The movement for obtaining higher wages by this rude collective bargaining was extinguished in the counties already mentioned by the beginning of December, but disturbances now developed over a larger area. A ‘daring riot’ took place at Stotfold in Bedfordshire. The labourers met together to demand exemption from taxes, dismissal of the assistant overseer, and the raising of wages to 2s. a day. The last demand was refused, on which the labourers set some straw alight in a field to alarm the farmers. Mr. Whitbread, J.P., brought a hundred special constables, and arrested ten ringleaders, after which the riot ceased. There were disturbances in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex; and in many other counties the propertied classes were terrified from time to time by the news of fires. In Cambridgeshire there were meetings of labourers to demand higher wages, in some places with immediate success, and one magistrate was alarmed by rumours of a design to march upon Cambridge itself on market day. In Devonshire Lord Ebrington reported an agitation for higher wages with encouragement from the farmers. He was himself impressed by the low wages in force, and had raised them in places still quiet; a mistake for which he apologised. Even Hereford, ‘this hitherto submissive and peaceful county,’ was not unaffected. In Northamptonshire there were several fires, and also risings round Peterborough, Oundle and Wellingborough, and a general outbreak in the Midlands was thought to be imminent. Hayricks began to blaze as far north as Carlisle. Swing letters were delivered in Yorkshire, and in Lincolnshire the labourer was said to be awakening to his own importance. There were in fact few counties quite free from infection, and a leading article appeared in the Times on 6th December, in which it was stated that never had such a dangerous state of things existed to such an extent in England, in the period of well-authenticated records. ‘Let the rich be taught that Providence will not suffer them to oppress their fellow creatures with impunity. Here are tens of thousands of Englishmen, industrious, kind-hearted, but broken-hearted beings, exasperated into madness by insufficient food and clothing, by utter want of necessaries for themselves and their unfortunate families.’
Unfortunately Providence, to whom the Times attributed these revolutionary sentiments, was not so close to the scene as Lord Melbourne, whose sentiments on the subject were very different. On 8th December he issued a circular, which gave a death-blow to the hope that the magistrates would act as mediators on behalf of the labourers. After blaming those magistrates who, under intimidation, had advised the establishment of a uniform rate of wages, the Home Secretary went on, ‘Reason and experience concur in proving that a compliance with demands so unreasonable in themselves, and urged in such a manner, can only lead, and probably within a very short period of time, to the most disastrous results.’ He added that the justices had ‘no general legal authority to settle the amount of the wages of labour.’ The circular contained a promise on the part of the Government that they would adopt ‘every practicable and reasonable measure’ for the alleviation of the labourers’ privations.
From this time the magistrates were everywhere on the alert for the first signs of life and movement among the labourers, and they forbade meetings of any kind. In Suffolk and Essex the labourers who took up the cry for higher wages were promptly thrown into prison, and arbitrary arrests became the custom. The movement was crushed, and the time for retribution had come. The gaols were full to overflowing, and the Government appointed Special Commissions to try the rioters in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Berks, and Bucks. Brougham, who was now enjoying the office in whose pompous manner he must have lisped in his cradle, told the House of Lords on 2nd December, ‘Within a few days from the time I am addressing your Lordships, the sword of justice shall be unsheathed to smite, if it be necessary, with a firm and vigorous hand, the rebel against the law.’
The disturbances were over, but the panic had been such that the upper classes could not persuade themselves that England was yet tranquil. As late as Christmas Eve the Privy Council gave orders to the archbishop to prepare ‘a form of prayer to Almighty God, on account of the troubled state of certain parts of the United Kingdom.’ The archbishop’s composition, which was published after scores of men and boys had been sentenced to transportation for life, must have been recited with genuine feeling by those clergymen who had either broken, or were about to break, their agreement to surrender part of their tithes. One passage ran as follows: ‘Restore, O Lord, to Thy people the quiet enjoyment of the many and great blessings which we have received from Thy bounty: defeat and frustrate the malice of wicked and turbulent men, and turn their hearts: have pity, O Lord, on the simple and ignorant, who have been led astray, and recall them to a sense of their duty; and to persons of all ranks and conditions in this country vouchsafe such a measure of Thy grace, that our hearts being filled with true faith and devotion, and cleansed from all evil affections, we may serve Thee with one accord, in duty and loyalty to the King, in obedience to the laws of the land, and in brotherly love towards each other....’
We shall see in the next chapter what happened to ‘the simple and ignorant’ who had fallen into the hands of the English judges.
CHAPTER XII
THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT
II
The bands of men and boys who had given their rulers one moment of excitement and lively interest in the condition of the poor had made themselves liable to ferocious penalties. For the privileged classes had set up a code under which no labourer could take a single step for the improvement of the lot of his class without putting his life and liberties in a noose. It is true that the savage laws which had been passed against combination in 1799 and 1800 had been repealed in 1824, and that even under the less liberal Act of the following year, which rescinded the Act of 1824, it was no longer a penal offence to form a Trades Union. But it is easy to see that the labourers who tried to raise their wages were in fact on a shelving and most perilous slope. If they used threats or intimidation or molested or obstructed, either to get a labourer to join with them or to get an employer to make concessions, they were guilty of a misdemeanour punishable with three months’ imprisonment. They were lucky if they ran no graver risk than this. Few of the prosecutions at the Special Commissions were under the Act of 1825. A body of men holding a meeting in a village where famine and unemployment were chronic, and where hardly any one had been taught to read or write, might very soon find themselves becoming what the Act of 1714 called a riotous assembly, and if a magistrate took alarm and read the Riot Act, and they did not disperse within one hour, every one of them might be punished as a felon. The hour’s interval did not mean an hour’s grace, for, as Mr. Justice Alderson told the court at Dorchester, within that hour ‘all persons, even private individuals, may do anything, using force even to the last extremity to prevent the commission of a felony.’
There were at least three ways in which labourers meeting together to demonstrate for higher wages ran a risk of losing their lives, if any of their fellows got out of hand from temper, or from drink, or from hunger and despair. Most of the prosecutions before the Special Commissions were prosecutions under three Acts of 1827 and 1828, consolidating the law on the subject of offences against property and offences against the person. Under the eighth section of one Act (7 and 8 George IV. c. 30), any persons riotously or tumultuously assembled together who destroyed any house, stable, coach-house, outhouse, barn, granary, or any building or erection or machinery used in carrying on any trade or manufacture were to suffer death as felons. In this Act there is no definition of riot, and therefore ‘the common law definition of a riot is resorted to, and in such a case if any one of His Majesty’s subjects was terrified there was a sufficient terror and alarm to substantiate that part of the charge.’[449] Under the sixth section of another Act, any person who robbed any other person of any chattel, money, or valuable security was to suffer death as a felon. Now if a mob presented itself before a householder with a demand for money, and the householder in fear gave even a few coppers, any person who was in that mob, whether he had anything to do with this particular transaction or not, whether he was aware or ignorant of it, was guilty of robbery, and liable to the capital penalty. Under section 12 of the Act of the following year, generally known as Lansdowne’s Act, which amended Ellenborough’s Act of 1803, it was a capital offence to attempt to shoot at a person, or to stab, cut, or wound him, with intent to murder, rob, or maim. Under this Act, as it was interpreted, if an altercation arose and any violence was offered by a single individual in the mob, the lives of the whole band were forfeit. This was put very clearly by Baron Vaughan: ‘There seems to be some impression that unless the attack on an individual is made with some deadly weapons, those concerned are not liable to capital punishment; but it should be made known to all persons that if the same injury were inflicted by a blow of a stone, all and every person forming part of a riotous assembly is equally guilty as he whose hand may have thrown it, and all alike are liable to death.’ Under section 4 of one Act of 1827 the penalty for destroying a threshing machine was transportation for seven years, and under section 17 the penalty for firing a rick was death. These were the terrors hanging over the village labourers of whom several hundreds were now awaiting their trial.
The temper of the judges was revealed in their charges to the Grand Juries. In opening the Maidstone Assizes on 14th December, Mr. Justice Bosanquet[450] declared that though there might be some distress it was much exaggerated, and that he was sure that those whom he had the honour to address would find it not only their duty but their pleasure to lend an ear to the wants of the poor.[451] Mr. Justice Taunton[452] was even more reassuring on this subject at the Lewes Assizes: the distress was less than it had been twelve months before. ‘I regret to say,’ he went on, ‘there are persons who exaggerate the distress and raise up barriers between different classes—who use the most inflammatory language—who represent the rich as oppressors of the poor. It would be impertinent in me to say anything to you as to your treatment of labourers or servants. That man must know little of the gentry of England, whether connected with the town or country, who represents them as tyrants to the poor, as not sympathising in their distress, and as not anxious to relieve their burdens and to promote their welfare and happiness.’[453] In opening the Special Commission at Winchester Baron Vaughan[454] alluded to the theory that the tumults had arisen from distress and admitted that it might be partly true, but, he continued, ‘every man possessed of the feelings common to our nature must deeply lament it, and endeavour to alleviate it (as you gentlemen no doubt have done and will continue to do), by every means which Providence has put within his power.’ If individuals were aggrieved by privations and injuries, they must apply to the Legislature, which alone could afford them relief, ‘but it can never be tolerated in any country which professes to acknowledge the obligations of municipal law, that any man or body of men should be permitted to sit in judgment upon their own wrongs, or to arrogate to themselves the power of redressing them. To suffer it would be to relapse into the barbarism of savage life and to dissolve the very elements by which society is held together.’[455] The opinions of the Bench on the sections of the Act (7 and 8 George IV. c. 30) under which men could be hung for assembling riotously and breaking machinery were clearly expressed by Mr. Justice Parke[456] (afterwards Lord Wensleydale) at Salisbury: ‘If that law ceases to be administered with due firmness, and men look to it in vain for the security of their rights, our wealth and power will soon be at an end, and our capital and industry would be transferred to some more peaceful country, whose laws are more respected or better enforced.’[457] By another section of that Act seven years was fixed as the maximum penalty for breaking a threshing machine. Mr. Justice Alderson[458] chafed under this restriction, and he told two men, Case and Morgan, who were found guilty at the Salisbury Special Commission of going into a neighbouring parish and breaking a threshing machine, that had the Legislature foreseen such crimes as theirs, it would have enabled the court to give them a severer sentence.[459]