The Mysteries of London, v. 3/4

by George W. M. Reynolds

The multitude consisted chiefly of members of the industrious classes, many individuals being accompanied by their wives and children. They were attired in the best raiment that they possessed; and their conduct was most orderly and creditable.

At about a quarter to five o'clock, the carriages began to arrive and set down at the respective entrances the Members of the two Houses of Parliament: some, however, proceeded thither on horseback; and others on foot. The crowds neither cheered the popular, nor hissed the unpopular legislators who thus passed through the mass which had divided to make way for them; until at last one long, hearty, and glorious outburst welcomed the appearance of the Earl of Ellingham, as he proceeded on horseback, attended by his groom, to St. Stephen's.

The young nobleman acknowledged this outpouring of a people's gratitude—not with a patronising condescension, but with an affability which seemed to say, "I am one of yourselves—we're all equal—and I am proud of being considered your friend!"

Long after he had entered the portals of the House of Lords, and was lost to the public view, did the cheering continue outside; for the multitudes appreciated all that was great and generous in the task which a member of a proud aristocracy had undertaken to perform that day in their behalf.

There was a full attendance of Peers, Temporal and Spiritual; and the strangers' galleries, overlooking the throne and the woolsack, were crowded with fashionable gentlemen and elegantly dressed ladies. Amongst the audience there assembled, were Lady Hatfield, Mr. de Medina, and Esther. Georgiana was not however seated near the Jew and his daughter, she being unacquainted with them otherwise than by name, as the reader is already aware.

Soon after five o'clock the Earl of Ellingham rose from his seat, advanced towards the table, and proceeded to address the House on the motion of which he had given notice.

He began by expressing a regret that so important a subject as that which he proposed for discussion—namely, the condition of the industrious population—should not have been taken up by some noble lord more competent than himself to do it adequate justice; and he declared most solemnly that no selfish idea of obtaining popularity had influenced him in the course which he was pursuing. He then proceeded to expatiate upon the state of the working classes, and to urge upon the House the necessity of adopting measures to ameliorate their lamentable condition. It was too frequently alleged, he observed, that those classes were thoughtless, improvident, ungrateful, and intellectually dull; but this assertion he emphatically denied. Despair, produced by their unhappy condition, naturally led to dissipation in many instances; but were the working-man placed in a position so that his livelihood should be rendered less precarious than it now was—were his labour adequately remunerated—were he more fairly paid by the representatives of property—were a scale of wages established, having a fixed minimum, but no fixed maximum, the increased comfort thus ensured to him would naturally remove from his mind those cares which drove him to the public-house. His lordship would have no fixed maximum of wages, because wages ought always to be increased in proportion to the value of productive labour to employers: but he would have a minimum established, to obviate the cruel and disastrous effects of those periods when labour exceeded the demand in the market. This could not be considered unfair towards employers, because when the markets were brisk and trade was flourishing, they (the employers) reaped the greatest benefit from that activity, and enriched themselves in a very short time: therefore, when markets were dull and trade was stagnant, they should still be compelled to pay such wages as would enable their employed to live comfortably. The profits gained during prosperous seasons not only enabled employers to enjoy handsome incomes, but also to accumulate considerable savings; and as the best wages scarcely enabled the employed to make any thing like an adequate provision for periods of distress, it was not fair that the representatives of property should use the labour of the working classes just when it suited them, and discard it or only use it on a miserable recompense when it did not so well suit them. For the labour of the employed not only made annual incomes for the employers, but also permanent fortunes; and the value of that labour should not be calculated as lasting only just as long as it was available for the purpose of producing large profits. Labour was the working man's capital, and should have constant interest, as well as money placed in the funds—that interest of course increasing in proportion to the briskness of markets; but never depreciating below a standard value—much less being discarded as valueless altogether, in times of depression. A thousand pounds would always obtain three per cent. interest, under any circumstances; and, at particular periods, might be worth six or seven per cent. Labour should be considered in the same light. Stagnant markets diminished the profits of employers, but did not ruin them: if they did not obtain profit enough to live upon, they had the accumulations of good seasons to fall back upon. But how different was the case with the employed! To them stagnation of business was ruin—starvation—death;—the breaking up of their little homes—the sudden check of their children's education—the cause of demoralisation and degradation—and the terrible necessity of applying to the parish! The supply and demand of labour were necessarily unequal at many times, and in many districts; and the Government should therefore adopt measures to prevent those frightful fluctuations in wages which carried desolation into the homes of thousands of hard-working, industrious, and deserving families. In fact, a law should be passed to ensure the working-man against the casualty of being employed at a price below remuneration. In England the poor were not allowed to have a stake in the country—there were no small properties—the land was in the possession of a few individuals comparatively; and thus the landed interest constituted a tremendous monopoly, most unjust and oppressive to the industrious classes. The only way to remove this evil influence, and ameliorate the condition of the working population—the only way to countervail the disastrous effect of that monopoly, short of a Revolution which would treble or quadruple the number of landed proprietors,—was to compel property to maintain labour as long as labour sought for employment and occupation. The noble Earl then proceeded to state that if the working-classes were thus treated, they would not be driven by their cares and troubles to the excessive use of alcoholic liquors: they would not become demoralised by being compelled to migrate from place to place in search of employment—going upon the tramp, sleeping in hideous dens of vice, where numbers were forced to herd together without reference to age or sex: they would not be unsettled in all their little arrangements to bring up their children creditably and with due reference to instruction;—they would not be made discontented, anxious for any change no matter what, vindictive towards that society which thus rendered them outcasts, and sullen or reckless in their general conduct. But as things now were, the industrious man never felt settled: he knew that the hut which he called his home, was held on the most precarious tenure;—he felt the sickening conviction that if he had bread and meat to-day, he might have only bread to-morrow, and no food at all the day after. It was positively frightful to contemplate the condition of mental uncertainty, anxiety, and apprehension in which millions of persons were thus existing; and those who reproached them with recklessness or sullenness, should blame themselves as the causes of all that they vituperated. Lord Ellingham next proceeded to show that although there had been a vast increase of wealth and comfort amongst the middle and upper classes, yet the condition of the industrious millions was not only unimproved, but had positively deteriorated. The population was increasing at the rate of 1000 souls a day—and pauperism was keeping pace with that increase. Unrepresented in Parliament—without any means of making their voice heard—positively incapacitated from having a stake in the country, the industrious millions were the mere slaves and tools of the wealthy classes. Thus an immense mass of persons was kept in bondage—in absolute serfdom by an oligarchy. Was such a state of things just? was it rational? was it even humane? The millions were ground down by indirect taxes, in which shape they actually contributed more to the revenue, in proportion to their means, than the rich. The only luxuries which the poor enjoyed, and which had become as it were necessaries,—namely, tea, sugar, tobacco, beer, and spirits,—were the most productive sources of revenue. If noble lords reproached the poor for dirty habits, as he well knew that it was their custom to do, he would ask them why soap was made an article subject to so heavy a tax? It was a contemptible fallacy to suppose that because the poor contributed little or nothing in the shape of direct taxation to the revenue, they were positively untaxed. He would again declare that the poor paid more in indirect taxes than the rich did in both direct and indirect ways, when the relative means of the two parties were taken into consideration. From these subjects the Earl passed to the consideration of the inequality of the laws, and the incongruity, severity, and injustice of their administration towards the poor. Every advantage was given to the rich in the way of procuring bail in those cases where security for personal appearance was required; but no poor man could possibly give such security. He must go to prison, and there herd with felons of the blackest dye. Perhaps on trial his innocence would transpire; and then what recompense had he for his long incarceration—his home broken up during his absence—and his ruined family? It was possible—nay, it often happened that a man would lie thus in prison for four or five months previously to trial; and during that period it would be strange indeed if he escaped gaol contamination. Then, again, there were offences of a comparatively venial kind, and for which penalties might be inflicted in the shape of fines, the alternative being imprisonment. These fines were insignificant trifles in the estimation of a rich man; but the smallest of them was quite a fortune in the eyes of the poor. Even a person with a hundred a-year would pay a fine of five pounds rather than go to prison for a month or six weeks: but a labouring man, earning ten or twelve shillings a week, could no more satisfy the demand thus made upon him than he could influence the motion of the earth,—unless, indeed, he pawned and pledged every little article belonging to him; and the infliction thereby became a blow which he never afterwards recovered. Did a poor man offend a clergyman, he was forthwith put into the Spiritual Court, as the common saying was; and the expensive proceedings, which he could not stay, involved him in utter ruin. When a poor man was oppressed by a rich one, it was vain and ludicrous to assert that the Courts of Law were open to him: law was a luxury in which only those who possessed ample means could indulge. In a case where some grievous injury was sustained by a poor man—the seduction of his wife or daughter, for instance—redress or recompense was impossible, unless some attorney took up the case on speculation; and this was a practice most demoralising and pernicious. But if left entirely unassisted in that respect, the poor man could no more go to Westminster Hall than he could afford to dine at Long's Hotel. With regard to the subject of education, the noble Earl declared that it was positively shocking to think that such care should be taken to convert negroes to Christianity thousands of miles off, while the most deplorable ignorance prevailed at home. The Church enjoyed revenues the amount of which actually brought the ministers of the gospel into discredit, as evidencing their avaricious and grasping disposition;—while the people remained as uneducated as if not a single shilling were devoted to spiritual pastors or lay instructors. He boldly accused both Houses of Parliament and the upper classes generally of being anxious to keep the masses in a state of ignorance. Where instruction was imparted gratuitously, it was entirely of a sectarian nature; just as if men required to study grammar, history, arithmetic, or astronomy on Church of England principles. The whole land was over-run by clergymen, who lived upon the fat of it—Universities and public schools had been richly endowed for the purpose of propagating knowledge and encouraging learning,—and yet the people were lamentably ignorant. It was a wicked and impudent falsehood to declare that they were intellectually dull or averse to mental improvement. Common sense—that best of sense—was the special characteristic of the working classes; and those who could read, were absolutely greedy in their anxiety to procure books, newspapers, and cheap publications for perusal. The fact was, that the mind of the industrious population was a rich soil wherein all good seed would speedily take root, shoot up, and bring forth fruit to perfection: but the apprehensions or narrow prejudices of the upper classes—the oligarchy—would not permit the seed to be sown. Now, as the soil must naturally produce something, even of its own accord, it too often gave birth to rank weeds; and this was made a matter of scorn, reviling, and reproach. But the real objects of that scorn—that reviling—and that reproach, were those who obstinately and wickedly neglected to put the good soil to the full test of fertilization. Lastly, the Earl of Ellingham directed attention to the state of the criminal laws. These were only calculated to produce widely spread demoralization—to propagate vice—to render crime terribly prolific. A man—no matter what his offence might have been—should be deemed innocent and untainted again, when he had paid the penalty of his misdeed; because to brand a human being eternally, was to fly in the face of the Almighty and assert that there should be no such thing as forgiveness, and was no such thing as repentance. But the nature of punishments in this country was so to brand the individual, and so to dare the Majesty of Heaven. For the gaols were perfect nests of infamy—sinks of iniquity, imprisonment in which necessarily fastened an indelible stigma upon the individual. He either came forth tainted; or else it was supposed that he must be so. Under these circumstances, he vainly endeavoured to obtain employment; and, utterly failing in his attempt to earn an honest livelihood, he was compelled perforce to relapse into habits of crime and lawlessness. This fact accounted for an immense amount of the demoralization which the Bishops so much deplored, but the true causes of which they obstinately refused to acknowledge. The criminal gaols were moral pest-houses, in which no cures were effected, but where the contagious malady became more virulent. Society should not immure offenders solely for the sake of punishment—but with a view to reformation of character. The noble Earl then summed up his arguments by stating that he was anxious to see measures adopted for a minimum rate of wages, to prevent the sudden fluctuation of wages, and to compel property to give constant employment to labour:—he was desirous that indirect taxes upon the necessaries of life should be abolished;—he wished the laws and their administration to be more equitably proportioned to the relative conditions of the rich and the poor;—he insisted upon the want of a general system of national education, to be intrusted to laymen, and to be totally distinct from religious instruction and sectarian tenets;—he desired a complete reformation in the system of prison discipline, and explained the paramount necessity of founding establishments for the purpose of affording work to persons upon leaving criminal gaols, as a means of their obtaining an honest livelihood and retrieving their characters prior to seeking employment for themselves;—and he hoped that the franchise would be so extended as to give every man who earned his own bread by the sweat of his brow, a stake and interest in the country's welfare. The noble Earl wound up with an eloquent peroration in which he vindicated the industrious millions from the aspersions, misrepresentations, and calumnies which it seemed to be the fashion for the upper classes to indulge in against them; and he concluded by moving a number of resolutions in accordance with the heads of his oration.

The Earl's speech was received with very partial cheering by the assembled Lords, to whom its tenor was most unpalatable: but such was its effect upon the auditors in the strangers' galleries, that, contrary to the established etiquette, it was loudly applauded by them. The Lord Chancellor immediately called to order; and in a few minutes a dead silence reigned throughout the House.

The leading Minister present then rose to answer the Earl's oration; which he did in the usual style adopted by official men under such circumstances. Entirely blinking all the main arguments, he declaimed loudly in favour of the prosperity of the country—dwelt upon the happiness of English cottagers—lauded the "wisdom of our ancestors"—uttered the invariable cant about our "glorious institutions"—spoke of Church and State as if they were Siamese twins whom it would be death to sever—and, after calling upon the House to resist the Earl of Ellingham's motion, sate down.