fed on skillee', sooner than wife or daughter should wear the prison dress-sooner than that-Newcastle ought to be, and should be-one blaze of fire, with only one way to put it out, and that with the blood of all who supported this abominable measure." He recurred to this theme in most of his sermons, and once he declared tersely:

I have never acknowledged the authority of the New Poor Law, and so help me God I never will. I never paid my rates under it, and so help me God I never will-they may take every chair, every table and every bed I have-they may pull my house over my head, and send me and my wife and my child wanderers on the heaths and the hills-they may take all but my wife, my child, and my life, but pay one penny I never will. If they dare attempt to take them, and it becomes necessary to repel force by force, there will be a knife, a pike, or a bullet at hand, and if I am to fall, I will at least sell life for life. I exhort you and all others to do the same. I do not mean to flinch. I will recommend nothing which I will not do. I tell you that if they attempt to carry into effect this damnable law, I mean to fight. I will lay aside the black coat for the red, and with the Bible in one hand and a sword in the other— a sword of steel, not of argument-I will fight to the death sooner than that law shall be brought into operation on me or on others with my consent or through my silence. . . Perish trade and manufacture - perish arts, literature and science-perish palace, throne and altar-if they can only stand upon the dissolution of the marriage tie-the annihilation of every domestic affection, and the vilest and most brutal oppression ever yet practiced upon the poor of any country in the world.1

The most salient feature in his sermons, besides their inciting character, was the subjection of politics to eco

1 A Sermon Preached at Primrose Hill, London, on Sunday, May 12,

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1

nomic ends. Contrary to well-nigh all Chartists, he never made universal suffrage synonymous with universal happiness. He believed that every man without a home, or whose home was "not all that God meant it to be," was robbed and had, therefore, “ a just cause for quarrel with society." He gave his allegiance to the People's Charter in so far as it aimed to assure a happy home for every man " that breathed God's free air or trod God's free earth." But at the same time he realized, and endeavored to make the people realize that the Charter would be of no avail without a strong, organized, revolutionary movement for the purpose of effecting a complete change in the economic system:

There has already been too much of what is called political reform, the juggling of the places from one to another, the passing of the pea from one cup to another cup to amuse and to deceive, and ultimately to destroy the people; and every step you take is a step nearer to hell. All the laws in England could not make Hyde one bit the better unless the people were a changed people. An Act of Parliament cannot change the hearts of the tyrants Ashton and Howard. These men have made themselves rich by making you poor. They have swollen with wealth by plundering you. Now, all the laws in England could not change the hearts of those wicked men; and unless their hearts were changed, and your hearts were changed, what could the law do? There would be a thousand ways of breaking through it; a thousand ways of avoiding it and of screening those who were detected, even after they had broken the law. It could do no good. Your minds must be made up. You, husbands! unless your minds be made up that your wives ought not and shall not work; that rather than kill your wives by allowing them to work, you will allow God to take their lives by gradual starvation. . . . But God Almighty

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

is moving the working classes in the country, and therefore I exhort you to give yourself to prayer. Pray God to sound the alarm from one end of the land to the other; and then, in the spirit of self-denial, and self-sacrifice, and devotion, be united as the heart of one man, and as one united and indissoluble phalanx, God leading you by a pillar of fire by night, and by a pillar of cloud by day, wend your way and force your passage through the wilderness of the promised land-the land that flows with milk and honey. It is high time there was some mighty movement.1

The emphasis which Stephens always laid on the economic aspects of the movement, not less than his advocacy of physical force, precluded Lovett and his friends from recognizing him as a bona fide Chartist. In an Address to the Irish People, published in August, 1838, in reply to the Precursors, the London Working Men's Association disclaimed all affiliation with Stephens, who was labeled as a man “more known for his opposition to the New Poor Law than for his advocacy of Radicalism", and who "ridiculed our principles and publicly declared his want of confidence in us." 2 His sermons support the suspicion that in his heart of hearts he probably never believed in the efficacy of political agitation. It may have been the vanity of a popular idol and the fear of losing his grip on the people that restrained him from speaking his mind; he may have felt reluctant to disillusion the masses in their faith in the talismanic power of the Charter; he may have himself been unconsciously caught in the maelstrom of universal agitation, or he may have cast his lot with the Chartists simply because the new movement afforded a wide field for the dissemination of his revolutionary ideas. At any rate, his

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

'William Lovett, Life and Struggles, p. 195.

skepticism became the more pronounced the sterner the government became in its hostility towards the movement. In a sermon preached at Ashton on May 26th, 1839, he warned the people of the futility of abortive demonstrations and desultory fighting and advised them to divide themselves into little bands of five or ten in a company and to meet at each other's houses, and "there over the hearthstone, without books and papers, without speeches and resolutions, without anything but talking and praying, tell one another what they think, and ask one another whether they are right, and whether their minds are made up to shed the last drop of blood rather than live in bondage, and sell their wives and children to the devil." And then in an ebullition of in

dignation, he cried out:

Down with the House of Commons; down with the House of Lords; aye, down with the throne, and down with the altar itself; burn the church; down with all rank, all dignity, all title, all power; unless that dignity, authority, and power will and do secure to the honest industrious efforts of the upright and poor man a comfortable maintenance in exchange for his labor. I don't care about your Charter; it may be all very right; it may be all very good; you have a right to get it, mind you, and I will stand by you in it; but I don't care about it; and I don't care about a republic. You have a right to have it if you choose; and I will stand by you, in defending your right to have it if you choose. I don't care about a monarchy; I don't care about the present, or any other order of things, unless the Charter, the republic, the monarchy, the present order of things, or any other order of things that may be brought to succeed the present, should, first of all, and above all, and through all, secure to every son of the soil, to every living being of the human kind a full, a sufficient and a comfortable maintenance, according to the will and commandment of God. That is what I go for; that is what I talk for; that is what I live for; and that is what

I will die for; for I will have it. I say now what I said before; the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the cattle upon a thousand hills; the gold and the silver; and he has filled all things with plenteousness. There is nothing niggardly from God. There has nothing come in stinging, closefisted niggardliness from God Almighty. It is all plenty. There is plenty of soil-there is plenty of water-there is plenty of sun-there is plenty of rain-there is plenty of dew -the winter throws a warm blanket of driven snow upon the earth, to cover it and keep it warm: then He sends out the sun to rule the day-refreshing and reviving is the breeze. . . . What have we to thank God for? What have we to bless God for? Does God call upon us to thank Him for nothing? Then what kind of a God is He? And what sort of worshippers does He take us to be? Does He call upon us to bless Him for curses? Then what kind of a Maker, Preserver, and Redeemer, and Judge, is He; and what kind of workmanship of his Almighty hand are we? No, my brethren, the very thought of such a thing is impiety and blasphemy; God does not ask us to thank Him for nothing; or to bless Him for curses. Then what have we to thank and bless God for? You have to thank and bless God for houses and for lands, for food and for clothing, which He has given you, but which others have taken from you. I thank God, who gave me life and breath, and all things richly to enjoy. And if any man asks me where they are, as a laboring man, I answer, "God gave them, but wicked men have taken them from me." But I not only thank God for having given them to me; I not only bless God for having bestowed them upon me, but I trust in God for strength to help me to take them back again. I am alive, and therefore, I thank God, I have the use of my understanding, and the understanding shows me not only what things are, but what things ought to be-and I trust that God, who gave me life, and who still lends me breath, and intrusts me with power of body as well as power of mind-I trust in that God, and I pray to that God, that he would, if it be found that my rights cannot be got back