University of Virginia Library

2. CHARTISM

WE have seen that Punch did not belittle the Chartist movement, but admitted the evils, political, social, and economic, out of which it sprang. So did some of the leaders of the Young England group (see Sybil), but Punch ridiculed their remedies. He was out of touch alike with Whigs, Tories, and Churchmen, especially the Tractarians) who denounced the men who tempted the people to rail against their rulers and superiors.

Punch, too, did a good deal in this line. But while he recognized the sincerity and earnestness of Chartism, he distrusted the methods of the extremists, and his distrust was largely justified by the history of the movement. The cleavage between the advocates of moral and physical force showed itself from the very beginning, and the fiasco of 1848 was largely due to the fact that the leading spirits of Chartism had already declared themselves against it, or actually withdrawn from the movement. Of the famous Six Points of the People's Charter of 1838, three have been conceded—No Property Qualifications, Vote by Ballot, and Payment of Members—and we have come very near the realization of Universal Suffrage and Equal Representation. The demand for Annual Parliaments alone remains unsatisfied. Yet Lovett, who drafted the Charter, and was imprisoned in 1839 with other Chartist leaders after the riots in Birmingham, emerged from gaol more than ever an advocate of moral force, joined Sturge in his efforts to reconcile the Chartists and the middle class reformers, and after 1842 took no further part in the Chartist movement. In the years of riots and fires and strikes and starvation that followed the rejection of the second National Petition in 1842, the leaders were, with few exceptions, engulfed in a tide which they were unable to control. Feargus O'Connor was one of

NOT SO VERY UNREASONABLE! EH?
JOHN: "My Mistress says she hopes you won't call a meeting of her creditors; but if you will leave your Bill in the usual way, it shall be properly attended to."

[Description: A strong, large working man carries a rolled up document labelled "THE CHARTER" to the door of a mansion, where he is greeted by a shrunken butler, who indicates that his mistress hopes that man will not call in her creditors. ]

the exceptions, but his success in inducing the Chartists to repudiate the Corn Law Repeal agitation, and the disastrous failure of his agrarian scheme at Watford, alienated many of the old Chartists. Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law rhymer, withdrew from the movement, which he had actively supported, in order to devote all his energies to the repeal of the hated "bread tax," and happily lived long enough to see it abolished. Punch, who had pronounced its dirge in February, 1849, with the legend "obiit. February 1, 1849, aged 34," was heart and soul with the Corn Law rhymer. Repeal of the Corn Laws was the deepest principle in his early life, and he was too angry to do justice to Peel, denouncing him as a "political eel"; an infringer of Dickens's copyright in Pecksniff; attacking his policy of "wait awhile," much as later critics attacked the policy of "wait and see"; and even when Peel's conversion was complete, refusing to acknowledge any virtue in it. When Punch was bracketed with Peel as an opponent of the Corn Laws he indignantly repudiated the association: he at least had never turned his coat. One cannot help feeling that remorse must have mingled with admiration in his posthumous tributes to the statesman "who gave the people bread." But there were no prickings of conscience in the welcome extended by him in 1850 to the proposal (realized in 1854) to erect a statue to Ebenezer Elliott at Sheffield:—

The true-tempered men of Sheffield are about to do a new honour to themselves by honouring the memory of Ebenezer Elliott, the man whose wise pen drew up the indictment against that public robber, Corn Law: and never was indictment better drawn for conviction, though a rare success attended the novel deed, for it was only worded with common words, the words themselves hot and glowing with hate of wrong. Elliott struck from his subject—as the blacksmith strikes from the red iron—sparkles[1] of burning light; and where they fell they consumed. His homely indignation was sublimed by the intensity of his honesty: if his words were homely, they were made resistless by the inexorable purpose that uttered them. But the man had the true heart and soul of the poet, and could love the simple

and beautiful as passionately as he denounced the selfish and the mean.

The Corn-Law Rhymes did greatest service. They were the earliest utterances of a people contending with a sense of inarticulate suffering. They supplied the words; they gave a voice and meaning to the labouring heart, and the true poet vindicated his fine mission by making his spirit pass into the spirit of the many.

Time rolled on and Corn Law was condemned. The indictment drawn by the poet was the draft afterwards improved; but Ebenezer Elliott was the first drawer; and honoured be the men of Sheffield who seek to do monumental homage to their patriotic poet! We have plenty of modern statues to the sword, it is full time we had one to the pen.

Meanwhile the Chartist movement, weakened by defections and dissensions, and by the dissipation of its energies on a mixed programme, which antagonized all classes, damped by the constant rains which fell at every meeting and drenched the fires of revolution, was marching steadily to disintegration. Punch's distrust of the professional agitator is expressed in a bitter portrait published in the spring of 1848:—

THE MODEL AGITATOR
The only thing he flatters is the mob. Nothing is too sweet for them; every word is a lump of sugar. He flatters their faults, feeds their prejudices with the coarsest stimulants, and paints, for their amusement, the blackest things white. He is madly cheered in consequence. In time he grows into an idol. But cheers do not pay, however loud. The most prolonged applause will not buy a mutton chop. The hat is carried round, the pennies rain into it, and the Agitator pours them into his patriotic pocket. It is suddenly discovered that he has made some tremendous sacrifice for the people. The public sympathy is first raised, then a testimonial, then a subscription. He is grateful, and promises the Millennium. The trade begins to answer, and he fairly opens shop as a Licensed Agitator. He hires several journeymen with good lungs, and sends agents—patriotic bagmen—round the country to sell his praises and insults, the former for himself, and the latter for everybody else. Every paper that speaks the truth of him is publicly hooted at; everybody who opposes him is pelted with the hardest words selected from the Slang Dictionary. A good grievance is started, and hunted everywhere. People join in the cry, the Agitator leading off and

PUNCH'S MONUMENT TO PEEL

[Description: An illustration of a mother and children eating together at a table; behind them a pyramid is made out of loaves of bread. A sign on the pyramid reads "Peel. Cheap bread." A smiling baker looks on. ]

shouting the loudest. The grievance is run off its legs; but another and another soon follows, till there is a regular pack of them. The country is in a continual ferment, and at last rises. Riots ensue; but the Model Agitator is the last person to suffer from them. He excites the people to arm themselves for the worst; but begs they will use no weapons. His talk is incendiary, his advice nothing but gunpowder, and yet he hopes no explosion will take place. He is an arsenal wishing to pass for a chapel or a baby-linen warehouse. He is all peace, all love, and yet his hearers grow furious as they listen to him, and rush out to burn ricks and shoot landlords. He is always putting his head on the block. Properly speaking he is beheaded once a quarter.

A monster meeting is his great joy, to be damped only by the rain [the great open-air meetings of the Chartists were uniformly

unfortunate in their weather] or the police. He glories in a prosecution. He likes to be prosecuted. He asks for it; shrieks out to the Government, "Why don't you prosecute me?" and cries and gets quite mad if they will not do it. The favour at length is granted. He is thrown into prison and gets fat upon it; for from that moment he is a martyr, and paid as one, accordingly.

The Model Agitator accumulates a handsome fortune, which he bequeathes to his sons, with the following advice, which is a rich legacy of itself: "If you wish to succeed as an Agitator, you must buy your patriotism in the cheapest market and sell it in the dearest."

The monster demonstration of 1848, as a recent writer [2] puts it, "was the funeral of Chartism with the Duke of Wellington as the Master of Ceremonies." Hopes of a general rising had been kindled by the revolution in Paris, but they were not fulfilled. The annus mirabilis which set thrones rocking on the Continent and toppled down that of Louis Philippe passed in the main peacefully in England. Feargus O'Connor's monster procession and petition on April 10 ended in fiasco, largely owing to the precautions taken by the Duke of Wellington as Commander-in-Chief—the swearing in of 170,000 special constables (including Louis Napoleon!) and his wise decision to keep the troops as far as possible out of sight. It is right to record the fact that Punch was not moved by these events to desert his "left-centre" position; that he advocated amnesty rather than reprisals. In September, 1849, he published his special "Chartist Petition to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty":—

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY—
WHEREAS Death, the great Gaol-Deliverer, has by Cholera set free from Westminster Prison, Joseph Williams and Alexander Sharpe, foolish men, foolishly preaching the Charter, by means of pike and blunderbuss—

Punch humbly prays that your Majesty will, in this season of political tranquillity, and of grave moral chastisement, give orders for the release of certain misguided men, it is hoped better instructed for the future—and thereupon pardon and set free William Vernon, Ernest Jones, Little Cuffey, and other such offenders, now made

SPECIAL'S WIFE: "Contrary to regulations, indeed! Fiddlesticks! I must insist. Frederick, upon your taking this hot brandy-and-water. I shall he having you laid up next, and not fit for anything."

[Description: An illustration of a street scene, in which woman in a shawl addresses a brawny policeman wrapped up in a coat with: "Contrary to regulations, indeed! Fiddlesticks! I must insist. Frederick, upon your taking this hot brandy-and-water. I shall he having you laid up next, and not fit for anything."]

harmless by the common sense and common loyalty of the English people. And your Petitioner will ever Print and Pray—

PUNCH.

Ernest Jones was the young poet, a recent recruit of Feargus O'Connor, and Cuffey was the fiery little tailor for whom Punch always had a soft corner in his heart. When Sir George Grey announced that Cuffey had been included in the list of deported prisoners, amnestied on the declaration of peace after the Crimean War, Punch expressed his satisfaction at the release of the "resolute, fire-eating but withal frank-hearted and honest goose-hero of Chartism." But of much greater importance and significance is the striking poem printed in the issue of June 16, 1849, which may be taken as the best condensed summary of Punch's political and social creed in a time of transition. The occasion was a speech of Lord John Russell in the House, declining to entertain proposals for an extension of the franchise. Lord John, it may be recalled, was nicknamed "Finality Jack" for saying in a debate on the Address in 1837 that it was impossible for him to take

part in further measures of electoral reform. Punch held that the collapse of the physical force movement, so far from prompting a lethargic acquiescence in the existing régime, ought to stir men of good will to further efforts in order to remove legitimate grounds of discontent:—

This may not be great poetry, but it is and remains sound political philosophy, and an apologia for Chartism as interpreted by the saner and nobler spirits who took part in the movement, endeavoured to control it, and were in some instances engulfed in it. The Rebecca Riots in South Wales in 1842-3 are little more than a name to most of the present generation. Few of those who connect them vaguely with resentment against the Turnpike Laws know that the name arose from the proclamations issued in the name of Rebecca, in allusion to the verse in Genesis (xxiv. 60) in which it is promised to the wife of Isaac that her seed shall possess "the gate of her enemies." Six years later there were still 160 turnpikes in and about London, and Punch declared that Rebecca was needed to sweep them away. "We laugh at the French for their passports; they may with equal justice laugh at us for our turnpikes. At all events the passports cost very little, whereas you cannot go three miles out of London without dipping your hand into your pocket two or three times." Emigration at this time was hailed by many, including Punch, as a remedy for existing discontent with conditions, and in the cartoon "Here and There," and the verses "Know'st Thou the Land where the Kangaroos Bound?" Punch gives a roseate picture of Australia, "deficient in mouths, over burdened with meat," and urges John Bull to help his paupers to go thither and live in plenty at high wages. A little

time later the Female Emigration Scheme, started by Sidney Herbert and other practical philanthropists, furnished Punch with a text for his oft-repeated sermon on the Two Nations. The writer was one of those who witnessed the departure of a party of thirty-eight women from Fenchurch Street station for Gravesend, and thence to Australia, and after describing the group, their homely appearance and dress and manners, continues in a vein of self-reproach:—

What a confession it is that we have almost all been obliged to make! A clear and earnest-minded writer gets a commission from the Morning Chronicle newspaper, and reports upon the state of our poor in London; be goes amongst labouring people and poor of all kinds—and brings back what? A picture of London life so wonderful, so awful, so piteous and pathetic, so exciting and terrible, that readers of romances own they never read anything like to it; and that the griefs, struggles, strange adventures here depicted exceed anything that any of us could imagine. Yes; and these wonders and terrors have been lying by your door and mine ever since we had a door of our own. We had but to go a hundred yards off and see, for ourselves, but we never did. Don't we pay poor-rates, and are they not heavy enough in the name of patience? Very true; and we have our own private pensioners, and give away some of our superfluity very likely. You are not unkind; not ungenerous. But of such wondrous and complicated misery as this you confess you had no idea. No. How should you? You and I—we are of the upper classes; we have had hitherto no community with the poor. We never speak a word to the servant who waits on us for twenty years; we condescend to employ a tradesman, keeping him at a proper distance—mind, of course, at a proper distance; we laugh at his young men if they dance, jig and amuse themselves like their betters, and call them counter-jumpers, snobs, and what not; of his workmen we know nothing—how pitilessly they are ground down, how they live and die, here close by us at the backs of our houses; until some poet like Hood wakes and sings that dreadful Song of the Shirt; some prophet like Carlyle rises up and denounces woe; some clear-sighted energetic man like the writer of the Chronicle travels into the poor man's country for us, and comes back with his tale of terror and wonder.

Awful, awful poor man's country! The bell rings and then eight-and-thirty women bid adieu to it, rescued from it (as a few more thousands will be) by some kind people who are interested in their behalf. It is a solemn moment indeed—for those who (with

the few thousands who will follow them) are leaving this country and escaping from the question between rich and poor; and what for those who remain? But, at least, those who go will remember that in their misery here they found gentle hearts to love and pity them, and generous hands to give them succour, and will plant in the new country their grateful tradition of the old. May Heaven's. good mercy speed them.

Emigration was one of the contributory influences which helped to end the hunger of the Hungry 'Forties. The repeal of the Corn Laws was a far more powerful factor in the revival of prosperity, and the efforts of Protection to raise its diminished head met with consistent derision from Punch, who gloried in the statistics of increasing trade. But he was no Benthamite, and one may search his files in vain for any recognition of the salutary results of the new Poor Law. The famous report of 1834 was drawn up by men who were largely inspired by the doctrines of Bentham and Malthus, and their scientific principles were repugnant to Punch. There is really not much to choose between his criticisms and the hostility of the Chartists to the workhouses or "Bastilles" of the new system. In his zeal for pillorying instances of harsh administration he overlooked the real improvement effected in the Act of 1834 in the rural districts. But the new Poor Law, though it was followed by an immediate local re-absorption on a sounder economic basis of agricultural labour and a migration of the surplus elsewhither, was not the sole cause of this improvement.

The demand for labour in the rapidly expanding industries of railway construction and coal mining was an even more potent instrument of relief. Coal, on which both industries equally depended and depend, may be now a tyrant, but it was in a sense the good genius of the 'forties, though the high prices paid in London owing to extortionate tolls caused Punch to denounce him as "Cruel King Coal" from the point of view of the poor consumer.

The threat of revolution passed, but the diffusion of prosperity brought with it, as it always does, further demands for increased wages. The year 1853 was so notable for strikes

that Punch, who had already applauded poor needlewomen for adopting this course, and suggested it to poor curates, felt obliged to register his protest:—

Really John Bull may almost be described as a maniac with lucid intervals. A few Years ago it was the railway mania—a very dangerous frenzy. . . . The mania now prevailing is one which, if not attended to, may perhaps prove troublesome. This is the striking mania. Everybody is striking. The other day it was the cabmen; now it is the dockyard labourers; the policemen, even, have struck and thrown down their staves. Our mechanics have so far become machines, that, like clocks, as clocks ought to be, they are all striking together. Should this mania spread, we shall have striking become what might be called the order, but that it will be the disorder, of the day. In short, almost everybody will strike except the threshers, the smiths and the pugilists. With all this striking though, we had better take care that we are not floored.

As for the efficacy of the strike-weapon in general, Punch's view is summed up in the remark which he puts into the mouth of a working man's wife as early as 1853) "Wot good did strikes ever do the pore?"