Mr. John Morley wrote an article in the Fortnightly on Mr. Chamberlain, which first gave him a position before the public. Not even in Birmingham could any one see adequate justification for it. But Mr. Morley proved right, and had discerned a capacity which had not then unfolded itself.
About that time Mr. Chamberlain made some remark on Mr. Disraeli in the Birmingham Town Council, which did not amount to much. Mr. Disraeli did the municipal speaker the honour to call him to account. Had any one in like case called Mr. Disraeli to account he would have said in his airy and evasive way: "Every public speaker is liable to the misconstruction of unheeding and ill-hearing reporters, and he could not be expected to answer for them." Mr. Chamberlain gave no sign of any such adroitness which was ready to his hand, but wrote what read like an abject apology. He did not dare to say to Mr. Disraeli "What I have said I have said."
Mr. Jesse Collings was one of the minor merchants of Birmingham. He came originally from Exeter, and was held in great respect for his earnest Liberalism, and for promoting the education of the people—though he was himself a sectarian pure and simple, with little, if any, secularity in him. When he came to be Mayor, the Tories of Birmingham—who had not then and never had any man of mark or genius among them—were capable of outrage. It was the only art they knew. When Mr. Collings presided one day at a public meeting in the town hall, they drew an ass's head on a large sheet of pasteboard, and hung it over the clock in front of the chair labelled—the "Portrait of the Mayor." For two hours they made all business impossible by shouting "Mr. Mayor, look at your portrait." At length the Mayor took courage and ordered the Chief Constable—Major Bond—to remove the picture placard and the ringleader of the disturbance. This was construed as an insult, which Mr. Kynersley, the principal Tory magistrate, supported. I was one who urged Mr. Collings to apply to the bench for a case, that it might be determined in the higher courts whether a mayor had legal power to preserve order at a public meeting. The case was refused by Mr. Kynersley. This was the treatment of the Right Honourable Jesse Collings for being a Liberal. Is there a stranger sight in England than seeing this Liberal mayor dressed in Tory livery, fetching and carrying in Parliament for the intolerant party which treated him with such ostentatious indignity? What must be his sense of humiliation under his new convictions? Equally tragic and unforeseen must be the humiliation of the Tory party in Parliament who used to boast of their pride, their dignity, and self-respect at having to accept as a leader the great "caucus-monger," as they called Mr. Chamberlain, who was the object of their epithets and hatred during so many sessions. The tragedy of political convictions can no further go. Far be it from me to deny that Mr. Collings and Mr. Chamberlain have not honest reasons for their strange professions, though I do not understand them. Like gravitation, I admit the fact, though its cause is inscrutable. In politics motives are as though they were not. They cannot be taken into account. If alleged, they admit of no proof. Resentment rages among the partisans of the accused and the tendency of their principles, which it is alone instructive to discuss, is lost sight of. It is common for partisans to disparage those who have left their ranks—forgetting that conviction depends upon evidence. Those who leave a party may be as honest as those who remain. Whoever has rendered aid to liberty and gone over to the other side should be honoured for what he has done. He who has once stood upon the side of humanity deserves more respectful treatment than he who never took the part of the right. Mr. Collings and Mr. Chamberlain rendered important service to the cause of public progress, and their abandonment of it was a loss. For the rest, the career of Joseph Chamberlain, like that of Joseph Cowen, has its explanation in the passion for paramountcy.
CHAPTER VII. THE TENTH OF APRIL, 1848—ITS INCREDIBILITIES
It is not easy to determine which of many historic incidents of interest should take precedence. The 10th of April, known as the day of Chartist Terror—still spoken of in hysterical accents—will do, as it shows the wild way with which sober, staid men can write history. I was out that day with the Chartists, and well know how different the facts were from what is believed to be the peril of the metropolis on that day. I have long regarded it as one of the "bygones" having instruction in them.
The French have their 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), when the Reign of Terror ended, and their 18th Brumaire (November 9, 1799), when the Napoleonic Terror began, and the English have their 10th of April, 1848, when a million special constables were out staff in hand, to prevent a National Petition of the people being presented to the House of Commons. Yet no conspiracy existed—nor even had the police fabricated a plot (as they often did in those days)—no disorder had been threatened, not a man was armed; the only imaginable enemy was the Chartist Convention of less than two hundred persons. The most distinguished of the Special Constables was Louis Napoleon, who four years later became known as the assassin of French liberty, and whose career is one of the infamies of Imperialism.
The 10th of April, 1848, has for more than half a century held a place in public memory. The extraordinary hallucination concerning it has become historic, and passes as authentic. Canon Charles Kingsley was the chief illusionist in this matter. He wrote: "On the 10th of April, the Government had to fill London with troops, and put the Duke of Wellington in command, who barricaded the bridges and Downing Street, and other public buildings."* Nobody "had" to do what Kings-ley relates. Nine years had elapsed since any one had taken the field against the Government, and that was in a Welsh town 147 miles away. John Frost and his tiny band of followers were the insurgents. All were put down in twenty minutes by a few soldiers. Frost came to London in 1839 to consult James Watson, Henry Hetherington, Richard Moore, William Lovett, and other responsible Chartists, whom he most trusted. They besought Frost to abandon his idea of an attack upon Newport, as no one would support him. There were no arms in London on April, 1848, no persons were drilled, no war organisation existed, and no intention of rising anywhere. The Government knew it, for they had spies everywhere. They knew it as well or better in 1848 than in 1839. For nine years John Frost had then been in penal servitude, and no one had attempted to imitate him. Nor had he any followers in London in 1848. At his trial no noblemen, no aristocratic ladies, crowded the court to cheer him by their sympathy, or mitigate his sentence by their influence—as they did when Dr. Jameson and others were on trial for their wanton and murderous raid on the Government of South Africa. Such is the difference between the insurgency of poverty seeking redress, and the insurgency of wealthy insolence seeking its further aggrandisement There was absolutely nothing in the field against the Duke of Wellington in London but a waggon, on which a monster petition was piled.
* Introduction to "Alton Locke," by Thomas Hughes.
Politically speaking, London has seen no tamer day than the 10th of April, 1848. There was less ground for alarm than when a Lord Mayor s procession passes through the city. The procession of actual Chartists, able to leave their work to join it, could never have amounted to four thousand. There was not a single weapon among them, nor any intention of using it had they possessed it. There was only one weapon known to be in London, in the hands of the Chartists, and that was a Colonel Macerone's spear, fabricated in 1830, to assist in carrying the first Reform Bill. That was hidden up a chimney in 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. It came into my possession, and I have often shown it to members of the Government to convince them what risks Society ran in Wellington's days—and are exposed to still.