CHAPTER VIII

I am here to blow to the uttermost ends of the earth that lie-the impious and blasphemous lie of the hirelings— that you are bound to obey laws without knowing what they are. . . . Nothing can be more wicked or diabolical than that. Before you obey a law, you

must know whether it is good or bad. -Rev. J. R. Stephens.

THE GOSPEL OF REVOLT

WILLIAM LOVETT was the apostle of Moral Force. He had unbounded faith in the moral propensities of mankind. Since ignorance alone was at the root of all oppression, it was necessary only to awaken the dormant faculties of mind in order to assure the blissful regeneration of society. It was natural, then, that he should inspire the London Working Men's Association not to "rely on the mere excitation of the multitude to condemn bad men or measures, or to change one despot for another." No force other than moral suasion, backed by political and social education, would enable the people "to found their institutions on principles of equality, truth, and justice."

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O'Connor and Bronterre made no religion of Moral Force. They advocated "Peace and Order" not as a maxim, but as a policy. When the temper of the people dictated a different policy, they did not contradict it,—they

1 See "Address to the Working Classes of Europe, and especially to the Polish People," in Life and Struggles of William Lovett, pp. 150158.

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did not even apologize,-they simply yielded to the inevitable. Physical Force as a philosophy and Revolt as an apotheosis of justice were broached by a different set of men who exerted a dominant influence on the masses during the first period of the movement.

Joseph Raynor Stephens, the apostle of revolt and the only Chartist who at one time vied with O'Connor in popularity, was born on the 18th of March, 1805, at Edinburgh, where his father was a Methodist preacher. He made the best of his elementary education when yet quite young. After teaching school for two years, he became a Methodist preacher in 1825, and the following year was appointed to a mission station at Stockholm, Sweden. In 1829 he was ordained as a Wesleyan minister and in 1830 was stationed at Cheltenham. His Wesleyan career ended in 1834, when he was dismissed for his association with Richard Oastler in the agitation for the improvement of the condition of factory laborers. The dismissal from the ministry raised him in the estimation of the working men. But it was his subsequent scathing attacks on the New Poor Law that endeared him to the masses who before long erected for him three chapels in the Ashton district. Besides his regular sermons in the chapels, he made use of the public market to harangue big crowds and to teach them not to "care for an Act of Parliament ", as it was only waste paper ", "treason", and "blasphemy ", unless it tended to promote happiness among men. He was never shy in the choice of his epithets against the ruling classes, and it was for this that Francis Place characterized him as a "malignant, crazy man who never seemed exhausted with bawling atrocious matter."

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Stephens did not consider himself a radical, but, as "a revolutionist by fire, a revolutionist by blood, to the knife,

1

to the death," be joined the ranks of the Chartists, proclaiming the question of universal suffrage to be, after all, "a knife and fork question." He was recognized as the greatest Chartist orator. A master on the platform, he possessed personal magnetism, felicity of expression and a singular style of oratory which, at his best, made him irresistible. Vehement inflammatory declamations interwoven with passages of classical beauty; rugged expressions of protest mingled with sentiments of love and devotion; scenes of revolting despondency redeemed by prophetic promises of a happy life; curses sputtered in a voice that could be distinctly heard by twenty thousand persons in the open air soothed by intonations of musical cadence; stories of every-day life, so near and familiar, followed by strange but exalted citations from the Bible,-all this rendered his spell the more dominant because of the spectacular effect produced by the black robe of a minister of the gospel. His sermons were partly religious and partly political, but in all he exposed the crying injustice of the economic system. His pictures of women bleeding to death from overwork in factories, of children in mortal terror of the workhouse, of old men and old women dying from starvation, produced a lurid effect on the minds of his hearers and made them the more susceptible to his subtle allusions to force. He made extensive use of the gospel to popularize his philosophy of social justice. He preached class consciousness and organization as he preached religion. He urged insurrection as he extolled the names of the Prophets. He inspired courage in emulation of Christ:

Oh, my brethren, look neither to this man nor to that man, but pray to God Almighty to raise up among you prophets like unto Moses and Joshua and Hezekiah and Ezekiel and Mala

1 See Annual Register, vol. lxxx, 1839, p. 311.

chi, and Amos and Jonah; pray to God to raise up apostles like Peter and Paul and John; pray God to raise up men filled with his favor; men whose hearts are filled with love to their brethren; pray God to send such men out, with their lives in their hands, to launch his thunderbolts at the head of the oppressor, and to shed his blessing upon the heads of those who in obedience, reverential, child-like obedience, love to follow in the way of his commandments.

You will never have freedom or happiness in England; this land will never be worth living in-it is not worth living in now, if it were not for the hope in God that it may be better; if there be a hell upon earth comparatively with other nations of the world, it is England; if the devil has any seat of authority-any kingdom where he rules more infernally than in any other part of the world, it is England at this moment. Look where you will; cast your eyes abroad from the political head to the political foot, there is no soundness in us; there is nothing "but wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores," and the only balm of Gilead, the only good physician is yonder Good Physician-he who laid down his life for the world. Pray, then, for the spirit of God to be poured out; pray for the spirit of God to come down-; pray for the spirit of determined and decided men once more to be imparted . . . ; pray that God would fill you with his truth, that he would raise you up and carry you far beyond the fear of man; and when your own soul is let loose, when your own mind is free, when your own heart is big and swollen, and entirely filled with the fear of God, you will never be afraid of what men can say or do unto you. You will say, "He that is for me, is greater than all that are against me"; and you will go on in the name, and in the strength of God, and you will be a Christian Reformer. We want in England Christian Reformers.1

...

Resistance to bad laws is, according to Stephens, as

1 A Sermon Preached at Hyde, in Lancashire, on the 17th of February, 1839.

exalted a virtue as is obedience to good laws. Allegiance per se is not an end; if the law affords no protection, it must be disobeyed. His appeal for rebellion was direct:

Are the Spitalfields weavers protected, when not one in a hundred of them, after working twelve hours a day, can earn 12s. a week? Are the handloom weavers of the north protected, when they cannot, with all their toil, earn more than 7s. a week? I have known girls eight years of age working at the anvil, making nails from six in the morning until eight or nine at night, and on Friday all night long, and, after all, could not earn more than is. 6d. per week. The mother worked equal time, and whilst she was at work, one of her children was burnt almost to a cinder, and she could only earn 3s. a week, whilst the grandmother could get no more than 1s. 6d. Do those poor creatures owe allegiance to the laws? Are they pro

tected? Do the poor wretches of the factories-the carders, the piecers, the scavengers, dressers, weavers, and spinners -do they owe allegiance to the laws? Does the agricultural laborer, who can only earn 8s. a week, owe submission to the laws? The law, in establishing oppression, makes the oppressed its deadly enemy.1

ter.

Stephens dwelt little on the political aspects of the CharHe aimed chiefly to impress the masses with the realization of the iniquitous economic and social system. "You see yonder factory with its towering chimney. Every brick in that factory is cemented with the blood of women and little children ",-he said on one occasion. He always warned his hearers against passiveness. On January 1, 1838, referring to the New Poor Law, he admonished a Newcastle audience that "sooner than wife and husband, and father and son, should be sundered and dungeoned, and

1 A Sermon Preached in Shepherd and Shepherdess Fields, London, on Sunday, May 12, 1839.