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.