12. An Address of the Working Men's Association to Queen Victoria [The Life and Struggles of William Lovett, pp. 124-8], 1837.
Madam,
While we approach your Majesty in the spirit of plain men seeking their political and social rights, apart from mere names, forms, or useless ceremonies, we yield to none in the just fulfilment of our duties, or in the ardent wish that our country may be made to advance to the highest point of prosperity and happiness....
The country over which your Majesty has been called on to preside, has by the powers and industry of its inhabitants been made to teem with abundance, and were all its resources wisely developed and justly distributed, would impart ample means of happiness to all its inhabitants.
But, by many monstrous anomalies springing out of the constitution of society, the corruptions of government, and the defective education of mankind, we find the bulk of the nation toiling slaves from birth till death—thousands wanting food, or subsisting on the scantiest pittance, having neither time nor means to obtain instruction, much less of cultivating the higher faculties and brightest affections, but forced by their situation to engender enmity, jealousy, and contention, and too often to become the victims of intemperance and crime.
The exclusive few have ever been intent in keeping the people ignorant and deluded, and have sedulously administered to their vices and fomented their prejudices. Hence the use of their privileges and distinctions to allure the wealthy and corrupt the innocent; hence their desire to retain within their own circle all the powers of the Legislative and Executive, all the riches of Church and State....
To this baneful source of exclusive political power may be traced the persecutions of fanaticism, the feuds of superstition, and most of the wars and carnage which disgrace our history. To this pernicious origin may justly be attributed the unremitted toil and wretchedness of your Majesty's industrious people, together with most of the vices and crimes springing from poverty and ignorance, which, in a country blessed by nature, enriched by art, and boasting of her progress and knowledge, mock her humanity and degrade her character.
We entreat your Majesty that, whoever may be in your ministry, you will instruct them, as a first and essential measure of reform, to prepare a bill for extending the Right of Suffrage to all the adult population of the kingdom; excepting such as may be justly incapacitated by crime or defection of the light of reason; together with such other essential details as shall enable all men to exercise their political rights unmolested.