in
Jones, William, 195, 199, 201, 204
Kay, James P., 47, 60, 72
Labor legislation, 70, 71
Leader, J. T., 90, 91, 204)
Levellers, 22, 25
Lock-outs, 80
London Cooperative Trading Associa-
tion, 102
London Corresponding Society, 26-27
London Democrat, The, 133, 151, 152,
159. 17
London Democratic Association, no,
ill, 133, 157
London Mercury, The, 113
London Times, The, 49
London Working Men's Association,
84, 88, 89, 98, 99, 104, 106, no, 120,
121, 122, 137, 143, 156; addresses,
86, 87, 91, 92-95, loo, 129, 145; pe-
tition for new Constitution, 89; Crown
and Anchor meeting, 90; and the
committee of twelve, 91, 95; and the
Chartist agitation, 97, 135, 140; and
Stephens, 129; influence on the wane,
146
Lovett, William, prominent member of
trade unions, 84; on the London
Working Men's Association, 86; sec-
retary of the L. W. M. A., 87; author
of the petition of the L. W. M. A., 90;
at theCrown and Anchor meeting, 90,
91; correspondence with Lord Rus-
sell, 92, 93; author of the People's
Charter, 95, 104; life and views, 102-
105; and O'Connor, 107, 192; and
Bronterre, 114; and Hetherington,
121 ; and Stephens, 122, 129; his res-
olution at the Palace Yard meeting,
145; and the General Convention,
156-158; secretary of the General
Convention, 156; on the Manifesto,
170; his arrest, 177; his trial and
defence, 186, 187, 188; his imprison-
ment, 189, 190; on the Newport Riot,
191, 192
McDouall, 176
Macerone, Colonel, 151
INDEX
Manchester Massacre, 32
Manifesto of the General Convention,
166-168, 170
Marat, in, 133, 156
Marsden, Richard, 156
Melbourne, Lord, 36, 61, 203
Metropolitan police, 176, 179, 187
Metropolitan Political Union, 103
Mill, James, 47
Monetary reform, see Attwood
Moore, R., 91
Moral force, 99, 120, 122, 142, 153, (see
also Lovett)
Morning Chronicle, 1 88
Mortality, 65, 66
National Petition, 143, 145, 153-159,
165, 174, 179-183
National Political Union, 33, 36
National Reformer, The, see Bronterre
National Union of the Working Classes,
35. i4
Nationalization of land, 101, 115
Newport Riot, 190-192, 194-199, 206
North, Lord, 24
Northern Star, The, 107, 108, 112, 113,
IS*
O'Brien, see Bronterre
O'Connell, Daniel, on the New Poor
Law, 44; and the People's Charter,
qo, 91, 95; and O'Connor, 106
O'Connor, Feargus, on the New Poor
Law and machinery, 51, 52, no; on
Chartism, 70; life and views, 105-
112, 122; and Lovett, 107, 192; and
Bronterre, 114; and Attwood, 121;
and Stephens, 123; and Harney, 133;
speeches, 141-144; and the London
Working Men's Association, 143; at
public demonstrations, 146-148, 172-
3; and the General Convention, 158,
166, 172; on the sacred month, 185;
and the Newport Riot, 192; sen-
tenced, 205
O'Connor, Roderick, 105, 107
O'Connor, Roger, 105
Oastler, Richard, 70, 123
Operative, The, 113
Owen, Robert, 77, 78, 80, 103, 118
Owenism, 78, 84
Paine, Thomas, 26-7, 137
Palace Yard demostration, 143, 149
People's Charter, publication of, 95, 97
Phillips, Thomas, mayor of Newport,
197, 200
247
Physical force, 100, in, 123, 132, 142-
4, 149, 152, 156, 170, 178. (See also
Harney and Stephens)
Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, 22
Pitt, William, 22, 24, 26, 27
Place, Francis, 36, 76, 78, 95, 102, 104,
106, 107, 123, 189
Pollack, Frederick, 203
Poor Law, New, 39, 40, 43, 55, 66, 68,
69, 81, 106, no, in, 123, 126, 129,
138, 141, 147, 153, 193
Poor Law, Old, 40, 42
Poor relief, 54, 68
Poor Man's Guardian, The, 35, 1 13, 1 21
Prentice, Archibald, 61
Prorogation of Parliament, 91, 159
Reform bills, 22, 23, 24, 27
Reform Bill of 1832, 33, 35-37, 63, 92,
120, 175
Ricardo, 34
Riot Act, 176
Riots, 28, 31, 176, 202. (See Bull Ring
and Newport Riot)
Robespierre, ill, 113, 119
Roebuck, J. A., 72, 90, 91, 95, 107
fatten House of Commons, The, 88, 89
Rotundism, 84, 104
Rousseau, 23
Russell, Lord John, hero of Reform
Bill, 36, 39; "Finality Jack," 39;
letter to, on children in the work-
house, 48; correspondence with
Lovett, 92, 93; on the torch -light
demonstrations, 149; and John Frost
162-5; on tne General Convention,
165; his letter to magistrates, 166;
on the National Petition, 180-182
St. Just, 1 1 1
Sacred Month, 139, 142, 169, 173, 183-5
Sadler, Michael Thomas, 70
Scott, Walter, 112
Seligman, Edwin R. A., 9, 76, 78
Senior, Nassau W., on the old Poor
Laws, 41 ; on dwelling conditions,
66; on hours of labor, 71, 72, 74; on
labor combinations, 79
Shell, George, 199
Shelley, 32, 33
Short Time Committee, 71
Simultaneous meeting!, 168, 169, 172,
J?3 '75
"Six Acts" of 1819,75
" Six points," 21, 24, 90, 91, 138, 148
Smith, Adam, 56, 75
248
INDEX
Smith, Sydney, 34, 38
Socialism, 84, 109, 133
Socialists, 71, 77
Society for Constitutional Information,
24
Society of the Friends of the People, 23
Society of the Supporters of the Bill of
Rights, 22
Southern Star, 113
Spencean Philanthropists, 31
Spies, 26, 161
Stanhope, 23
Stephens, J. R., 122, 146, 148, 149;
life and views, 123-133; indictment,
165; sentenced, 189
Taylor, Dr., 176, 177
Ten Hour Movement, 71
Terrorism, see Physical force
Thistlewood, 33
Thompson, Colonel T. P., 65, 90, 91,
95
Thompson, William, 77
Tindal, Nicholas, Chief Justice, 200,
202
Torch-light processions, 148-150
Tories, opposed to New Poor Law, 53;
attitude towards labor legislation, 70,
71; defeated Liberals, 95; and Ro-
tundists, 104; and Whigs, 8, 166,
1 68; and the National Petition, 179
Trade Unionism, 75, 77, 78, 80, 84, 104
Twopenny Despatch, 89, 113, 121
Ulterior measures, 156, 168, 169, 170,
'73. 75
Underground societies, 138
Unemployment, see Distress
United Irishman, 105, 107
Victoria, Queen, 92, 140, 187, 203
Vincent, Henry, prominent member of
trade unions, 84; and the London
Working Men's Association, 89, 135;
member of committee of twelve, 91;
as an orator, 135, 142; in the West,
147; organizer of female associations,
147, 150; in Wales, 147, 150, 160;
arrest, 165; imprisonment, 190; and
Welsh rising, 191
Watson, J., 91
Wages, 60, 64
Wakley, T., 91
Welsh Chartists, see Newport Riot and
Vincent
Westgate Hotel, 197-9, 204
Western Vindicator, The, 200
Wheat, price of, 28, 63
Whigs, 8, 23-4, 34-46, pledges, 63, 142;
denunciation of, 69, 92, 166, 168, 179;
hostile attitude towards labor legisla-
tion, 70,71; opposition to Liberals,
95; and Rotundists, 104; and the
National Petition, 179, 180; victory
of, 206
William IV, 91
Williams, Zephaniah, 195, 199, 201, 204
Wilson, William Carus, 49
Woman labor, 73
Workhouse-test, 42
VITA
THE author of this monograph was born May n, 1882,
in Volhynia, Russia. The son of a Hebrew scholar, he was
taught Hebrew, Talmud and the rabbinical literature up
to the age of fourteen. He was then allowed to take up a
course in a Russian classical gymnasium. In the Spring of
1903, he emigrated to Switzerland and from there, in
September of the same year, to the United States. In 1906
he was admitted as a senior student to Columbia College
and, upon his graduation in 1907 with the degree of A. B.,
registered under the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia
University, choosing Economics as a major and Sociology
and Philosophy as minors. He received the degree of A.M.
in 1908. In 1907 and 1908 he was awarded University
Scholarships in the Department of Economics. In his post-
graduate studies he took courses with Professors Seligman,
John B. Clark, Seager, Giddings, H. L. Moore, Simkhovitch,
Mussey, Dewey, Montague, and others and attended the
Seminar in Economics. In 1909 he was employed by the
National Monetary Commission. From October, 1910, to
February, 1912, he was connected with the work of the
Tariff Board in Washington, D. C. He then held the
position of Expert Special Agent with the New York State
Department of Labor until September, 1914, when he ac-
cepted the office of general secretary and executive director
af a fraternal death and sick benefit insurance corporation.
249
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