The Paper Cap: A Story of Love and Labor

by Amelia E. Barr

They generally went back to the dramatic rejection of the first Reform Bill, on the sixteenth of August, A. D. 1831. Parliament met again on the sixth of December, and on the twelfth of December Lord John Russell brought in a second Reform Bill. It was slightly changed but in all important matters the same as the first Bill. On the eighteenth of December, Parliament adjourned for the Christmas holidays but met again on January the seventeenth, A. D. 1832. This Parliament passed The Bill ready for the House of Lords on March the twenty-sixth, just two days after his own arrival in London. He had made a point of seeing this ceremony, for a very large attendance of peeresses and strangers of mark were expected to be present. He found the space allotted to strangers crowded, but he also found a good standing place and from it saw the Lord Chancellor Brougham take his seat at the Woolsack and the Deputy usher of the Black Rod announce—“A message from the Commons.” Then he saw the doors thrown open and Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell, bearing the Reform Bill in their hands, appeared at the head of one hundred members of Parliament, and Russell delivered the Bill to the Lord Chancellor, saying:

“My Lords, the House of Commons have passed an act to amend the representation of England and Wales to which they desire your Lordship’s concurrence.”

The great question now was, whether the Lords would concur or not, for if the populace were ready to back their determination with their lives the Lords were in the same temper though they knew well enough that the one stubborn cry of the whole country was “The Bill, The Bill, and nothing but The Bill.” They knew also that The House of Commons sympathized with the suffering of the poor and the terrible deeds of the French Revolution were still green in their memories. Yet they dared to argue and dispute and put off the men standing in dangerous patience, waiting, waiting day and night for justice.

During the past week, also, all thoughtful persons had been conscious of a change in these waiting men, a change which Lord Grey told The Commons was “to be regarded as ominous and dangerous.” It was, that the crowds everywhere had become portentously silent. They no longer discussed the subject. They had no more to say. They were now full ready to do all their powerful Political Unions threatened. These unions were prepared to march to London and bivouac in its squares. The powerful Birmingham Union declared “two hundred thousand men were ready to leave their forges and shops, encamp on Hampstead Heath, and if The Bill did not speedily become a law, compel that event to take place.”

At this time also, violent expressions had become common in The House. Members spoke with the utmost freedom about a fighting duke, and a military government, and the Duke of Wellington was said to have pledged himself to the King to quiet the country, if necessary, in ten days. It was also asserted that, at his orders, the Scots Greys had been employed on a previous Sabbath Day in grinding their swords.

“As if,” cried the press and the people as with one voice, “as if Englishmen could be kept from their purpose by swords and bayonets.”

Throughout this period the King was obstinate and ill-tempered and so ignorant about the character of the people he had been set to govern, as to think their sudden quietness predicted their submission; though Lord Grey had particularly warned the Lords against this false idea. “Truly,” he virtually said, “we have not heard for a few days the thrilling outcries of a desperate crowd of angry suffering men but I warn you, my Lords, to take no comfort on that account.”

When Englishmen are ready to fight they don’t scream about it but their weapons are drawn and they are prepared to strike. The great body of Englishmen did not consider these poor, unlettered men were any less English men than themselves. They knew them to be of the same class and kidney, as fought with Cromwell, Drake, and Nelson, and which made Wellington victorious; they knew that neither the men who wielded the big hammers at the forges of Birmingham, nor the men who controlled steam, nor the men that brought up coal from a thousand feet below sight and light, nor yet the men who plowed the ground would hesitate much longer to fight for their rights; for there was not now a man in all England who was not determined to be a recognized citizen of the land he loved and was always ready to fight for.

Sentiments like these could not fall from the lips of such men as Grey and Brougham without having great influence; and in the soul of Antony Annis they were echoing with potent effect, whatever he did, or wherever he went. For he was really a man of fine moral and intellectual nature, who had lived too much in his own easy, simple surroundings, and who had been suddenly and roughly awakened to great public events. And, oh, how quickly they were rubbing the rust from his unused talents and feelings!

He missed his wife’s company much at this time, for when he was in The House he could not have it and when he got back to the hotel Annie was seldom there. She was with Jane or Josepha, and her interests at this period were completely centered on her daughter Katherine. So Annis, especially during the last week, had felt himself neglected; he could get his wife to talk of nothing but Katherine, and her dress, and the preparations Jane was making to honor the beauty’s début.