CHAPTER XXVII.
Defects of the Reform Bill—Origin of Chartism—The "People's Charter" Promulgated in 1838—The Riots of 1839 and 1842—The Vengeance of the Government falls on O'Connor, Lovett, Collins, Vincent, J. B. O'Brien, and Cooper—The Nonconformist Newspaper Established by Mr. Miall—Mr. Sturge—Organization of the Complete Suffrage Union—Character of the Chartists.
The old-fashioned Tories declare that the Reform Bill inscribed "Ichabod" on the British Constitution. Though it ushered in a better era, an experience of seventeen years has proved that power has not yet departed from the privileged few.
A few examples of its defects are given. For instance, Glasgow, with a population of 270,000, Manchester of 200,000, Birmingham of 160,000, Leeds of 130,000, were allowed two members of Parliament each; while Cricklade, with a population of 1,600, Shoreham of 1,500, Retford of 2,400, Wenlock of 2,400, were also allowed two members each. Finsbury, Lambeth, Mary-le-bone, and Tower Hamlets, with an aggregate population of 1,100,000, had two members each, whose eight votes were balanced by the members from Huntingdon, Marlborough, Dorchester, and Truro, with an aggregate population of 12,500. The entire metropolis, with more than 2,000,000 of inhabitants, received sixteen members, whose power in the House was nullified by the sixteen members of eight boroughs, with a total population of less than 24,000. Fifteen of the principal cities and towns in the kingdom, containing 3,500,000 people and 160,000 electors, were allowed thirty-two representatives, while the same number was assigned to twenty-seven boroughs, containing 170,000 inhabitants and 6,900 electors.
The inequalities in the distribution of the suffrage are not less striking. The number of males in the United Kingdom, of the age of twenty-one years and upward, is about 7,000,000. The number of registered electors is a little over 1,000,000. Thus, but about one-seventh of the adult males is entitled to vote. The suffrage is most unequally distributed amongst this one-seventh. The House of Commons consists of 658 members, which gives an average of full 1,500 electors to each member. But, 15 members are returned by less than 200 electors each—50 by less than 300 each—100 by less than 500 each—and so on, till careful calculations make it apparent that a clear majority of the House is returned by 200,000 electors, or one-fifth of the entire body, which body consists of only one-seventh of the adult male population.
In the distribution of members, reference was had to the supremacy of the landlord interest. Thus, South Lancashire, which swarms with a manufacturing population of more than 1,000,000, and has 25,000 electors, was balanced by aristocratic Lymington, with 3,300 inhabitants, and 150 electors, whom any lord can buy. West Yorkshire, the seat of the woolen interest, with 1,200,000 people and 40,000 electors, was given the same weight in the House as any two of numerous boroughs, with a joint population of 6,000, whose 400 or 500 electors were the cowering vassals of some great landed proprietor. In Lancashire and Yorkshire, whose skies are blackened with the smoke of their manufactories, there is one member for every 55,000 inhabitants, while rural Rutland has one for every 9,000, and corn-growing Dorset one for every 13,000. Manchester and Salford, the center of the cotton interest, with 300,000 people, send three members, and agricultural Buckinghamshire, with less than half that amount of population, sends eleven.[17]
The usual complexion of the House is alike caused by and aggravates the evils that spring from unequal representation and partially distributed suffrage. In the House previous to the present, there were 205 members closely related to the peers of the realm; 153 officers of the army and navy; 63 placemen; and 247 patrons of church livings. Of the 658 members, there were only about 200 who had not either title, office, place, pension, or patronage. And the same is substantially true of the present House.
These details, which might be multiplied indefinitely, will enable a very ordinary arithmetician to answer the question, which the Chartists have rung in the public ear of England: "Does the Reformed House of Commons represent the people of Great Britain, and Ireland?"
The meager fruits brought forth by the Parliament elected under the reform bill, convinced a large mass of the enlightened working men, that Labor must look for relief to a radical change in the constitution of the popular branch of the legislature. They agreed upon a fundamental law for Parliamentary reform, to which they gave the name of "The People's Charter." Hence their name, "Chartists." The Charter, having been adopted by large numbers of Workingmen's Associations throughout the country, was ratified and promulgated in August, 1838, by 200,000 persons of the laboring classes, assembled from all parts of the kingdom, at Birmingham.
The outline of the Charter was mainly the work of Mr. William Lovett, a London cabinet-maker, one of God's nobility. It was perfected by Messrs. D. O'Connell, Hume, Bowring, Roebuck, Wakely, P. Thompson, and Crawford, then members of the Commons, who prepared the draft of an act of Parliament embodying its provisions. The leading points in the Charter are six, viz: Universal Suffrage, Voting by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Equal Electoral Districts, No Property Qualification of Representatives, and Payment of Members for their Services. It is remarkable that these identical reforms were proposed forty years before, in an elaborate report by a committee of the "Friends of the People," of which the illustrious Charles James Fox was chairman.
And this is the essence of Chartism. Its principles, which fall like household words on the American ear, filled the heart of British aristocracy with dismay and wrath. Nor were the terror and indignation abated when their promulgation was followed by laying the "Great Petition," in favor of the People's Charter, bearing one million two hundred thousand names, on the tables of the House of Commons.
The Chartists were chiefly laboring men, dwelling in cities and towns. They justly expected countenance and aid from liberal Whigs who had protested against the aristocratic features of the Reform bill. They received neither. The cause of national representation was regarded as only the poor man's question, and as such it was left exclusively to the poor. The poor, thus abandoned to fight the battle single-handed and alone, nourished a fatal resentment against all above them. Far-sighted and pure-minded men among them urged the superiority of intellectual and moral means over brute force, in promoting their objects. Keen-eyed demagogues were not wanting to fan their resentment, and remind them that in their swart arms dwelt the physical strength of the country. Deprived of political power, (for the great majority were non-voters,) the mass lent a greedy ear to these wily counselors. Chartism being a knife-and-fork question to the laboring poor, starving men were easily induced to seize the pike and the torch under a promise of bread. Preparations for a rising were made. It was attempted in 1839. A few riots occurred, a few houses were gutted, a few wheat-ricks fired, a few cart-mares shot, and some human blood shed. The vengeance of the Government descended upon the deluded men—the military crushed the embryo insurrection—the courts imprisoned and transported the leaders—the noble principles of the Charter were involved in the stigma which fastened upon a portion of its advocates—the middle classes, who might have averted the disaster, were, for a season, frightened into a renunciation of the principles they had maintained during the discussions on the Reform Bill. A similar outbreak, stimulated by similar causes, and followed by similar consequences, occurred in 1842.
Governmental vengeance fell alike on the men of peace and the men of violence. Feargus O'Connor, a hot-headed bully and coward, who had stigmatized the pacific doctrines as "moral-force humbuggery," was sent to York Castle. William Lovett and John Collins, two noble specimens of the working classes, spent a year in Warwick jail. The young and brilliant Henry Vincent was lodged in a dungeon two years, for making the Welsh mountaineers "discontented with the Government." J. Bronterre O'Brien, a legitimate son of the land of Emmett, suffered twelve months in Lancaster Castle. Thomas Cooper, who dropped the awl, took up the pen, and wrote the celebrated poem, "The Purgatory of Suicides," was imprisoned two years and a quarter in Stafford jail. Other less conspicuous persons were incarcerated at home, or banished beyond the seas.
The election of 1841 returned a large Tory majority to Parliament, dissolved old party connections, and drove the radical reformers of the middle and working classes once more together in opposition to the common foe. The Nonconformist, a weekly newspaper, just then established in London, and conducted with marked ability by Mr. Edward Miall, took up the subject of a reform in Parliament, in a series of articles which powerfully argued the right of the working men to the franchise, and the necessity of an equalization of the representation. These essays were subsequently printed in a pamphlet and widely circulated. Their calm and cogent reasonings, their hearty and fervid appeals, arrested general attention. Mr. Miall gave to his scheme the name of "Complete Suffrage." It only remained for a practical man like Joseph Sturge to give to what was so far but a happy theory, the form and vitality of an organized movement.
After some preliminary meetings, Mr. Sturge, who had recently returned to England from an investigation of the electoral system of the United States, assembled a National Convention, or Conference, at Birmingham, in April, 1842, composed of delegates favorable to the main points of the "People's Charter," but opposed on principle and policy to all resort to intimidation or force in the accomplishment of their objects. Many of the best and brightest minds of the kingdom were present. During its four days' session, the debates were animated; the feeling earnest and warm; but the excitement glowed rather than flamed. The Chartists were represented by Lovett, O'Connor, Collins, Vincent, and O'Brien, while Sturge, Miall, Rev. Thomas Spencer, and Rev. Dr. Ritchie, represented the Complete Suffragists. After full discussion, the six points of the Charter were adopted, and an association, called "The National Complete Suffrage Union," was formed.
The cause was now on a good foundation, and under wise control. The same month of the Conference, Mr. Sharman Crawford, a judicious friend of the non-voting millions, divided the House of Commons on a motion in favor of complete suffrage. Among the sixty-nine members who voted with him were Messrs. Bowring, Cobden, Duncombe, Gibson, Napier, O'Connell, Roebuck, Strickland, Villiers, Wakely, and Ward, all of whom held prominent positions in the House.
It would transcend my limits to detail the progress of the Complete Suffrage movement since its organization in 1842. During these seven years of Corn-Law and Irish agitation, so unfavorable for fixing the public mind upon the question of an organic reform in Parliament, the Complete Suffragists have discussed their great proposition before the people, have returned several able advocates to the House, deepened the conviction that a thorough reörganization of the Legislature is a sine qua non to future radical reforms, and aroused a determination to place that subject on the Parliamentary "cards" so soon as matters that now occupy them are disposed of.
In the mean time, the Chartists proper have increased their numbers, as their Monster Petition of many millions, presented to Parliament during the last year, proves; and with the increase of numbers has come an abatement of their belligerent spirit, as their law-abiding conduct on that occasion shows; thus inspiring the hope of all good men, that when the great battle between the laboring many and the governing few shall be fought, Chartists and Suffragists will unite in a common struggle to make the Commons House of Parliament the representative of the common people of the realm.[18]
It would be doing injustice to some of the clearest-headed men in England to suppose that they for one moment regard the most radical reform in Parliament as the final remedy for the enormous evils that make one-eighth of the people of the realm absolute paupers, and one-fourth of the entire population paupers in all but the name. They look to the establishment of such a reform only as affording to the depressed classes an essential means for remodeling, on a basis of equality, the whole Governmental structure. They seek it, not as an end, but as an instrument to attain an end—a John the Baptist to herald the times and the men that shall make the crooked straight, the rough smooth, the inequalities level.
Scarcely any body of men have been regarded with more unintelligent horror, or subjected to more unreasonable denunciation, by the higher classes of England, than the Chartists. And yet, no section of British reformers are more worthy of admiration for the principles they avow, or of sympathy for the persecutions they have endured. It has been my good fortune to make the acquaintance of several of these men, to attend some of their meetings, and read many of their publications. I have never taken by the hand nobler members of the human family, nor listened to speeches that glowed with more eloquent devotion to the rights of man, nor perused papers more thoroughly imbued with the democratic sentiment, and which inculcated lofty principles in a style of more calm and lucid reasoning. Their publications dwell with emphasis upon the blessings of peace, the superiority of moral over physical means in the attainment of ends, the importance of education, of industry and economy, of self-reliance without arrogance, and of an independent and manly bearing in their intercourse with the world. Bad men are among them, who have often imposed upon their ignorance or inflamed their passions, goading them to violence and crime. But the mass are as far removed from the state of barbarism and brutality, which their traducers have assigned to them, as they are from the utterance of truth or the practice of charity.
It stirs the blood not a little to see such men as Lovett, Collins, Vincent, O'Brien, and Cooper, suffer through long years, in dark and filthy cells, for teaching the people to be "discontented" with a Government that first denies them any voice in its administration, and then taxes them down to the starvation point, that it may pamper a bloated priesthood and an overbearing aristocracy at home, and build navies and equip armies to scour the seas and scourge unoffending tribes in the uttermost parts of the earth. However, those who know John Bull best say the only way to manage him is to mingle a little threatening with a good deal of blarney, when the conceited old bully, after a fearful amount of bluster, will yield a point—as witness Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, and Corn-Law Repeal. Perhaps these pacific counselors are right; though a James Otis, or a Patrick Henry, with the cry of "No taxation without representation!" on their lips, would recommend that the towers of Windsor, and the minarets of Lambeth, be pitched instantly into the Thames.
A more particular notice of some of the persons who have acted prominent parts in the transactions above detailed, will be given in the next chapter.