The role of Frost. The plot to release Vincent by force. The plan of a rising in Yorkshire and Lancashire O'Connor's late warning . Frost's last public letter. The plan of the Welsh Chartists. Frost, Williams and Jones the chief commanders Steps taken by the mayor . . . The progress of the rebels impeded by bad weather. The fight at the Westgate Hotel. George Shell's letter to his parents Death sentence commuted to transportation for life. Decoration of the graves of the Westgate victims Petition agreed to at the "Crown and Anchor" meeting, February APPENDIX B CHAPTER I Chartism means the bitter discontent grown fierce and mad. . . . It is a new name for a thing which has had many names, which will yet have many. Carlyle. PROTOTYPES OF CHARTISM THE term Chartism was coined in 1837 to designate a set of principles which were subsequently embodied in the famous "People's Charter". Universal suffrage, equal representation, annual parliaments, no property qualifications, vote by ballot, and payment to members - these formed the "six points " which for a number of years eclipsed all other political and social creeds. At its inauguration the movement attracted a number of recruits from the ranks of the middle class. In time, however, Chartism became ever more crystallized as a distinct labor struggle for the reconstruction of society. The form of the demands were purely political, but the object was strictly economic. Political equality was proclaimed as the only weapon to secure equality of condition and the abolition of class privilege. The concomitant social equality would then pull down the mountains of wealth and fill up the valleys of want. The task could be effected by the workingmen only. Coöperation of the middle class was generally tabooed as spelling imminent treason and danger to the people's cause. It was this expression of class consciousness and realization of class interests that distinguished Chartism both from utopian socialism and from previous democratic movements in England. Long before the Chartist demands were framed in the 21] 21 People's Charter, political reform, of one kind or another, had been urged by the friends of the people. The spirit of democracy, which had been quelled by Cromwell's defeat of the Levellers, revived a century later. Indeed, some of the Chartist "points" were promulgated as early as 1769 by the "Society of the Supporters of the Bill of Rights," which, among other parliamentary reforms, demanded equal representation and annual parliaments. Petitions were for the first time presented to Parliament, protesting that its members were not self-representing individuals, but trusted delegates whose authority ceased the very moment they disregarded the wishes and interests of their constituents. Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, soon pronounced himself a convert and professed that "the constitution intended that there should be a permanent relation between the constituents and representative body of the people." On the first of May, 1771, he asserted that "the act of constituting septennial parliaments must be repealed. . . . Our whole constitution is giving way, and, therefore, with the most deliberate and solemn conviction, I declare myself a convert to triennial parliaments." 1 His son, William Pitt, went even further, declaring that "the restoration of the House of Commons to freedom and independency, by the interposition of the collective body of the nation, was essentially necessary to our existence as a free people "; that an equal representation of the people by annual elections and the universal right of suffrage appeared to him "so reasonable to the natural feelings of mankind, that no sophistry could elude the force of the arguments which were urged in their favor." The bills which he introduced in 1782, 1783 and 1785 provided for the extension of the franchise to householders, and for the gradual extinction of all rotten boroughs. 1 William Pitt was far from being an extremist among his 1 Chatham Correspondence, edited by W. S. Taylor, Esq., and Captain John Henry Pringle, London, 1840, vol. iv, p. 174. colleagues. The writings of Stanhope and of Major John Cartwright appeared as early as 1774 and 1776, respectively, and demanded universal suffrage as a natural right. In his Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated, Cartwright argued that "freedom is the immediate gift of God to all the human species," and that the franchise is a prerequisite of freedom. "The very scavenger in the streets has a better right to his vote than any peer to his coronet, or the king himself to his crown; for the right of the peer and of the king are derived from the laws of men, but the scavenger's from the laws of God". This idea became so popular that the Whigs began to consider it advantageous to identify themselves with the reformers. Aristocratic clubs, such as the "Constitutional Society", the "Whig Club", and the "Society of the Friends of the People", vied with each other in radicalism and in their emulation of the idealistic maxims of Rousseau and the French Encyclopedists. In 1780 the Duke of Richmond introduced a bill for universal suffrage and annual parliaments. The preamble contended that since the life, liberty and property of every man is or may be affected by the law of the land in which he lives, no man is, or can be, actually represented if he has no vote in the election of the representative whose consent to the making of laws binds the whole community. The state of election of members of the House of Commons was declared as a gross deviation from the “simple and natural principle of representation and equality." In several places members were returned by the property of one man while the number of persons who were suffered to vote did not amount to one-sixth of the whole community. The great majority of the commoners were thus governed by laws to which they had not consented either by themselves or by their representatives. Triennial and septen 1 Compare this with the preamble of the "People's Charter". See Appendix B. |