What contributed most to strengthen Sir Robert Peel was the agitation among the agricultural labourers. It was very difficult to resist such an appeal as theirs, when they pointed to their gaunt forms, and wan and haggard faces, and said, “Behold this is the result of the Protection that is kept up for our benefit.” They held meetings, in the beginning of 1846, in various parts of the country, and from the speeches at these we get a vivid idea of the sad condition of the English people at this time. One gathering may be cited as typical. It was held by some two hundred starvelings, who met in fear—for the gentry frowned upon the movement—on a bleak winter’s night, by the light of a clouded moon and a few flaring candles at a cross-road near Wootton Bassett. The chairman said he had six shillings a week, on which he
MEETING OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS AT WOOTTON BASSETT. ([See p. 216.])
had to keep his wife and two children, and he complained that it was not half enough for them to live on. Another speaker, one William Burchall, said, “that though their wages had risen within the last few months a shilling a week, bread had risen two shillings, so that the difference was against them. He was past forty years of age, and he could say that he had never purchased a pound of good slaughtered beef fit to be carried into the market. As to mutton, he had purchased a little of that, but never as much as would average a pound a year in forty years. He knew what veal was, but never had any at all.” Another man said that, during thirty-nine weeks, ending 10th of June, 1844, he had earned only £5 19s. 8d., or 3s. 1d. a week; and that but for getting a little land to rent from Lord Carnarvon, he and his wife and eight children would have starved. His house rent came to £4 a year, and his bread bill alone came to from 7s. 7d. to 8s. 8d. a week. Another man said that he had so little bread to eat that he got weak, and was then discharged as unfit for service. James Pegler complained he had been “hunted down” under the Poor Laws, having been, with his wife and family, forced into the workhouse, and separated from them for eleven months. At last, he was turned away to get work, and because he went out of the district to find it, he was taken before the magistrate, charged with desertion, and sent to prison for a month. “God bless my heart and life,” exclaimed this poor creature, “I never see’d such a go, to be sure, as how I was served. I know enough of starvation and misery to make me say ‘God send us Free Trade.’” At this meeting the labourers declared they were thankful that Providence had put it out of the power of Government “to write taxation on the bosom of the streams and rivulets that were so bountifully spread around their neighbourhood.”[35] They were unconsciously illustrating the wisdom of Paul Louis Courier, who once said that the rich are grateful to Providence for what it gives—the poor, for what it leaves them.
The Queen, it has been reported, was deeply affected by these demonstrations of suffering. It is said that she will never forget, as long as she lives, that she began her reign when the wealth and power of England were waning. She was, on her accession to the throne, the object of the most chivalrous devotion that any Queen could inspire. Yet, when crowned, the tears fell from her eyes, as she thought of her own responsibility in the midst of a nation sinking deeper and deeper into destitution, and plunging deeper and deeper into debt. Mrs. Browning, when she read the account of her Majesty’s coronation, gave apt expression to the popular hopes that were raised by the significance which the people instinctively attached to this incident of the ceremony.
“God save thee, weeping Queen!
Thou shalt be well beloved;
The tyrant’s sceptre cannot move
As those pure tears have moved!
The nature in thy eyes we see
Which tyrants cannot own;
The love that guardeth liberties,
Strange blessing on the nation lies,
Whose Sovereign wept;
Yea, wept to wear a crown.”
As if in fulfilment of the hopes which the Queen’s conduct and bearing since her accession had inspired, a happier day was now dawning. There was every prospect that content would now gladden the reign that began in sorrow and in tears. The partial relaxation of the Protective tariff during the last three years had brought hope to the heart of the Sovereign, for it was certainly followed by some amelioration in the lot of her subjects. Her Majesty was profoundly impressed by Sir Robert Peel’s inferences from the success of this experimental loosening of the shackles on commerce. She was, therefore, naturally inclined to give the weight of her artless sympathies and “sweet counsel” to a new departure in fiscal policy, that promised to “make Plenty smile on the cheek of Toil.” The opening of the Parliamentary Session of 1846 was, therefore, to the Queen no mere formal or ordinary ceremony of State. It was, in her opinion, and in the opinion of the Prince Consort, the initiation of a “bloodless revolution,” and the closing of a distinct epoch in the history of Party Government.