THE TOWN LABOURER
1760-1832
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
THE VILLAGE LABOURER
1760-1832
A Study in the Government of England
before the Reform Bill.
8tv. 91. &/. net.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOM BAT, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
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\A
THE TOWN LABOURER
1760-1832
The New Civilisation
BY
J. L. HAMMOND AND BARBARA HAMMOND
SECOND IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE A BOTH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1917
HD
838!
TO
LEONARD TRELAWNY HOBHOUSE
AND
JOHN ATKINSON HOBSON
a 2
PREFACE
THIS book was almost ready for publication in the summer
of 1914, when it was put on one side for the more pressing
tasks of the war.
It is published now, because it seems to the writers that
the subject it discusses has a direct bearing on problems
that are beginning to engage the attention of the nation as
the war draws, however slowly, to its end. The more
closely any period of history is studied, the more clearly
does it appear that the mistakes and troubles of an age are
due to a false spirit, an unhappy fashion in thought or
emotion, a tendency in the human mind to be overwhelmed
by the phenomena of the time, and to accept those pheno-
mena as the guide to conduct and judgment, instead of
checking and criticising them by a reasoned standard of its
own. Men come to think that it is their business to explain,
rather than to control, the forces of the hour.
The social system produced by the Industrial Revolu-
tion reflected a spiritT that we may" describe as a spirit of
pessimism, and this spirit has done more than
any event in English history to create the ' two nations ' of
which Disraeli used to speak. Unity is only possible in
a society which pursues a common aim, in which all men
and women have a recognised and equal share. Such an
aim must have some relation to human qualities and
human needs. This age had taken for its aim the accumu-
lation of economic power, and its guiding philosophy was a
vii
\
viii THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
dividing force, because it regarded men and women not as
citizens but as servants of that power. If the needs of
that power seemed to conflict with the needs of human
nature, human nature had to suffer. In its extreme form
this theory made the mass of the nation the cannon-fodder
of industry.
The war has shaken that philosophy as nothing else has
shaken it. It has brought in its train evils and dangers
sufficiently ominous and manifest, but it has undermined
the stability of conventions that seemed secure five years
ago. Men and women refuse to believe that England must
always remain two nations. They are in revolt against
'iron laws' and the predestinations of 'economic necessity.'
New lessons have been learned from the sacrifices made
by every home, in the struggle with a spirit that presents
the most sinister aspects of the industrial system in a
military form. For as the world sees what kind of life
Europe would lead under the shadow of a gospel that
makes a god of military power, so it comes to understand
what humanity must lose if it makes a god of industrial
power. On the will and capacity of the nation to bring
to its problems the ideals for which the noblest of
its sons have given their lives, the future of England
depends.
This volume is the first part of a study of the Industrial
Revolution. It attempts to describe the general features
of the new civilisation. The second volume will give in
detail the history of the workpeople in various industries,
with a full account of the disturbances known as the
Luddite Rising, and of those connected with the adven-
tures of Oliver, the famous agent provocateur.
The Home Office Papers, now accessible to students in
the Public Record Office, provide new and important
PREFACE i*
material for the study of the period, and considerable ut>u
has been made of them in preparing this book.
The writers have to thank many friends for help and
criticism ; among others Mr. A. Glutton Brock, Mr. G. D.
H. Cole, Mrs. M. A. Hamilton, Professor L. T. Hobhouse,
Mr. and Mrs. F. H. Lucas, Professor George Unwin, and
Miss L. Finch who has helped with the index. Miss
M. K. Bradby and Mr. R. H. Tawney have read the book
through in proof and made a number of most useful
suggestions, while Professor Graham Wallas has given
the writers the most generous assistance at every stage of
their work.
HZMKL HEMPSXKAD, May 1017.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAOB
i. THE NEW POWER, 1
ii. THE NEW DISCIPLINE, 17
i! i. THE NEW TOWN, 37
iv. JUSTICE, 60
v. ORDER, 81
M. THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS, ..... 95
vn. THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS, 112
vni. THE EMPLOYMENT OP CHILDREN (i.) : THE MILL, . 143
TX. THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN (n.) : MINES AND
CHIMNEYS, 172
THE MIND OF THE RICH, 194
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH, .... 221
x'n. THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR (i.) : THE SPIRIT OF
UNION, . 247
xin. THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR (n.) : THE SPIRIT OF
RELIGION, 268
xiv. THE MIND OF THE POOR, 288
xv. THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR, . ... 306
xvi. CONCLUSION, 320
TABLE OF DATES, 331
CHIEF AUTHORITIES, 333
INDEX, . 337
I
CHAPTER I
THE NEW POWER
" OUR fields are cultivated with a skill unknown elsewhere,
with a skill which has extracted rich harvests from moors
and morasses. Our houses are filled with conveniences
which the kings of former times might have envied. Our
bridges, our canals, our roads, our modes of communication
fill every stranger with wonder. Nowhere are manufactures
carried to such perfection. /Nowhere does man exercise such
a dominion over matter.")
In this passage, part of a powerful contrast that Macaulay
drew in the exciting debates on the Reform Bill between
the standard of English government and the standard of
English life, we have a vivid picture of the effect produced
on the imagination of the cultivated classes by the miracles
that had been accomplished within the lifetime of most of
the members of the last of the unreformed Parliaments of
England. It is not surprising that this revolution pro-
duced a profound impression on the generation that had
witnessed it. Even to-day, when the most fantastic of
Mr. Wells's dreams seem to tumble into life before one's
eyes in quick succession, the story of the changes that trans-
formed travel, transport, commerce, manufacture, farming,
banking, and all the various arts and means of social life,
reads like a chapter from the Arabian Nights. The blind
Metcalf had introduced the art of making roads ; the illiterate
Brindley , th ( : art of building aqueducts ; Telford, a shepherd's
son, had thrown a bridge across the Mcnai Straits ; Bell, a
millwright's apprentice, had launched the first steamer on
the Clyde ; Stephenson, the son of a fireman, had driven his
2 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
first railway engine ; while a long lire of inventors and
organisers Watt, Arkwright, Wedgwcod, Crompton, Har-
greaves and a hundred others by their patience and their
murage and their imagination, had between them made
England the workshop of the world. When George the
jrd came to the throne, woollen goods were the chief
manufactures sold by England, her cotton exports were
unimportant ; when Macaulay spoke, her cotton exports
were worth some eighteen millions, her total exports had
risen from fourteen to over sixty millions, her imports from
nine to over forty millions ; 1 a nation that had been poor
and even backward in her roads now possessed three thousand
miles of navigable canals besides her infant railways ; the
new Stock Exchange had been founded, and in two years
alone no less a sum than a hundred and seventy millions
had been subscribed for joint-stock companies. The men
to whom Macaulay spoke had seen the dazzling birth of
modern England.
It is not the aim of this book to describe this revolution,
to trace the long struggles of inventors, or the rapid triumphs
of the leaders of enterprise, to examine the result of all this
energy in terms of national power and national wealth.
That subject, though not exhausted, perhaps inexhaustible,
has been the theme of a hundred important volumes. These
pages are concerned with the fortunes of the mass of the
> pie engaged in the industries that produced this wealth.
Industrial Revolution was a social revolution, creating
with* problprns"aiid aVh:t rat-tf-r of its own.
; /TernsT whaTlrolntions were~j
it_was the result__ofjtln- spirit in which this revolu
was guided, or \efi^^g^^f^~^s^^j^^f^^ life, <
prospectifol this new society ;_what^did this dominion of
mai ) i-rJookJikQo thegreat popula
part, II a blind part, 4n ita^estabiisEmeht and its ex
Other aspects of the revolution will only be discussed In
so far as they seem necessary to a full understanding of
minghom, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, ii. pp. 694
and 695.
THE NEW POWER 3
the circumstances and conduct of the world that had been
shaken into life in the violent birth of modern England.
A word of caution is needed at the outset of such an
inquiry. It is as true of the industrial world as of any
other that there is a sense in which it is impossible to
explain anything without explaining everything. It IB
true, again, that there is an element of risk in any general
statement about th- 1 ndustrMTleyorutiQn. 1 . Many forms
of life and eontrol that are associated with that revolution
"were not novel. Th-- normal worker before the Industrial
Revolution was not an independent producer in the full
meaning of the term. There were persons working in
factories before this period ; there were many more work-
ing for capitalist merchants, on whom they were entirely
dependent for the supply of raw materials and the
marketing of the product. 2 M. Mantoux has put it in his*
classical book 3 that Large Scale Industry did not create
the proletariate or capitalist organisation, it completed
their evolution. 4 The Industrial Revolution did not sweep
away an England in which there were no employers and
no employed and none of the problems that arise between
masters and men. Adam Smith said, in the Wealth of
Nations, that in every part of Europe twenty workmen
serve under a master for one that is independent. But the
Industrial Revolution separated England from her past as
completely as the political Revolution separated France
from her past. For we understand by the characteristics
of a society its governing facts and conditions : the classes,
institutions, and atmosphere in which its life expresses and
arranges itself. These features are quite definite and
manifest in the civilisation that had its origin in the changes
1 See Professor Meredith's analysis in his Economic History of England.
* The Yorkshire woollen domestic producer had kept his independence
in these respects. See Professor Ashley, Economic Organisation of Eng-
land, p. 142.
3 La Revolution IndustrieUe au XV HI* Siecle en Angleterrf.
4 As early as the thirteenth century there were small weavers hiring
looms from master weavers in London. See Professor t T n win's important
book. Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth Century.
4 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
that came over England between the accession of George
the Third and the passing of the Reform Bill. The new
classes and the new institutions were not new in the sense
in which the spinning -jenny was new or the power-loom
was new. The atmosphere of a capita-list society had
already crept over certain industries, 1 but it maktes all the
difference whether this or that feature is an accidental or
an essential mark of an age, whether this or that grouping
or relationship finds itself here and there in a society, or
whether it is the most obvious and significant fact about
that society. The view that the English people were the
same in 1830 as in 1760 would be rejected as no less
contrary to reason than the view that English manu-
factures were the same, or that they still travelled along
the same roads, to the same markets, to reach the same
customers.
The most striking fact about the Industrial Revolution,
if we look at it as a chapter in the history of men and
women, is the rapid rate at which the population grew.
Within this period the population of England nearly
doubled itself. 2 This growth was not uniform or general.
It marked a redistribution of the inhabitants. In 1700 the
five most populous counties are believed to have been
Middlesex, Somerset, Gloucester, Wiltshire, and North-
ampton. In 1800 they were Middlesex, Lancashire, the
West Riding, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire. In the
counties that were the theatre of most of the struggles de-
scribed in this book, the increase was gigantic. In the twenty
years from 1801 Lancashire grew faster than Middlesex. 3
This increase represented not only the growth of great
1 Notably the woollen and worsted trades in the south-west and in the
east. Defoe had found the beginnings of the factory system in Norwich,
Frome, Taunton, Devizes, and Stourbridge.
* Toynbeo put it : " Before 1751 the largest decennial increase, so far as
we can calculate from the imperfect materials, was 3 per cent. For each
of the next three decennial periods the increase was 6 per oent. ; then
between 1781 and 1791 it was per cent. ; between 1791 and 1801, 11 per
oent.; between 1801 and 1811, 14 per oent.; between 1811 and 1821,
r oent." (Industrial Revol 7).
1 From <>72.000 to 1,052,000. See Barnes's Lancashire.
THE NEW POWER 6
towns like Manchester l and Liverpool, 2 but the flooding of
HIT towns. 8 There was a similar though less violent
development in the oth< r manufacturing counties. 4 The
cotton towns grew the fastest, then the iron towns, then
the woollen. 5 A great feature of the new civilisation was
the rapid settlement of a dense working-class population
outside the narrow limits of the existing towns.
'This alteration in the map of England was caused partly
by the change from an agricultural to an industrial society,
partly by the growth of new industries, and partly by
developments in the method and nature of old industries^,
If the general change is to be described in a sentence, we
may say that England was hastening towards that industrial
specialisation which more than anything else distinguishes
modern social life from social life before the eighteenth
century. Defoe considered that the West Riding was the
only part of England that specialised in manufacture at the
time of his tour (1724), but there were already the beginnings
of concentration in particular industries, and each discovery
brought with it some new reason why this or that industry
should make its home in one county rather than in another.
Thus, to take one example, in the early part of the century
the production of iron had decreased, owing to the scarcity
of fuel, but when inventions made it possible to use coke
fuel instead of charcoal, smelting and all iron processes
depended on the supply and neighbourhood of coal, and
no longer on the supply and neighbourhood of timber.
1 In 1774 Manchester had 41,000 inhabitants; in 1801, 102,000; in 1821,
187,000. See Baines.
1 Liverpool had a population of 77,000 in 1801, of 118,000 in 1821.
See Baines.
a Bolton sprang from 29,000 to 50,000 ; Blackburn from 33,000 to
53,000; and Oldham from 21,000 to 38,000. See Bainee. M. Mantoux
says Oldham had 300 or 400 inhabitants in 1760.
4 Bradford was a little town with grass-grown streets in 1794, and by
1831 she had a population of 23,000 ; ^jpds meanwhile had grown to
123,000, her population having been less than half that figure in 1801.
Sheffield increased in the same period from 45,000 to 91,000 ; Birmingham
from 73,000 to 146,000.
* Mantoux, op. tit., p. 372.
6 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
This, in its turn, gave a great impetus to coal mining, and as
one discovery after another made iron a more useful
material than wood or stone, the new industry of iron
feinelting grew fast in the neighbourhood of coal mines. The
iron trade in consequence left the south and travelled to
the north and the Midlands. 1
It was natural for the cotton industry to find a home in
Lancashire, with its little streams flowing from the hills into
the Ribble and the Mersey, because water was needed to
drive Arkwright's machinery. The steam engine, which was
first used in this industry in 1785, led to concentration, and
many a water mill became a picturesque ruin. The new
industries suited Lancashire as well as the old. 2 Then, of
course, transport played a decisive part hi the destinies of
this or that district. The Five Towns were the Potteries
in 1700, and they were the Potteries in 1830. Burslem had
coal and clay, and a race of enfranchised copyholders, men
of initiative and enterprise. These initial advantages were
crowned by the piece of good fortune that gave the Five
Towns, in Josiah Wedgwood, a leader with the will and
energy to drive the Bill through Parliament that made
the Trent and Mersey Canal. 3
But our business is with the people engaged directly as
employers or employed in the industries that became im-
1 Sussex had been at one time the most important centre of the pro-
duction of iron : in 1740 there were ton furnaces in that county, more than
in any other county ; by 1796 the output in Sussex had dropped to 173
tons, and by 1830 the industry had settled in its present home, Stafford-
shire possessing no less than 123 furnaces, or more than all the other
English counties together. Wales was not far behind with 113. See
Report of Midland Mining Commission, 1842.
a In 1788 there were 143 water mills in the United Kingdom, of which
41 were in Lancashire ; by 1838, of 220,000 cotton workers in England and
Wales, more than 150,000 were in Lancashire. Special properties of
climate and atmosphere had reinforced the advantages of situation.
Professor Chapman sums up the advantages of Lancashire : ( 1 ) The port
of Liverpool, (2) cheap coal, (3) a damp climate. " The spinning districts
of Lancashire are so suit able gpcause they lie on the slopes of lulls facing
west, upon which the damp Ibreezes from the Atlantic discharge their
moisture, as they are driven to higher levels by the slope of the ground."
See Chapman, Cotton Industry, pp. 149 and 153.
Wedgwood, Staffordshire Pottery and its History.
THE NEW POWER 7
portant or were called into life by these developments.
Who were they ? Where did they come from ? What
were the new classes forming the new society ?
Before the Industrial Revolution the rich classes in
England were landed proprietors, a small class of bankers
and money-lenders, and merchants. 1 The merchants were
sometimes manufacturers as well, but there was no regular
class of manufacturers in the modern sense of the word.
To Adam Smith and Arthur Young that term denoted a
person working with his hands. " It was indeed the
merchant, and not the manufacturer, who represented the
most advanced form of capitalism in the eighteenth cen-
tury. Long before Dr. Johnson's discovery that ' an
English merchant is a new species of gentleman,' Defoe
had noted the rise of merchant-princes in the Western
clothing trades, observing that ' many of the great families
who now pass for gentry in these counties have been originally
raised from and built out of this truly noble manufacture.' " 2
These merchant princes were merchant middlemen. At
this time there was little capital laid down in fixed plant
except in shipping, canal transport, and agriculture. Joint
capital found its field chiefly in chartered companies for
foreign trade, such as the East India or the Hudson's
Bay Company. The machinery of finance and credit was
very slight, and in 1750 there were not more than twelve
bankers' shops outside London. 3
The Industrial Revolution produced a new powerful rich
class, the class of the capitalist manufacturer. The great
mass of people collected in Lancashire, Cheshire, and the
western borders of Yorkshire were working in 1830, not
for a multitude of small masters^ but for a comparatively
small number of large masters. (The dominant fact about
the districts that now became densely populated was the
rapid rise of these larger employers.^
1 Mantoux, op. cit., p. 376.
' Hobson, Evolution oj Modern Capital m, p. 62.
* Burke in " Letter on a Regicide Peace ' Quoted by Toynbee, op. cit. t
p. 32.
8 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Where did this new class come from ? It did not come,
as might have been expected, from the ranks of the merchant
manufacturers of the east and south-west. Nor did it
come from the landlord class. The Industrial Revolution
had in one respect an effect exactly contrary to that of
the agrarian revolution. Enclosure eliminated the oppor-
tunities of the small man ; the Industrial Revolution threw
open the doors to adventure, enterprise, and industry, and
the men who pressed in were spinners, weavers, apprentices,
any one who could borrow a little money and was prepared
to work like a slave and to live like a slave master. Many
of them came of yeoman stock : Peel, Fielden, Strutt,
Wilkinson, Wedgwood, Darby, Crawshay, and Radcliffe
among others. Radcliffe, whose family, like Fielden's, had
been ruined by an Enclosure Act, started without any
capital, and so did Watt's friend, Kennedy. Robert Owen
was apprenticed to a retail shopkeeper, and he set up in
business with a hundred pounds that he borrowed of his
brother. Brotherton, father of the member for Salford in
the first Reformed Parliament, had been a schoolmaster
and an exciseman before he started a cotton mill. Gaskcll
remarks that few of those who entered the trade rich were
successful : " . . . the men who did establish themselves
were raised by their own efforts, commencing in a very
humble way, and pushing their advance by a series of un-
ceasing exertions, having a very limited capital to begin
with, or even none at all save that" of their own labour. "-
He gives a dark picture of the life and character of these
early employers : " uneducated, of coarse habits, sensual
in their enjoyments, partaking of the rude revelry of their
dependents, overwhelmed by success, but yet, paradoxical
as it may sound, industrious men, and active and far-sighted
tradesmen." l But the phaso thus described, whether the
description is just or not, soon passes. The employ
become an order ; by 1830 the more important of them had
been born, as M. Mantoux puts it, in the cotton or the wool,
and a wide distance separated them from their workmen.
1 Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of England, pp. 45 *nd 65.
THE NEW POWER 9
Tho workman, however much he hated the early master,
in personal touch with him and understood him, but
the gulf between the workman and an employer whose
father has been a workman, may be as wide and isolating
as the gulf between men whose families have been apart for
generations. 1
There was indeed one industry in which the capitalist
class came in part from the aristocracy. If the chief" 1
opponents of Lord Shaftesbury's Factory Bills were cotton
spinners, the chief opponent of his attacks on the scandals
of the mines was a colliery owner who was also a peer, the third '
Lord Londonderry. Several aristocratic owners are men-
tioned in the early Reports as working their own mines,
among others, besides Lord Londonderry, Lord Durham, Lord
Fitzwilliam, Lord Dudley, and the Duke of Portland. But
owners did not as a rule work their own mines. 2 The great
development of coal mining enriched many landowners
directly, and the Enclosure Acts of the period show that
the lords of the manor kept an alert eye on the possibilities
of enterprise of this kind. Under the Wakefield Act
arrangements were made for the prosecution of coal mining
that were very satisfactory to the Duke of Leeds, 3 and
another landowner took even ampler precautions in the
case of an enclosure in the promising county of Stafford. 4
And of course it was not only the landowners who had coal
on their estates who were enriched by the success of the new
1 See Chapman, p. 216. Bamford describes the change, Early Days,
chap. xii.
1 Buddie told the House of Lords Committee on the Coal Trade in 1829
that only five out of the forty-one collieries on the Tyne, and only three
out of the eighteen on the Wear, were worked by the proprietors, the rest
being in the hands of lessees or adventurers. Leases were generally for
twenty-one years, and the lessees generally received 10 per cent, and their
purchase money back ; in very risky undertakings, 20 per cent. The pro-
prietors protected themselves by stipulating for a fixed rent, in addition
to a percentage. When the lease expired, the lessor usually had the right
to take the machinery on an independent valuation. In some di.st riots,
notably in Staffordshire, small pits were let to contractors who \vero known
as " Butties " and were very harsh masters.
8 Village Labourer, p. 383.
d Midland Mining Commission, 1842, Appendix, p. 53.
10 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
industries. The manufactures of Lancashire are said to
have raised the rental of land in some cases 1500, and in
others as much as 3000 per cent. 1
Although the aristocracy seldom became actual employers,
they helped the Industrial Revolution by promoting internal
development and communication. Nothing struck Voltaire 2
more about England than the freedom of the English
aristocracy from the prejudice against commerce that kept
the French aristocrat out of every trade less reputable than
the trade of living openly on the public. If the name of
any single patron is to be linked with the progress of canals,
which explains so much of the growth of Lancashire and
Yorkshire and the Midland counties, the hero of that
revolution is by universal agreement the Duke of Bridge-
water. There is a heroine too in the story. The Duke was
to have married the younger of the two famous Irish sisters,
the Gunnings, the widow of the Duke of Hamilton, but
at the last moment his peace of mind was disturbed by
rumours of the levity of her sister, Lady Coventry. He
desired his future wife to break off relations with her sister,
and as she gave the only reply that was possible to a woman
of spirit, they separated. The lady found a less exacting
husband in the Duke of Argyll. The Duke of Bridgewater
renounced society and found consolation and distraction
in carrying out his father's project of making a canal to
connect his mines at Worsley, near Manchester, with the
Irwell. For this purpose he employed Brindley, and
Brindley's success in this difficult enterprise emboldened the
Duke to devote his vast income to building a canal between
Manchester and Liverpool. He risked his fortune, but in
the end he acquired vast wealth as well as wide renown.
The success and results of his great scheme encouraged others
to embark on similar projects ; a network of canals soon
1 Cooke Taylor, Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire, p. 167.
See Webb, Manor and Borough, p. 113 n. In 1846 the town of Manchester
bought the manor and all the rights and incidents from Sir Oswald Mosley
for 200,000. In 1596 a Mosley h id bought it for 3500, and in 1808 the
town might have bought it for 90,000.
Morley, Voltaire, p. 75.
THE NEW POWER 11
covered the face of Lancashire and Yorkshire ; the 1 )
became the proverbial type of princely benefactor, and
Spencer Walpole was able to say of him that he "did
perhaps more to promote the prosperity of this country
than all the dukes, marquises, and earls combined, who
before his time had been born into the world." 1
It is not difficult to understand how it was that the
Industrial Revolution discovered the capital and the enter-
prise needed for the new industry at a time when profit
were made with lightning rapidity. The supply of labour
is more puzzling. It looks as if the Peels and the Ark-
wrights had only to stamp on the ground to turn empty
valleys into swarming hives of workpeople. Where did
the mass of wage earners in South Lancashire come from ?
Before answering this question it is necessary to see
what classes made up this population. At the beginning
of this period the two main classes of work were spinning
and weaving. Both were done by hand, spinning for the
most part by women and children, weaving by men, and
weaving was considered to carry the higher status. When
Samuel Crompton was married at Bolton in 1780, he put
himself down as a weaver, although he had already invented
his seining machine or mule. 2 During this period, spin-
ning, with its subsidiary processes, passed into the factories,
and weaving in great part remained outside. The two
occupations, by 1830, had changed places, spinning (though
not its subsidiary processes) being now a comparatively
well-paid employment, whereas the weavers were the mort
miserable people in Lancashire.
How was the factory population assembled ? The peopl*
working in the factory were children, women, and in a much
smaller proportion, men. The millowners began by getting
children from the workhouses, and this system of serf
labour carried the mills over the first stages, until there
was a settled population, able to provide women and
children. The men came from all parts, the only class
1 History of England, i. p. 79.
1 French, Life of Crompton, p. o9 n.
12 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
that did not make any considerable contribution being the
hand-loom weavers. We have a description of the immigra-
tion given by a Bolton witness to the Factory Commissioners
in 1833: l
" When power spinning came in, did it throw the hand spinnare
out of employ ? " " No ; spinners were very scarce then :
families had to come in from different places and learn to spin,
and whole families together were sent for by masters."
" You have been a witness of the operative class in these parts ;
you have seen it grow from nothing into a great body in the
space of a few years : how was it recruited ? Of what was it
composed ? What were the spinners taken from ? " "A good
many from the agricultural parts ; a many from Wales ; a many
from Ireland and from Scotland. People left other occupations
arid came to spinning for the sake of the high wages. I recollect
shoemakers leaving their employ and learning to spin ; I
recollect tailors ; I recollect colliers ; but a great many more
husbandmen left their employ to learn to spin ; very few weavers
at that time left their employ to learn to spin, but as the weavers
could put their children into mills at an earlier age than they
could put them to looms, they threw them into mills as soon as
possible, and many of the weavers' children stopped in the mills
and learnt to spin ; but during the last twelve years weavers
have put almost all their children into mills since hand-loom
weaving has got so bad."
" Do you ever hear of people leaving other occupations now
to learn to spin ? " " No ; the masters don't take men from
other occupations now."
" How long is it since that influx of grown-up men into the
spinning branch began to cease ? " " It did not break off at a
time, but I should say it had ceased for fifteen or twenty years."
The weaving population outside the factories
recruited in much the same way. T1 was not difficult to
learn to work a hand-loom, and for a few years the profits
were high. Agricultural labour* med into it, and as
they had been accustomed to low wages, the master spinners
found them ready to work at an inferior price, and so dis-
covered an outlet for their extra quantity of yarn. :< This
1 Factory Commission, Supplementary Report. 1834, part i. p. 169.
THE NEW POWER 13
at once led to a great depreciation in the price of hand-
loom labour, and was the beginning of that train of disasters
which has finally terminated in reducing those who have
lung to it to a state of starvation." 1 A great nun.
of the immigrants came from Ireland. During the i
against power-looms in 1826 there were said to be as many
as thirty or forty thousand Irish weavers in Manchester
alone. The Poor Law Commission Report of 1833 2 contains
a graphic picture of the destitute Irish families continually
arriving at Liverpool to seek employment in the manu-
facturing districts. 3
There were three main disturbances of the regular life of
HH- time to account for the great stream of population into
Lancashire and the adjacent counties. There was, first.
the agrarian revolution in England, dispossessing a large
number of small agriculturists, and breaking down the life
and economy of the old village. 4 There was, secondly, the
congestion of Ireland, and the acute distress caused by the
exactions of an absentee landlord-class. There was, in the
thrd place, the long war ; the disbanding of a huge army
let loose a flood of men, whose ties with their old homes
were broken. The building of canals and bridges must
also have helped to make labour more mobile, and these
enterprises drew workpeople to the districts where labour
was wanted for the factories.
These causes explain the rapid redistribution of the popu-
lation that accompanied the Industrial Revolution, but
the growth of the population is as striking a fact as this
resettlement. This growth was due to the same causes
that made the country village increase its population in the
1 Gaakell, op. cit., p. 47.
* Extracts from Information received, p. 349.
3 An Irish Catholic priest in Manchester stated to the Factory Commis-
sioners that this IrLsh population kept to itself, and did not mix with other
workmen. Factory Communion, Second Report, 1833, Dr. Hawkins,
p. 15.
4 A witness, Thomas Smith, before the House of Commons Committee
on the Cotton Wea\ ion in 1811, said that as farms were thrown
together, cottages wer e pulled down, and the people were obliged to retire
to the towns.
14 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
midst of distress and growing poverty. Under the Speen-
hamland system, which gave allowances according to the
number of children, a family was an essential source of
income. In the manufacturing districts the pressure was
even stronger. In some parts, indeed, the Speenhamland
system itself was in operation. In the weaving districts
of South Lancashire, for example, it was the practice to
make allowances in aid of wages to able-bodied weavers who
had more than two children under ten years of age. 1 But a
more powerful and a more general stimulus to population
was provided by the new industrial system, for that
system made a money wage earned by women and children
as well as men the basis of the workman's economic life.
In respect of its enduring consequences this was the most
important fact about the new civilisation. The power of
the capitalists, competing wildly for the new opportunities
of wealth, and enabled by law successfully to resist the
claims of the workmen to a living wage, forced the new
society into this mould. Child labour was not a discovery
of the Industrial Revolution, but the new industry pro-
vided infinite scope for the labour of children, and drove
the workmen to rely upon it.
In the third place, it is well known that population in-
creases with a decline in the standard of life. The first
Sir Robert Peel argued in 1806 that it was prosperity that
produced early marriages and the rapidly growing birth-
rate,* but that view is discredited by the fuller knowledge
we possess to-day. It was rejected at the time by some
of the workpeople, and the Bradford woolcombers, rather
after our period, pointed to the effect of long hours of work
and unrelieved monotony in a bad atmosphere upon the
habits of men and women. 8
1 Poor Law Commission, Extracts from Information received, 1833, p.
340.
See Toynbee, Ind. Rev., p. 67 n.
* See Burnley, History of Wool and Woolcombing, p. 177. Compare
Hewins, English Trade and Finance, p. 1 1 7 : w of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries points to the principle that below a certain level
a further deterioration of comfort stimulate- ! <A populat.
THE NEW POWER 15
The cotton industry made the most sweeping progress in
the period, 1 and was chiefly responsible for the great avalanche
of population. In the woollen districts of Yorkshire the
conditions were not quite the same. The workhouse appren-
tices were carted to the worsted mills, as they were to the
cotton mills, but the adult immigration was more specialised.
The immigrants appear to have been mainly woollen workers
from Norfolk and the south-west.
For the working classes the new system meant, then, that
a new population was called into existence to satisfy the
needs of a new power. That power employed steam as
well as hands, machines as well as men and women. The
event on which the imagination is apt to fasten as repre-
sentative of the history of the working classes during this
period is the Luddite rising. Byron's famous speech and
Charlotte Bronte's more famous novel give to most people
their idea of the misery of the time, and of its cause, the
displacement of hand labour by machinery. This, how-
ever, is only part, and a small part of the truth. At the
close of this period there were still great numbers of work-
people working in their homes. It was not the introduc-
tion of power-loom weaving that ruined the hand-loom
weavers, and the revolt of the frame-work knitters in
Nottinghamshire is mistakenly conceived, if it is conceived
as an uprising against machinery. The real conflict of the
time is the struggle of these various classes, some working
in factories, some working in their homes, to maintain a
standard of life. This struggle is not so much against
machinery as against the power behind the machinery, the
power of capital. There were a number of persons who
suffered when machinery superseded hand labour, or one
machine superseded another ; there were more who ex-
pected to suffer ; but the incidence of the new power was
not local or particular, but universal. The whole working-
class world came under it. The miner, who had never
been a domestic worker, and the hand-loom weaver, who
remained a domestic worker, were just as sensible of this
1 See an important htble, Lloyd, Cutlery Trades, p. 399.
16 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
power as the spinner who went into the factory to watch a
machine do the work that had been done in the cottage,
or the shearman who tried unavailingly to keep put the
gig-mill.
Thus the new world has two aspects. Those who lived
under the shelter of property welcomed the new wealth
that multiplied their enjoyments, embellished their homes,
enriched their imaginations, increased their power, and gave
an astonishing range and scope to the comforts and the
arts of life. They felt about it as Dryden had felt about
his age, and the founding of the Royal Society, and the
boundless hopes of the new science :
" Then we upon the globe's last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky ;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry."
For the working classes the most important fact about
that wealth was that it was wealth in dangerous disorder,
for unless these new forces could be brought under the
control of the common will, the power that was flooding the
world with its lavish gifts was destined to become a fresh
menace to the freedom and the happiness of men.
CHAPTER II
THE NEW DISCIPLINE
IN 1831 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
published a volume called The Results of Machinery,
addressed to the working men of the United Kingdom.
The little book gives a glowing picture of the glories of in-
vention, of the permanent blessings of machinery, of the
triumphant step that man takes in comfort and civilisa-
tion every time that he transfers one of the meaner drudgeries
of the world's work from human backs to wheels and pistons.
The argument is developed with great animation and vigour,
and the writer, as he skirmishes with the workman's pre-
judices, travels over one industry and one country after
another. Almost every page offers a graphic illustration
of Macaulay's proud verdict on English industrial life,
" Nowhere does man exercise such dominion over matter."
If we study the speeches and writings that represent
working-class feeling we shall notice very specially one
aspect of the new system. The system threatened the
employment and livelihood of a large number of people,
ind complaints to that effect are, of course, constant and
general. The fear of this fate or its actual experience was
the cause of violence against machinery and of violence
against persons. But there appears in the protests and
remonstrances of the time a spirit that was quite inde-
pendent of these anxieties and resentments, a feeling of
hatred and terror that no magician among econom
could have dispelled by the most convincing demonst
tion that machineiy could not hurt the poor. 1 This spirit
1 Soo, for example, The Voice oj the People, which expressly repudiates
hostility to machinery, but lays great stress on the servitude to which the
ii
18 THE TOWN LABOURER. 1760-1832
finds its most articulate expression, after our period, in the
Chartist movement and the passionate response of the
working men and the working women of the north of
England to the mobilising rhetoric of Stephens and Oastler.
The men and women of Lancashire and Yorkshire felt of
this new power that it was inhuman, that it disregarded
all their instincts and sensibilities, that it brought into their
lives an inexorable force, destroying and scattering their
customs, their traditions, then* freedom, their ties of family
and home, their dignity and character as men and women.
If one sentence can sum up this impression, we might say,
transposing Macaulay's words, " Nowhere does matter
exercise such dominion over man." l
Scarcely any evil associated with the factory system was
entirely a new evil in kind. In many domestic industries
the hours were long, the pay was poor, children worked
from a tender age, there was overcrowding, and both h6me
and workshop were rendered less desirable from the com-
bination of the two under a single roof. In many, not in
all, for there were home workers who were very prosperous,
and in his halcyon days the hand-loom weaver was in the
enviable position of a man who had something valuable
to sell and could make very comfortable terms for himself.
But the home worker at the worst, even in cases where to
those who examine the economic forces on which his liveli-
hood depended, he seems to have been at the end of a
shorter chain than he realised, was in many respects his
ii master. He worked long hours, but they were his own
hours ; his wife and children worked, but they worked
beside him, and there was no alien power over their lives ;
his house was stifling, but he could slip into his garden ; he
working classes had been reduced by its means from their want of power.
" Every successive improvement which is introduced tends only to deterio-
rate their condition" (Jan. 22, 1831). At a meeting at Ashton it was
declared that the negroes were slaves in name, hut the factory employees
were slaves in reality.
1 " A steam engine in the hands of an interested or avaricious master is
a relentless power to which old and young are equally bound to submit "
(a factory inspector, quoted by Fieldeu, Curse of Factory Sygtein. p. 43).
THE NEW DISCIPLINE Id
had spells of unemployment, but he could use them some-
times for cultivating his cabbages. The forces that ruled
ins fate were in a sense outside his daily life ; they did not
overshadow and envelop his home, his family, his move-
tits and 'habits, his hours for work and his hours for
food.
Whaf the now order did in all these respects was to tun,
the discomforts of the life of the poor into a rigid system.
Hours were not shortened, the atmosphere in which thev
worked was not made fresher or cleaner, child labour wa^
not abolished. In none of these respects was the early
factory better than the home, in some it was worse. But
to all the evils from which the domestic worker had suffered,
the Industrial Revolution added <"!<' nd the dis
cipline of a power driven by a competition that seemed as
inhuman as the machines that thundered in factory and shf H .
The workman was summoned by the factory bell ; his daily
life was arranged by factory hours ; he worked under an
overseer imposing a method and precision for which the
overseer had in turn to answer to some higher authority ;
if he broke one of a long series of minute regulations he was
fined, and behind all this scheme of supervision and control
there loomed the great impersonal system. Let anybody
think of the life of Bamford's uncle at Middleton, who used
to retire into his house every morning and every afternoon
to enjoy a pipe, 1 or of the account of his early days given
by a Nottingham stocking maker, mentioned by Felkin,
where every other Saturday was taken off for gardening, 2
and then let him enter into the feelings of a spinner at
Tyldesley, near Manchester, who worked in a temperature
of 80 to 84 degrees, and was subject to the following
penalties : 3
9. d.
Any spinner found with his window open . .10
Any spinner found dirty at his work . . .10
1 Bamford, Early Days, p. 103.
Felkin, History of MacJiine- Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacture*,
3 Political Register, August 30, 1823.
20 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
. d.
Any spinner found washing himself . . .10
Any spinner leaving his oil can out of its place . .10
Any spinner repairing his drum banding with his gas
lighted 20
Any spinner slipping with his gas lighted . .20
Any spinner putting his gas out too soon . .10
Any spinner spinning with gaslight too long in the
morning . . . . . . . .20
Any spinner having his lights too large for each light . 1
< Any spinner heard whistling . . . . .10
Any spinner having hard ends hanging on his weights
Any spinner having hard ends on carriage band . 1
Any spinner being five minutes after last bell rings . 1
Any spinner having roller laps, no more than two
draws for each roller lap . . . . .06
Any spinner going further than the roving-room door
when fetching rovings . . . . .10
Any spinner being sick and cannot find another
spinner to give satisfaction must pay for steam
per day . . . . . . . .60
Any spinner found in another's wheel gate . .10
Any spinner neglecting to send his sweepings three
mornings in the week . . . . .10
Any spinner having a little waste on his spindles . 1
This list of fines was given by the spinners during a strike,
in a pamphlet published at Manchester. The pamphlet
adds, " At Tyldesley they work fourteen hours per da} 7 ,
including the nominal hour for dinner ; the door is locked
in working hours, except half an hour at tea time ; the
workpeople are not allowed to send for water to drink, in
t he hot factory ; and even the rain water is locked up, by
the master's order, otherwise they would be happy to drink
even that/'
In the modern world most people have to adapt them^
to some kind of discipline, and to observe other people's
time-tables, to do other people's sums, or work under other
people's orders, but we have to remember that the popu-
lation that was flung into the brutal rhythm of the factory
luul carnr-d its living in relative freedom, and that the
THE NEW DISCIPLINE 21
discipline of the early factory was \> avage. To
understand what this discipline meant to men, women, and
hildrrn, we have to -remember too that poor people rarely
had a clock in the house. Sadler said that you could hear
the feet of children pattering along the dark streets long
before the time for the mills to open. 1 No economist of
the day, in estimating the gains and the losses of factory
employment, ever allowed for the strain and violence that
a man suffered in his feelings when he passed from a life
in which he could smoke or eat, or dig or lie pleased,
to one in which somebody turned the key on him. and for
fourteen hours he had not even the right to whistle. 2 It
was like entering the airless and laughterless life of a prison.
Unless we keep this moral sacrifice in mind, we shall not
understand why the hand-loom weavers refused to go into
the power-loom factories, where they would have earned
much higher wages : a refusal that is an important fact in
the history of the cotton industry. 3 Moreover, although
to the authors of the books on the advantages of machinery,
invention seemed to have lightened the drudgery of men
and women, it had introduced a wearing tension : the
nervous strain of watching machinery and working with
machinery aged men and women faster than the heavi
physical exertions. The machinery never tired. " Whilst
the engine runs the people must work men, women, and
children are yoked together with iron and steam. The
animal machine breakable in the best case, subject to a
thousand sources of suffering is chained fast to the iron
machine, which knows no suffering and no weariness." 4
1 Memoirs of Life and Writings of Sadler, p. 374.
' An Englishman went to Rouen to superintend a factory there, and
\\hen he tried to establish the English discipline among workmen who
were accustomed to leave their work as they pleased, there was a strike, and
the soldiers had to be called in. See Evidence of Mr. Wm. Smith before
Sadler's Committee.
1 See Chapman, p. 46 : " Only the direst necessity, however, could
drive the typical hand-loom weaver into a steam factory, and not
infrequently he preferred to fight famine at close quarters rather than
surrender his liberty."
4 Moral and Physical Conditions of the Operatives employed in the
22 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
The hours at Tyldesley were exceptionally long, but the
normal working day in Manchester and the neighbourhood in
1825 varied from twelve and a half to fourteen hours, 1 and
mills, like mines, sometimes worked day and night. Moreover,
under the system there was a strong pressure for a longer
day. A master spinner, who was a member of an associa-
tion formed at Manchester in 1831 for the purpose of secur-
ing the observance of the earlier Factory Acts, gave it as
his opinion that if there were no Factory Acts, the tremen-
dous competition in the industry would make masters
work their mills for the whole twenty-four hours with no
relief except for meals. 2
In 1824 the Macclesfield masters tried to lengthen the
working day in the silk mills. The story was told by a silk
spinner before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery. 3
The hours were from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., and the masters pub-
lished a paper signed by forty-five firms, stating that in
future the hours in Macclesfield would be the same a3 those
hi the neighbouring towns, namely, from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M.
The men refused to agree to this, and after several ineffectual
meetings the masters withdrew their proposed rule. Each
side appealed to the public. "It is a well-known fact,"
said the men, " that children very young are employed in
the above branch ; and can we as men submit to a propo-
sition so highly indecorous, as to increase the hours of
labour, knowing that it would* not only greatly affect the
present age, but ages yet unborn ? You are well aware that
we have of late obliged them, by working night and day
for their peculiar interest." The masters, in announcing
their decision not to press their demand, told the public
" that it is deeply to be regretted, that the orderly, quiet, and
peaceable working classes of this town and neighbourhood
Cotton Manufacture in Manchester, by James Philip Kay, 1832, p. 24,
quoted by Hutchins and Harrison, History of Factory Legislation, p. 50.
Greg said that the work of a spinner was almost the most laborious work
known (Fielden, p. 35).
1 Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit., p. 30.
1 Factory Commission, Second Report, 1833, Mr. Tufoell, p. 50.
Pp. 682-6.
THE NEW DISCIPLINE 23
should so far have lost sight of their true interest,
given way to the representation of the vicious and designing
amongst them, as to reject the proposition of the masters,
for working twelve hours to the day, with a proportionate
addition to their wages." ness told the Committee
that the increase of wages was an afterthought, and that
the men knew well enough that if it were granted, it would
soon be withdrawn, on the pretence of trade stagnation.
Moreover, there were children in the Macclesfield mills who
uvrc under five years of age. "We told them they had
mail'' cripples enough already in Macclesfield." l
It was not only the life of the men that was swallowed
up in the factory. Women and children were shut out from
the daylight as well. 2 The home life of Lancashire is
described as follows 8 at the end of our time. The factory
woman has had no time, no means, no opportunities of
learning the common duties of domestic life. " Even if
she had acquired the knowledge, she has still no time to
practise them. In addition to the twelve hours' labour is
an additional absence from home in the going and th-
returning. Here is the young mother absent from her
child above twelve hours daily. And who lias the charge of
the infant hi her absence ? Usually some little girl or aged
1 It is interesting to note that in 1833 the manager of some silk mills in
Macclesfield referred to this incident, dating it 1825, representing the pro-
posal of the masters as a proposal to reduce the working day, and the
men as standing out for thirteen hours. See Factory Commission,
Second Report, 1833, Mr. Tufnell, p. 31. The witness wished to
confirm his argument that a shorter working day would be unpopular.
1 It was calculated in 1833 that the cotton mills employed 00,000 adult
males, 65,000 adult females, 43,000 boys under eighteen, and 41.000 girls
under eighteen. About half of those under eighteen wero less than
fourteen years old (Factory Commission, Supplementary Report, 1834,
part i. p. 138). Of the factory operatives in 1839 rather less than a quarter
were men over eighteen (Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England
in 1844, quoting Ashley, p. 142). A manufacturer gave statistics to show
that there were 10,721 married women employed in Lancashire factories;
of the husbands of these women half wero also employed in the factories,
3927 were otherwise employed, 821 were unemployed, and information
was not forthcoming as to 659 (Engels, p. 147).
* Factory Commission, Second Report, 1833, Dr. Hawkins, p. 5.
24 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
woman, who is hired for a trifle and whose services are
equivalent to the reward. Too often the dwelling of the
factory family is no home ; it sometimes is a cellar, which
includes no cookery, no washing, no making, no mendingf
no decencies of life, no invitations to the fireside." This
point had been put in a letter to the Home Office from a
Manchester correspondent as early as 1800. 1 " The people
employed in the different manufactures are early intro-,
duced into them, many at five and six years old, both girls
and boys, so that when the former become Women they
have not had any opportunity of acquiring any habits of
Domestic economy or the management of a family. . . .
The greater part of the Working and lower class of people
have not wives that can dress a joint of meat if they were
to have it given them . The consequence is that such articles
become their food that are the most easily acquired, con-
sequently their general food now consists of bread and
cheese." The writer goes on to mention that in a family
known to him, 24s. out of 26s. or 28s. a week earned by
its members are spent on bread.
The same sense of an inexorable and inhuman power
overshadowed the mining population. Their living was
gained in the midst of dangers and hardships of the most
terrify big kind, for the age of great accidents and deeper
mines had begun, and there was nothing in the administra-
tion of the system that seemed to take any account of their
feelings. 2 The most brutal and direct illustration of the
light in which they were regarded was the policy of in-
timidation and concealment practised by the coalowners
when lives were lost in the mines. "As so many deplor-
able accidents have lately happened in collieries," said the
Newcastle Journal in 1767, "it certainly claims the atten-
tion of coal owners to make a provision for the distressed
widows and fatherless children occasioned by these mines,
1 H. O., 42. 63.
1 In one mine men were paid an extra allowance of 6d. a day for working
in a temperature of 130 degrees, but 2d. was deducted for every hour lost
(A Voice from thr Coil Mine*. 182f,).
TTFE NEW DISCI HJ 25
as the catastrophes, from foul air, become more common
than ever ; yet as we are requested to take no pa
ice of these things, winch, in fact, could have very lr
<1 tendency, we drop the further mentioning of it
Down to 1815 it was not the custom to hold inquests on t he-
victims of accidents in the mines of Northumberland and
Durham. 2 That public attention was drawn to the facts
was due to two men, a judge and a parson. The judge was
John Bayley, who made very strong representations at
the Assizes at Newcastle in 1814 on the scandal of omitting
all inquiry into the circumstances under which hundreds
of persons had lost their lives, and the parson was John
Hodgson, Vicar of Jarrow, who, " braving the di*j
of the affluent Brandlings," wrote and published an account
of the accident at Felling, in which ninety-two of his parish-
ioners had perished. Hodgson's action led to the establish-
ment of a Society at Sunderland for preventing accidents, 3
and it was in answer to an appeal from this Society that
Sir Humphry Davy visited Newcastle and gave his mind
to the problem. 4 Unfortunately even the alleviations of
science were turned to the miner's disadvantage. The
Davy lamp, for which the inventor refused to take out a
patent, renouncing an income of 5000 or 10,000 a year,
"his sole object to serve the cause of humanity," was
used in many cases to serve the cause of profits. Deeper
and more dangerous seams were worked, and accidents
actually increased in number. 5 The writer of A Voice
from the Coal Mines, a pamphlet published by th
Northumberland miners hi 1825, stated th. t since the
introduction of the lamp the miner had had to work in
still higher temperatures, under conditions that caused him
1 Newcastle Journal, March 14. 1767.
1 Boyd, Coal Pits and Pitmen, p. H7.
3 Galloway, History oj Coal Mining, pp. 157 and 179.
4 Evidence of Founder of Society (Wilkinson) before Select Committee
on Accidents in Mines, 1835.
* The Select Committee on Accidents in 1835 reported thnt there were
447 deaths in Northumberland and Durham in the eighteen years before
ad 538 in the eighteen years following.
26 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
physical agony. The Children's Employment Commission l
reported in 1842 that in the West Riding the lamp was
often made a substitute for ventilation, that in South
Staffordshire accidents were so common that the people
talked as if the whole population was engaged in a cam-
paign, and that in Northumberland and Durham the mining
population had become absolutely indifferent to its danger.
The indifference of the coalowners scandalised this Com-
mission, and commenting on the accidents that had occurred
from negligence in the pits belonging to Curwen and Lord
Lonsdale, they observed " when such management is
allowed in the mines of two of the most opulent coal pro-
prietors in the kingdom, we cease to wonder at anything
that may take place hi mines worked by men equally without
capital and science." The Commission were severe on
the conduct of coalowners and their agents, in throwing
all the blame on their workpeople and making them respon-
sible for chains and tackle, but they were most severe about
the tasks on which children were employed. In Derbyshire,
and some parts of Lancashire and Cheshire, especially
around Oldham, it was the custom to employ children to
let down and draw up the workpeople. The Chief Constable
of Oldham mentioned a case in which three or four boys
were killed because the attention of the child of nine years
who was hi charge of the engine for drawing up the cage**
was distracted by a mouse. But in all mines children were*"
employed on most responsible work, and the Commission
concluded that it was astonishing that accidents were not
more frequent, seeing that all expedients for safety might
be counteracted by allowing a single trap door to remain
open, 2 " and yet in all the coal mines, in all the districts
of the United Kingdom, the care of these trap doors is
entrusted to children of from five to seven or eight years of
age, who for the most part sit, excepting at the moments
1 See First Report of Commission for inquiring into employment of
children in mines and manufactures, 1ft t?.
1 The whole system of ventilation in mine* depended on the shutting of
the trap doors.
THK NEW DISCIPL1NK 27
when persons pass through these doors, for tw 1\
hours consecutively in solitude, silence and darkness." *
F. C. Hippisley, a Somerset magistrate, wrote to the Home
Office in 1817 : " At the great colliery of Clan Down .
from 100 to 150 men are employed in the veins at a per-
pendicular depth of above 1200 feet, and it is in the power
of an idle or mischievous Engine Boy to drown the whole
of them without destroying or injuring the Fire Engine." a
The magistrate noted this as an argument, not for pro-
hibiting the employment of boys in such responsible work,
but for making the punishment for damaging collieries
more drastic.
The population that lived thus on the brink of the mines
and the brink of the next world became an hereditary race.
In some parts of England the women worked as well as the
men. Women were employed in Durham at the beginning
of the eighteenth century, for there were women killed in
explosions in Gateshead (1705) and Chester-le -Street (1708),
but the practice died out there before the end of the century. 3
Women were also said to have been killed in an explosion
in Whitehaven. When the Children's Employment Com-
mission reported in 1842, women were working in the pits
in thr West Riding, in Cheshire, in some parts of Lancashire,
and in South Wales. The custom had strict local frontiers,
as a miner found when he went from Wigan, where women
were so employed, to Oldham, where the feeling was strong
against it. Women were apparently not employed down
the Lancashire mines east of Manchester. They were
generally employed as " drawers," i.e. in carrying or push-
ing the corves containing the coal " won " by the hewers,
1 Mr. Buddie told the Lords Committee on the Coal Trade in 1829 that
there was no provision for the victims of accidents except parochial relief
and the generosity of the employers. He had never known an employer
turn out a widow after an accident, and often if she had a boy he was
" indulged with some employment at advanced wages."
1 H. O., 42. 161.
1 Galloway (Xnnak of Coal Mining, 1st series, p. 305) saye employment
of women and girls underground in Tvne and Wear district ceased about
1780.
28 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
for the men liked women in this capacity, finding them easy
to manage, and yet too spirited to let others pass them.
Also, though women coal-getters were not unknown, they
were rare, and therefore the danger of competition for
employment was diminished by using women for " draw-
ing." l A witness told the Commission of 1842 that a
married woman miner worked day and night, the day being
spent in the mine and the night in washing, cooking, and
cleaning her house. Children were employed from earliest
years, some so young that they were put to bed when they
got home. The working day varied ; for men it was often
twelve hours, for women and children it was longer. At the
Felling Pit at the beginning of the nineteenth century
boys' hours were from eighteen to twenty. There was thus
little daylight for father or children out of the mine. The
race lived underground like the refugees in Les MiseraUes,
who lived in the sewers of Paris. One miner described how
he used to put his child in its cradle in the seam where he
worked, to keep the rats off his dinner. Children who were
going to work in the mines were often brought to the pit
on their fathers' backs. 2
If the treatment of the miners gave the new society the
look of a civilisation in which human life seemed a good
deal less important than the profits of capital, the same
impression was made, not on the working classes only, by
the behaviour of the shipowners on the Tyne and Wear.
In 1815 there was a seamen's strike in the north-eastern
ports, which was suppressed after a long struggle by the
use of troops. 8 The cause of the strike was the conduct of
the shipowners, who made a practice of undermanning their
ships and refused, in spite of the appeals of the magistrates,
to bind themselves to any fixed scale. Local opinion was
largely on the side of the seamen, and the behaviour of the
1 Boyd, op. cit., ways women hewed in Yorkshire, and on most dis-
trict* only " hurried " (p. 84).
1 According to census of 1841, there were 83,408 men over twenty, 32,476
under twenty, 1185 women over twenty, and llfio under twenty (Engels,
p. 241).
For document* on the subject, see H. O., 42. 146.
l HE NEW DISCIPLINE 20
owners was stigmatised in severe language by the general
commanding the troops, by several of the magistrates,
including the Vicar of Bishops Wearmouth, and by a Home
Office envoy who, going down to the scene of the dis-
pute with the strongest bias against the men, gradually
learned that the seamen who had upset the entire industry
of the ports, forbidding any boat to leave without t i
sanction and taking over the discipline of the towns, had
been driven to these measures by the masters* wanton
disregard of life. " Ships from these ports," he wrot*
Sidmouth, " have gone to sea shamefully deficient in strength
to navigate them, and should ever the subject excite t!,
attention of the legislature, hundreds of cases may be pro-
duced in which avarice has risked at sea a helpless insuffi-
cient crew in a crazy but highly insured ship." After a
good deal of bickering between the Home Office and the
Admiralty a twenty -gun ship was sent to Shields. The
sentiments of the bluejackets were so strong that the
officers doubted whether they would act against the men,
and the officers themselves were scarcely less warm in their
j-vmpathy with the cause of the seamen or their admira-
tion of their bearing and discipline. They tried to act as
mediators, but found that the seamen would not accept
any undertakings that did not formally bind the masters.
The men's suspicions were soon justified. Cartwrightj the
Home Office envoy, described in a letter to Sidimmth how
he found himself at a public table among shipowners, and
' ; heard a full discussion of the subject. They openly, to my
deep disgust, avowed the base dissimulation with which
they are acting, and that they intend to observe any terms
they may agree to only till the present compact association
and the consequent danger are dispersed." General Riall
describes a characteristic incident after the men had been
overcome by military force. " At Sunderland, where a
compromise had been made with the Ship Owners and an
agreement entered into with the Seamen that a certain
number were to be taken into each Ship according to her
size or Tonnage, they have broken their faith, in a \
30 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
shameful manner, the numbers were actually taken on
board eight ships, but after the ships had got a certain
distance from the Harbour the extra men they had promised
to take were relanded." In this case, although the men's
demand commended itself as fundamentally just to persons
who were shocked by their way of presenting it, no influ-
ence could prevent the masters from taking complete
advantage of the victory they owed to the intervention of
the forces of the Crown, and magistrates continued to urge
the Home Office in vain for measures to enforce some respect
for human life on this formidable interest.
The new power of capital seemed all the more crushing and
overwhelming because even the efforts of leading employers
could not soften its incidence. Brotherton, when he was
sent to the Reformed Parliament by the electors of Salford,
put this truth about the agitation against the long hours of
children. Parents had petitioned in their tens of thousands,
and forty of the largest manufacturers in Manchester had
signed a manifesto, but unless the law intervened, no force
could shake a system that was defended, in some
quarters as essential to manufacturers, in others as
essential to parents. John Fielden, according to Cobbett,
worked up one-hundredth part of all the cotton imported
into England, and he employed two thousand persons, but
neither he nor any other employer believed it possible to
abate the evils of the system under which they grew rich,
without the help of Parliament and the successful coercion
of the entire class of employers. 1 It happened more
than once in the course of agitations for better wages
that the workmen were able to enlist the support and
sympathy of a considerable body of masters, but sympathy
and support were valueless, because Parliament would not
ratify their wishes. Men might work astonishing miracles
1 In Fielden's mill the hours were at first ten a day. His father, com-
peting with men using the same machinery and working for 77 to 84 hours
in the week, raised the hours to 12 a day and 11 on Saturday. After 1819
(under Peel's Act) the hours for children were reduced to 72 (Curse of the
Factory System, p. 34).
THE NEW DISCIPLINE 31
in acquiring mastery and guidance over the forces of fire
and water, but the industrial system itself was so contrived
as to make the public spirit, or the human sympathy, or
the generous common-sense of the best employers, dependent
on the selfishness or indifference or the blind greed of the
worst. A good man who built a mill gave a hostage to the
man who wanted to work the longest hours at the lowest
wages. The history of the cotton industry, of the frame-
work knitters, and of the ribbon weavers shows that
there were many employers who understood that low wages
were bad for industry and bad for the nation. With the
economic notions then in power, the workmen had to con-
vince either the most unenlightened employer or Parlia-
ment before they could obtain a remedy. Even Robert
Owen's successful experiment in the economy of good wages
and shorter hours made no impression on his competitors.
The fierce struggle that is the subject of this book looks
from one point of view like a class conflict of a most cruel
and exhausting kind. So it was : but it was none the less
a conflict in which there were employers as eager for the
victory of the men as the men themselves. In the old days
the workmen were dealing with a comparatively small circle
of masters ; they were now pitted against a system, and
not only they, but every good employer and every good
citizen as well. At Leicester on one occasion the men were
supported by the Lord Lieutenant, Mayor, Aldermen, and
the churches and chapels. The Industrial Revolution had
delivered society from its primitive dependence on the forces
of nature, but in return it had taken society prisoner.
The spectacle of this new power as a profane and brutal
system that spared neither soul nor body, and denied
to men and women the right to human treatment, was
impressed upon the imagination with special force by its
ruthless violation of all the ties and affections of the family.
These ties were particularly strong in a community where
the rich would not have expected to find them . All observers
agreed that among the miners the women had great influence
over their husbands, and that they were invariably con-
32 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
suited on all questions of strikes and combinations. " The
females exercise or are destined early to exercise an unusual
and unlimited influence over the miners : and nearly the
whole of the arrangements and duties of upper ground life
are by common consent deputed to them." 1 The idea of
the family wage as the economic unit, though not of course
explicitly formulated, governed men's thinking about the
industrial system, arid thus the factories seemed to offer
special advantages to the poor by providing employment for
their children. A manifesto from the Female Political
Union of Newcastle, hi 1839, put just the opposite view that
it was a special grievance that men's wages were so low
that the mother and her small children were driven to work
at a labour that degraded soul and body. 2
When the revolt against the barbarities began, it \
common retort that if this system was bad the parents were
to blame, for they sent their children into the factory.
This argument disregarded history. The system b<
with serf labour from the workhouses, and it was not until
the weavers had been reduced to want that they took
their children to the hated mill. 3 In many parishes the
overseers refused relief unless the children went out to
work. 4 A family could not live on an income of five or
six shillings a week. Cobbett described how women took
their children to the mill through the snow ; the child
crying, but the mother too was crying. 5 It is true, again,
1 Children's Employment Commission, Report of 1842.
1 Dolloanu. Le Char' I i. p. 24 J.
* The first children sons of Irish weavers (Fielden, p. 12).
4 See, e.g., the evidence of William Osburn, ex-overseer of Leeds, before
Sadler's C'ommitK'o us to (he practice of the Leeds overseers ; aloo of
assistant overseer of Keighley (G. Sharpe).
* OastW was asked by Sadler's Committee whether he knew instances
in which parents lived entirely on the earnings of their children, and he
replied : " Yes, I met with a case, a little while ago, of a man who lives a
short distance house, and who said to me, ' I hope you will get this
Ten Hours Bill passed ; I have two children, one seven and the other
thirteen, at work at the factories, and I have not had the least stroke for '
I think he said ' tho last thirteen months.' He told me that they were
earning seven or eight shillings a week, and he said, ' That lit tlu girl has to
, and bho COHKV. homo at half-
THE NEW DISCIPLINE 33
that a great deal of the beating in the factories was done
by the workpeople without orders, or even against orders,
but that only emphasised the brutality of the system.
Fathers beat their own children to save them from a worse
beating by some one else ; overseers and spinners beat
children, sometimes no doubt from sheer brutality, but
often because they had to get so much work out of them
or go. In 1833 nearly two-thirds of the boys in mills, and
one-third of the girls, were directly employed by men
workers, 1 but the men workers did not prescribe the hours
or the volume of work to be done. The system imposed on
children more work and longer hours than human nature
could bear, and somebody had to wring it out of them.
Everywhere this cruel necessity hemmed in the life of the
new society, and the new system wore a more inexorable
face just because it made workmen, or even parents, the
agents of its iron rule. In some cases, of course, not in-
voluntary agents, for there have always been parents ready
to exploit their children, and the factory system offered a
powerful incentive to that spirit. One witness before a
Lords Committee boasted that he had broken his child's
arm for disobedience in the mill. A system such as this
was bound to find parents, and bound to make parents,
callous to their children's sufferings, and no charge more
bitter could be brought against it.
That system further aggravated the horrors of industrial
life by setting up a class of small contractors for child
labour. The piecers were generally provided and paid by
the wheelmen or spinners out of the wages per Ib. weight
they received from the millowner. 2 One of the witnesses,
past eight, and all that I see of her is to call her up in the morning, and
send her to bed, and it almost makes my heart break. We cannot get any
work, and I know that I am living by the death of that child ' ; and he
cried when he told me. In fact, they weep when they tell their tales, and
the poor children weep too." Quoted, Wing, Evils of the Factory System,
p. 100.
1 Factory Commission, Supplementary Report, 1834, part i. p. 138.
1 See Colonel Fletcher of Bolton's letter about the Factories, H. O. f
52. 3.
C
34 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Mr. George Gould, before Peel's Committee in 1816, said
that spinning men and women were allowed to employ
children of their own selecting, and if they could get a
child to do their business for a shilling, or one and six,
" they would take that child before they would give four,
five, six, or seven shillings to an older one." 1 In the mines,
again, the women and children who dragged the tubs were
sometimes engaged and employed by the hewers. Thus the
avarice of men and women of their own class was made
another scourge for the backs of the children. The vested
interest thus established has been at all times a serious
obstacle to reforms, and the industrial life of the nation has
not yet been freed from it.
The miners were a better paid class than the weavers
during the last part of the period discussed in this book,
but if their earnings were higher, the nature of their work
made a higher expenditure on food necessary. A pamphlet
was published by the Northumberland miners in 1825, with
the title A Voice from the Coal Mines. The writer takes
a man with wife and three children and puts his gross
earnings at 2 a fortnight. This, he says, is a high figure.
Deductions for fines, rent, and candles will bring it down
to thirty shillings, or fifteen shillings a week. How far will
this go ?
8. d.
Bread, 2J stone at 2s. 6d. per stone . . .63
1 Ib. of butcher's meat a day, 7d. per Ib. .41
2 pecks of potatoes at Is. a peck . . . .20
Oatmeal and milk for seven breakfasts at 4Jd each
morning . . . . . . . .28
15
The family need as well to produce comfort
2 oz. of tea at 6d. per oz. . . . . .10
2 Ibs. sugar at 8d. per Ib 14
1 Ib. salt butter 12
Carry forward, .18 6
1 Quoted TTntoliins and Harrison, op. cit., p. 26.
THE NEW DISCIPLINE 35
a. d.
Brought forward, .18 6
1 Ib. cheese 09
Pepper, salt, mustard, vinegar . . . .04
Soap, starch, blue, etc. . . . . .16
Tobacco, 1J oz 5J
1 pint of ale a day ..... 19
Clothing for five persons 30
Is this too much ? the writer asks, and he replies that
many colliers would die of want if they did not take their
children to work fourteen hours a day as soon as they could
speak and walk.
The Oldham miners issued a handbill in 1818 addressed
to the gentlemen of Oldham and Manchester. 1 " It is well
known to the greatest part of you that when you come
to the side of a Coal Pit for to look down, that sight will
make many of you to tremble ; but was you to go down
to the bottom of the Pit, and there see the dangers that
Colliers are exposed to, you would never think the wages
too much was they to get a Pound per day. . . . We think
it very hard that we must be confined in the bowels of the
Earth from 9 to 10 and from that to an 11 and 12 hours or
more to the day, for 10 to 12, and from that to 14 shillings
per week." One of the Factory Commissioners took evi-
dence from miners in 1833, and the answers to his questions
showed that in Lancashire men got 15s. a week when in full
employment, but often they did not receive more than
10s. in the week, and out of that they had to pay
for tools and candles. It was stated that colliers were
short b'ved, and that if they lived to fifty they were unable
to work and came upon the parish. 2
The depreciation of human life was thus the leading fact
about the new~system for the working classes. The human
1 H. O., 42. 179.
8 The Commission of 1842 reported that in Lancashire, Derbyshire, and
Yorkshire " each generation of this class of the population is commonly
extinct soon after fifty."
36 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
material was used up rapidly ; workmen were called old at
forty ; 1 the arrangements of society ensured an infinite supply ;
women and children were drawn in, and at the end the
working class, which was now contributing not only the men
but the entire family, seemed to be what it was at the
beginning, a mere part of the machinery without share in
the increased wealth or the increased power over life that
machinery had brought. /For the revolution that had
raised the standard of comfort fop the rich had depressed
the standard of life for the poor ; 2 1 it had given to the capi-
talist a new importance, while it had degraded the work-
people to be the mere muscles of industry. Men, women,
and children were in the grasp of a great machine that
threatened to destroy all sense of the dignity of human life.
We have now to see what inspirations were to be found in
the towns where they lived, or in the character and aspect
of government, justice, law, and order, to keep that strug-
gling sense alive.
1 Engels, op. cit., p. 160. Sadler said that spinners rarely lived beyond
forty.
* Compare Knight's letter to Sidmouth, July 17, 1817 (H. O., 42. 168):
** MY LORD, I have always been intimately acquainted with the circum-
stances of the labouring class in the vicinity of Manchester, and I can assure
your Lordship that they have seen very few good days since the year 1792,
compared with those they experienced before that period ; notwithstanding
the vast improvements which have during that time been made in their
Manufactures."
CHAPTER III
THE NEW TOWN
THE capital idea associated with towns and town life in
history is the idea of shelter. Shelter first from the primi-
tive dangers to mankind, nature, wild beasts, hostile tribes,
robber barons. The town walls enclose a refuge where
men and women can break or check the power of circum-
stances over their lives : a fortress where, relatively secure
from want and violence, they can practise the arts of peace.
As their wants multiply and their ambitions expand, their
imagination is enriched, and the town comes to be the
shelter not of life only, but of good life, protecting and
fostering not only the food and homes of men and women,
but light and knowledge, the humanity and culture that
come from association and experiment, ideas of liberty and
justice, the desire for development and self-expression. The
town thus comes to symbolise the pride of man in his power,
his initiative, his energy, his sympathy, the variety and the
character of his needs. To the people of ancient Athens,
or of Florence or Siena in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
tury, or of Norwich or York in the fifteenth century, their
town was not a mere roof from the wind and the rain : it
was a living personality, expressing and cherishing the
instincts, tastes, beliefs, and corporate pride of the citizens,
widely and richly pictured.
This city life had produced the art and literature of Greece
and Italy, and in England a spirit of enterprise in repre-
sentative government and public administration that influ-
enced profoundly the form and development of our national
institutions. The history of these towns, their brisk and
38 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
eager life, their triumphs and their crimes, the active share
that the citizens had taken in building, adorning, defending,
and serving them, were reflected in their streets and halls
and churches. The old English towns were often over-
crowded, insanitary, honeycombed with alleys and courts
that never saw the sun or breathed the air, but the fancy,
and emotion, and the skill and craftsmanship of different
ages, had made them beautiful and interesting. They were
the home of a race, with all the traditions and pieties and
heirlooms of a home.
It was of immense moment to the citizens of such towns
whether their towns were beautiful, well governed, and
administered with justice and magnanimity : this mattered
much more to them than half the wars that have filled so
disproportionate a page hi the writing of history. It made
just as great a difference to the people living under the
shadow of the new industry whether Bolton and Oldham
and Bradford and Manchester and Gateshead were beauti-
ful or ugly, nobly or ignobly built and ruled. It made an '
even greater difference than would appear at first sight,
for two reasons : England was still a country with very
little government from the centre, and almost all the local
responsibilities, health, housing, education, police, that are
now subject to strict inspection and control, were left to
the unchecked discretion and pleasure of magistrates and
borough rulers. Parliament and Government knew nothing
of this side of life. They passed no laws and exercised no
supervision or initiative. The new industry had produced
problems that were general, but except in respect of criminal
law the central Government still looked upon them as local,
and disclaimed all concern. The character of its local
government and the. success of its town life were therefore
of even more engrossing concern to that population than they
are to us to-day with our modern centralisation.
The form and appearance of the town were also of vital
importance. There is a great chapter in Victor Hugo's
Notre Dame de Paris describing the rise of printing and
the overthrow of architecture as the principal language of
THE NEW TOWN .v.
mankind. But we have to remember that the population
in the new industrial districts was a population for which
literature scarcely existed, that the boundaries of their lives
were for many the boundaries of their imagination, and
that the only things that spoke to their minds were the
mill in which they worked and the town in which they
lived. In their work they had none of the excitement or
pleasure of handicraftsmen ; they worked among ugly
things, in ugly factories or ugly mines, for though an engine
or a wheel may have a noble beauty and design, its beauty
is obscured for those who are tending one small part of it
and doing nothing else. Thus the monotonous strain of
an occupation that gave no scope to the mind, and its un-
attractive setting, rendered them all the more dependent
on their surroundings, making it more certain that they
would derive from their buildings and their streets and their
homes the spiritual influence that others would find in their
work, and others again, by means of literature, in the ima-
gination and experience of distant worlds and distant ages.
The sights and sounds of his daily life affect every one, and
they do not affect a person less because he receives few
impressions from other sources.
Perhaps the best way to describe the new towns and their
form of government would be to say that so far from
breaking or checking the power of circumstances over men's
lives, they symbolised the absolute H ft p^nH^n re ftpH Help-
lessness of the^mass of thejreople _ jiving. JUDL them . They^..
were not so much towns as barracks : not the refuge of a
civilisation but the barracks of an industry. This character
was stamped on their form and life and government. The
mediaeval town had reflected the minds of centuries and
the subtle associations of a living society with a history ;
these towns reflected the violent enterprise of an hour, the
single passion that had thrown street on street in a frantic
monotony of disorder. Nobody could read in these shape-
less improvisations what Ruskin called " the manly language
of a people inspired by resolute and common purpose," for
they represented nothing but the avarice of the jerry-
40 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
builder catering for the avarice of the capitalist. 1 It would
be as reasonable to examine the form and structure of an
Italian ergastulum in order to learn the wishes and the
character of the slaves who worked in it. Nobody could
find a spell of beauty or romance to supply the pieties of the
old city, or to kindle a civic spirit in the great tide of human
life that poured in from the villages that had lost their
commons or the distant towns that had lost their trade.
Their towns were as ugly as their industries, with an ugli-
ness in both cases that was a symptom of work and life
in which men and women could find no happiness or self-
expression ; the brand of a race disinherited of its share in
the arts and the beauty of the world.
" The singers have sung and the builders have builded,
The painters have fashioned their tales of delight ;
For what and for whom hath the world's book been gilded,
When all is for these but the blackness of night 1 " 2
And these towns were precisely what they looked. They
were settlements of great masses of people collected in a
particular place because their fingers or their muscles were
needed on the brink of a stream here or at the mouth of a
furnace there. These people were not citizens of this or
that town, but hands of this or that master. Often the
houses where they lived, and the shops where they bought
their food, were supplied by their employers.
The extreme type of this organisation was the mining
village. The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor
described with great enthusiasm the arrangements made by
the Duke of Bridgewater for the management of his collieries
near Manchester. 3 The colliers were all his tenants at will
("an encouragement to good conduct " as the Society puts it),
and when they were paid their wage each month, the shop-
keeper, also the Duke's tenant, brought their bills to the
1 " The population is crowded into one dense mass, in cottages separated
by narrow, unpaved, and almost pestilential streets." Kay, quoted by
Wing, Evils of the Factory System, p. Ixxi.
a William Morris, The Message of the March Wind.
8 Reports of Society (1798), vol. i. p. 170.
THE NEW TOWN 41
colliery agent, who paid the bill and handed the surplus to
the collier. " Thus the collier always has credit for neces-
saries and reasonable comforts ; and, at the same time, is not
able to squander the mass of his gams, to the injury of him-
self and his family . " A rather different view of this arrange-
ment was put before the public in the course of the coal
strike on the Tyne in 1765, when a correspondent wrote to
Lloyd's Evening Post, 1 giving a picture of the colliery
economy : " This Overseer, who b}^ the by is seldom distin-
guished for the amiableness of his character, constantly
keeps a shop contiguous to the Pit where he lays in every
necessary both for the belly and the back, and obliges the
poor men to buy whatever they want from him, stopping it
out of their wages at a stipulated sum a week till the whole
is discharged." Even Lauderdale, the most inflexible of
doctrinaire economists, supported the extension of the early
and not very effective Truck Acts to mines in 1817, declar-
ing that he knew of cases of the grossest fraud, miners being
compelled to pay 12s. for 6s. worth of flour. But even if
this system was administered with absolute honesty and
good faith, it remained true that this society was a society
depending entirely on the industry, living under its shadow,
immersed in its economy, with no life or interest outside.
And, of course, the colliery owners were the masters of the
situation : in the Northumberland strike of 1832 one clergy-
man owner evicted all his tenants during a raging cholera.
This was true of the mining village, and only less true of
the textile town. The capitalist built the houses. We have
accounts of the system from different points of view.
Cooke Taylor 2 writing of it with enthusiasm, Gaskell 3 with
dislike, and Engels 4 with the fierce abhorrence that he felt
for almost all the aspects of the factory system. Cooke
Taylor thought it reintroduced the old patriarchal relations
of society, that the workmen were better housed, and that
1 September 25, 1765.
* Tour of Manufacturing Districts (1842), p. 159.
1 Manufacturing Population of England (1833), p. 347 ff.
Condition of the Working Classes in 1844, p. 184.
42 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
the fear of losing his rents operated on the mind of the
millowner as a motive for humane conduct in the mill.
Gaskell thought the actual accommodation better than the
housing of the poor elsewhere, but he argued that the
arrangement reduced the workman to a slavery as complete
as that of the West Indies. Moreover, it was combined with
a system of truck ; in some cases the masters sold meat and
coal themselves above the market price, in others they built
shops and taverns, and the workmen knew that they were
expected to patronise their masters' tenants. Gaskell con-
tended also that the masters were grasping and avaricious,
that they drew revenues of 13 J per cent, from these houses,
and that they used this arrangement to prolong the working
day. In fact the masters had found the practice so advan-
tageous that they adopted it in the neighbourhood of towns,
and not only in the remote country : the population round
Hyde, Newton, and Dukinfield, which was housed in the
main in this way, increased from 3000 to 26,000 hi the first
thirty years of the century. This kind of economy was
seen at its best in some model establishments like those of the
Gregs or the Ashtons or the Strutts, where the capitalist
supplied church, school, and reading-room ; at its worst
in cases where the masters made their workmen pay rent
for houses whether they lived in them or not, and evicted
them without mercy in times of strike. 1
The industrial towns were not, of course, all of them
colonies established beside a factory or mine. Manchester,
Leeds, Preston, Sheffield, and other towns were not the
creation of the Industrial Revolution : they were towns of
antiquity renowned already as centres of special industries
or trades. Such towns were not thrown up by the Industrial
Revolution, but they were overwhelmed by it. An adver-
tisement that appeared in a Macclesfield paper in 1825 gives
1 Engels, p. 104 ; cf. Life of Bright (Trevelyan), p. 74. There was an
interesting difference between the mining and the textile colony. In the
mining colony the house.rent was nominal, 3d. or 6d. a week ; in the textile
colony it was a more or less commercial rent, 3s. or 3s. 6d. a week. The
mining village was in this respect like a great estate, and of course it was a
good deal older than the textile town.
THE NEW TOWN 43
us a picture of the reckless way in which the new industry
satisfied its demand for labour without regard to the com-
fort of the new town : " To the Overseers of the Poor and
to families desirous of settling in Macclesfield. Wanted
between 4000 and 5000 persons between the ages of 7 and
21 years." 1 The Annals of Agriculture give a picture of
the plight of one of these towns when this avalanche of
population swept into it. The writer is describing Preston
and its neighbourhood in 1791 : 2 " Sudden and great call
and temptation for hands from the country, of this county
and others, and many distant parts ; crowded of course in
their lodgings ; tempted, by extra gain, to long continued
application at sedentary work, in air contaminated both by
the exhalation and breathing of many people together, and
also the effluvia of the material used, in confined places ;
and, though getting good wages at what they think easy
work, yet (by the natural consequence of so many different
manufactures, flourishing all over the county, and so
suddenly increasing, provisions being dear, as you would
see from my last) perhaps living but poorly in diet, these
people are frequently visited, especially in autumn and
beginning of winter, with low and nervous fevers ; in short,
putrid and gaol distempers, that often cuts off men, leaving
families behind ; and who by the high rent that all the
above musf cause on houses, gain settlements, come from
where they will." Nassau Senior has drawn a picture of
those parts of Manchester that were inundated by the Irish
tide : " As I passed through the dwellings of the mill hands
in Irish Town, Ancoats, and Little Ireland, I was only
amazed that it is possible to maintain a reasonable state of
health in such homes. These towns, for in extent and
number of inhabitants they are towns, have been erected
with the utmost disregard of everything except the imme-
diate advantage of the speculating builder. A carpenter
and builder unite to buy a series of building sites (i.e. they
lease them for a number of years) and cover them with
1 Annual Register, 1826, p. 62.
Annals of Agriculture. 1 5. 564.
44 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
so-called houses. In one place we found a whole street
following the course of a ditch, because hi this way deeper
cellars could be secured without the cost of digging, cellars
not for storing wares or rubbish, but for dwellings of human
beings. Not one house of this street escaped the cholera.
In general the streets of these suburbs are unpaved, with a
dungheap or ditch in the middle ; the houses are built back
to back, without ventilation or drainage, and whole families
are limited to a corner of a cellar or a garret." l Chadwick
summed up the conditions under which the working classes
lived with an apt illustration : " Such is the absence of
civic economy in some of our towns that their condition hi
respect of cleanliness is almost as bad as that of an en-
camped horde or an undisciplined soldiery." 2 It looks as
if all the creative and organising enthusiasm and spirit of
the age had gone into the making of machinery and those
conquests over fire and water that had produced the new
industry. Men were so engrossed hi building mills that
towns were left to build themselves.
These towns, too, were now losing their last glimpses of
nature. Formerly the men and women who lived in the
English town, like those who lived in Pisa or Verona, were
never far from the open country : their town life was fringed
with orchards and gardens. But as the Industrial Revolution
advanced, a Manchester was growing up hi which the work-
men would find it harder and harder to escape out of the
wide web of smoke and squalor that enveloped their daily
lives. 3 And as the towns grew, the spaces of common
within their borders became more valuable, and they were
appropriated by the powerful classes. The Duke of Norfolk
of the day is chiefly known in history as the Whig noble
who was dismissed from the Lord Lieutenancy for propos-
ing the toast of " Our Sovereign the People." To the
people of Sheffield he was better known for his deeds than
for his oratory, for he was a principal promoter of the
1 Quoted Engels, op. cit., p. 63.
1 Quoted Hutchins, Public Health Agitation, p. 64.
* The field of Peterloo was already shrinking.
THE NEW TOWN 45
Enclosure Acts that turned seven thousand acres of commons
into a gold mine for a few families. 1 Civilisation, in this and
other guises, was rapidly painting the green spaces black
on the industrial map. Manchester still had her Angel
Meadows, but they were no longer meadows, and the only
angel that came near them was the Angel of Death. Cooke
Taylor declared that he would rather trust himself to the
savages of New Zealand than to a race bred in such sur-
roundings. For the workman, Manchester was a prison :
he was excluded from all the amenities that other classes
enjoyed. " The commons on which the labourers indulged
in healthful sports are enclosed ; policemen guard the
streets and keep the highways clear ; high walls enclose
demesnes, and even the iron palisades that surround
ornamental grounds are jealously planked over to prevent
the humble operative from enjoying the verdure of the
foliage or the fragrance of the flowers." 2 " Have we not
seen the commons of our fathers enclosed by insolent
cupidity our sports converted into crimes our holidays
into fast days ? The green grass and the healthful hayfield
are shut out from our path. The whistling of birds is not
for us our melody is the deafening noise of the engine.
The merry fiddle and the humble dance will send us to the
treadmill. We eat the worst food, drink the worst drink
our raiment, our houses, our everything, bear signs of
poverty, and we are gravely told that this must be our lot." 8
Dr. Hawkins had remarked to the Factory Commission the
effect of this on the health of Manchester. " It is impossible
not to notice the total absence of public gardens, parks,
and walks at Manchester : it is scarcely in the power of the
factory workman to taste the breath of nature or to look
upon its verdure, and this defect is a strong impediment to
convalescence from disease, which is usually tedious and
difficult at Manchester." 4 Meanwhile the same process
1 See Some Forgotten Facts in the History of Sheffield and District, by
Carolus Paulus.
2 Cooke Taylor, op. cit., p. 129.
Pioneer or Trade Union Magazine, October 19, 1833.
4 Second Report, 1833. Aston in his Picture of Manchester (1810),
46 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
that swept the colour from the town swept the colour too
from the sky. In the middle of the eighteenth century the
smoke was so thick in Mr. Arnold Bennett's Five Towns on
a Saturday afternoon that people had to grope their way
in the streets of Burslem. 1 It is true that some observers
had found an extraordinary poetry in this new atmosphere,
and one critic of the day, anticipating the triumphs of the
art of Mr. Muirhead Bone, wrote in rhapsody of the black
streams and the chimney tops, 2 but this was an acquired
taste, and it was human nature to prefer the lost rainbow
to all the gorgeous canopy of mill or furnace.
Life in such a town brought no alleviation of the
tyranny of the industrial system ; it only made it more real
and sombre to the mind. There was no change of scene or
colour, no delight of form or design to break its brooding
atmosphere. Town, street, buildings, sky, all had become
part of the same unrelieved picture. The men and women
who left the mill and passed along the streets to their homes
did not become less but more conscious of that system as a
universal burden, for the town was so constructed and so
governed as to enforce rather than modify, to reiterate
rather than soften the impressions of an alien and unaccom-
modating power. The town was as little their own as the
mill. For the working classes had no more control over their
own affairs outside than inside the factory. The weaver of
Burnley or the spinner of Rochdale had less to remind him
that he counted in the life of a society than his grandfather
who had helped to administer the little affairs of the village
and to regulate the use of its common pastures.
Mr. and Mrs. Webb have traced the history of town
government during this period, and they have shown that
which does not err on the side of depreciation, observes about the streets of
Manchester that attention had been " too minutely directed to the value
of land to sacrifice much to public convenience or the conservation of
health " (p. 220).
1 See Wedgwood, Staffordshire Pottery and its History, p. 65. Bradford
kept out factories at first on this account. See James, History of the
Worsted Manufactures, p. 592.
8 Smart, Econ. Annals, 1801-20, p. 709.
THE NEW TOWN 47
it took many different forms. Their general conclusion is
that the Report of the Municipal Commissioners of 1834,
from which most people derive their impressions of municipal
administration before the reforms of the following year,
misstated the quantity and quality of the vices of the old
boroughs. But in all cases, whether the town was well
governed or ill governed, whatever the faction or group
that held the control and appointed the Borough-reeve or
the Constables and the numerous minor officials, the
working-class population had nothing to do with it except
to obey its decrees. Manchester was an unincorporated
borough, and as late as 1838 Cobden complained that this
community of 200,000 people was governed from Bolleston
Hall in Staffordshire. At Rolleston Hall lived the Lord of
the Manor, whose steward nominated the jury of the Court-
leet who held all the real power. The chief officials were a
Borough-reeve and two Constables chosen annually from the
most respectable of the inhabitants, by a jury impanelled
by the steward of the manor, at the latter of the Court-
leets which were held by the Lord of the Manor every year
at Easter and Michaelmas. The Borough-reeve was always
an ex-Constable. The Deputy Constable had a salary of
350 a year in addition to fees, and he became, when a man
of energy like Nadin, the real ruler of Manchester. The
power of this little gang was challenged in 1817 by what
Mr. and Mrs. Webb call a turbulent democracy, but that
democracy making its voice heard at vestry meetings, and
qualifying in large numbers for membership of the body
known as Police Commissioners, was not a democracy of
working men but of shopkeepers and publicans. Professor
Chapman 1 suggests that Manchester as an unincorporated
borough was free from the restrictions that hampered
immigrants elsewhere, and that it was partly due to this
that it became the centre of the new industry. Bolton,
Bury, Rochdale, and many of the smaller towns in Lanca-
shire and Cheshire were governed in the same way. The
Court-leet, under the presidency of the agent of the Lord
1 Cotton Industry, p. 154.
48 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
of the Manor, would meet yearly and appoint a Borough-
reeve or similar officer, Constables, Ale-tasters, Pig-ringers,
Bellmen, and other officials. If a town had a charter its
government was in form different, but the working classes
had, as a rule, no more to do with the choice or the control
of the Mayors and Aldermen than they had with the choice
and control of Borough-reeves and Constables. In Preston,
for example, there was a popular franchise for the House
of Commons, every male over twenty-one with a six months'
residence being an elector, but the municipal dignitaries who
governed the town itself elected each other. 1 Leeds, again,
was governed down to 1818 by a " little group of friends
and relations who served in turn as Mayor, Aldermen, and
Churchwardens, and appointed, without cavil, their own
nominees as Overseers and Surveyors of Highways." 2 In
that year the rule of this little Tory oligarchy was disputed
by the excluded Whigs, who used the vestry meetings for
that purpose and obtained from the magistracy the control
of Poor Relief and Highway Administration. When the
new working class was collected hi old towns, it found itself
governed by a close corporation and a municipal magistracy,
and when it was living in one of the vast tracts from
which everything that is associated with the country had
suddenly been swept away except feudal forms, it was
committed to the care of a Court-leet formed from the
classes that were always described at the time as " most
respectable."
Whatever the form of government here or there, there was
a general agreement about the needs of the working classes.
The town which at one time in English history had pro-
vided artists, players, minstrels, great pageants and guild
festivals, represented now the meanest and barest standards
of life. Scarcely a year passed without some improvement
in the arts of manufacture and production, but for the
great armies of men, women, and children harnessed to
1 See Barnes's Lancashire, ii. p. 491. Preston sent Henry Hunt to the
unreformed House of Commons.
* Webb, Manor and Borough, 421 f.
THE NEW TOWN 40
the thunder and lightning of the new science, the art of
living had been degraded to its rudest forms. These towns
illustrated, indeed, a remark made by Windham wh
defending a bad cause, in the debate on bull-bailing, that
men of his own class were apt to think of the common
people as people whose only business it was to eat, sleep,
and work. The working classes were regarded as persons
incapable of profiting by leisure, and fit only for the long
discipline of factory hours. 1 There were conspicuous
exceptions to this general spirit, and exceptions among
employers. No man fought harder for a shorter working
day and a more humane life for the factory workers of
Lancashire than John Fielden, 2 the great cotton spinner of
Todmorden, and the crusade against the cruelties of the
woollen factories was launched by John Wood, the worsted
manufacturer of Bradford. Rathbone Greg, one of the
family of that name, wrote in favour of reducing hours.
Some employers provided schools and libraries for their
workpeople, and the Strutts of Derbyshire supplied not
only schools and library, but a swimming-bath with
an instructor, and a dancing-room. But, generally speak-
ing, the employing class, though perhaps they would not
have said of all the labours of mine and mill, with Bishop
Berkeley addressing the Irish peasants, * ' Labor ipse voluptas"
would certainly have thought that any voluptas that the
poor could enjoy would do them more harm than any
labour their masters could impose on them. It was a
favourite argument for long hours in the mill that the hours
spent elsewhere would be spent in drinking, and the
favourite argument for low wages was based on the same
general view of the working classes. The employing class
were not of course peculiar. It was a commonplace hi the
1 " All experience proves that in the lower orders the deterioration of
morals increases with the quantity of unemployed time of which they have
the command " (An Inquiry into the Principle and Tendency of the Bill
for imposing certain restrictions on Cotton Factories, 1818, quoted by
Hutchins and Harrison, op. tit., p. 28).
* The factory workpeople of Lancashire put up a statue to Fielden in
gratitude for the Ton Hours Bill.
D
50 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
speeches in Parliament, though many members must have
known very little of the industrial districts, and Pitt summed
up the artisan population of the northern towns as
" ignorant and profligate." l The working men of
Manchester were fond of music, and Cooke Taylor, who
visited the public houses, found that there was a marked
difference between the manners of the workmen in houses
where music was allowed and those where it was forbidden.
' The operatives of Manchester have shown their taste
and capability for higher enjoyments than smoking and
drinking. I have gone into some of the concert-rooms
attached to favoured public-houses which they frequent,
and I have never been in a more orderly and better-behaved
company. The music was well selected, the songs perfectly
unobjectionable ; the conversation, in the intervals between
the pieces, not only decorous, but to some degree refined,
and the quantity of liquor consumed by each individual
very trifling. But I have also been in houses where music
was prohibited, and the scenes which I witnessed will not
bear description." 2 Yet Cooke Taylor found that it was
the practice of the magistrates, as a rule, to refuse licences
to public-houses where concerts were held. It was generally
agreed that drunkenness was particularly common in Lanca-
shire, and in 1819 Norris, the Stipendiary Magistrate of
Manchester, wrote to the Home Office to recommend that
an Act of Parliament should be passed to make it com-
pulsory on employers to pay their workpeople singly and at
the factory. It was the general practice to pay a lump sum
to one of the workpeople, who took it to the public-house
where there were regular pay- tables. 3 In this way the
children had to go to the public-house to be paid, and of
course they were expected to drink. Thirteen years later
Detroisier, a witness before the Factory Commission,
pointed to the same practice as an important cause of early
1 House of Commons, May 16, 1794.
* Tour in Manufacturing Districts, p. 131.
8 H. O., 42. 184. Miners were often paid in the same way. See Report
of Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, vol. i. p. 227.
THE NEW TOWN 6)
drinking : the piecers had to go to the public-house to be
paid. 1
It was not surprising, as Detroisier said, that the
working classes who were offered littla else took their
pleasures in vicious and brutal amusements. These in-
cluded bull-baiting and cock-fighting, practices that were
still legal down to 1833. There was a regular trade con-
nected with the latter sport, men appearing as cock-feeders
and coek-heel makers in the Directories of the time. 2 It
was stated in the House of Commons that bull-baiting was
a favourite sport in Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Shrop-
shire, but that it was unknown in Yorkshire and Northum-
berland. Attempts were made in 1800 and 1802 to put
down these practices, but without success. It is not always
easy to trace the line that divides a noble from a barbarous
pleasure in the treatment of animals, or to ascertain the
exact ratio that prowess must bear to suffering if a sport
that involves the infliction of pain is to rank as a sport that
gentlemen ought to enjoy. In the debates in Parliament
in 1800 and 1802 a good many speakers, and some, at any
rate, of the promoters of the Bill, were preoccupied with the
effects of bull- baiting in making workmen disorderly and
idle. It was unfortunate for the Bill that it was in the
hands of Sir Richard Hill, a typical representative of the
school that rarely supports a good proposal except for bad
reasons. So far as the question of cruelty was concerned,
there were three lines of argument. It was possible to dis-
tinguish bull-baiting from stag-hunting and fox-hunting,
or to approve of both or to condemn both. Windham, for
example, who opposed legislation strongly, argued that
bull-baiting was no more cruel than hunting, and that
though he was not a sportsman himself, he was not prepared
1 The authorities were not always agreed on the disadvantages of
drinking. In 1819 the reformers started a temperance crusade as a way
of starving the revenue. The Manchester churchwardens spent 80 in
placarding the town with an appeal to the citizens to show their attach-
ment to King, Church, and Constitution by drinking the good old English
drinks (Prentice's Manchester, p. 151).
Leader, Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century, p. 44.
52 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
to forbid the sports of his friends. He would, however,
introduce such a Bill himself if Parliament interfered with
the pleasures of the poor. Canning extolled the sports of
all classes, declaring of bull-baiting that " the amusement
was a most excellent one ; it inspired courage, and pro-
duced a nobleness of sentiment and elevation of mind." 1
On the other side, speakers like Sheridan contended that
the poor were capable of enjoying other amusements, that
there was nothing to prevent them from playing cricket,
and that though the magistrates were far too ready to
suppress * innocent diversions, this particular cruelty was
generally recognised as a scandal. Sheffield had apparently
at one time a cruel amusement of its own 2 that disappeared
under the pressure of public opinion. Cocks were tied to
a stake and then used as targets by men and boys, who
pelted them with large billets of wood. Mackenzie, 3 de-
scribing the Northumberland pitmen, mentioned that they
dressed in gaudy colours on holidays, with variegated
patterns, and that their amusements were cock-fighting,
bowling, foot-races, handball, quoits, cards, and when
possible hunting or fowling. Yorkshire was pre-eminently
the county for horse races. The " Lancashire way of
fighting " was the common description of a particularly
violent kind of single combat, of which Babies gives an
account hi his History of Lancashire* " At almost every
Assizes at Lancaster several individuals are tried for murder
or manslaughter, arising out of battles, when, to the
astonishment of strangers, evidence is given of parties
mutually agreeing to fight ' up and down,' which includes
the right of kicking (or purring, as it is called) on every part
of the body, in all possible situations, and of squeezing the
throat or ' throttling ' to the very verge of death. At races,
fairs, and on other public occasions, contests of this nature
1 Canning modified his views two years later and decided not to vote
either way. See Windham's Papers, ii. 189.
8 Leader, Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century, p. 46.
8 Mackenzie, View of the County of Northumberland, 1825, p. 208 f.
Vol. i. p. 537.
THE NEW TOWN 53
are witnessed by crowds of persons who take part on each
side, with as much interest as is excited by the regular
boxing matches of the south. That death often occurs in
such battles will not be thought extraordinary, especially
when it is considered that clogs or heavy wooden-soled shoes,
with iron plates and studded with large nails, are commonly
worn hi the districts where this barbarous custom prevails."
Bamford gives an account of a fight of his father's that
lasted two full hours, " up and down fighting," at the Boar's
Head at Middleton. 1 It was characteristic of the upper-
class treatment of such difficulties that the method adopted
for putting down this amusement was the revival by some
of the judges, in a country where every civilising influence
was withheld, of the old punishment of burning in the
hand. 2
Just at the close of our period Lord Shaftesbury was
travelling by one of the new railways through the Midlands,
and he put into his diary this significant and interesting
reflection : " These towns always affect me the mass of
human kind whom nothing restrains but force or habit,
uninfluenced because unreached by any moral or religious
discipline, presents a standing miracle." 3 The idea of the
town as a focus for civilisation, a centre where the eman-
cipating and enlightening influences of the time can act
rapidly and with effect, the school of social arts, the nursery
of social enterprise, the witness to the beauty and order
and freedom that men can bring into their lives, had vanished
from all minds. Englishmen thought of their great towns
not with hope, or pride, or ambition, but with a haunting
fear, reminding themselves not of the light that might be
diffused, but of the darkness that overspread them. The
1 A witness, John Taylor, before the Select Committee on Accidents in
Mines in 1835, said that he had known the mining population in Cornwall
for thirty -six years, and that great changes had been made by the influence
of Methodism : " there is not now the fighting which was formerly pre-
valent."
2 Baines's Lancashire, ii. p. 537. This punishment was abolished in
1822.
* Hodder, Life and Work of Lord Shaftesbury, vol. i. p. 257.
64 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
real difficulty was that most of the upper classes, though
they were afraid of the darkness, were still more afraid of
the light. Place wrote in 1832, the Whigs being then in
office : " Ministers and men hi power, with nearly the whole
body of those who are rich, dread the consequences of
teaching the people more than they dread the effect of their
ignorance." l If this was true in 1832, it was still truer
during the generation that preceded the passing of Reform ;
if it was true of a Government that contained Grey and
Brougham, it was certainly much truer of the Sidmouths
and Liverpools, and even of Pitt and Canning. The Govern-
ihent so described by Place was the first to give a sixpence of
public money to education.
The state of the manufacturing districts in this respect
was one of the chief scandals of Europe. In 1818 about
one in four of the children of the poor were receiving
education of some kind, 2 and Lancashire was one of the
most backward counties. But the mere statement of
this figure would give an exaggerated impression of the
education of the working classes. 3 In 1842 a careful review
of the state of the industrial districts was made for the
Report of the Commission on Children's Employment, and
the results were remarkable. The Commissioners found
" that neither in the new Colliery and Mining towns which
have suddenly collected together large bodies of the people
in new localities, nor in the towns which have suddenly
sprung up under the successful pursuit of some new branch
of Trade and Manufacture, is any provision made for Educa-
tion by the establishment of Schools with properly qualified
teachers, nor for affording tke means of moral and religious
1 Graham Wallas, Life of Place, p. 338.
1 Spencer Walpole, op. tit., i. 212.
8 Cf. evidence before Select Committee on Accidents in Mines, 1835,
1198. The Factory Commission Report of 1834 contains a table giving
returns from factories of the workers in Lancashire mills : 17 per cent, could
not read and 62 per cent, could not write. In Yorkshire the figures were
15 and 52, in Cheshire 10 and 53. Aberdeen was the most backward
county in Scotland, and there the figures were 7 and 54. In Lanarkshire
and Renfrewshire, the two largest factory counties, the figures were 4 and
46 and 3 and 4,6 respectively. Dr. Mitchell's Report, p. 46.
\
THE NEW TOWN 65
instruction and training, nor for supplying the spiritual
wants of the people ; nor in general is there any provision
whatever for the extension of educational and religious
institutions corresponding with the extension of the
population." In Derbyshire, where there were a few free
and national schools, colliers' children were formally
excluded by the rules. At this time Leonard Homer re-
ported that in an area of thirty-two square miles comprising
Oldham and Ashton, with a population of 105,000, there was
not a single public day school for poor children. 1 In 1839,
1840, and 1841, 40 per cent, of the men and 65 per cent,
of the women married or witnessing marriages in Lancashire
and Cheshire could not sign their names. 2 Where schools
existed, the education given was of the poorest quality.
Schoolmasters were often men or women who had been
disabled by accidents in the factory, or had failed to earn
a livelihood in any other occupation. " The refuse of other
callings," they were described later ; sometimes they could
not write themselves.
In this respect England was far behind the rest of the
civilised world ; " Prussia is before us ; Switzerland is before
us ; France is before us. There is no record of any people
on earth so highly civilised, so abounding in arts and comforts,
and so grossly generally ignorant as the English." 8 Most
of the Governments of Europe interested themselves in
education during the eighteenth century : Prussia, Austria,
and the Catholic and Protestant States of Germany. Turgot,
Condorcet, and Talleyrand devised elaborate schemes for
France, and these schemes were carried out in part by
Napoleon. In England the importance of public educa-
tion had been preached by thinkers so diverse as Blackstone,
Adam Smith, Eden, Malthus, and Bentham. Yet in England
no Minister ever showed a trace of the imagination or the
zeal that had inspired the Fredericks in Prussia, Maria
Theresa in the Empire, Turgot or Condorcet or Napoleon in
1 Factory Inspectors Report for 1842, p. 21.
1 Porter, Progress of the Nation, 1851, p. 700.
* Dean Alford in 1839.
56 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
France, or Florida Blanca in Spain. England almost alone
in Europe was quite content to leave the education of the
poor to the charity-schools and the Sunday-schools.
There were two statesmen who tried to bring England
into the daylight. One was Whitbread, the other Brougham.
In 1807 Whitbread introduced a Bill for the general provi-
sion of elementary schools throughout England, but the
House of Lords rejected it at the instance of the Lord
Chancellor (Eldon) and the Archbishop of Canterbury
(Manners-Sutton), the only support for it coming from Lord
Holland who introduced it, and from Lord Stanhope. The
general hostility of the governing classes was shown in the
adverse reports of the magistrates among whom the Bill
was circulated. The Bill in its original form made it com-
pulsory on all parishes to provide education out of the rates,
but Sturges- Bourne persuaded the House of Commons to
make this provision optional. The vestries were to report
to the magistrate, and the magistrates to sanction a rate.
All children of the poor were to receive two years' schooling
free.
There were two powerful currents of hostile opinion.. One
was represented in the speeches of Windham and Giddy.
Windham, after the death of Fox, was the best scholar in
the House of Commons, and Giddy 1 was President of the
Royal Society and a great patron of scientific enterprise.
Windham declared himself a sceptic as to the value of the
" diffusion of knowledge," and defended his view by a signi-
ficant illustration : " It was said, look at the state of the
savages when compared to ours. A savage among savages
was very well, and the difference was only perceived when
he came to be introduced into civilised society." He also
quoted Dr. Johnson as saying that it was not right to teach
reading beyond a certain extent hi society. " The danger
was, that if the teachers of good and the propagators of bad
principles were to be candidates for the control of man-
kind, the latter would be likely to be too successful." 2
1 1767-1839.
Windham^ Speeches, vol. iii. p. 17. (April 24, 1807.)
THET NEW TOWN 67
Giddy developed this argument three months later : " How-
ever specious in theory the project might be, of giving educa-
tion to the labouring classes of the poor, it would in effect
be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness ;
it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of
making them good servants in agriculture, and oth<
laborious employments to which their rank in society had
destined them ; instead of teaching them subordination,
it would render them factious and refractory, as was evident
in the manufacturing counties ; it would enable them to
read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and publications
against Christianity ; it would render them insolent to
their superiors ; and in a few years the result would be that
the legislature would find it necessary to direct the strong
arm of power towards them, and to furnish the executive
magistrate with much more vigorous laws than were now
in force." *
The other contrary current was represented in the speech
of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who objected to any
system that put the control of education elsewhere than in
the hands of the bishop of the diocese.
Such daily education as was given was given in schools
founded by one of two rival societies. One society,
founded in 1808 and patronised by the rich Whigs and
Quakers, adopted Joseph Lancaster's ideas of popular
education with general religious instruction ; the other,
representing the interests of the Established Church and
adopting the ideas of Dr. Bell, was founded in 1811. 2 The
one movement blossomed into the British and Foreign
Schools Society ; the other into the National Society for
Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of
the Church of England. Whitbread's successor in the
leadership of the cause of popular education was Brougham,
1 Hansard, ix. p. 798 nn.
* Even Pitt, who had been content to leave the country entirely destitute
of education, wrote to Bishop Tomline in 1802 that he was strongly per-
suaded that Mr. Lancaster's project, if allowed to operate to any great
extent, was likely to produce great mischief, and that it was very important
to find some safe and effectual substitute (Rose, Pitt and NapoUon, p. 1 10).
58 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
whose exertions in this cause were perhaps the happiest
chapter in his chequered career. In 1820 he introduced
a Bill, based on the reports of a Committee which he
had persuaded Parliament to appoint four years earlier,
empowering Quarter Sessions to found schools on the
representations of two magistrates, the local clergyman, or
five resident householders. The schoolmaster was to be
appointed, not by the magistrates as in Whitbread's Bill,
but by the vestry ; the clergyman was to have the right to
examine and dismiss him. Further, the Bishop could act
as Visitor or appoint the Dean or Archdeacon as Visitor,
and the Visitor could remove the master. The Bill passed
its second reading, but Brougham then withdrew it. Accord-
ing to the Annual Register there was violent opposition
alike from the Church and the Nonconformists ; according
to a statement made by Brougham fourteen years later, it
was the hostility of the Nonconformists that decided him
to abandon the Bill. But though Brougham did not fare
any better than Whitbread in this part of his scheme, his
efforts had one permanent important result. In 1816 he
obtained the appointment of a Commission to inquire into
the abuses of Charitable Endowments, and this inquiry
was the parent of the Charity Commission.
More significant than the dislike of education was the
spirit of those who favoured it. Hannah More allowed no
writing for the poor because she did not want to make
fanatics ; one of the Manchester parsons 1 told the Factory
Commission in 1833 that writing was not taught in any
of the Church Sunday-schools, and that there was great
objection to teaching the poor to write among many persons
who contributed liberally to the support of Sunday-schools.
Mrs. Trimmer, regarded in many quarters as dangerously
advanced, kept her ambitions within reason ; she put it that
the lower sort of children might be so far civilised as not
to be disgusting.
Detroisier, the secretary of the National Political Union,
1 First Report, Factory Commission, Evidence of Huntingdon, Rector
of St. John's. Tufnell, p. 49.
THE NEW TOWN
59
who had begun life in the mill and had afterwards become
a lecturer and a social worker, the founder of Mechanics'
Institutions in Hulme and Salford, cited the remark of a
large employer, when asking him to recommend a porter, 1
as characteristic of very many of his class : " I don't want
one of your intellectuals ; I want a man that will work and
take his glass of ale : I '11 think for him." l This is an excel-
lent description of the upper-class mind. Some would
concede to Hannah More that property would be safer if
the poor were taught to read the Bible, but they were
determined that the upper classes should do their thinking
for them.
The objection to an educated working class was part of
the general philosophy of the governing world. Z-Fpjr the
first time there existed a vast proletariate, with no pro- '
perty but its labour, and therefore in the eyes of its rulers
bound by no ties to the society in which it lived except by
the ties that discipline could create"} The upper classes
would have said of this proletariate^what Ireton, speaking
in the Council of the Parliamentary Army in 1647, had said
of tenants, labourers, tradesmen, and all persons outside the
men of landed property and the members of trading cor-
porations, that " they had no interest in the country except
the interest of breathing." The working classes were
therefore regarded as people to be kept out of mischief,
rather than as people with faculties and characters to be
encouraged and developed. They were to have just so
much instruction as would make them more useful work-
people ; to be trained, in Hannah More's phrase, " in habits
of industry and piety." Thus not only the towns they
lived in, the hours they worked, the wages they received,
but also the schools in which some of their children were
taught their letters, stamped them as a subject population,
existing merely for the service and profit of other classes.
1 First Report of Factory Commission, 1833, E, p. 18.
CHAPTER IV
JUSTICE
IN the speech that marked the beginning of the long duel
with France, Pitt made the proud declaration that " it was
the boast of the law of England that it afforded equal
security and protection to the high and the low, the rich*
and the poor." This statement, when placed beside the
cold facts of contemporary English life, looks like sheer
hypocrisy. When other politicians repeated it after Pitt ...
had dragooned the country by Treason and Sedition Acts x <-
it looked more like hypocrisy than ever. But the men who
said this were not consciously misrepresenting the truth :
they had a definite picture of England in their mind.
Within a certain charmed circle England remained, even
in the darkest hours of superstition and coercion, a remark-
ably free society. We have only to think of the speeches
of Fox and Sheridan, or the poems of Byron and Shelley,
to recall the latitude allowed to criticism in certain ranks ;
within those ranks rebellion and free thinking enjoyed a
licence that seemed astonishing to those who tried to say
and write what they thought under a Continental govern-
ment. For the power of the^rigtocracy had prevented the
growth of a system which in other countries gave the official
special advantages in respect of justice over the private
citizen. Hen.ce at. the beginning of the, nineteenth century
the upper-class Englishi]^n.j^S-tli&.fce.ejst_m^iL4n^iirQpe.
So clearly was the immunity of this society recognised,
that the blasphemy laws were never set in motion against
any member of the upper class, though the Saints were
making them a terror to the poor. Canning and his fellow-
writers on the Anti-Jacobin could take what liberties they
so
JUSTICE 61
pleased with the Liturgy or the Bible. Of course free
criticism was not encouraged. Miss Edgeworth wrote The
Absentee as a play, wishing to strike the conscience of Irish
society in London, but Sheridan warned her that it would
never pass the Censor. But men of the privileged classes
could say and write things that would have carried a rebel
into jail under any other government in Europe.
This was a very important fact, and it had momentous
consequences in English history. It was the result of the
Whig Revolution, which put an end to the state of things
that had grown up under the Stuarts with courts that were
the servile instruments of the Crown. An Englishman,
since the beginning of the eighteenth century, had been
tried by judges who were no.^^^jere creatures of the
Court, but men holding an of|fl Bt^ -'hich they could not
be removed except by an 4lH Hpom both Houses of
Parliament. In the countrjB Pfras administered by a
country gentleman, not som ^HBP c ^ like an intendant,
but a squire living among the pa^Ile over whose affairs he
had jurisdiction, and therefore alive to all the influences of
local association and atmosphere. This was what the
upper-class Englishman meant by the " equity of our laws,"
why they talked of English justice with an enthusiasm that
bewilders readers of Fielding or Goldsmith, or those who
follow the labours of Romilly and Bentham, and why Pitt,
whose long career opened with such promise of reform and%
improvement, never put a finger on the worst abuses of
that system. The caprice of the Crown had been abolished :
the supremacy of the Law had been established, and in a
class that regarded the defence of the rights of property
as the main ^business of society, the spirit and the working
of English institutions all tended to protect the normal
Englishman from the encroachments and the extortions of
the State. .Trial by jury and independent judges, these
were the securities of English justice ; the normal English-
man was thought to be the^EngUshman with property, and
a system that provided for him was equitable and
adequate.
|
62 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Having established this broad principle that justice should
be in the hands of representative and independent men, who
held the large general views of their society, and would not
serve the insidious aims of a Court, the upper classes paid
little attention to the abuses that disgraced the actual
administration of the law. As the new population increased
and new problems arose, the machinery of the law-courts
became obsolete and defective. Instead of reforming the
system, the governing class contented itself with adding ,
new felonies and making the penal law more savage. By
the end of the century, with the panic of the Revolution,
a new danger came into their minds. There was now no '
quarrel between the aristocracy and the Crown, and whereas
a generation or two before English gentlemen thanked
heaven that they did not live under the justice of a despotism,'
they now prayed to God that they might never live under >
the justice of an anarchy. The days of the Stuarts seemed
remote compared with the misfortunes that had overtaken
property across the Channel. Consequently the majority
/of the upper classes came to look upon judges and magis-
| trates not as persons trying to do justice between man and
I man, but as the most effective part of the system of repres-
/ sion. Pitt gave the keynote in the remarkable speech
that he made on the trial of Muir, 1 when in wnitewashing
the notorious Braxfield he declared that " the judges would j
have been highly culpable if, vested as they were with dis-
cretionary powers, they had not employed them for the
present punishment of such daring delinquents and the
suppression of doctrines so dangerous to the country." 2
From this time judges and magistrates, with few excep-
tions, regarded themselves as the policemen of the existing
1 Muir was a young Scottish reformer who was tried for sedition and
sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. Braxfield, characterised by
Cockburn as a coarse and dexterous ruffian, is drawn in Stevenson's Weir
of Hermiston. He was the Jeffreys of Scotland. Every member of the
jury (packed by the presiding judge) had belonged to an association which
had expelled Muir for his political opinions. Those opinions differed
scarcely at all from Pitt's earlier opinions. Erskine May, ii. 293.
8 House of Commons, March 10, 1794.
JUSTICE 63
order and the predominant ideas. The rebels among the
aristocracy were safe from them, as a rule, for tradition was
too strong, and the men themselves too formidable. 1 Tlftre
was one other check on the aggression of the magistrates,
for London juries were apt to upset the best laid plans,
, and jury-packing presented far greater difficulties in London
than in the country. In the new industrial districts they
had a comparatively free hand ; there the danger seemed
greater. One of the kindest, and in some respects one of
the most enlightened men of the time, a Spitalfields manu-
facturer, speaking of the poor crowded together there, and
the good effects of Sunday-schools, remarked : " I believe
no instance is to be found where so multitudinous a poor
congregate together in so small a space with so little
inconvenience to their neighbours." 2 The upper classes
could rarely escape from this way of looking at the working
V ses, but whereas Mr. Hale talked of inconvenience, the
north-country magistrate would have used a sharper word.
The law put unlimited powers into their hands, and in using
those powers they did not think of the working classes as
men and women to whom they owed justice, but as a body
I of rebels dangerous to society. In the letters from magis-
/ trates to the Mome ffice, and from the Home Office to
/ magistrates, the law is treated as an instrument not of
c justice but of repression. There is consequently no aspect
of their lives in which the working classes appear so con-
spicuously as a helot population. For to the inequality
kw inseparable from the inequalities of circumstances^
ivated by all the gross anomalies of the legal system
time, there was added the inequality that was delib- ^l~
r-j set up when the courts became the recognised uisjjni- "
S^ merit pf a class supremacy. Moreover, the workman was
rarely, tried by his peers. He was generally sent to prison
by a Magistrate. Lord Holland dwelt on this as a growing
evil.
1 Pitt once thought of trying to send Fox to the Tower, but he decided
that it would be too great a risk.
Report on Mendicity, 1815; see Ann. Reg. t 1810, p. 599.
64 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
A great part of the new population was subject to county
magistrates. This was true even of Manchester with her popu-
lation of 200,000 people, 1 and many of the Lancashire and
Yorkshire towns were in the same case. For many years
it was the custom in the Duchy of Lancaster to exclude
manufacturers from the Bench, 2 and at first sight it might
seem that landowners and parsons would be able to deal
justly with the workmen, who were not their own servants
but the servants of a class that many of them disliked
and despised. The Home Office records show, however,*
that there were overruling prejudices in their minds
scarcely less fatal to justice than the motive of direct and
evident self-interest. The country gentlemen were apt t
give the manufacturers a wide berth until they became
millionaires, but they had their own quarrel with the class
that the manufacturers oppressed. If the employers re-
garded the discontent of the workmen as a menace to
profits, the squires and parsons regarded it as a menace
to property and order. There were some respects, indeed,
in which the manufacturers understood the new popula-
tion better than did the territorial class. Phillips, a leading
Manchester manufacturer, though one of the least en-
lightened of his class on the subject of factory legislation,
protested strongly in Parliament against the use of spies,
a favourite method among several of the county magis-
trates of securing the ends of justice. On the Combina-
tion Laws the magistrates were sometimes more hostile
than the masters, and even went so far as to put those laws
into force against workmen acting in concert with their
masters. It would certainly have been difficult to find any
set of manufacturers more destitute of sympathy with the
working classes than the active justices who looked after
the working men of Manchester. For the rest the new
power was in most places well represented on the Bench.
Colonel Fletcher of Bolfcon was a coalowner, and he took
1 After 1813 Manchester had one stipendiary magistrate.
* Webb, Pariah and County, p. 383 n. See Debate, House of Commons,
May 12, 1813.
JUSTICE 65
care that his brother magistrates put his workmen in prison
when they struck for an advance of wages. 1 The factory
visitors reported in 1828 that the Factory Acts were a dead
letter at Wigan, because all the magistrates there were
manufacturers and therefore disqualified for trying breaches
of the Act. 2 Consequently they all broke it at their pleasure.
In other parts of the country, manufacturers were often
on the Bench, and there were frequent complaints to the
Home Office of the abuse by employers of their powers.
In 1820 the High Constable of Bradford in Wiltshire brought
serious charges of this kind against the employers in his
neighbourhood, 3 and Lord Bute in 1826 said that the case
of Glamorganshire was serious : 4 in the hundred of Caer-
philly and Merthyr Tydfil the only magistrates were two
ironmasters employing four or five thousand workmen
apiece, who were constantly trying their workmen for
offences against themselves. 5 These men were responsible
for carrying out the Truck Acts or the Acts prohibiting the
payment of wages in kind. A Monmouthshire coalowner,
who was a magistrate, wrote to the Home Office in 1830
during a strike that was partly a strike against the illegal
truck system : " The steps I shall propose to take will be
to have the men apprehended who have left their employ
and to have them sent to the treadmill." 6
The Combination Laws, though they drew an important
distinction between masters and men, did on paper profess
/ to restrain the masters from combining. In fact they were
never interpreted by the magistrates as applying to the
masters at all. The masters combined freely, and in no
single instance were they punished. Their immunity was
indeed so well established that they never thought it
necessary to put the thinnest disguise on their combina-
tions against their men. In 1823 four of the chief employers
in Knaresborough and the neighbourhood, employing some
fifteen hundred linen weavers, concerted a large reduction in
wages, following on three reductions in eight years. The
1 H. O., 42. 179. H. O., 52. 5. s H. O., 44. 1.
4 H. O., 62. 4. H. O., 52. 4. H. O., 52. 9.
66 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
men struck, but after twenty-eight weeks they had to
yield. The masters, who combined openly for this pur-
pose, published an abstract of the Combination Law
to prevent people from subscribing for the support of the
men. 1
The employers knew very well that they ran no risks.
Gravener Henson, in 1811, tried to prosecute some masters
at Nottingham who had published their resolutions to reduce
wages. He went to the magistrates, who said they had not
sufficient evidence. He produced the newspaper, and
invited them to summon the printer and hear his evi-
dence. They advised him to go no further. He made a
fresh application, and in form the magistrates assented,
but when he asked for a warrant the Town Clerk refused
to grant it, because he could not prove the parish in which
they had met. 2 No formal difficulties like these ever stood
in the way of a magistrate if the offenders were workpeople
and not masters.
A still more graphic and striking illustration of the
justice with which the magistrates treated the claims of
the working classes is provided in the history of the struggles
of miners and ironworkers against the fraudulent truck
system. Parliament did not concede much to the working
classes, but the concessions, such as they were, lost all their
value from the refusal of the magistrates to carry out legis-
lation that was obnoxious to the masters. Down to the
end of our period colliers and ironworkers were engaged in
a series of strikes to compel the masters to do what the
law ordered them to do ; these strikes were conducted with
bitter feeling on both sides, and the maintenance of order
became a serious difficulty ; the soldiers were called in, life
was lost, and this confusion and misery were caused, not
by demands from the men for better wages or conditions,
but by the plain and open violation of the law on the part
of the masters. The fact that the law was not carried out
is established, not from the controversial manifestoes of
1 Committee on Artisans and Machinery, p. 541.
8 Committee on Artisans and Machinery, p. 280 f.
JUSTICE 67
the men, but from the frank admissions of the magistrates,
who, for the most part, seem to have taken it for granted,
that if the masters would not obey the law, nothing could
be done to enforce obedience. When the trouble became
serious they met, not to put the Truck Acts into operation
against the masters, but the Vagrancy Acts against the
men. As they could not persuade the masters to obey the
law, they sent the men to prison for trying to make them
do so.
There was a Truck Act on the Statute Book as early as
1726, 1 the first Act applying to the woollen industry. From
1749 2 there are various Truck Acts applying to other in-
dustries, including the iron, but not the coal and steel
industries. In the coal and iron works of the Midlands and
Wales the masters paid wages to a large extent by means
of their " Tommy-shops," and the abuses were particu-
larly flagrant. This system was a perpetual cause of ill-
feeling in the life of the district ; it poisoned the relations
of masters and men, and it vitiated all the calculations of
the wages paid, so that the men felt that in every quarrel
the employers were deceiving the public by their state-
ments of the " ample pay and constant work " 3 enjoyed
by their misguided men. This was the feeling of others
beside workmen. In the course of a dispute in 1816, in
which colliers and ironworkers were resisting a reduction
of wages, the solicitor to the Bench at Merthyr wrote to the
papers to say that the colliers had 15s. a week and the
firemen 21s. to 25s. a week. 4 But a magistrate from a
neighbouring hundred wrote to the Home Office : " Nothing
could be more untrue than the letter in the Courier ', signed
Wm. Meyrick, with respect to wages per week, as the mode is
to pay them by weight or measure, and that only monthly,
which gives the Iron Masters an opportunity of imposing
on the people by obliging them to go to their Shops." 5 In
the following year a number of Staffordshire magistrates,
not themselves employers, impressed by the scandals
1 12 George i. o. 34. 22 George n. o. 27. H. O., 42. 154.
Ann. Reg., 1816, Chronicle 17. * H. O., 42. 160.
68 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
of this system, obtained special legislation from Parlia-
ment, two Acts * being passed forbidding the payment
of wages in the steel and coal industries otherwise than in
money. Three years later the law was stiffened, an Act
being passed in 1820 forbidding employers to make any
stipulation as to the expenditure of wages. 2 This law was
to be renewed from year to year. But the laws remained
idle, and in 1821 the whole district was blazing again.
The quarrel began with a reduction of wages in the
Wellington district ; the masters agreed among themselves
on a reduction of 6d. a day, and after some rioting, hi the
course of which the yeomanry were called in and two
workmen were killed, a compromise was made and wages
were reduced by 4d. a day. 3 Next year there was a new
movement among the masters, beginning at Tipton, and
this time the employers decided to recoup themselves for
the fall in the price of iron, not only by reducing wages, but
by raising prices in their " Tommy -shops." Of this, wrote a
correspondent, whose letter was sent to the Home Office, 4
" the men have now availed themselves as a plausible and
(I may safely add) a real cause of complaint. By this
practice the Coal and Iron masters compel their workmen
to accept of two-thirds of their wages in goods, such as
Sugar, Soap, Candles, Meat, Bacon, Flour, etc., instead of
money, at an unreasonable large profitt. This appears
the real cause of complaint more than the reduction of
wages, and is really very hard upon them, and as the
masters contrive to evade the Act of Parliament the Men
seem to have no relief but ceasing to work."
Faced with the prospect of a serious strike and a great
deal of misery, the magistrates gave their attention to the
subject with remarkable results. In the first place, the
two parson magistrates of Bilston wrote to the Home
Office enlarging on the merits and popularity of the truck
system, which Parliament had pronounced illegal. 5 The
1 1817 : 67 George ra. c. 115 ; 57 George in. c. 122.
8 1 George iv. c. 93. H. O., 40. 16. H. O., 40. 17.
6 H. O., 40. 17.
JUSTICE 9
magistrates of tho district then proceeded to issue a h.
bill l stating that after calling a meeting of the principal
coal and iron masters they were convinced that the men
were receiving from 2s. 6d. to 3s. a day, " with the Advan-
tages of three Pints of Pit Drink, and Firing for their
Families, and can, at the present Moment, generally have
full employment " ; that the practice of paying otherwise
than in money was rare, and that they intended to put
into force the Vagrant Act against " all Persons going about
from Door to Door or placing themselves in Streets, High-
ways, or Passages, to beg or gather Alms." The men,
refused the protection of the law for their legal rights,
adopted violent measures for checking the supply of labour,
" cutting the ropes and ducking and half drowning "
blacklegs. In the course of an affair between a mob of
colliers waiting for some returning blacklegs and the soldiers,
a collier was shot and killed. 2
In this district there was one magistrate who thought that
laws ought to be put in force even if the powerful classes
disliked them. He was a parson in Wolverhampton
named Haden. He wrote an interesting letter describing
his experience in administering the law : 8
... On some of the Coal Masters still persisting in the oppres-
sive practice of paying their Workmen in Truck or Tommy-
Tickets so called, I issued four Summonses and heard them this
Morning at our Public Office. It was curious to see what
artifices they made use of, to prevent my fixing upon the most
proper person to pay the just demands of the Complainants.
One gave me for Answer that " he only brings the money to
pay the workmen.'* He then brought forward one Walter
Davis (no doubt the Butty Collier) who said that " he was not a
Butty Collier, but merely a Dogger or overlooker, to see that the
men do their work." Various other evasive answers were given ;
but I at last told them that if they did not immediately pay
them in Cash, I would make an order and enforce it. I pro-
cured a Tommy Ticket from one of the Complainants, which I
have the honour to inclose, that you may see their plan. No
name is affixed as to the Master, Issuer, or Shopkeeper : but the
H. O., 40. 17. H. O., 40. 17. H. O., 40. 17.
70 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Interpretation of it is that Jones is to receive 8s. in Truck from
E. P. N. a Shopkeeper whose Name is North, in league with the
Master ! ! When I added that if the Men were not instantly paid
their full Wages in Money without any abatement, / would lay
that Ticket before the Higher Powers, they seemed alarmed and
paid them instantly. The Court was crowded with Colliers, all
of whom appeared much pleased with my decisions. I mention
this merely to show you by what means they would become
peaceable and fully satisfied.
This information I hope and trust will convince you and His
Majesty's Government, as to the indispensable necessity of
continuing the 1 G. 4. cap. 93. You perhaps will coincide with
me in opinion that the following clause would answer every
purpose, namely, TJiat no Tommy Ticket, or Truck, shall be
allowed to be given or set off as and for Workmen's Wages ; one
Justice of the peace to summon, and the Adjudication of two or
more Justices to be final, and no Appeal. I have the honor to be,
sir, your most obedient humble Servant, A. B. HADBN.
The right Honorable ROBERT PEEL,
etc. etc. etc.
TICKET.
Due to JONES.
Eight Shillings Pence.
8/- From E. P. N.
1820. 17.
A fierce struggle was carried on, at the same time, over
the same question, in Monmouth and on the Welsh borders,
and the men succeeded in obtaining a declaration from the
ironmasters that they would drop their tommy-shops and
pay in cash. 1 This promise was apparently kept, at any
rate for a time, but of course it did not cover the collieries
not worked by ironmasters. In 1823 a magistrate, who had
interested himself in the men's grievances from the first,
wrote to the Home Office : 2 " The workmen in the collieries
of this neighbourhood are at present in a state of great
irritation and discontent owing to that abuse which has
H. O., 52. 3. H. O., 44. 13.
JUSTICE 71
been the real though sometimes latent cause of all the
disturbances which have taken place amongst them,
namely the pernicious practice of paying workmen in shop
goods instead of money, which now prevails here to a degree
unknown since the riots of 1816, and which has been resorted
to by the Master Colliers (who for the most part are not
proprietors) since the conversation in the House of Commons
on the renewal of the late Act obtained at the insistence of
the Staffordshire magistrates. . . . The rapid rise in the
prices of provisions since and the unrestrained manner
in which the men are compelled for the most part to
receive their wages in goods instead of in money at prices
20, 30, and 40 per cent, higher than in the markets and
open shops have of late been laying the sure foundations of
future disturbances."
Nearly ten years later, when there were disturbances in
the Dowlais and others works, the officer sent down to
restore order reported that the truck system survived,
and that many workmen were compelled to pay 15 or 20
per cent, above the market price for their provisions. 1
In the same year (1832) the masters met at Abergavenny
and undertook to abolish the truck system, which " some of
them were reluctantly obliged to acknowledge was one of
the original causes of the agitation in the mining district." *
In the colliers' strike in Staffordshire in 1831 the potters
held a great meeting at Hanley and decided to help the
miners, " in the defense of their, just rights." 3 Among the
miners' grievances recited in their resolution an important
place was given to the continuance of the illegal truck
system. It is not surprising that the system was still in
force in remote places in 1842, 4 seeing that it flourished in
districts where there were powerful landlords, like Lord
Bute and the Duke of Beaufort, taking an active part in
the administration of justice and public affairs, although it
was admittedly the cause of continual disorder.
The lives and liberties of a class that was unable to
1 H. O., 40. 30. H. O., 40. 30.
8 H. O., 52. 15. Mines' Report, 1842.
72 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
secure from the magistrates a semblance of the protection
that Parliament had designed for it, were not likely to
count for very much hi the eyes of the authorities that
administered the law. It is not too much to say, hi the
light of the Home Office papers, that none of the personal
rights attaching to Englishmen possessed any reality for
the working classes. The magistrates and their clerks
recognised no limit to their power over the freedom and the
movements of working men. The Vagrancy Laws seemed
to supersede the entire charter of an Englishman's liberties.
They were used to put into prison any man or woman of
the working class who seemed to the magistrates an incon-
venient or disturbing character. They offered the easiest
and most expeditious way of proceeding against any one
who tried to collect money for the families of locked-out
workmen, 1 or to disseminate literature that the magistrates
thought undesirable. Lloyd, the clerk of the magistrates
at Stockport, one of the most energetic officers of the law
in the north of England, believed that he could throw
into prison as rogues and vagabonds the spinners who were
on strike parading the streets of that town. 2 The Home
Office, however, endorsed the letter " There must be proof
of Poverty and of refusal to work."
A parson magistrate wrote to the Home Office hi 1817
to say that he had seized two men who were distributing
Cobbett's pamphlets and had them well flogged at the
whipping-post under the Vagrancy Laws. 8 A man caught
taking a peep-show round the country, containing among
other curiosities a coloured print of Peterloo, who fell into
the hands of the Vicar of Chudleigh, got off more lightly,
being sent to the House of Correction as a vagrant till the
Sessions. 4 In their eagerness to pounce on sedition, the
magistrates sometimes made an awkward slip. In 1819 a
man was arrested on as grave a charge as could well be
incurred : that of selling the works of Tom Paine himself.
He was thrown into prison, and there he would have remained
1 Cf. H. O., 42. 118, December 13.
H. O., 42. 179. * H. O., 42. 159. * H. O., 42. 199.
JUSTICE 73
had not a respectable gentleman written to the Home Office
to point out that a very unfortunate mistake had been
made, enclosing at the same time a copy of the work that
had brought a highly religious man into a very disagreeable
position. The pamphlet is preserved with the Home Office
papers. 1 The magistrate had seen the incriminating name
of Paine and looked no further, but the pamphlet is in fact
a publication of the Religious Tract Society, composed by
Mrs. Trimmer herself, containing a repulsive version of
Paine's habits of life and manner of death, set off with an
equally repulsive picture, with the object of enhancing the
dignity of the Christian religion. 2 It is difficult to see how
any workman could have eluded the wide net cast by one
Nottinghamshire magistrate, who, finding it impossible to
formulate any charge against two men whose influence he
thought bad and unsettling, wrote to the Home Office
suggesting that he might demand sureties for their good
behaviour : 8 they were poor men, and their only friends
were poor men : consequently they would be unable to pro-
duce sureties and could be shut up in jail for the winter. 4
Until Peel's advent the Home Office appear to have done
nothing or next to nothing to discourage illegalities on the
part of the magistrates, and the law-officers on one occa-
sion set an example in proposing to violate the principles
of what Bacon calls " clear and round dealing " between
men. This was in 1802, when there were disturbances in
1 H. o., 42. 199.
1 There was a considerable literature of this kind on the subject of
Paine's death. One pamphlet bears this title, " Radicals and True Patriot*
compared, or Living Evidence from New York of Paine's character and
last hours contrasted with those of the patriotic Duke of Kent and the
late great and good King George the Third, compiled from the narrative of
a late resident at New York and other authentic sources. By a Clergyman,
late of Oxford." H. O., 42. 155.
4 The Settlement Laws were sometimes convenient for this purpose.
In 1819 a working man took part in starting a reform society at Wigan,
and alarmed the magistrates by publishing a pamphlet calling on Britons
to prove to the world that they were countrymen of Boadicea. Fortun-
ately the town clerk found that the man had previously been removed
from Wigan under the Settlement Laws, so the parish officer* procured
a warrant and locked him up for a month. H. O., 42. 189.
74 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
the south-west over the introduction of gig-mills. 1 A
number of shearmen waited, by invitation, on a manu-
facturer named Jones to discuss the situation ; the meeting
broke up without result, and the delegates, seven in number,
told the manufacturer that the shearmen throughout the
country were united in their opposition to the new machinery.
The account of these proceedings was sent to the Home Office,
and it bears the following remarkable endorsement :
" We are of opinion that the Conduct of the Individuals who
came to Mr. Jones's House will support an Indictment for a
Conspiracy, and we should recommend an Indictment to be
prepared and sent down to the Assizes for Wiltshire charging
these seven men with such Conspiracy, and that Mr. Hobhouse
and the other persons present with Mr. Jones should attend at
the Assizes to go before the Grand Jury with the Bill.
SP. PERCEVAL.
THOS. MANNERS SUTTON." 2
This tempting invitation was declined by the employers,
but the methods of justice revealed in the Home Office
papers were in keeping with this proposal. As Lord Pem-
broke put it in writing to the Home Office, the working
classes were " unfortunately true to each other," 3 and the
magistrates had consequently to resort to craft to surprise
them into disclosures. One method was to arrest a number
of men, and then try to make them compromise each other.
During this affair in the south-west a Wiltshire magistrate
wrote that he had held out every temptation to accomplices
without effect, and that six shearmen had been sent to
prison the previous week under the Combination Laws, two
of them for refusing to give evidence. " I am bringing
forward as many Cases as I can under the Combination Act,
and by forcing some to give Evidence against others, I hope
to provoke some quarrels amongst them, and by that means
to be able to bring some of their Deeds to light." 4
1 Gig-mills were machines for raising the nap on the surface of cloth,
which was afterwards shorn. This raising had previously been done by
hand with teazles.
3 H. O., 42. 65. 3 H. O., 42. 66. H. O., 42. 66.
JUSTICE 75
The law, set in force by every kind of trickery, including
the use of unscrupulous characters as spies, was adminis-
tered with a brutality that stamped the working classes
as a population amenable to no influence but that of
terror. An example of the value put on a man's freedom
was given by Mr. Justice Park, who, as the Attorney-
General for the County-palatine of Lancaster, had played
an important part in the punishment of the disturbances of
1812. Park, when a judge in 1818, sentenced a labourer
at the Salisbury Assizes to eighteen months' imprisonment
for stealing a sack of oats. The man, on receiving sentence,
asked the judge how he could recover the wages that were
due to him. Park responded by converting his sentence
into one of transportation for seven years. 1 The view of __ f
the ruling classes was well illustrated in the case of a child
erf ten who was sentenced to death in 1800 for secreting
notes at the Chelmsford Post Office. 2 The judge, Baron
Hot ham, wrote to Lord Auckland : " All the circumstances
attending the transaction manifested art and contrivance
beyond his years, and I therefore refused the application
of His Counsel to respite the Judgment on the ground of his
tender years, being satisfied that he knew perfectly what
he was doing. But still, he is an absolute Child, Now only
between ten and Eleven, and wearing a bib, or what your
old Nurse (my friend) will know better by the name of a
Pinafore. The Scene was dreadful, on passing sentence,
and to pacify the feelings of a most crowded Court, who all
expressed their horror of such a Child being hanged, by their
looks and manners, after stating the necessity of the pro-
secution and the infinite danger of its going abroad into
the world that a Child might commit such a crime with
impunity, when it was clear that he knew what he was
doing, I hinted something slightly of its still being in the
power of the Crown to interpose in every Case that was open
to Clemency." The sentence was commuted, and the boy
was sent out to Grenada for fourteen years, apparently by
a private arrangement with a member of the Grand Jury
1 Taunton Courier in H. O., 42. 180. H. O., 42. 49.
76 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Q . who had estates there. The transportation of children
was, of course, a common occurrence. The list of prisoners
sent up from London and Middlesex in 1817 included two
boys aged ten and thirteen under sentence of death, 1 and
the list from the Chester Assizes the next year includes a
sentence of death on a boy of fourteen for stealing a silver
watch and two bank notes. 2 Two boys aged ten and twelve
were sentenced to transportation for seven years, at the
Manchester Quarter Sessions in 1813, for stealing linen from
a warehouse. 3 A boy of fourteen was hung at Newport in
\ 1814 for stealing. A woman whose husband had been
transported for felony committed the same felony in the
hope of joining him in exile, but the judge thought it
^ necessary to make an example and hanged her instead. 4
We have a grave picture of the justice shown to the poor,
drawn by a lawyer who was as nervous as anybody else
of industrial disorder. In 1828 Brougham made a speech
on the State of the Law, which is invaluable as a record of
legal procedure and habit in those days. In that speech
he argued before a House of Commons that might be ignorant
on many subjects, but was certainly not ignorant about
magistrates and magistrates' ways, that magistrates com-
mitted a great many persons who ought to be discharged,
from motives of vainglory and from motives that were
even worse. He was referring to Peel's Bill for extending
the payments of expenses of witnesses and prosecutors
out of the county rates. "It is not to be doubted that
it has greatly increased the number of commitments, and
has been the cause of many persons being brought to
trial who ought to have been discharged by the Magis-
trates. The habit of committing, from this and other
causes, has grievously increased everywhere of late, and
especially of boys. Eighteen hundred and odd, many of
them mere children, have been committed in the Warwick
1 H. o., 42. 158.
* At the same Assizes a cooper from Newport was transported for life for
stealing a handkerchief, value sixpence. H. O., 42. 180.
* Meinertzhagen, From Ploughshare to Parliament, p. 186.
4 Spencer Walpole, i. 190, quoting Police Com. of 1818, p. 175.
JUSTICE 77
district, during the last seven years. Nor is this a trifling
evil. . . . Many are the inducements, independent of any
legislative encouragement, to these commitments. The
Justice thinks ho gains credit by them. He has the glory
of being commemorated at the Assizes before the Lord
Judge and the Sheriff, and the Grand Jury, and all who
read the Crown Calendar. On that solemn occasion he
has the gratification of hearing it fly from mouth to mouth
* He is a monstrous good magistrate : no man commits
so many persons.' Then there is the lesser glory acquired
among neighbours, into whose pockets they are the means
of putting money, by making them prosecutors and witnesses
in petty criminal cases ; and thus converting (as Sir Eardley
Wilmot says) their journey of duty into a jaunt of pleasure
to the Assizes. The reputation of activity is very seducing
to a Magistrate ; but I have known it curiously combined
with things more solid than empty praise." l It was cer-
tainly unfortunate for the class that filled the prisons as
they filled most of the undesirable situations in life, that
the prosecution of offenders throughout most of this period
was so lucrative a business. Nadin, the notorious Deputy
Constable of Manchester, found that he had hit on a career
as enriching as the most enterprising career in commerce
or industry. Originally a master spinner, he attracted the
notice of the Society for the Prosecution of Felons by his
skill as a thief taker, and through their influence he became
Deputy Constable of Manchester. A Manchester corre-
spondent wrote to the Home Office in 1816, urging that a
very necessary reform in police legal procedure was the
abolition of the system by which responsibility for initiating
prosecutions rested with officials who drew a profit from
them. He alleged that in Manchester the Clerk and the
Deputy Constable made every little offence a felony for
the sake of the perquisites, and that Nadin had already
made 20,000 out of his position. 2 In 1818 another corre-
spondent wrote setting out the rewards that the Deputy
Constable received for obtaining a conviction. 3 For most
1 9pcechet, ii. p. 376. H. O., 42. 153. H. O., 42. 174.
78 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
serious offences the reward was 40, together with the
Tyburn ticket (the right of exemption from service in
parish offices). On one occasion Nadin had sold the Tyburn
ticket for fSOO. 1 Nadin's unpopularity may have coloured
the general opinion of his character, and an official who is
much more afraid of letting a guilty man escape than of
putting innocent men in prison, who thinks that justice
and terrorism are much the same thing, may appear to owe
to avarice the zeal that needed no such bribe. But nobody
ever questioned the belief that when Nadin retired he took
a fortune with him from an office on which he had entered
a poor man, and the sort of men he employed can be judged
by the admission that one of his police constables at Peterloo
made under cross-examination, that " he had been in the
habit of inveigling persons into the uttering of forged
notes for the purpose of convicting them, and that he had
succeeded in hanging one man in this way." 2
In 1818 Bennet 3 brought in a Bill to abolish the scandal
of blood money, or the system referred to by Nadin's
critic, under which the successful prosecutor was entitled
to a reward of 40 in the case of conviction on any one of
several charges. The debate that followed 4 shows that
police conspiracies for the sake of this reward were not
uncommon. Bennet, who had been Chairman of a Com-
mittee on the state of the police in the metropolis, said
" he was convinced he was not exaggerating when he said,
that it had been a long-established practice in this country,
for individuals, day after day, and year after year, to stimu-
late others to the commission of crime, for the purpose of
putting money into their pockets by their conviction."
Romilly, who supported Bennet strongly, " commented
on the rapacity of police officers, not only in London, but
also in other great towns, and stated, that in Birmingham
a case had lately occurred wherein police officers had earned
120 by the conviction of three boys." Alderman Wood
1 See also Philips's Speech, House of Commons, March 5, 1818.
1 Ann. Reg., 1820, p. 860. 3 See p. 187.
See Parl. Debates, March 2, April 13, and May 4, 1818.
JUSTICE 79
said that police officers went so far as to employ counsel
in order to secure a conviction ; and that anybody who
had experience of the courts could see how eager they were
to have a man committed for a capital offence. Mackintosh
also spoke of the scandalous scenes that the country had
often witnessed, and contended that false accusation had
lately become a most flourishing trade. Copley, afterwards
Lord Lyndhurst, objected to this statement as too sweeping,
saying that in his experience on the Midland circuit he had
never known an instance to justify it, to which Romilly re-
plied that he did not know what proof Copley thought neces-
sary to establish the fact of an abuse, but that for himself
he thought the conviction of five innocent men, which had
happened not long since, a sufficient argument for reform.
The law-officers carried an amendment, empowering the
judge to give a reward at his discretion, and the Bill passed
in this form, the fixed statutory rewards being abolished.
At the same time, prosecutors were allowed their expenses.
There have always been Englishmen who could break
through the prejudices of their class, and the time we are
discussing was no exception. In Parliament men like Sir
William Meredith, 1 Bennet, Romilly, and Whitbread were
always protesting against the carelessness of human life
and human liberty that had become habitual in the use of
their power by Ministers and magistrates ; in the Derbyshire
trials of 1817, Joseph Strutt made great efforts on behalf
of the prisoners, and there must have been on other Benches
some men of the humanity and independence, of Capel
Lofft of Suffolk. But the general temper was reflected in
the minds of Sidmouth or Parson Hay or Fletcher of
Bolton. Ministers and magistrates were careless about
their methods and their punishments, because the world
of the ruling class did not seem more separate to the poor
1 Meredith, a Rockingham Whig, and formerly a Jacobite (died 1790,
loft Parliament 1777), was Romilly's predecessor. See his speech on tho
brutalities of the Penal Law in 1777 (May 13). He first moved (November
27, 1770) for an inquiry into the Penal Code, and it is interesting to note
that his motion was seconded by Fox, who was then a Tory. Trevelyan,
Early Life of C. J. Fox, D. 405.
80 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
than the world of the poor seemed to the ruling class. To
the rich the mass of the people seemed ripe for rebellion.
In 1801, Ainsworth, a big manufacturer of Bolton, wrote to
Peel that if the French invaded and the soldiers were with-
drawn, the people would rise. 1 Bury was also said to be
ready for revolution, and two years later, when a French
invasion seemed possible, the Mayor of Leicester wrote to
the Home Office : " I think that if whilst the Enemy remains
in force the people of this Town were to suffer from the want
of Bread, a fourth of the population would join the French
Standard if they had an opportunity." 2 The mutual dis-
trust of the upper classes and the workmen was not less
acute than the mutual distrust of two hostile races, and the
industrial towns had the moral atmosphere of a society
kept uneasily in order by a system of martial law. This
state of things was at its worst long after the war was over
and all danger of invasion had ceased.
The principal argument put forward by the magistrates
in opposition to a Bill, introduced by Bennet in 1817 and
again in 1819, to deprive the justices of their absolute power
over licences, was the argument that magistrates used that
power for purposes of their own, and that by this control
over the publican they were able to make public-houses
an important source of information about the intentions
and temper of the working classes. One magistrate wrote
that those who had not lived in the Midlands had no idea
of the difficulties of the magistrates there : "A strong
combination of the ill-disposed, which includes, I am sorry
to say, nearly the whole class of working manufacturers." 3
The magistrates who sent spies into the taverns and into
little trade unions and workmen's societies and chapels,
who tried to bribe men in prison to betray their comrades,
who treated strikers as vagrants and children wearing bibs
as dangerous characters, were not administering justice
with even hand to a society of fellow-citizens ; they were
trying to terrorise an underworld ; they were watching for
the first stir and movement of its myriad hands.
1 H. O., 42. 61. H. O., 42. 73. a H. O., 42. 187.
CHAPTER V
ORDER
THE impression created by the general behaviour of the
magistrates was strengthened and dramatised by the force
on which the ruling class relied for their purpose of
keeping order.
The modern police system dates, as everybody knows,
from the day when Peel abolished the old London
watchmen and created the organisation that advertises
its author by its nickname. A century ago most of the
great towns had the administrative equipment of villages.
In most places the ultimate source of authority was a Justice
of the Peace, not always accessible, and a small number
of constables. Deficiencies of organisation were supple-
mented by the private incentives already described, and
the men who acted under the constables in the big towns
were often the greatest rascals of the place. 1 On paper
the whole population might be called out in the form
of the posse comitatus, or a town might be put under watch
and ward and all its male inhabitants thereby requisitioned
for police work, but neither of these courses was simple,
and measures that can be adopted in extraordinary emer-
gencies cannot be made part of the normal life of a society.
Least of all could they be adopted for such problems as the
problems that had new arisen. The whole theory of police
conscription belonged indeed to an earlier regime ; and
though these antique methods were still tried on occasion,
the results were not satisfactory. Manchester, Salford,
1 Readers of Godwin's powerful novel, The Adventures of Caleb Wittiam,
will recollect the character of Ginea, who alternated between the professions
of thieving and thief-taking.
F
82 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Blackburn, Stockport, Barnsley, Nottingham, and Carlisle
were put under watch and ward at the time of the Luddite
disturbances. There were difficulties in the West Riding
of Yorkshire, and the Clerk of the Peace at Wakefield
reported that to apply the Watch and Ward Act would be
to put arms into the hands of the most powerfully dis-
affected. 1 A West Riding magistrate attempted eight
years later to mobilise the posse comitatus at Dewsbury. 2
Some blanketeers had been summoned before him for
preventing others from working. A disorderly mob
collected and threatened to rescue the prisoners. In this
emergency he gave immediate orders for the posse comitatus
to be called out (there being no special constables or military
at hand), when to his surprise he found he could not muster
more than fifty persons in a market town containing nearly
eight thousand souls. There was a general fear among
shopkeepers of losing custom. Some towns had special
arrangements ; Manchester, for example, had obtained an
Act of Parliament establishing a body of Police Com-
missioners, though they were only becoming efficient
towards the end of our period. 3 But, for the most part,
these towns kept order by a handful of constables acting
under the directions of magistrates, few in number and
often living at a distance. A correspondent wrote to the
Home Office in 1819 describing the district that comprised
Oldham, Middleton, and Ashton, and extended to Yorkshire,
as being entirely without magistrates. 4 It is not surprising
that there was a continual demand from these places for a
1 H. O., 42. 122. * H. O., 52. 1.
* The police force in 1816 consisted of 4 beadles, 200 special constables,
and 53 night watchmen with rattles (Aston, Manchester, p. 27 ff.).
* H. O., 42. 193. Cf. H. O., 42. 163. Two magistrates from Rochdale
complained that they were the only acting magistrates among a popula-
tion of 100,000.
Cf. also H. O., 42. 165, 1817. Memorial from Potteries for stipendiary
(refused). District 40 miles in circumference, with more than 50,000
inhabitants ; no acting magistrate within these five parishes (Stoke-upon-
Trent, Burslem, Wolstanton, Trentham, Norton in the Moors), average
distance of magistrate, 9 miles, which meant a journey of 40 miles first to
obtain warrant and back, then to attend hearing.
ORDER 83
proper police force and system. The Bishop of Durham,
( sample, wrote in 1815 after the strike already de-
scribed, representing the urgent need for an efficient police
force for the ports of Sunderland and North and South
Ids. 1 Similar representations were made to the Home
Office from Nottingham, Newcastle, Wakefield; and in 1812
General Maitland reported that the Manchester magistrates
D inclined to bring up the question of a permanent
police establishment, and that he had told them that there
would be considerable objections to such a proposal. A
beginning was made towards the end of our period in
Cheshire, but throughout the commotions of the time the
north and the Midlands depended, so far as a civilian
constabulary was concerned, on such casual and ineffective
provision as we have described.
How, then, was order preserved ? For the answer to that t
question we must turn to the history of the British Army. *
Down to the Revolutionary War, England had a very small
standing army, and it was the custom to quarter such
troops as were kept in England in alehouses, barracks being
used only in garrison towns and fortresses. The military
needs of England governed the distribution of the British
troops, and the traditional jealousy of a standing army
showed itself in the arrangements for their housing. Black-
stone had declared that " the soldiers should live inter-
mixed with the people ; no separate camp, no barracks, no
inland fortresses should be allowed." During the French
War, Pitt effected a revolution, abolishing the old habit of
quartering soldiers, and spreading barracks over England.
Now this revolution was not a military measure at all. It
was, as Mr. Fortescue has shown, purely a measure of police.
Its origin is disclosed in the Home Office papers. In the
summer of 1792, Dundas sent a Colonel De Lancey on a tour
of inspection in the north of England to find out what he
could about the disposition of the troops, and " how far
they were to be depended upon in any emergency." 2 De
Lancey reported that it was " a dangerous measure to keep
1 H. O., 42. 146. H. O., 42. 20.
84 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
troops in the. manufacturing Towns in their present dis-
persed state, and unless Barracks could be established for
them where they could be kept under the eyes of their
officers it would be prudent to Quarter them in the towns
and villages in the vicinity, from whence in case of emerg-
ency they would act with much more effect." This report
led to the policy of covering the manufacturing districts
with barracks. The policy was not adopted without some
discussion in Parliament, though Pitt succeeded in screen-
ing most of his plans until they had been carried out. 1 In
the course of these debates the political character of these
measures was frankly acknowledged by Sir George Yonge
(Secretary at War) and by Pitt himself. Pitt put the motive
quite clearly : " The circumstances of the country, coupled
with the general state of affairs, rendered it advisable to
provide barracks in other parts of the kingdom. A spirit
had appeared in some of the manufacturing towns which
made it necessary that troops should be kept near them."
The critics of this policy included Fox, who addressed him-
self to this point : "If there were places where the existing
police was insufficient, let means be tried to remedy the
defect, but let it not be pleaded as a reason for keeping up
a military force ; for of all sorts of police, a military police
was the most repugnant to the spirit and the letter of our
Government, and ought to be the last that ever Parliament
should adopt." 2 There was another debate hi 1796, 3 when
Windham, defending the building of barracks as a means
of isolating the soldiers, said Government should act on
" the maxim of the French comedian : ' If I cannot make
him dumb I will make you deaf.' ' To which Fox
replied that the number of persons who were totally
deaf being unfortunately limited, it would be difficult
to recruit an entire army of the desirable kind, but that
perhaps foreign mercenaries who could hear, but would
1 See Fortescue, History of British Army, iv. 903, and the complaints of
the Opposition, April 1796.
* Parl. Debates, House of Commons, February 22, 1793.
* Parl. Debates, House of Commons, April 8, 1796.
ORDER W5
not understand, would answer the purpose Dundas had
in view. 1
The policy of building barracks was thus pushed forward
briskly ; at the beginning of the French War the Govern-
ment had barrack accommodation for some 21,000 troops
in forty-three garrison towns ; by 1815 a hundred and fifty-
five barracks had been built to contain 17,000 cavalry and
138,000 infantry. 3 Troops were distributed all over the
country, and the north and Midlands and the manufac-
turing region in the south-west came to resemble a country
under military occupation. 8 The officers commanding in
the different districts reported on the temper and circum-
stances of their districts, just as if they were in a hostile
or lately conquered country ; soldiers were moved about
in accordance with fluctuations in wages or employment,
and the daily life of the large towns was watched anxiously
and suspiciously by magistrates and generals. But the
problem was more complex than the ordinary problem of
military occupation, for soldiers and inhabitants were of
the same race, and much of the correspondence of the period
relates to rumours that the soldiers were in danger of con-
tamination. Colonel Vyse, commanding in the eastern
counties, did not dare to make Norwich his headquarters
in 1792 on account of its revolutionary tone, 4 and De
Lancey thought the Greys should be moved from Manchester
because they had been to a Presbyterian chapel where
they might have learned sedition. 5 A Plymouth corre-
spondent reported to the Home Office in 1795 that soldiers
1 Fox's bitter jest came true when a German legion was employed for
keeping order while English militiamen were flogged in the streets of Ely.
See Cobbett'e Trial for Seditious Libel in 1808.
1 Halevy, Histoirc du Peuple Anglais au XIX* Siicle, p. 68. -
' Barracks for small bodies of cavalry were built at Birmingham, Not-
tingham, Northampton, Sheffield, Manchester, Coventry, York. Infantry
were collected at Newcastle, Sunderland, Tynemouth, Carlisle, Chester,
Liverpool. See Adolphus, Brit. Empire, vol. ii. p. 293. The Fourth Report
of the Commissioners of Military Inquiry contains a list of the barracks
which it was proposed to keep permanently, and a list of those that were
to be given up at the end of the war.
4 H. O., 42. 22. H. O., 42. 25.
86 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
had been abettors of food riots in Devonshire, 1 and in 1816
a Home Office informant stated that he had been present
in a public-house at Rowley when a soldier had said to his
friends that he had received a letter from his father (who
was unemployed and starving with his family in the same
case) " charging him if any 'Riot took place in this country
for want of work not to hurt none of them, but if compelled
to fire either to fire over their heads, or to shoot the Tyger
that gave the order, and to persuade all his comrades to do
the same." 2 The Oxfordshire Blues were thanked by the
mob for their sympathy with the rioters at Nottingham in
1800, 3 and Maitland reported in 1812 that serious attempts
had been made to seduce his troops in Yorkshire. 4
The same difficulty arose with the militia in a more acute
form, for the militia were raised by compulsory ballot from
the general body of the nation. In the food riots of 1795
the militiamen more than once took open part with the
mob. This happened twice in Sussex in the month of
April : 5 in one case the militia seized and sold flour at
reduced prices at Seaford, and order was restored by
bringing in the Lancashire Fencibles from Brighton. A
sergeant of the Fencibles was killed. A court-martial was
held and two militiamen were shot, and three received three
hundred lashes apiece. Two were also hung for stealing
flour, after a trial at the Lewes Assizes. At Chichester the
militiamen broke open the prison and set at liberty a
number of labourers who had been sent to jail for forcing
a farmer to bring his corn to market. About the same time
Sir John Carter wrote from Portsmouth that men belong-
ing to the Gloucester regiment of militia had compelled
the butchers to lower the price of meat. 6 In the affair at
Cartwright's Mill in 1812 one Cumberland militiaman re-
fused to fire. " The monster is in custody," wrote a corre-
1 H. O., 42. 34. H. O., 42. 153. s H. O., 42. 51.
H. O., 42. 125.
* See Ipswich Journal, April 25, 1795; and also Annual Register, 1795,
Chronicle, p. 23 f.
H. O., 42. 34.
ORDER 87
Bpondent of the Home Office, though he ended his letter
with the admission : "I allow the poor are starving." x It
is not surprising, in the light of these and similar incidents,
that the ruling class distrusted the militia as a police force
for use against great popular outbursts of discontent or
hunger. As early as 1793, correspondents were writing to
the Home Office to urge that the militia of Northumberland
and Durham should be withdrawn as quickly as possible
from their respective counties, and that others who had no
local attachments should be substituted for them. 2 Simi-
larly in 1812, Parson Hay wrote from Manchester to urge
that if militiamen had to be employed they should be
militia regiments from the south of England. Throughout
that year there was great uneasiness about the militia.
In Cheshire it was thought to be wiser not to call them out,
and in many places where the force was called out some
sifting was done first. Colonel Clay, reporting on Lancashire
riots that same year, said about a riot in which three men
were killed and twenty wounded, that the Cumberland
militia behaved well ; this staggered the mob, who had the
idea that they would not act. 8 At Wakefield one of the
reasons given for claiming more military protection was
the intimate connection between the local militia and the
insurgents. 4 In 1817 Lord Anglesey wrote to the Home
Office that the local militia were useless, and he added,
" And indeed it is very revolting to the feelings of any man
to be called upon to attack his neighbours, and possibly his
kinsfolk." 6
These anxieties about the militia had an important
consequence : they account for the military error that Pitt
made in organising the volunteers at the beginning of the
French War on a separate basis. The volunteers under
his system became a third force, naturally more attractive
than the regular army or the militia. Mr. Fortescue has
shown that the army took ten or twelve years to recover
from this capital mistake. It was already difficult to get
1 H. O., 42. 122. H. O., 42. 24. H. O., 42. 122.
4 H. O., 42. 122. H. O., 42. 160.
88 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
recruits for the army, militia service was unpopular, and Pitt
seemed to go out of his way to set up a rival service and to
grant exemption from the militia to any one who chose to
become a volunteer. Politicians like Fox, and soldiers like
Craufurd, pointed out from the first that this policy seemed
designed to make it impossible to raise an army. If Pitt
had been looking across the Channel merely, his method
would have been as mad as it seemed to his critics at the
time, and as it has seemed to military historians ever since.
But he was looking across the Trent to the " ignorant and
profligate " populations that filled the mining and factory
districts. He was thinking less of the maintenance of the
army for foreign service than of the protection of the
existing system at home. The experiment broke down
because the volunteers proved as untrustworthy as the
militia. Pitt meant them to be a select force, but they
developed into a force representing the general population.
In most of the towns in the north, Sheffield, Manchester,
Bolton, Bury, Stafford, Birmingham, the authorities re-
ported at one time or another that the volunteers would
not act, or even that they would act with the rioters, in case
of food riots or strikes. 1 One force, however, answered
all expectations. Aristotle and Bacon both remarked the
suitability of cavalry to oligarchy, and when the volunteers
were disbanded in 1813, the yeomanry were retained.
They provided the authorities with their one efficient and
trustworthy police force. During the industrial disturb-
ances they were the principal auxiliaries to the regular
army. It was their function to repress the less serious
outbreaks, and to keep order in other cases until regular
troops could be summoned. Their value was appreciated
by the employers, and in 1816 Sir Mark Sykes, writing to
the Home Office about a seamen's strike, reported that it
was said that the local militia could not be relied on, that
1 H.-O., 42. 51, 42. 52, 42. 55, 42. 61. Fitzwilliam's letter about the
Sheffield volunteers (H. O., 42. 51) betrays great sympathy with men called
upon " to disperse an Assemblage of People composed probably of their
particular friends and messmates, perhaps even of their own Wives and
Children, calling out for Bread."
s
ORDER 89
a corps of yeomanry could be raised without difficulty at
Holderness, and that it would be worth more than all the
regiments of local militia in the West Riding. 1 In the same
year a Captain Littlewood pressed for the creation of a
similar force for use in Huddersfield, remarking that the
better classes should associate together in this way. 8 They
became the most unpopular set of men in England, and the
hatred that is scattered in sparks over Cobbett's pages
reflects the feelings of the great mass of Englishmen. When
Castlereagh organised his local militia, he found it necessary
to put into an Act of Parliament a provision that Friendly
Societies were to be forbidden to expel members on the
ground that they had joined this force. A letter to the
Home Office 8 mentions that a man was thrown from his
horse near Oldham, that some labourers near hurried to the
scene in answer to cries for help, and that on coming up and
seeing a well-dressed man lying on the ground, they said
to one another that he was probably a cavalryman, and one
and all refused to help.
This incident followed closely upon Peterloo. The story
of that day is well known, and its full history belongs
rathjr to the reform movement than to the subject of this
book, but the main facts may well be recalled because they
illustrate the argument of these chapters with peculiar
force. The Lancashire reformers decided to hold a great
meeting in St. Peter's Fields, on the outskirts of Manchester.
The magistrates were uneasy about the meeting, for popular
discontent, inflamed by the recent Corn Law, was acute :
meetings had been held in various northern towns : an
attempt had been made to organise a boycott of exciseable
goods, drilling had been going on, and several persons had
found their way into prison, where it was hoped that they
would learn that in the circumstances of contemporary
society to speak the truth or anything like it was sedition.
But though the magistrates disliked the meeting, they
decided only a few hours before it began that it could not
be regarded as illegal. When the vast throng assembled,
1 H. O., 42. 155. H. O., 42. 155. H. O., 42. 194,
90 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
there was nothing in its appearance to shake the opinion
of the magistrates. The meeting was in its Sunday
clothes, bands were playing " God Save the King," and one
out of every three persons was a woman. The chief orator
of the day, Henry Hunt, a brave, vain, and sincere man,
had a taste for language that sounded violent and dangerous
to the authorities, but even he could scarcely lead a
revolution with so decorous an army. Bamford, the
leader of the three thousand from Middleton, has described
the scene when his contingent started ; how he addressed
them, saying that sticks were only to be carried by the old
and infirm, that the procession was to march in military
order, that the reformers were determined, by taking the
most elaborate precautions against disturbance or confusion,
to give the lie to their enemies who said the working classes
were a rabble. 1 The Middleton Reformers, reinforced by
another three thousand from Rochdale, set out on their
slow march towards Manchester ; a band was playing, the
men were hi their Sunday shirts, children were in the ranks,
women and girls at their head. As they went their army
was swollen by new contingents, and when they passed
through the Irish weavers' quarter they were received with
an enthusiasm more demonstrative than the enthusiasm
of Englishmen, expressing itself in a language that few
of them could understand. When all the contingents
had poured into the Fields, the meeting numbered
80,000 persons, assembled to demand universal suffrage,
vote by ballot, annual Parliaments, and the repeal of the
Corn Laws. The town they met in, though almost the
1 A fact with which the magistrates made great play in their efforts to
show that the meeting at Peterloo was revolutionary and dangerous was
that one of the contingents carried a flag with a bloody dagger painted red.
During the trials the story of the making of the dagger was told, and it
shows that the colour that alarmed the magistrates was due to the Sab-
batarian scruples of one of the reformers. A man named William Burns
had undertaken to decorate the Bury flag : he meant to paint a yeflow
fleur-de-lys, but he could not find any yellow paint. Next day was Sunday,
and he did not like to work on Sunday, so he painted the flag with the only
paint he had in the house, which happened to be red. Henry Hunt's Trial,
p. 259.
ORDER 91
largest in England, was unrepresented in a Parliament that
gave two seats to Old Sarum. Of the eighty thousand, the
vast mass were voteless men and women, whom Parliament
had handed over to their employers by the Combination
Laws, while it had taxed their food for the benefit of the
landowners by a most drastic Corn Law. The classes that
controlled Parliament and their lives were represented by
the magistrates, who were landlords or parsons, and by
the yeomanry, who were largely manufacturers. Between
those classes must be shared the responsibility for the
sudden and unprovoked charge on a defenceless and un-
resisting crowd, for if the magistrates gave the orders, the
yeomanry supplied the zeal. Hunt had scarcely begun his
speech, when the yeomanry cavalry advanced brandishing
their swords. Hunt told the reformers to cheer, which
they did ; the yeomanry then rode into the crowd, which
gave way for them, and arrested Hunt. But this was not
enough for the yeomanry, who cried, " Have at their flags,"
and began striking wildly all round them. The magistrates
then gave the order to charge. In ten minutes the field
was deserted except for dead and wounded, and banners,
hats, shawls, and bonnets : the strangest debris of any
battlefield since the madness of Ajax. Eleven people died,
two of them women, one a child, and over four hundred
were wounded, one hundred and thirteen being women.
Of the wounded more than a quarter were wounded by the
sword. So bitter were the hatreds and suspicions of class,
that wounded men and women did not dare to apply for
parish relief, or even go to hospital for treatment, for fear
it should be discovered that they had received their wounds
at Peterloo. A correspondent wrote to the Home Office
to say that the woman from Eccles who had been killed was
a dangerous character, for she had been heard to curse the
curate. 1 The magistrates, hussars, and yeomanry were
thanked by the Government ; Fitzwilliam was dismissed
from his Lord Lieutenancy for protesting at a great York-
shire meeting ; Hunt and three of his colleagues were
1 H. O., 42. 194.
92 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
sent to prison, Hunt for two years and a half, the others for
a year. And Hunt, whose arrest was the nominal excuse
for the violent onslaught, had actually offered to surrender
himself to the authorities the night before. 1
The scene at Peterloo illustrates very vividly all the con-
ditions of the time. The working people who met there
were excluded from the rights of citizens : they were
refused representation, education, liberty to combine in
answer to the combinations of their masters. The law
existed solely for their repression and punishment. They
were nowhere recognised as belonging to society, except in
the sense in which his wheels and engines belonged to the
owner of a mill. Their leaders were intrepid and public-
spirited men, but little more : they were not statesmen who
could make a nation out of chaos : they were not generals
who could use the power of numbers against the overwhelm-
ing powers of wealth, education, custom, discipline, and
force : they were not even heroes who could embellish, by
the greatness of their minds and lives, the great history of
the cause of freedom. The magistrates knew so little of
the world they governed that they thought that a meeting
to which reformers had brought their wives and children
was designed for some violent purpose. Magistrates and
yeomanry cared so little for the lives of a subject class that
they exposed this crowd of defenceless people to all the
dangers of a cavalry charge with a levity that revolted every
onlooker and won the middle classes of England to reform.
For though the magistrates and yeomanry made every effort
to disguise the facts, the eye-witnesses included a number
of independent people, and among others the reporter of
the Times. The truth by this means travelled through the
country, and almost every large town held a meeting of
protest. Prentice describes the consequent change of mind
in the middle classes as the breaking up of a long frost.
We have tried to set out a very rough picture of the kind
of civilisation that enveloped the new working class : to
sketch in general outline its home, its surroundings, its
1 Prentice, Manchester, p. 158.
ORDER 93
employment and diversions, the government and justice
and institutions it received from its rulers, the atmosphere
and complexion of its life. If we think of the character-
s that speak a society able to take a pride in itself, to
attach and develop the affections and sympathies of those
who live under its shelter, nothing strikes us so forcibly
in the circumstances of this world as its sharply limited
outlook, its conception of order as discipline, of government
as force, of a town as a garrison overawing the plotting
poor, and its consequent dread of any stimulus to public
spirit or disinterested and emancipating ideas among the
general body of the inhabitants. The Cheshire magis-
trates in 1819 wanted to suppress the Sunday-schools. 1
The spirit of the times was embodied in the common
expression " policing the poor." It would be an error
and an injustice to forget the special influences and circum-
stances of the period. The shock of the French Revolu-
tion had brought with it a new way of looking at the mass
of the nation^ When Bacon \vrote on the dangers to which
kings are exposed, he had treated the danger of popular
insurrection as very slight, " except it be where they have
Great and Potent Heads, or where you meddle with the
Point of Religion or their Customs or Means of life." 2
This was the light in which the rank and file of the nation
i appeared to the ruling class down to the day when France de-
i stroyed their peace of mind. In English history for two
ituries rebellion had been the business of aristocrats,
churchmen, yeomen, squires, Puritans, in fact of every-
body but the poor. The poor had rioted when food ran
out, but those were local demonstrations, essentially tem-
porary in their character. We have only to recall the key
in which Burke himself wrote before 1789 to appreciate
the depth of the change in upper-class thinking that followed
the French Revolution. " When popular discontents have
been very prevalent," he wrote in 1770, 3 " it may well be
affirmed and supported, that there has been generally some-
1 Prentice, Manchester, p. 156. * Essay on Empire.
* Work*, ii. p. 224. (Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent*.)
94 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
thing found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of
government. The people have no interest in disorder.
When they do wrong it is their error and not their crime."
And he went on to quote Sully : " Pour la populace, ce n'est
jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se souleve, mais par
impatience de souffrir." There was no presentiment here of
" the swinish multitude." After the French Revolution
the tone was very different. The poorer classes no longer
seemed a passive power : they were dreaded as a Leviathan
that was fast learning his strength. fOr we may say that
before they were regarded as people naturally contented,
they were now regarded as people naturally discontented.j
The art of politics was not the art of keeping the attachment
of people who cherished their customs, religion, and the
general setting of their lives, by moderation, foresight, and
forbearance : it was the art of preserving discipline among
a vast population destitute of the traditions and restraints
of a settled and conservative society, dissatisfied with its
inevitable lot and ready for disorder and bHnd violence.
For two revolutions had come together. MThe French
Revolution had transformed the minds of the ruling classes,
and the Industrial Revolution had convulsed the world of
the working classes?} Politicians like Sidmouth, and magis-
trates like Hay, who saw the poor struggling in the debris
of that social upheaval, never imagined that their lot could
be made any lighter. They thought that any one who
attempted such a task would merely precipitate a French
Revolution in England : a revolution that would destroy
the classes to which they belonged themselves, but would
destroy the poor as well. (Discipline, uncompensated by
reform and unqualified by concession, was the truest kind-
ness to the working classes^ They would have paraphrased
Rousseau's aphorism about nature, and said that the secrets
they tried to hide from the working man were so many
evils from which they wished to guard him. We shall see
in a later chapter how the men and women whose lives were
cast amid these dense shadows discovered some of these
secrets for themselves.
CHAPTER VI
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
NOBODY would say of the industries discussed in this book
that they were declining during this period. Nobody would
say that they were stagnant. The history of the early
years of the Industrial Revolution is a history of vast and
rapid expansion. This is true of different industries in
different degrees, but it is true in greater or less degree of
all industries. 1 The immense increase of trade, helped and
stimulated by new invention, new communication, new
transport, new control of the forces of nature, was a
conspicuous fact of their times for economists, thinkers,
legislators, and all public men.
There is another fact not less conspicuous, to those who
have explored even the surface of this society. |The wage
earners employed in these industries did not obtain any
part of the new wealth. / They received more money in
wages when employment was good than when it was bad.
but the expansion of industry did not in itself inciv
their share in the wealth of the nation. They were shut
out from the surplus profits of an industry that earned such
fortunes as to create a new and powerful rich class, besides
enabling England to maintain a long war with France and
to pay Europe handsomely to fight by her side. Indeed,
their case was worse than this. The vast mass of people
working in these industries were not even receiving a main-
tenance from them. It is true of the cotton weavers, of
1 The percentage of increase in import of raw cotton between 1764 and
1794 was 615, between 1794 and 1824, 445 ; of wool between 1790 and 1820,
280 ; in production of iron between 1750 and 1788. 210, and between 1788
and 1820, 488. See Lloyd, The Cutlery Trades, p. 399.
06 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
the frame-work knitters, even of some of the miners, that
they were supported partly by the parishes, partly by their
children. The industries that were making the new wealth
were not supporting their workpeople. If a traveller had
moved among the employers, and been shown the brimming
life of mills, mines, canals, and docks, he would have said
that England as an industrial nation was making an advance
unprecedented in the history of trade. If he had moved
among the working classes, learned what wages they were
receiving, how they lived, he would have concluded that
the industries in which they were employed were either
stagnant or declining. 1
Immense fortunes were made in cotton, wool, iron, and
coal, but on the workers in these industries there fell
degradation and distress. Not all employers grew rich
with the Peels, nor did all the workmen grow poor with the
hand-loom weavers, but the general feature of the tunes
was the rise of a class of rich employers and the creation
of a large and miserable proletariate.
This remarkable contrast might seem to demand an
explanation : it might provoke misgivings about the
justice and good government of society, and make people
wonder whether there was not some flaw in the structure
that was disfigured by such a basis of misery. These
doubts and misgivings entered the mind of the working
classes and produced, in time, a more or less organised
demand for an altered distribution of the burdens and the
powers of government. The upper classes (of course there
were individual exceptions) regarded these doubts and
suspicions as outraging the laws of nature and the laws of
God. The progress of the world, so some would argue,
depended on the fortunes of the Arkwrights and the Peels,
and those fortunes in their turn depended on the very
privations and hardships that appeared to put such dis-
1 It has been observed by a competent critic that the title Porter gave
to his great work was hardly j ustified by the facts, and that the fifty years
that followed the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, if they marked a
vast increase of wealth in England, reduced the working classes to deeper
povarty. See Hirst's Introduction to new edition.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 97
cordant questions to the optimism of civilisation. The
existing order, others would argue, was the dispensation of
Providence, and it was blasphemy to scrutinise its justice
or to try to modify its exactions. The social history of the
period is largely the revolt of the working classes against
this body of prejudice or superstition or reason, whichi
people like to term it. This is not to say that the working
classes thought of their revolt in this form. They were
struggling for a direct and immediate object, to maintain a
standard of life against forces apparently overwhelming.
In one case they would ask for the enforcement of old and
fading regulations ; in another for a legal minimum wage ;
in a third for the right to combine. From time to time
the political movement and the economic movement run
into each other. The working classes came to doubt
whether a Parliament that was always coercing the poor
and never restraining the rich was really possessed of an
Olympian wisdom and impartiality in determining the
issues that were raised by conflicts between masters and
men. The subject of sinecures and pensions became in-
teresting to a class half of whose wages went in taxes to a
State that provided none of the rudiments of a civilised and
rational life. 1 The economic struggle of the time was in
this sense a general conflict. It is a struggle between men
and masters, and a struggle also between a subject class
and the classes that possessed the State. The word struggle
is perhaps misleading as a name for so unequal a contest.
The working classes were beating against closed doors, and
when at last partly by their help those doors are broken
open, it is not the working classes that gain an entrance.
A complete social history of the times would therefore
embrace the history of the movement for Parliamentary
Reform, as well as the history of the battle for a standard
of life. In this book we are only able to consider the more
important circumstances and consequences of the political
situation as they affect the position of the working classes
as combatants. This is the subject of the present chapter.
1 See Agricultural and Industrial Magazine for 1833.
G
98 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
The spirit of reform in England, which had been eager
and active in 1780 and had been a powerful force in the
overthrow of two Governments, had been put to sleep for
some years by Pitt's triumph over the Coalition and his
record of economies and improvements in office. The
French Revolution rekindled it into flame. Everywhere old
societies revived or new societies sprang into life for dis-
cussing ideas of just and free government, the meaning
of citizenship, the grounds of right and duty in the State.
The ruling class, with the exception of a handful of Whigs
led by Fox, took fright at once. The French Revolution
at an early stage began to look very different from the
Revolution of 1688, which they regarded as the model for
the behaviour of nations in such circumstances. What was
perhaps worse, the new societies, partly drawn from small
shopkeepers, artisans, and working men, looked very
different from the respectable agitators for reform in 1780,
who met under the aegis of a sheriff or a Lord Lieutenant,
and as often as not had a nobleman on the platform. Then
came the red horizon of September, the November Decree
offering the help of France to any people desiring to regain
its freedom, the execution of the King, the declaration of war,
and a universal frenzy of indignation and terror throughout
England. Pitt suspended the Habeas Corpus in 1794, and
for the next eight years ministers and magistrates were
free from this encumbrance ; he passed two Bills for
suppressing public meetings, and he instituted a series of
prosecutions, of which the most famous ended in the
acquittal of Thomas Hardy and his comrades by a London
jury. The first democratic movement had been crushed.
After Waterloo the story is resumed. Political reform now
became a serious object to the working classes. During the
first Jacobin terror it had been possible and easy for a
magistrate to incite a working-class mob to harry a working-
class reformer. But a great change had come over the
working classes in the last twenty years. They had learnt
much from Cobbett, more perhaps from suffering, and
by 1817 there was a widespread desire for the franchise
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 99
That was the year of the futile march of the Blanketeers.
Castlereagh and Sidmouth replied in 1817 by suspending
the Habeas Corpus for a year, 1 and two years later by
voting a million for building churches and by passing the
famous Six Acts. One of the Acts made any meeting that
tended to excite hatred and contempt of the Government an
unlawful assembly, thus preventing all criticism and also
putting any speaker at a meeting at the mercy of any spy.
The punishments for seditious libel were made more brutal,
and the stamp duty of fourpence was made chargeable on
any paper or pamphlet costing less than sixpence. Under
this legislation discussion or criticism of ministers or their
policy was a perilous adventure.
Thus the working classes suffered as citizens, if the word
can be applied to a class so ruthlessly shut out in the cold,
not only by the denial of political rights, but by the denial
of all liberty of speech. They could not declare their
opinion on taxation, the Corn Laws, the Combination Laws,
or any political issue, except at great risk. Under the
Tories a working-class meeting in Manchester became a
Peterloo. Under the Whig Government that passed the
Reform Bill four working men were sent to prison for a
year for attending an open-air meeting there. In the same
year when the Government, to please the Saints, ordered
a solemn fast as a way of keeping out the cholera, the
leaders of the National Union of the Working Classes were
prosecuted for organising a procession in London, carrying
a loaf of bread and a round of beef with the inscription :
" The True Cure for the Cholera." But they were tried by
one of the London juries that Governments always dreaded,
and were acquitted. Neither Whig nor Tory statesmen
thought the working man had any business with politics.
The war thus injured the working people by inflaming
the fears and hatreds of class in their rulers, and by throw-
ing a great body of moderate opinion on to the side of
repression. It injured them also by aggravating all the
1 Cobbett, thinking he could be of little use to his countrymen in prison,
fled to America.
100 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
elements of disturbance that belonged to the new industrial
system. It has been well put that " the handicraft or guild
system is associated with the town economy, the domestic
or commission system with the national economy, and the
factory system with the world economy." 1 Industry that
is supplying markets all over the world is subject to violent
fluctuations, and during those years of ungoverned enter-
prise, men who could put together a little capital, or
borrow it, might start a mill, in the hope of sharing in the
profits of these vast speculations. The new capitalists were
all competing with each other for this distant custom, and
the workpeople found themselves at the mercy of a series
of guesses about the demands of the wide world. England
had passed through many speculating crazes, but the new
gamblers were playing with new stakes. We may illustrate
it in this way. On two occasions the mirage of trade with
South America has led to a great catastrophe. The more
famous catastrophe, the South Sea Bubble, was an affair
of finance. The people ruined were the people who are
ruined to-day by a disastrous adventure on the Stock
Exchange. But if those who bought the Company's
shares at a fancy price had spent their money instead in
building factories, collecting workpeople from various
parts of the country, and pouring out goods to ship them to
South America, and then found there was no market for
them, the disasters of the early eighteenth century would
have resembled those that overwhelmed industrial England
a century later. M'Culloch has given a memorable descrip-
tion of the craze that brought ruin to numbers of work-
people in 1808 and 1809, when the whole eastern coast
of South America was thrown open to British trade by
the alliance with Spain. " Speculation was then carried
beyond the boundaries within which gambling is usually
confined, and was pushed to an extent and into channels
that could hardly have been deemed practicable. We are
informed by Mr. Mawe, an intelligent traveller resident at
Rio Janeiro at the period in question, that more Manchester
1 Professor Unwin, Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth Century, p. 10.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 101
goods were sent out in the course of a few weeks than had
been consumed in the twenty years preceding ; and the
quantity of English goods of all sorts poured into the city
was so very great, that warehouses could not be provided
sufficient to contain them, and that the most valuable
merchandise was actually exposed for weeks on the beach
to the weather and to every kind of depredation.^ But the
folly and ignorance of those who had crowded into this
speculation was still more strikingly evinced in the selection
of the articles sent to South America?) Elegant services
of cut glass and china were offered to persons whose most
splendid drinking vessels consisted of a horn or the shell
of a cocoanut ; tools were sent out having a hammer on
one side and a hatchet on the other, as if the inhabitants
had had nothing more to do than to break the first stone
they met with and then cut the gold and diamonds from
it; and some specula,tors_actuapy jwentjso ^_lr _s_tp send _
out skates to Biojjmejro." l This outburst, accompanied
by other disasters, was followed by an epidemic of bank-
ruptcies in 1811 : the distress of Lancashire was such that
Sir Robert Peel declared that English labourers had never
known such misery, and the wages of Bolton weavers fell
to five shillings a week.
Another feature of the new system was the dependence
of industries on one another. This dependence is, of course,
a necessary result of specialisation and division of labour.
In an early community, living on its own resources, the stand-
ing danger is the danger of famine ; in a society, living by
means of an elaborate system of exchange on the resources
of the world, the standing danger is the danger that one
link in the long chain of industries which connect the finished
article with the raw material will break, and several in-
dustries be made idle. Further, if supply or demand fails
in one industry, the purchasing power of that industry is
diminished, and other industries, dependent on the purchas-
ing power of that industry, suffer. This process goes on
1 Quoted Smart, Economic Annals, p. 184. Exports of cotton goods
went up from 9,846.000 in 1808 to 18,616,000 in 1809. Ibid., p. 203.
102 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
indefinitely. The demands of the new world were various,
and therefore capricious, in comparison with the simple
wants of a poor country. Thus recurrent breakdowns were
part of the price paid for the highly civilised manner and
equipment of life that Macaulay described with such enthu-
siasm. Great industry follows certain cycles, or, as a
French writer puts it, obeys a rhythm : * it develops in
movements of rise and fall, and the transition brings un-
employment and want. 2
A war is, under any conditions, a disturbing force in a
world so organised, and the French War, as it involved all
Europe, was a specially demoralising force. The American
War of 1775 to 1783 brought distress to cotton spinners
and to the woollen trade at Norwich, 3 but the great war
was a far heavier strain. The annual expenditure rose
between 1792 and 1814 from something less than twenty
millions to a hundred and six millions. 4 There were taxes
on salt, soap, candles, leather, malt, sugar, tea, everything
that the workman used. It has been estimated that the
artisan at the beginning of the century found that the
expense of living had increased fivefold since he began life. 5
But this, of course, was a small part of the burden it threw
upon England, for the war had involved the whole civilised
world, and every nation was impoverished by its devasta-
tions. The poverty and misery it caused are incalculable,
and it is no part of our task to try to estimate or describe
them. But there were four respects in which the war in-
tensified the perils and vicissitudes to which the working
classes were exposed by the new system, and it is convenient
to enumerate them, because they explain the special distress
that marked particular years.
1. In November 1806 Napoleon tried to make a ring-
fence round Europe to shut out British goods and another
1 Dolteans, Le Chartisme, i. p. 182.
8 See Professor Smart's interesting discussion, Economic Annals, p. 606.
See James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, p. 309.
Porter (ed. 1851), p. 476.
5 Smart, op. cit., p. 7, quoting H. Martineau.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 103
round England to shut out foreign goods. 1 The instru-
ment of this policy was the Berlin Decree. England replied
by the Orders in Council. The first, issued in January
1807, was a mild retaliation, the Government being anxious
to avoid complications with the few Powers that were
neutral, notably America, and merely struck at the coast-
ing trade of France and her allies. Napoleon proceeded
to order the confiscation of all British goods and colonial
produce found in the Hanse towns. His blows at British
trade were effective and our commerce was almost paralysed.
The English Government accordingly decided to take more
drastic measures, 2 and issued Orders in Council declaring
the dominions of His Majesty's enemies and of countries
under their control to be in a state of blockade. Lord
Bathurst summed up the situation thus : " France, by
her Decrees, resolved to abolish all trade with England.
1 1 England said in return that France should then have no
[J trade but with England." The history of the disastrous
quarrel with the United States, in which we became in-
volved in spite of some attempts to qualify the system in
her favour, lies outside the scope of this book. /All that it
concerns us to note is that this system of carrying on war
by attacks on trade brought great disorganisation anc^
consequent suffering on the manufacturing population^ In
1809, Whitbread, in the course of a speech against the
Orders, mentioned that our imports of cotton wool had
fallen by twenty-seven millions, and that thirty-two cotton
mills stood idle in Manchester. So acute was the distress
in 1812 that the assassination of Perceval, who was the
principal champion of the Orders, produced an outburst of
enthusiasm hi the Midland counties that could scarcely
have been exceeded if the lunatic Bellingham had shot
Napoleon himself. Lord Holland alludes to this rejoicing
in a characteristic passage in his Memoirs : " One of the
leading manufacturers of Birmingham, a strict Dissenter,
who had come up to London with petitions against the
Orders in Council, lamented to me, with a demure coun-
1 Smart, op. cit., p. 119. See Smart, op. cit. t p. 156.
104 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
tenance and a subdued voice, the wickedness of the times
on which he had been cast, where, he said, as the coaches
arrived in various parts of the kingdom, the intelligence of
the murder of a fellow-creature had been received with more
exultation than horror, and even in some places greeted
with savage shouts of un-Christian joy. ' It is indeed dis-
gusting ; and yet/ added he, with an arch, puritanical smile,
' it proves the sad condition of the poor manufacturers,
and it cannot be denied that, in the present critical state
of the question on the Orders in Council, the finger of a
benevolent Providence is visible in this horrible event.' " l
2. During the war the Government were consumers on
an immense scale. They bought food to be shipped to the
Peninsula, clothing from Yorkshire and Lancashire, and
arms from Sheffield and Birmingham. When peace came
this expenditure ceased ; a customer who had been spend-
ing fifty millions went out of the market. 2 This vast ex-
penditure, instead of setting in train a process that would
produce and quicken a demand for commodities, had been
spent in making people less able to consume them. ^Con-
sequently the disappearance of this customer meant a
violent and permanent shrinking in the market. 3
3. Matters were made worse by the condition of Europe.
During the war, England, by reason of her security and her
command of the sea, obtained more than her share of the
trade of the world. This abnormal and temporary expan-
sion caused an excessive investment in manufacturing plant.
The English capitalist thought the demand would grow, and
that peace would bring plenty, but when peace came,
Europe was too poor to buy, and the special circumstances
that had hampered her manufacturing enterprise no longer
existed. Consequently the close of the war brought an
immediate decline of trade to manufacturers who had
counted on an expansion. Imports dropped by six and
exports by seven millions. The price of copper fell from
1 Further Memoirs, p. 131.
1 British expenditure fell from 106 millions in 1815 to 53 in 1818.
Spencer Walpole, History of England,vo\.i. p. 402, in quoting Porter, p. 483.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 105
180 to 80 a ton, and that of iron from 20 to 8. What
this meant to the working classes can be seen from the case
of the ironworkers and colliers of Shropshire and Stafford-
shire. In Shropshire twenty -four out of thirty-four blast
furnaces ceased working, and more than seven thousand iron-
workers were thrown out of employment. Further, these
furnaces had consumed eight thousand tons of coal a week,
and as this coal was no longer wanted, the miners shared
the fate of the ironworkers.
4. The close of the war was followed by the disbanding
of the huge armies that England had been feeding and cloth-
ing and supplying with weapons and ammunition. Castle-
reagh stated in 1817 that no less than three hundred thousand
soldiers and sailors had been discharged since the peace. 1 The
ranks of labour were thus flooded at a time when wages were
falling and the price of provisions was rising. The war then,
in these several ways, added special complications to the
struggle for a standard of life into which the working classes
were thrown by the revolution in industry. With steady
trade that struggle would have been bitter and severe, but
the new system contained all the elements of violent vicissi-
tude, ^nd those elements again were aggravated by the
war. I Meanwhile the working classes, who suffered as wage
earners from all these disorganising forces, suffered as con-
sumers from the political circumstances of the time, in
particular from^two causes, the course of the Currency and
the Corn Laws. | Each of these subjects, and especially the
second, has a long history of angry contention, and conten-
tion of which the ashes are not yet cold. It is no part of
our task to examine or to present all the considerations
that have to be kept in mind in judging the policy of the
Governments responsible^ for the several decisions that
afflicted the consumer. (We have only to note the effect
of that policy on the working classes.
The Industrial Revolution, with its sudden expansion of
commercial enterprise of all kinds, gave a great impetus
to banking. Everybody wanted money, for canals here,
1 Smart, op. cit., p. 539.
106 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
for factories there, for all the operations of dealing and
exchange, and banks sprang into life everywhere. Burke
said that there were not twelve bankers out of London in
1750 : in 1793 there were nearly four hundred. 1 Macleod
says that shopkeepers, grocers, tailors, and drapers started
up like mushrooms and turned bankers, and " issued their
notes, inundating the country with their miserable rags."
This process of issuing notes was carried to wild lengths,
until in 1793 the Bank of England, alarmed by the drain
of gold to the Continent, restricted its issue of notes. A
panic followed, and of three hundred and fifty banks no fewer
that one hundred stopped payment. Four years later there
was a still more serious crisis. The fear of invasion caused
a run on the country banks, and they applied to the Bank
of England for relief. The Government meanwhile were
making great demands on the bank for their payments
abroad, and on a Saturday in February 1797 it was found
that the bullion and coin in the bank had fallen to some
1,200,000. The Government summoned a Council for
the Sunday, and an Order was issued suspending cash pay-
ments until Parliament could consider the situation. A
Secret Committee of the House of Commons was appointed,
and on its advice an Act was passed forbidding the bank
to pay its notes in specie, and this Act was to remain in
force until six months after the signing of peace. 2 Thus
a paper currency was created that was not convertible into
gold. Paper money was not issued at first very much
faster, and it maintained its nominal value. But after
1 803 the circulation of paper money grew rapidly ; we were
sending gold instead of manufactures to the Continent
during the blockade, and in 1810, when the famous Bullion
Committee was appointed, depreciation had gone so far
1 Meredith, Economic History of England, 318, quoting Macleod, Theory
and Practice of Banking, i. 436.
c When the motion was adopted to appoint a Secret Committee the
opposition moved a hostile amendment, to direct the Committee to inquire
not only into the circumstances of the bank, but into the causes which had
produced the Order in Council. See Debate on Sheridan's Amendment,
February 28, 1797. They were defeated by 244 to 88.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 107
that 100 of paper money was only worth 86, 10s. in gold.
This led, of course, to an immense inflation of prices. Mr.
Prothero thinks that from 1811 to 1813, when wheat was
at one time 126 shillings, one-fifth of the enormous price
of agricultural produce was due to the disordered state
of the currency. 1 The depreciation of money and the
fluctuation in the price of gold (the premium in 1813 was
over 29 per cent. ; in 1815 with peace, between 13 and 14)
produced high prices and violent variations, each of them
a catastrophe for the working classes. 2
In the history of the Corn Laws the important event
for our purposes is the Law of 1815. It is generally believed
that the Corn Laws before that date had no considerable
influence. 3 Before the French War they were moderate,
and during the war it was a force more powerful than Par-
liament that ruled prices. From 1808 to 1813 the home
price never fell below 95s. 8d. The war had raised freights
to such an extent that importation was impracticable, and,
as a rule, when there was scarcity in England there was
scarcity over those parts of Europe whence supplies might
have been drawn. There was indeed an important exception,
for France and the Netherlands had good harvests in 1809
when the English harvest failed. It was the most bitter
phase of our war with Napoleon, but he did not dare to
1 Prothero, English Farming Past and Present, p. 213.
* Spencer Walpole, op. cit., vol. i. p. 403.
3 The Act of 1773 admitted foreign wheat at 6d. a quarter as soon as the
home price had risen to 48s. a quarter, and though it maintained the old
bounty of 5s. a quarter on exported wheat, it made both that bounty and
the liberty to export cease when the home price was 44s. In 1791 a lees
liberal Act was passed, prohibitive duties were put on importation till the
home price was 50s., and it was only when the home price was 64s. that the
duty fell to 6d. a quarter. Exporting was forbidden when the home price
was higher than 46s., and encouraged by a bounty when the price was below
44s. Then came the French War and several bad harvests, the crops failing
in 1795 and 1800, and the price of wheat reaching 122s. in 1796 and 155e.
in 1801. In 1804, Parliament, alarmed by the violent fall to 60s., revised
the Corn Laws once more ; a duty of 24s. 3d. being charged on imports
when the price was below 63s., 2s. 6d. when the price was between 63s. and
65s., and the duty of 6d. when it was 66s. Export was prohibited when
the home price was 54s., and encouraged by a bounty when as low as 48s.
See Lecky, History of England, vii. 249, 261 ; and Smart, op. cit., p. 372.
108 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
try the patience of his farmers beyond a certain point, and
he granted licences for exportation to England. In that
extreme crisis we were partly fed by France.
But after 1815 the conditions were quite different. Three
things happened to make it possible to import food with
advantage. Charges for transport fell to their peace level,
there was no war to disturb the production of corn in
Northern Europe, and America, which was outside the
influences of climate that dominated the sources from which
England had previously taken her supplies, was beginning
to send corn to Europe. 1
This^ possibility, though it seemed satisfactory to the
consumer, wore a different look to Parliament. Landlords
and farmers had speculated on high prices, their manner
of life was arranged accordingly : so were rents : and a
great deal of land that did not repay cultivation if food
was reasonably cheap had been brought under the plough.
Dreading the effects of a violent fall in prices, and arguing
that the way to steady prices and to secure adequate
supplies was to be found in the encouragement of home
resources, the Government passed a law designed to make
perpetual the conditions created by Armageddon, and to
do by import duties what had been done by restraints on
exports due to the war. Imports were shut out by pro-
hibitive duties until the home price was 80s. This figure
was altered more than once, and in years of scarcity the
Corn Laws were modified and relaxed, but it remains true
that throughout the last seventeen years of our period they
formed an important element in the misery of the time.
Professor Nicholson says that " after 1815, and especially
towards the end of the Corn Law period, the influence of
the Corn Law was becoming real and serious ; that is to say,
the average was somewhat higher, and the extreme prices
on occasions were greatly higher than would have been the
case under free imports." 2 Fluctuations of prices fell,
of course, with special severity on the poor, whose wages
1 Prothero, op. cit., p. 271.
8 Nicholson, History of the English Corn Laws, p. 52.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 109
could not keep pace with them. That wages lag behind
prices was recognised at the time by speakers like Huskisson. 1
Porter has given a good example to show what high prices
of corn meant to the working classes. "If we contrast
the weekly wage at the two periods of 1790 and 1800, of
husbandry labourers and skilled artisans, measuring them
both by the quantity of wheat which they could command,
it will be seen that the former could in 1790 purchase
82 pints of wheat, and in 1800 could procure no more than
63 pints, while for the skilled artisan the figures were 169
pints in 1790 and 83 pints in 1800." Professor Nicholson,
who quotes this passage, 2 gives his approval to Porter's
conclusion : "To talk of the prosperous state of the country
under such a condition of things involves a palpable con-
tradiction. It would be more correct to liken the situation
of the community to that of the inhabitants of a town
subjected to a general conflagration in which some became
suddenly enriched by carrying off the valuables, while the
mass were involved in ruin and destitution."
Real wages thus fell rapidly in consequence of all the
several causes that raised prices, among which must be
reckoned the paper money and Corn Laws of the period.
But there was another way in which high prices lowered
wages. Porter observed that pieceworkers tried to keep
their families alive when bread was dear by working longer
hours, and thus they came to bid against each other and
actually beat down their nominal wages. Professor
Nicholson quotes 8 in support of this view the evidence of a
bailiff before a House of Lords Committee in 1814, from
which it appeared that a landowner had been able to carry
out improvements more cheaply in the years of famine
prices because he contracted for some very large ditches at
Od. an ell, though when food was cheaper he could not get
the work done for two or three times the price. This effect
of the Corn Laws was urged as an argument in their favour
by a speaker in 1814, who argued that high prices made
1 Smart, op. tit., p. 413.
Nicholson, op. c7., p. 96. Nicholson, op. cit., p. 63.
110 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
labour cheap, for " when provisions were very cheap,
artisans could earn in a few days what was necessary to
subsist them for many." x
We can illustrate the effect of an increase in prices on
the working classes from an interesting letter, written by
Colonel Fletcher of Bolton to the Home Office in 1822, 2
on the subject of the prospects of trade in that town and
district. Fletcher gave an analysis of the population, from
which it appeared that of 100,000 persons, 90,000 were
labourers. Of these 60,000 were weavers, 15,000 were
bleachers, printers, dyers, masons, colliers, 10,000 were pre-
parers and spinners, and 5000 agricultural labourers. He
put the wages of a family of five at 16s. lOd. in the case
of weavers, and 1, 4s. for other labourers. The cost of
rent and fuel he put at hah* a crown a week. (In another
letter he mentions incidentally that it was usual for
people to sleep four in a bed in Bolton.) He put the effect
of an advance in the price of provisions from 45s. to 65s.
per quarter of wheat at 3s. 4d. per family. In the year of
his letter wheat was lower than it had been for thirty
years : next year it rose to 53s. 4d., in 1824 it was 63s. lid.,
and in 1825, 68s. 6d. 3
The war, the disturbance of the currency, the Corn
Laws, brought great distress and misfortune to the people
of England. But they also brought great riches to some
of the people of England. There were financial houses
founded on the profits of lending money to the Government
to prosecute the war, there were landlords who were en-
riched by the Corn Laws, and if some manufacturers were
ruined by the cyclones that swept over the markets of the
world in years of crisis, many fortunes were made during
this period. But of all the classes that bore the burdens of
the war, and paid the penalty of their rulers' errors, no class
was so destitute of compensations as the class that could
only make its voice heard by food riots, and by the kind of
demonstration that ended in a cavalry charge and half a
dozen men or women sent to the gallows.
1 Hansard, xxvii. p. 720. H. O., 40. 17. * Prothero, op. cit., p. 441.
THE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 111
We have now to turn to the measures taken by the
ruling class that affected the working classes not as citizens,
or as taxpayers, or as consumers, or as producers for an
irregular market, but as combatants in the struggle of a
class against the new power.
CHAPTER VH
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS
THE new industry, which had increased the need for Trade
Unions, had increased their opportunities, for it massed
men together in a common system, melted down individual
grievances in a common discontent, made common delibera-
tion and common action easier and simpler, and thus
created conditions favourable to association on a larger
scale. Employers again, with plant and machinery, were
more vulnerable than the old masters who had little fixed
capital and lost much less in strikes. 1 For the first time
combination promised to become a weapon of real power
in the hands of a class that had no other weapon when facing
the superior forces of wealth, education, and influence with
magistrates and the governing world. But if Trade Union-
ism found a new scope in the changed conditions of in-
dustrial life, it found a new spirit in the ruling classes.
Combination had been punished, of course, before this
time, both under conspiracy laws and under special laws
against combination, of which, according to Whitbread,
there were forty on the Statute Book in 1800. But before
the famous legislation of 1799 and 1800, the State forbade
combination, not as infringing the freedom of employers,
but as infringing its own authority. 2 The theory was that
the State regulated industry itself, and that combinations
were unlawful as interfering with the province of the legis-
lature. Hence, though a combination to reduce hours or
raise wages was illegal, it was possible to combine against
masters who refused to obey the law, and such combination
1 Chapman, Cotton Industry, p. 184.
Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 58,
US
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS
was followed, not by punishment, but by discussion in
Parliament of the merits of the regulation.
At the end of the century, under the influence of the ideas
then in the ascendant, combination assumed a new aspect
for the governing class. As a political danger, it seemed
much more formidable since the French Revolution ; as
an economic danger, it seemed much more formidable to
an age that had discovered that the employer was the best
judge of all questions relating to the conditions of his
industry.
The politicians who thought seriously about what they
were doing in 1799, would have said that invention was
rapidly producing a new world of trade, and that England's
chances of making herself the mistress of this new world
depended on the freedom and the daring of the great
organisers. If their designs were successful, the workers
would benefit ; if, for any reason, they came to grief,
the workers would suffer. The chief danger was mutiny
and insubordination, and this was the danger from whicli
the State ought to protect industry. Peace, order, and
progress all turned on discipline ; the rough artisans
must not be allowed to act or to think for themselves,
but must be made to accept the rule of their masters with-
out question : they must take what wages their masters,
who were the best judges of the circumstances of the trade,
chose to give them. The State, that is to say,, was to abdi-
cate in favour of the employers. The employers' law was
to be the public law. Workmen were to obey their master
as they would obey the State, and the State was to enforce
the master's commands as it would its own. This was
the new, policy behind the Combination Laws of 1799 and
1800. /These two Acts, the second modifying the first,
prohibiting all common action in defence of their common
interests by workmen, remain the most unqualified sur-
render of the State to the discretion of a class in the
history of England. )
The word abdicate does not exaggerate the gravity or
significance of the policy that the English ruling class
H
114 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
adopted at this time. In English history there were great
traditions of State regulation. The interest of the com-
munity in prices, wages, and the risks and consequences of
the economic measures pursued by individuals, was affirmed
and defended in a great number of statutes. There were
statutes empowering magistrates to fix rates of wages, others
empowering them to fix the price of bread. All kinds of
regulations governed the conduct of the woollen trade, and
there were elaborate laws laying down conditions of appren-
ticeship on which alone certain trades could be practised.
During this period, as will appear in a later volume, the
workmen more than once called on the State to act on
this principle and to regulate the anarchy of the new
competition, to protect human life in the avalanche of
economic forces. The ruling class rejected this policy, but
they did not merely leave the industrial world to itself.
They put the masters into the place of the State.
The prestige of the new industry had enabled the manu-
facturers to talk to the State in the language that hitherto
had been the prerogative of the landowner. " Our pros-
perity is yours. Our difficulties are yours. Prosperous
manufacturers make a prosperous State. To check the
conditions of our success is to impoverish the State. The
conditions of success for the landowner were enclosures
and corn laws : for us they are cheap and docile labour,
men and women forced to take such wages as we think well
to give them. Prosperity and social peace point the same
way. Insubordination is the enemy, yours and ours.
Scratch a Trade Unionist and you will find a Jacobin ;
catch him talking in his sleep and you will overhear an
atheist. Leave us to rule this new world. Withdraw your
supervision and make laws giving us an absolute control."
The ruling class were not all convinced. At one time or
another this doctrine was combated by men like Whitbread,
Sheridan, Holland, Burdett, and Fowell Buxton. But the
answer of the generation that passed the Combination Laws,
abolished apprentice laws and the regulation of wages,
was simple and clear. A powerful class is often apt to say
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 115
to itself, " L'Etat, c'est moi." The new capitalists were
no exception. But few Governments have said so emphati-
cally as the Governments of Pitt and Liverpool, " L'Etat,
c'est lui."
The history and circumstances of this legislation require
full description. In some respects it is the most important
legislation of the period, and yet, as Mr. Justice Stephen
remarks, " in the parliamentary history for 1799 and 1800
there is no account of any debate on these Acts, nor are
they referred to in the Annual Eegister for these years." *
Fortunately we are not left without record of these debates.
They are reported in the Parliamentary Register, the
Senator, and the newspapers, and from these sources a
tolerably full account of the proceedings can be collected.
It appears that the two statesmen to whom these measures
were mainly due were Wilberforce and Pitt.
The immediate cause of this legislation was a petition
from the master millwrights which reached the House of
Commons on April 5, 1799, after the time fixed for receiving
petitions. 2 In consideration of " the particular Circum-
stances " the House waived its rules, and allowed the
petition to be read. The petition set forth ' ' that a dangerous
Combination has for some Time existed amongst the Journey-
men Millwrights, within the Metropolis, and the Limits of
Twenty-five Miles round the same, for enforcing a general
Increase of their Wages, preventing the Employment of
such Journeymen as refuse to join in their Confederacy,
and for other illegal Purposes, and frequent Conspiracies of
this Sort have been set on Foot by the Journeymen, and
the Masters have as often been obliged to submit, and that
a Demand of a further Advance of Wages has recently been
made, which not being complied with, the Men, within the
Limits aforesaid, have refused to work ; and a Compliance
with such Demands of an Advance of Wages hath generally
been followed by further Claims, with which it is impossible
1 History of the Criminal Law, vol. iii. p. 208.
House of Commons Journal, April 5, 1799.
116 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
for the Masters to comply, without occasioning so consider-
able an Advance in the Price of Mill Work as most materially
to affect the said Business, and the different Manufactories
connected therewith ; and that, in Support of the said
Combination (notwithstanding they complain of the In-
sufficiency of their Wages) the Journeymen have established
a general Fund, and raised Subscriptions, and so regular
and connected is their System that their Demands are made
sometimes by all the Journeymen, within the above Limits,
at the same Time, and at other Times at some one particular
Shop, and, in case of Non-compliance, the different Work-
shops (where their Demands are resisted) are wholly deserted
by the Men, and other Journeymen are prohibited from
applying for Work until the Master Millwrights are brought
to Compliance, and the Journeymen, who have thus thrown
themselves out of Employ, receive Support in the mean
Time from their general Fund ; and that the only Method
of punishing such Delinquents, under the existing Laws, is
by preferring an Indictment, at the Sessions or Assizes,
after the Commission of the Offence, but, before that Time
arrives, the Offenders frequently remove into different Parts
of the Country, so that, even if their Places of Residence
should be discovered, it would be a long Time before they
could be brought to Trial, and the Expence of apprehending,
and bringing them back, by Habeas, to the Place where the
Offence was committed, is so heavy to the Masters, whose
Businesses have been stopped by the Desertion of the
Journeymen, that (aware of these Difficulties) the Journey-
men carry on their Combinations with Boldness and Im-
punity ; and that the last Obstruction given to the Busi-
ness of the Petitioners, under which they are now suffering,
and which rendered their Application to the Legislature
necessary, did not take place until after the Time fixed by
the House for receiving Petitions for Private Bills was
elapsed : And therefore, praying, That Leave may be given
to exhibit a Petition for Leave to bring in a Bill, for the
better preventing of unlawful Combinations of Workmen
employed in the Millwright Business, and for regulating
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 117
the Wages of such Workmen, in such manner as to the
House shall seem meet."
The petition was referred to a committee composed
of Sir John Anderson, the Lord Mayor and others, who
reported on April 9 that its allegations were true, and
asked for leave to bring in a Bill to prevent unlawful
combinations of workmen in the millwright business, and
to enable the magistrates to regulate their wages. 1 At
this point Wilberforce rose to suggest that it would be
better to have a general Combination Law. " These com-
binations he regarded as a general disease in our society ;
and for which he thought the remedy should be general ;
so as not only to cure the complaint for the present, but to
preclude its return. He thought the worthy mover of this
subject deserved praise for what he was doing, as far as the
measure went ; but if it was enlarged, and made general
against combinations, he should be better satisfied with it,
and then it would be a measure that might be of great
service to society." 2 The Speaker told Mr. Wilberforce
that a measure of the kind he proposed could not be founded
on the present report, and the millwright business was
accordingly proceeded with, and leave given to bring in a
Bill. The Bill was read a first time on May 6, 3 and a second
on May 10. 4 On May 10 came a first petition from the
workmen, who asked to be heard by themselves or counsel,
against the Bill. This petition was ordered to lie on the
table till the report was received. 5 On May 20 came another
petition from the workmen, and this was referred to the
committee, who heard counsel for and against. 6 On June
6, when the report of the committee was considered, the
question of the first petition from the workmen came up
again. It was ordered that when the report was taken
House of Commons Journal, April 9, 1799.
Parliamentary Register, April 9, 1799. See also Senator, April 9, 1799 ;
Times, April 10, 1799 ; True Briton, April 10, 1799.
House of Commons Journal.
House of Commons Journal.
House of Commons Journal, May 10, 1799.
House of Commons Journal, May 20 and 31,
118 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
into further consideration, the petitioners should be heard,
by themselves or counsel, against the Bill. " Then the
House proceeded to take the said Report into further Con-
sideration. And the House being informed that Counsel
attended ; a Motion was made, and the Question being
put, That the Counsel be now called in ; It passed in the
Negative." l On the third reading of the Bill on June 10,
there was a debate in which Sir Francis Burdett and Mr.
Benjamin Hobhouse alone opposed the Bill, whilst Sir John
Anderson, Messrs. Buxton, C. Smith, Hawkins Brown,
H. Lascelles, Lord Sheffield, the Solicitor-General, Mr.
Ellison, and Mr. Bragge supported it. 2 Sir Francis Burdett
" opposed the principle of the Bill. He thought the exist-
ing laws sufficient for every fair and reasonable purpose
the framers of the Bill could have in view, and believed
that there was seldom a combination of the kind complained
of, without a great grievance to provoke it. He quoted
Dr. Adam Smith in support of his opinions, and maintained
that it was the wise policy of every well-regulated state to
leave trade of every kind to find its own level." 3 Mr.
Benjamin Hobhouse spoke in the same sense, and also
alluded to the refusal of the House to hear the journey-
men's counsel. 4 The supporters of the Bill agreed with
the general principle of leaving trade and labour to find
their own level, but denied that the principle applied to
these particular circumstances ; they were also " for the
most part of opinion that this Bill should be followed up by
one more general, in order to prevent all combinations." 5
The Bill passed the House of Commons, but was dropped
in the Lords owing to the introduction of the more com-
prehensive measure.
On June 17 of the same year (1799), seven days after
Burdett's speech and appeal to Adam Smith, Pitt asked
and obtained leave to bring in the Workmen's Combination
1 House of Commons Journal, June 6, 1799.
3 Parliamentary Register, June 10, 1799. See also Senator, June 10;
Times and True Briton, June 11 ; and London Chronicle, June 8-11.
Times, June 11, 1799.
4 London Chronicle, June 8-11. Ibid.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 119
Bill. 1 " Mr. Chancellor Pitt said, it was his intention to
endeavour to provide a remedy to an evil of very consider-
able magnitude ; he meant that of unlawful combination
among workmen in general a practice which had become
much too general, and was likely, if not checked, to produce
very serious mischief. He could not state particularly the
nature of the Bill which he intended to move for leave to
bring in ; but it would be modelled in some respects on
that of the Bill for regulating the conduct of the paper
manufacturers. He wished to call the particular attention
of the House to this important matter." 2 As reported in
the Times* Pitt referred specially to the combinations in
the northern parts of the kingdom. 4 When leave had been
given to bring in the Bill it was ordered, say the Journals
of the House of Commons, 5 " that Mr. Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Mr. Attorney-General, Mr. Solicitor-General,
Mr. Rose, Mr. Long, and Mr. Bragge do prepare, and bring
in, the same." The Bill was a close copy of the Paper-
makers Act referred to by Pitt, 6 and the preparation had
evidently been done beforehand, for the very next day
Mr. Rose 7 presented the Bill, and it was read a first time.
The Bill which had now started on its lightning career
through Parliament was certainly drastic enough to satisfy
Wilberforce and Pitt. It passed too rapidly to allow of the
presentation of many petitions, but the calico printers of
the London district contrived to present one, 8 and Mr.
Gurney appeared as their counsel in the House of Lords. 9
1 Parliamentary Register, June 17; Times and True Briton, June 18;
London Chronicle, June 15-18.
Parliamentary Register, June 17.
Times, June 18.
It seems probable that the Government were alarmed by the newly
formed Association of Weavers in the north.
6 House of Commons Journal, June 17.
36 George m. o. 3 (1796) ; but the Paper-makers Act had fixed hours of
work to ten or eleven a day.
7 Rose was Secretary to the Treasury.
House of Lords Journal, July 6, 1799.
House of Lords, July 9. For long account of Mr. Gurney 's speech, see
True Briton, July 10.
120 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Under this Act l any workman who combined with any
other workman in order to get an increase of wages or a
decrease of hours was liable to be brought up before any
single magistrate it might be one of the employers for
whom he was working and on conviction be sent forthwith
to jail for three months, or to hard labour in the House
of Correction for two. The same process and the same
penalties would await him if he should " by any Means
whatsoever, directly or indirectly, decoy, persuade, solicit,
intimidate, influence or prevail, or attempt or endeavour to
prevail," on any worker to leave his work, or if " being
hired or employed " he refused to work with any other
person. Further, if he himself attended any meeting for
the purpose of shortening hours or raising wages, etc., or
" directly or indirectly " induced any workmen to attend
such a meeting, or contributed to such a meeting, or
collected money for such a meeting, he made himself liable
to the same penalties. The effect of these clauses was well
described in the criticisms of the petitioners against the Act
next year, " that_the_said Act appears to the Petitioners
to h^vej;re,ateiLiiw_Crirjie5^ .of. so indefinite a Nature, that
r Workynan will be safe in holding
any^Conyersation with another on the Subject of his Trade
orJEmployment ; and that the Petitioners and others are,
by the said Act, deprived of a Trial by a Jury of their
Country, and to be tried by One Justice of the Peaco, who,
for the most part, is engaged in Trade, and whom, in all
Cases, it is^competent to the Masters to select." 2 Another
petition pointed out that hi the Act it was " declared
illegal, directly or indirectly, to attempt to prevail upon
any Journeyman or Workman to quit the Service in which
he is employed ; and that the said Act, by the use of such
uncertain Terms, and others of the same Nature, has
created new Crimes of boundless Extent . . . and that,
in many Instances, the Crimes created by the said Act are
such as will encourage wiHul Perjury in Witnesses, from the
1 39 George in. c. 81.
2 Petition from Liverpool, House of Commons Journal, June 13, 1800.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 121
great Difficulty of its being discovered, and will of course
expose the Petitioners to numberless false Accusations at
the Pleasure of any malicious Prosecutor. . . ." In fact, if
tlto law were not repealed, " it will hereafter be dangerous
for the Petitioners to converse with one another, or even
wit h their own Families." l If a workman was convicted, his
only remedy was to appeal to Quarter Sessions, but before
he could do this he must enter into Recognisances " with
Two sufficient sureties in the Penalty of Twenty Pounds."
The removal of a conviction by Certiorari was expressly
forbidden. By another clause it was enacted that any
person, whether a workman or not, who contributed " for
the Purpose of paying any Expences incurred or to be
incurred by any Person acting contrary to the Provisions
of this Act " was liable to a 10 fine, whilst the receiver
might be fined 5. In reference to these clauses, the
petitioners pointed out that when workmen had been con-
victed by a single justice who was probably engaged in ( ?
trade, a master himself, " the Parties nevertheless are not
even permitted to remove any Conviction by such Justice
... by Certiorari, or any other Writ or Process what-
soever, into any of His Majesty's Courts of Records at '
Westminster ; and that, although a Right of Appeal is
given by the said Act against any Conviction by such
Justice to the General or Quarter Sessions of the Peace, yet
the Sureties and Recognisances required, and the great
Expence of such Appeal, puts that Remedy beyond the
Reach of the Petitioners, and other Workmen, who earn,
by their daily Labour, barely sufficient to maintain them-
selves and Families ; and the said Act expressly forbids,
under a severe Penalty, any Person from subscribing or
contributing any Sum or Sums of Money whatsoever, for
the Purpose of paying any Expences incurred, or to be
incurred, by any Person charged with having acted con-
trary to the Provisions of the said Act." 2
1 Petition from London and Westminster, House of Commons Journal,
June 13, 1800.
* Petition from Liverpool, House of Commons Journal, June 13, 1800.
122 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Other clauses dealt with the funds which workmen had
raised to forward or protect their interests. Any money
contributed for any purposes forbidden by the Act which
remained undivided for three months after the passing of
the Act, and any contributions paid in after the Act, were to
be forfeited, half going to the King, and the other hah 5 to
any one who liked to sue for it. Further, any person who
had charge of such money, and was liable to be sued for it,
was compelled to answer any questions about it on oath,
" and no Person shall demur to, or refuse to answer such
Information, by reason of any Penalty or Forfeiture, to
which such Person may be liable, in consequence of any
Discovery which may be sought thereby." In other words,
the man was obliged to incriminate himself. His only
method of escape was afforded by the next clause, which
provided that if the holder of such money at once paid
it into court and gave all information about investments,
then he was to be discharged free from all penalties. In
reference to these clauses the workmen pointed out " that
the said Act empowers Trustees, Treasurers, Collectors,
Receivers, and Agents, to give up, in Breach of their Trust,
all Monies in their Hands, Custody, or Power, and in-
demnifies them, in so doing, before any Court of Law or
Equity shall have pronounced on the Legality or Illegality
of the Purposes for which such Funds shall have been
entrusted to them ; and finally, the Petitioners crave the
most serious Attention of the House to that Part of the
said Act, whereby all Persons who shall be charged with
having offended against the same, are compellable to
answer, upon Oath, all Questions that shall be put to them,
notwithstanding any Penalty or Forfeiture, as the Act
itself expressly states, to which such Persons may be liable
in consequence of any Discovery which may be sought
thereby." 1 Another petition pointed out that it had
" hitherto been a recognised and established Principle of
the Law of this Land, that no one shall be compelled to
1 Liverpool and Manchester Petitions, House of Commons Journal^
June 13, 1800.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 123
incriminate himself. . . ." l Finally, a clause in the Act
gave any justice power to grant a licence to an employer
to employ unqualified workmen, all regulations to the con-
trary notwithstanding, if the qualified workmen refused
to work " for reasonable Wages " or in any way impeded
the course of business. This meant, as the petitioners
pointed out, " that the same Magistrate, who has thus the
uncontrolled Power over Offenders within the Act, will,
in many Cases, be enabled to fix the Rate of Wages of
Journeymen and Workmen, and, upon their Refusal to
work for such Wages (however inadequate to their Labour),
may license Masters to employ in their respective Trades
all Persons indiscriminately, to the Detriment of those
Trades, and to the utter Destruction of the Workmen who
have served regular Apprenticeships therein." 2
The parliamentary history of the Bill was brief and rapid.
The Bill, as we have seen, was presented and read a first
time on June 18 ; the following day it passed its second
reading, and on Pitt's motion 3 was sent to a committee
of the whole House. A week elapsed before the committee
reported, the delay being due to pressure of other business.
On June 26 Mr. Bragge reported to the House, and by
July 1 the Bill had passed all stages in the House of
Commons, and twenty-four days after its introduction hi
the House of Commons it had received the Royal Assent. 4
The only opposition that was offered to the Bill
came from Mr. Benjamin Hobhouse in the Commons
and Lord Holland in the Lords. Hobhouse restated
the arguments against the principle of the Bill which
he and Burdett had advanced against the Millwright
Bill, and with regard to its details he laid stress on
the monstrous injustice of making workmen liable to
summary conviction by a single magistrate for expressions
1 Newcastle-on-Tyne Petition, House of Commons Journal, July 21, 1800.
a London and Westminster Petition, House of Commons Journal, June 13,
1800.
3 Senator, June 19, 1799.
4 House of Commons Journal, July 12, 1799.
124 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
of opinion or even insinuations. He tried without success
to amend the Bill, and to secure that workmen should not
be convicted except by two or more magistrates. 1 In the
l^prds HoJObncL Jnade a powerful speech, arguing that the
men_were the weaker party in all bargains between masters
and menTlind L that JihaJBilL would make them weaker still ;
that th^mastos_J^ in a dispute
without this additional and unjust help from the law. He
accused the masters of ^taking advantage of the general
prejudice of the times against the poor, excited by the
Revolution, in order to pass a Bill that would make their
workmen even more dependent. The_JBill took away trial
byjury_, andjmt the WQrkm.en.at tharnercy of the employers,
w]ip_wj3re_jnagistrates and could play into each other's
hands. The opportunity of appeal was worthless, because
no workman could find 20, as the law required. Itjpften
happened that an increase_pf_ wages was necessary on prin-
ciples of justice, and humajnty^and this _Bfl]Tmade it impos-
sible iox_Jwoj^men--4^^jaJS(^.JJieir_. wages. He contended
that it was most improper that so small a House should
pass a Bill of such importance. If the Bill was necessary
and proper, it was a Bill of great importance ; if it was
unnecessary, as he thought it, it was big with very dangerous
consequences indeed. The supporters of the Bill did not
attempt to reply to him, and his proposed amendment was
rejected without a division. 2
It has been shown that, owing to Pitt's haste to pass a
Bill for suppressing Trade Unionism, working men had had
no opportunity of making their views known to Parlia-
ment before the Bill became law. JJext year Parliament
was_flppded ^with petitions of protest from all parts^of_tjie
country : London, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Plymouth,
Bath, Lancaster, Leeds, Derby, Nottingham, and New-
castle-on-Tyne. 3
1 Parliamentary Register, June 26, 1799.
1 Parliamentary Register, July 9, 1799. This speech of Lord Holland's
was printed at Manchester and Liverpool for distribution. Lady
Holland's Journal, ii. 102.
3 House, of Commons Journal, June 13, 19, 27, 30, July 21, 1800.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 125
The discussion was, consequently, reopened, and this
time the workmen's case was put with the unanswerable
wit and eloquence of Sheridan himself. The amending
Bill was introduced l by Colonel Gascoyne, a Tory M.P.
for Liverpool, who joined forces for this purpose with his
Whig fellow-member for that city, the famous cavalry
officer, General Tarleton ; but the proceedings resolved
themselves in the main into a battle between Sheridan, on
one side, and Pitt, with the Attorney-General and the
Solicitor-General (Sir John Mitford, afterwards Lord Redes-
dale) and Sir William Grant on the other. 2 Sheridan said
that " a r jnore .intolerable mass of injustice had never been
entered on the Statute Boojj," and that this " foul and
oppressive " Act ought to be repealed. 3 Pitt defended
the Act, though he disclaimed the responsibility for intro-
ducing it, and said that its principle was good and ought
to be strengthened. The House was not prepared to go
so far as Sheridan, but there was a general consensus in
favour of considering the petitions, and as he could not
secure the repeal of the Act, Sheridan lent his energies to
the task of removing some of its worst features. A com-
mittee was appointed, consisting of Pierrepont, Gascoyne,
Tarleton, Dent, the Lord Mayor of London, and Sheridan,
to prepare and bring in an amending Bill. 4 The Act_of
1 800 5 was an improvement on its predecessor in certain
details. Thus " two magistrates " were substituted for
one magistrate as the court with power to convict a work-
man, it was provided that a magistrate .who was
a master in the particular trade affected should not
sit on the bench to try offences under the Act,
and a certain vagueness was eliminated by substi-
tuting " wilfully and maliciously " for " directly and in-
directly" in describing the offences to be punished. But
1 House of Commons Journal, July 4, 1800.
1 For account of debates see Parliamentary Register, June 30 and July 22,
and the Times, July 1, and Morning Post and True Briton, July 23.
* Times, July 1.
* House oj Common* Journal, June 30, 1800.
* 39 and 40 George m. c. 106.
126 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
the most important change was the addition of certain
arbitration clauses which provided that jn_ a dispute over
wages or hours both parties could name an arbitrator ;
and if the two arbitrators could not agree, either party
could require them to submit thepoints in dispute to a
Justice of the Peace, whose decision would be final. On
the third reading of the amending Bill l these clauses were
attacked by the Attorney-General, who declared that this
arrangement would have the tendency to fix wages, and
that the men might " name an improper person that a
master would be obliged to. meet this would be a sort of
Solicitor-General in that trade, who would no doubt be
paid and indemnified for his labour and genius." 2 Pitt
upheld this criticism, to which Gascoyne and Sheridan
replied by pointing out that the clause was taken almost
verbatim from the Act passed in the same session for
establishing arbitration in the cotton trade. 3 Pitt carried
his motion for adjournment at the time, 4 but the clauses
were ultimately adopted. 5 The final stages are unfortu-
nately unreported. The Bill as drawn up by Sheridan
and his colleagues on the committee contained a valuable
clause to protect friendly and benevolent societies, but this
clause disappeared. 6
July 22, 1800.
Parliamentary Register, July 22, 1800.
39 and 40 George in. c. 90.
Parliamentary Register, July 22, 1800.
For failure of these clauses see p. 134.
That nothing in this Act extends " in any Manner to affect or render
illegal any Clubs or Societies of Workmen now formed or hereafter to be
formed, or the Funds of any Clubs or Societies subscribed or collected bona
fide for the several beneficial Purposes of promoting the Knowledge of their
respective Trades and Manufactures, and of providing Masters with Work-
men, which latter Clubs or Societies are commonly called or known by the
Name of ' Houses of Call,' and of purchasing Tools for Workmen, who may
be incapable of purchasing the same themselves, or who shall have lost the
same by Fire, or other inevitable Accident, and of granting the like Relief
as is given by Friendly Societies established and enrolled under and by
virtue of an Act passed in the 33rd year of His present Majesty, intituled
' An Act for the Encouragement and Relief of Friendly Societies,' to
Workmen and their Wives and Families, who cannot receive such Relief
from such last-mentioned Societies, by Reason of their not admitting any
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 127
The greatest living master of controversial prose analysed
the Combination Laws in a characteristic article in the
Political Register that appeared the year before they were
repealed. 1 In 1823 a spinner named Ryding was tried for
an assault on a Preston manufacturer named Horrocks, who
was also a member of Parliament. In the course of his trial
it came out that Ryding had decided deliberately to wound
Horrocks or his partner in order that he might be tried
before a judge and jury, and thus bring before the world
the injustice of the Combination Laws under which he and
other spinners had suffered great privations, in consequence
of their attempt to resist a reduction of wages. Cobbett
wrote on the trial, putting his views in the favourite form
of a public letter to Wilberforce, who had let drop the un-
fortunate phrase " free British labourers " in a speech on
the West Indian slaves, and in the article he discussed the
Combination Laws. After reciting their main purpose
Cobbett goes on, " Well, Wilberforce ; the combiners are
to go to gaol or to the House of Correction, to the former
for not more than three months, to the latter for not more
than two months, for the first going off. Two Justices of
the Peace, who are appointed and displaced at the pleasure
of the Ministers, two of these men are to hear, determine
and sentence without any Trial by the Peers of the party.
It being very difficult to get proof of this combining for
the raising of wages, there is a clause in the Act compelling
the persons accused to give evidence against themselves
or against their associates. If they refuse, these two
Justices have the power to commit them to prison, there
to remain, without bail or mainprize, until they submit to
be examined or to give evidence before such justices.
" Now, you will observe, Wilberforce, that this punish-
ment is inflicted in order to prevent workmen from uniting
together, and by such union, to obtain an addition to their
Persons to be Members thereof after a certain Age : anything in this or
any other Act contained to the contrary thereof in anywise notwith-
standing."
A Political Register, August 30, 1823.
128 THE TOWN LABOURER, mo-1832
wages, or, as in the case of Ryding and Horrocks, to prevent
their wages from being reduced. Every man's labour is
his property. It is something whiuh he has to sell or other-
wise dispose of. The cotton spinners had then 1 labour to
sell ; or at least they thought so. They were pretty free
to sell it before this Combination Law of 1800. They had
their labour to sell. The purchasers were powerful and
rich, and wanted them to sell it at what the spinners deemed
too low a price. In order to be a match for the rich pur-
chasers, the sellers of the labour agree to assist one another,
and thus to live as well as they can ; till they can obtain
what they deem a proper price. Now, what waS there
wrong in this ? What was there either unjust or illegal ?
If men be attacked either in the market or in their shops ;
if butchers, bakers, farmers, millers be attacked with a
view of forcing them to sell their commodities at a price
lower than they demand, the assailants are deemed rioters,
and are hanged ! In 1812, a poor woman who seized, or
rather, assisted to seize a man's potatoes in the market at
Manchester, and, in compelling him to sell them at a lower
price than that which he asked .for them : this poor woman,
who had, very likely, a starving family at home, was hanged
by the neck till she was dead ! Now, then, if it was a crime
worthy of death to attempt to force potatoes from a farmer,
is it a crime in the cotton spinner to attempt to prevent
others from getting his labour from him at a price lower
than he asks for it ? It is impossible ; statutes upon
statutes may be passed, but it is impossible to make a man
believe that he has fair play, if farmer's property is to be
protected in this manner, and if it be a crime, to be punished
by imprisonment, without Trial by Jury, to endeavour to
protect the labourer's property.
" This Combination Act does, however, say that the
* masters shall not combine against the workmen.' Oh !
well then, how fair this Act is ! And what then did Ryding
mean, when he talked about the partiality of the law ?
What did he mean by saying that there was no law for the
poor man ; that there was no justice ; that the masters
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 129
could do what they pleased without being punished ?
Why, did he ever read this law ? Does he know the con-
tents of the fortieth of the good old King, chapter 106 ?
Does not this law say that all contracts between masters
and other persons for reducing the wages of men ; does
it not say, in short, that all such combinations of masters
against workmen ' shall be, and the same are hereby
declared to be, illegal, null, and void, to all intents and
purposes whatsoever ' ? Does not the law say this ; and
does it not empower the two Justices to send the masters to
the common gaol and the House of Correction ? No, the devil
a bit does it do such a thing ! No such a thing does it do.
However flagrant the combination ; however oppressive ;
however cruel ; though it may bring starvation upon thou-
sands of persons ; though it may tend (as in numerous
cases it has tended) to produce breaches of the peace, in-
surrections and all their consequences ; though such may
be the nature and tendency of these combinations of the
masters, the utmost punishment that the two Justices can
inflict, is a fine of twenty pounds \ But, and now mark the
difference. Mark it, Wilberfoirce ; note it down as a proof
of the happiness of your ' free British labourers ' : mark,
that the masters cannot be called upon by the Justices to give
evidence against themselves and their associates."
The Combination Laws lasted for a quarter of a century,
and during that time the workpeople were at the mercy
of their masters. A great deal can be learnt about the
effects and working of the Laws from the evidence taken by
the Committee on Artisans and Machinery over which Hume
presided in 1824.- Francis Place collected enough facts to
fill eight volumes. He showed that under cover of these
laws magistrates had threatened workmen with imprison-
ment or service in the fleet as the alternative to accepting
the wages their masters chose to offer them. " Could an
accurate account be given of proceedings, of hearings
before magistrates, trials at sessions and in the Court of
King's Bench, the gross injustice, the foul invective, and
terrible punishments inflicted would not, after a few years
I
130 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
have passed away, be credited on any but the best evi-
dence." l It is worth while to give a few illustrations from
the evidence taken by the committee to which allusion has
been made.
John Alexander, a journeyman bootmaker, described
how Mr. Algar of Lombard Street halved his pay, and then,
when his six or seven men refused to work for it, summoned
them before the Lord Mayor for combination. They were
imprisoned for fourteen days with hard labour. The
Lord Mayor remarked that it was a hard case, and gave
them the choice of this sentence or two months without
hard labour. 2
Joseph Sherwin, cotton weaver of Stockport, where
the average wage was 8s. a week for fourteen hours a day,
gave a case of a master in a steam-loom factory, in 1816,
who reduced wages 3d. per loom for artificial light, i.e. a
reduction of 6d. to most, to some few 9d. ; the master
forgot to return the reduction in summer, and when winter
came again (1817) he wanted to make a fresh reduction ;
the workers objected and left work, twelve women and
eleven men. They were taken before a magistrate, who
sent them out into the yard to deliberate whether they
would go to work or to prison ; they refused to return at
the reduced price, and were given a month's imprisonment,
the women at Middlewich and the men at Chester. 3
Another witness, William Salt, a cotton spinner, gave the
following evidence :
" Have you suffered prosecution under the Combination
Laws ? Yes, in 1822.
" What were the circumstances of your case ? We had not
the same wages as the other factories, and we gave notice.
" In what way ? Singly, by ourselves.
" All the men in the factory, or a limited number ? All of
them.
" In whose factory was this ? Mr. Marshall's, near Stockport.
1 Place MSS. 27798-7.
8 Report of the Select Committee on Artisans and Machinery, p. 133.
? Ibid., p. 418,
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 131
" You gave notice verbally, stating that you could not continue
to work, unless you had an advance of wages ? Unless we had an
advance of wages, according to what others were giving ; and on
Saturday I left his employment ; on the Tuesday he sent for me.
" Did the whole eighteen leave the employment ? Yes. I
met with him 40 or 60 yards from the factory, and we had some
conversation about the prices.
" Did the factories stop when you left ? No, but it stopped
on Tuesday night, when master and me parted ; I went my way
home and he towards the factory.
" What followed ? As I was coming home, there was a large
body of people on the road, my master and the constable were
after me ; and the constable, Mr. Pickford, struck me over the
forehead, and took me off to gaol.
" Did you ask under what authority ? No ; I asked not any
thing.
" Did you not ask when they took you to gaol, by whose
authority you were confined ? Yes ; that my master had
ordered Mr. Pickford to take me ; on the next day I was taken
up before Mr. Phillips, the magistrate ; he never asked me any
questions.
" Was any evidence given against you ? He examined my
master, and he told him that we had combined together ; no
one was taken but me that night.
" Were any others brought before the magistrate at that
time ? There was a warrant sent for five more.
" But were they before the magistrate at the same time with
you ? Yes.
" Was any other evidence given ? The overlooker gave
evidence against me.
" What was the determination of the magistrate ? I was not
asked any question, I was taken back again, and there I re-
mained to the next day, and then taken before the justice
meeting ; four justices were sitting there. And as soon as I
entered into the room, one of the justices said, Which is Salt ?
I said, I am Salt ; and he said I shall give you two months*
imprisonment ; and he said, I might think myself very lucky
that I was not prosecuted under the Conspiracy Laws. This
was on Wednesday ; the other five were at the justice meeting,
and stood upon my left. The question was asked, what must
be done with them, and he said, Give them all alike.
132 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
" And were they all served alike ? Yes, two months' imprison-
ment." *
The number of prosecutions gives a very imperfect
measure of the influence of the Combination Laws. In
^. ^\ industrial warfare the threat was often as good, or better,
, Vip^ , from the point of view of the masters, than actual pro-
o- *^ ceedings. It was a common practice for masters to take
the preliminary steps and then to agree to withdraw if
the men would publish a contrite submission in the local
papers. Such an advertisement spread fear of the law as
widely as the news that half a dozen workmen were in
prison. An example of this form of a submission may be
given from the columns of the Tyne Mercury : 2
" Whereas upwards of 80 Colliers and Workmen, of
Poynton, Worth, and Norbury Collieries, in Cheshire, on the
24th September last, assembled together in a wood, and
there resolved upon demanding from their employers an
advance of wages according to written terms read to the
meeting, and afterwards delivered to the underlookers of
the said collieries. These terms being so extremely
exorbitant, and the restrictions as to working so improper,
that it was impossible they should be complied with ; and
all the said colliers left their work at once, and remained
out of employment for nine weeks, to the great damage of
the collieries, and to the extreme inconvenience of the
public for this unlawful and dangerous conspiracy a
prosecution was commenced against the Secretary and
Delegates of the conspirators, to answer which the under-
signed were under recognisances to appear at the ensuing
sessions at Chester, but have since applied to the masters (the
prosecutors) to be forgiven, and to be permitted to return
to their employment like the rest of the workmen, without
any alteration in wages or restrictions demanded, which
the masters have consented to comply with, upon con-
dition of their signing a submission to be published at their
expence, in the Chester, Manchester, and Derby papers, We,
1 Report of the Select Committee on Artisans and Machinery, pp.
415-16. * January 8, 1811.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 133
the undersigned, do therefore most humbly acknowledge
the impropriety of our proceedings, and return our thanks
for the lenity we have experienced in the very serious
prosecution that pended over us, being withdrawn." l
In another submission, eighteen crofters of Bolton, of
whom one alone could write, not only apologise for joining
a society that had turned out to be a combination for
raising wages, and thank the master bleachers for with-
drawing a prosecution, but recommend all other crofters to
desert this illegal society at once. In this case the masters
were represented as relenting because of " the numerous
families " of the workmen. 2
The Combination Laws forbade combination among
masters as well as among men, but in this respect they
were a dead letter. The masters were not obliged, like the
men, to give evidence against each other, and Place pointed
out to the committee in 1824 that it was virtually impossible
for workmen to prosecute employers. 8 Some of the masters
were not aware that they came under the laws at all, 4
and the magistrates turned a blind eye on the most public
and overt acts of employers. There was indeed no conceal-
ment of the truth that the masters acted habitually and
openly as if the laws had placed no restraint on their
freedom to combine for reducing wages. 6
1 There are eleven signatures. Three write their names, eight men
make a mark. For other cases of. Shipwrights in 1801 (H. O., 42. 62) and
Coventry ribbon weavers in 1821 (Artisans and Machinery, p. 604).
* Manchester Mercury, October 30, 1810.
* " Have you ever known a master prosecuted by the men for combina-
tion ? No : I believe it would be nearly impossible to prosecute a master
to conviction. To prosecute at all, money must be raised ; to raise money
there must be a combination among the men, and then they may be
prosecuted by the masters. If, as the law now stands, the men were to
prosecute the masters, there would be a cross prosecution. The Combina-
tion Law compels the men to give evidence against one another, and thus
the prosecution may almost always be effectual. No law corn pels the
masters to give evidence against one another : thus it is almost impossible
ever to convict a master." Artisans and Machinery, p. 47. For Gravener
Henson's attempt see p. 66.
4 See evidence of B. Taylor, ibid., p. 63.
5 See, for example, circular published by four hundred manufacturers in
Sheffield, March 25, 1814, ibid., p. 401.
134 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
That the ruling class regarded the Combination Laws as
directed solely to the purpose of preventing the men from
combining is clear from two facts. In the first place,
although the laws were seen by everybody to be absolutely
inoperative so far as employers were concerned, there was
no proposal to amend them in order to make them effective.
On the contrary, the only proposals made were proposals
for making them more drastic in relation to men's com-
binations. 1 Adam Smith had given as one of his reasons
for opposing combination laws the injustice of their inci-
dence, it being so much easier for masters to combine hi
secret than for men. The ruling class acted as if the in-
equalities of circumstance were just the other way. In
the second place, Sheridan and his friends had contrived,
hi spite of Pitt's opposition, to introduce some arbitration
clause into the Act. These clauses were useless, because
i -tU* >* ^ e mas ters were able to evade them, 2 but Parliament
4o d^J&JL*- never tried to oblige the masters to accept them.
The repeal of the Combination Laws, which was brought
about hi 1824, is perhaps the most remarkable achievement
1 See, for example, application from Yorkshire magistrates, supported
by Wilberforce, the member for the county, in 1802 (H. O., 42. 66). Efforts
were made by the masters in 1814 and 1816 to obtain a more stringent
Combination Act. Memorials were presented to Government by the
master manufacturers of Lancashire. The master hosiers of Nottingham
and the Glasgow manufacturers wished for a similar measure (H. O., 42.
139 ; 42. 149 and 150). Sidmouth was sympathetic. " I incline to think
that more rope must be given, but I am satisfied that in the ensuing
Session the Interference of Parliament will be indispensably necessary," he
wrote in 1814 (H. O., 42. 141). In 1816, however, when he referred the
memorial to the law officers, the latter " declared their opinions that the
Laws were sufficient . . . and that they could advise no application
to Parliament for an extension of the Laws or for the Indemnity and
Protection of Prosecutors and Witnesses " (H. O., 42. 195).
8 There was no provision to compel an arbitrator to act. One
witness before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery of 1824
described how he had tried, with the goodwill of the magistrates, to initiate
proceedings under these clauses, but the masters had checkmated him.
The magistrates had looked with sympathy on an attempt to settle dis-
putes without disturbance to the public peace. Evidence of Peter Gregory,
p. 603 ; cf. Committee on Petitions of Ribbon Weavers, 1818, p. 11. For
full discussion of the failure of these clauses see succeeding volume.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 135
in this period. It is certainly the greatest achievement in
Place's remarkable life. Place (1771 to 1854), 1 for some
years a journeyman breeches-maker, and afterwards a
tailor, boasted with justice that on becoming a master he
did not forget that he had been a journeyman, and from
the year 1810, when he had been enraged by a savage sen-
tence passed on the compositors employed by the Times,
he devoted his life to the destruction of these laws. Place
was a friond and follower of Bentham, a disciple of Malthus
about population, and an economist with strong laissez-
faire convictions. On many questions his opinions were
those of the ruling class. He disliked any legislative
interference with wages, shrank from legislation that might
hamper the capitalist, and believed that attempts to regu-
late industry would be a dangerous encroachment on the
free direction of capital, and an unjust disturbance of the
world of labour. But his school differed from the employers
in regarding the world of trade as a world with its own
laws, and they taught that to forbid the workmen to com-
bine was just as much an infraction of those laws as to
regulate hours and wages by an Act of Parliament. If men
and masters were left to themselves, wages would follow a
law as immutable as the law of gravity. It was wrong to
impede the flow of these forces by preventing either the
masters or the men from making the best terms that they
could. Place further regarded the Combination Laws as a
cause of bad feeling and irritation, and he was possessed
by the wild notion that if they were abolished, Trade Unions
would melt away. Fortunately his delusion about the
future did not bewilder his vision of the best measures to
be taken at the present, or hamper the skill, patience, and
perseverance with which he carried through this great
reform. The difficulties before him were very great ; for
the workmen were slow to support what they thought was
a hopeless enterprise, and for years he worked at his object
under discouragements that would have overwhelmed any
1 The whole story is told by Mr. Graham Wallas, Life of Place,
chap. viii.
136 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
one but a man of his fortitude and tenacity. He gradually
produced the desired impression among the Trade Unions,
and then in other quarters the sky cleared. For five years,
from 1822, the Tory party were under the direction of three
men, Canning, Huskisson and Peel, who had all in different
degrees assimilated the main ideas of the economists^ and
whose policy it was to remove obstacles to trade and in-
dustry. In this spirit Huskisson wished to get rid of the
' laws that prohibited the emigration of artisans and the
exportation of machinery, and the atmosphere was particu-
i larly favourable to an attempt to abolish the laws that
oppressed workmen as trade unionists. Place's ally in
Parliament was Joseph Hume (1777-1855), the indefatigable
Radical critic, who added " retrenchment " to the watch-
word of his party, and preached individualism for nearly
forty years in the House of Commons. Hume and Place
between them succeeded in accomplishing an almost un-
noticed revolution. The proceedings began with a motion
made by Hume on February 12, 1824, for a committee
to consider the laws relating to the emigration of artisans,
the exportation of machinery, and combination among
workmen. Hume stated in his speech that he had originally
only intended to ask for the reconsideration of the laws on
the first two of these subjects. Huskisson, who was then
President of the Board of Trade, supported the motion
strongly, and said that under the Combination Laws
combinations had increased instead of diminished.
A committee was appointed, its most active members
were all men friendly to repeal, and in the next three months
the two Radicals had it all their own way. Representatives
were sent from various towns to give evidence. At Stock-
port the Mayor called a public meeting which was attended,
as Major Eckersley, the commanding officer at Manchester,
put it, " by all the rabble of the town." 1 A committee
of seven masters and three or five workmen was appointed
to act together. Norris, stipendiary magistrate of Man-
chester, blamed the Mayor, who might have put into
H. O., 40. 18.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 137
the heads of the workpeople what they otherwise would
not have thought of. The Liverpool representatives were
brought into the town in triumph on their return, the ship-
wrights taking a holiday for the purpose. 1 Hume was
chairman, and he and Place stage-managed the proceedings
with extraordinary skill and success. Place was a superb
master of the art of manipulating politics, and he managed
to secure, not only that the men's case should be put at its
very best, but also that those masters who favoured repeal
should give evidence before those who wanted to keep the
Combination Laws. Malthus gave evidence for repeal,
and said the Combination Laws had had a pernicious effect
on wages. If the conspirators had waited to present a
report of the usual kind, the report would probably not
have been unanimous, but Hume skilfully substituted for
a complete report a series of declaratory resolutions. These
resolutions were submitted on the 21st of May. The rest
followed fast. Indeed, there was just as much dispatch
and just as little discussion in the operation of putting down
the Combination Laws as there had been in setting them
up. The session was almost over. The Bill repealing the
laws got its second reading on June the 1st, and was passed
without any debate four days later. 2 So rapid and noiseless
had been Place's triumph, that next year the Prime Minister
(Liverpool) and the Lord Chancellor (Eldon) both declared
that they were unaware of the nature of the Bill, and
that if they had known what it was they would have
opposed it. 3
The Act was sweeping in its terms. " Journeymen,
workmen, or other persons who shall enter into any com-
bination to obtain an advance or to fix the rate of wages
or to lessen or alter the hours or duration of the time of
1 H. O., 40. 18.
2 Huskisson's speech in House of Commons, Hansard, March 25, 1825.
3 Some weeks after the Bill had become law, the magistrates in a Lanca-
shire town sentenced certain cotton weavers to imprisonment for acts that
were no longer punishable (Webb, Hist, of Trade Unionism, p. 92). The Act
is 5 George iv. c. 95. The Act, besides repealing the Combination Acts,
exempted workmen's unions from prosecution for conspiracy.
,
138 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
working or to decrease the quantity of work or to induce
another to depart from his service before the end of the time
or term for which he is hired or to quit or to return his
work before the same shall be finished, or not being hired,
to refuse to enter into work or employment, or to regulate
the mode of carrying on any Manufacture, Trade, or Busi-
ness or the management thereof, shall not therefore be
subject or liable to any indictment or prosecution for con-
spiracy, or to any other criminal information or punishment
whatever under the Commprj(prNthe Statute Law."
The sleep 7>ribhe upper classes did not last very long.
The Trade Unions took advantage of their new freedom to
claim a share in the prosperity of trade, as was natural
seeing that most workmen had been ground down under
these laws. It is interesting to notice that Major Eckersley,
in command at Manchester, who was usually not at all
inclined to see things from the workmen's point of view,
wrote to General Byng, January 27, 1825, 1 to say that
there were various spinners' strikes in progress, and that
some manufacturers with large capital were calling for the
re-enactment of the Combination Law. " Were I allowed
an opinion on the subject, I should certainly say it might
be well to pause for a while." The time has not been
sufficient to see the effects. " It has, at any rate, the
salutary one of making the masters bestir themselves and
to look a little to their workpeople, which in most cases
was before almost entirely neglected." The next winter
resounded with the quarrels of masters and men. Hume
and Place, justly afraid for the consequences on the mind
of Parliament, made great efforts to restrain the workmen
from retaliating on masters who had made themselves
conspicuous by oppression when under the shelter of the
old law.
The shipowners appealed to Huskisson, who was member
for Liverpool, as well as President of the Board of Trade,
and he came down to Parliament next session quite pre-
pared to pass a Bill drafted by the shipowners which would
1 H. O., 40. 18.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 139
have meant the death of Tradt I'nions. 1 He began by
moving on March 29, 1825, for a Select Committee to inquire
into the conduct of the workmen and the effect of the
recent Act. In the debate that followed there was a
general condemnation of the men, and Peel declared that
what was wanted was a Bill to put down all combinations
among masters and men alike. Like Huskisson, he blamed
Hume's committee of the previous year. Hume argued
that the masters were at fault as well as the men, and
Gurney defended the committee of 1824 : " The President
as Vice-President of the Board of Trade had attended all
its sittings and the conclusions had been unanimous."
Grant, afterwards Lord Glenelg and Colonial Secretary,
who was at that time Vice-Treasurer of the Board of Trade,
said the workmen had abused the kindness of Hume's
committee. The House agreed to the motion, and a com-
mittee carefully chosen by Huskisson was duly appointed.
The chairman was Wallace, the Master of the Mint, and
Huskisson, Peel, and the Attorney-General took part in
its proceedings. But it was impossible to exclude Hume,
and Hume, with Place at his elbow, managed to upset a good
many plans. The Trade Unions were thoroughly alarmed,
and committees sprang up all over the country to agitate
against a re-enactment of the Combination Laws. The
Easter holidays gave Hume and Place an interval for
organising their defence. Place published an answer to
Huskisson's speech and got up the workmen's case from
agents and delegates. As a result of all these preparations
Hume was able in committee to destroy the original scheme
of the Government, which was to prepare a Bill forbidding
the subscription of any funds to a trade, or any other
association, unless some magistrate approved its objects
and became its treasurer ; and the committee reported in
favour of a Bill which recognised the right of collective
bargaining, though it defined the legitimate purposes and
aim of association very narrowly, and put a great weapon
in the hands of the employers, by using such vague terms
1 Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 94.
140 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
as " molesting " and " obstructing " to describe forbidden
methods. This Bill the Government adopted and carried.
The chief champions of the men in the debates on the
Bill were Hume, Burdett, and Denman. Hume said that
if the magistrates were allowed to punish a man for such
an indefinite offence as molesting, the Bill would be simply
a Bill to keep down wages, and he tried to get rid of the
word " molesting " and also to add a clause " that every
master of workmen, and the father and son of such master,
be rendered incapable of acting as a justice of the peace in
cases of complaint under the Act." Denman tried to
substitute the verdict of a jury for conviction before two
magistrates. The Place MSS. give a most interesting
account of the proceedings from Place's point of view.
" Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse supported Mr.
Hume, but he had to bear the vehement attacks of the
whole ministerial bench Huskisson, Peel, Wallace, Canning,
the Attorney-General, etc. etc. No terms either as to
truth or decency of language, to the utmost extent which
ingenuity could use, so as not to be reprehended by the
Speaker, were spared." l Hume and Denman's efforts at
amendment were unavailing.
The new Act 2 was a disappointment to the shipping
industry, and to the other powerful interests that had
hoped to see the Combination Laws set up again. It differed
widely from the Bill that the Government had meant to
introduce. Place and Hume by their skill and pertinacity,
the Trade Unions by giving the impression that they would
resist the re-enactment of the old laws by violence, had
defeated the intentions of the masters and the Government.
In this sense the proceedings are a great moral triumph
for Place and Hume. But under the new Act the Trade
Unions were not allowed more than a bare existence. The
section which exempted them from prosecution for con-
spiracy was omitted in the new Act, which recites the
various offences that are punishable and then excludes from
its operation persons meeting together to determine the
1 Wallas, Life of Place, p. 236. 8 6 George iv. c. 129.
THE WAR ON TRADE UNIONS 141
conditions as to wages and hours which each or all shall
demand. The collective bargain is formally recognised, but
all the measures necessary to make it effective are forbidden.
How much the working classes lost in happiness, in
physical energy, in moral power, in the inherited stamina
of mind and body, during the years when these overwhelming
forces were pressing them down, it is impossible to estimate.
They were years of great moment to the race, and English
history would have been very different for many generations
after the close of this period if the workers had been
allowed to use the resources of organisation for the defence
of a standard of life, and if the rulers of England had not
tied their hands behind their backs at the time, more than
any other, at which they needed all their strength. The
Combination Laws gave the masters unlimited power to
reduce wages and to make conditions more severe. They
established the new industry on a basis of exploited labour,
wages representing not the share of the working classes in
the new wealth, however that share might be assessed, but
the degree of misery to which men and women, forbidden to
defend themselves, might be reduced in this or that place
and this or that trade in the wild competition of the
forces that used and ruled them. The industry in which
fortunes were made most rapidly was the industry in which
the mass of workers were degraded to the deepest poverty,
just because the cotton weavers were not protected by
any traditions of regulation, or by any special difficulties
in their employment demanding special skill o: special
physical strength. The Parliament that passed the Com-
bination Laws proclaimed a doctrine of serf labour and
low wages. Every working man was either to accept the
wages that his employer, with the law behind him, chose
to give, or to become a vagrant. That was the ruling fact
about the new industry. The working man was heavily
handicapped already. He had against him the power of
the new capital and the irregularities of trade that crippled
his resources by periodical spells of unemployment. Into
that scale Parliament threw the weight of the law. The
142 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
working classes had in the last resort only one weapon, the
weapon of violence, 1 and the class of workers that came
out of the struggle best were those who could intimidate
the magistrates.
For the mass of working men and working women thus
j treated, there was only one way of keeping body and soul
; together. The children were sent to the mill or the mine.
The Combination Laws put the children as well as their
parents at the disposal of the employers. In the view of
the ruling class the child of the weaver or the miner had
no claims on society : there was no reason to educate him
except that some rudiments of knowledge might make
him more useful to his employer, and there was every reason
to keep such education as might awaken discontent out
of his reach. He was born into a serf class. Thus the
consideration of the policy of the ruling powerg brings us
to the subject of the children of the factory and mine,
for the Combination Laws and the employment of children
on a great scale are two aspects of the same system. 2
1 See Buddie's evidence before 1829 Lords Committee on Coal Trade,
pp. 68 and 69.
8 Cf. evidence of Gifford (p. 397) and Sherwin (p. 420) before Committee
on Artisans and Machinery.
CHAPTER VIII
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN (I.)
THE MILL
MICHELET has told a dramatic and apocryphal story to
illustrate the severity and the strain of the great duel between
England and revolutionary France. " When the English
manufacturers warned Pitt that owing to the high wages
they had to pay their workmen, they were unable to pay
their national taxes, Pitt returned a terrible answer : ' Take
,the children/ That saying weighs like a curse upon
v England." The story, as M. Mantoux points out, is a
/ Wegend, and in so far as it represents the exploiting of
children as a new and terrible" inspiration from Pitt, it is
unjust to him : we give a little later the sentence from a
speech of Pitt's that suggested this rhetorical passage.
But the story, though a legend, is a legend woven round
the facts, for during 'the first phase of the Industrial Revolu-
tion the employment of children on a vast scale became the
most important social feature of English life, and its con-
sequences are not exaggerated in Michelet's outburst.
The idea that the children of the poor should work for
their living is a good deal older than the Industrial Revolu-*'
tion. Locke, the philosopher, proposed as part of a scheme
for the reform of the Poor Laws which he submitted toj <
the Board of Trade in 1697, that a working school should
be established in each parish, which the children of all
applicants for parish relief should be obliged to attend '
from the ages of three to fourteen. 1 In some of the Houses
of Industry during the eighteenth century infants were
1 Quoted in Annual Register, 1817, p. 279 ff.
143
144 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
employed at this tender age. In their own homes too the
children's working life began early, and Defoe was moved to
admiration by the busy spectacle of the Yorkshire clothiers :
f u Within we saw the Houses full of lusty Fellows, some at
\ the Dye- vat, some at the Loom, others dressing the Cloths ;
/ the Women and Children carding or spinning, all employed
/ from the youngest to the oldest : scarce any Thing above
I four Years old, but its Hands were sufficient for its own
Support." 1 Pitt in his famous Poor Law Bill proposed
that children should be set to work when they were five ;
and his speech on Whitbread's Minimum Wage Bill shows
the kind of impression that the beginnings of the great
system of child labour in factories made upon his mind.
" Experience had already shown how much could be
done by the industry of children, and the advantages of
v early employing them in such branches of manufacture as
they are capable to execute." 2
The child labour that was becoming so important a part
of industrial life at the time of Pitt's speech was different
from the child labour described by Defoe ; for whereas in
Defoe's day the labour of children was ancillary to the
labour of their parents, under the early factory system the
employment of masses of children was the foundation of
industry.
v/ The factory children of the Industrial Revolution fall
into two classes : (1) apprentice children, (2) free-labour
^children, or children living at home with parents or guardians.
- / The apprentice children were the first to be employed. The
early spinning machinery, invented whilst the wonders of
steam were still unknown, needed water power for its
working : hence the first mills were placed on streams, and
the necessary labour was provided by the importation of
cartloads of pauper children from the workhouses in the
big tjwns. London was an important source, for since the
passing of Han way's Act in 1767 the child population in
the workhouses had enormously increased, and the parish
Defoe, Tour, 3. 145.
* Parliamentary Register, February 12, 1796.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 145
authorities wore anxious to find relief from the burden of
their maintenance. Jonas Han way (1712-86), after a
strange career as a traveller, in the course of which he made
a journey down the Volga and by the Caspian to Persia
with a caravan of woollen goods, had settled in London
and given himself up to philanthropy. He was one of the
founders of the Magdalen Hospital, and introduced the
umbrella. By the Act generally called by his name, 1
passed in consequence of his untiring exertions, all London
parish children under six years of age were boarded out, not
less than three miles away, at not less than 2s. 6d. a week
An additional bonus of 10s. per child a year was given to
each successful nurse. Before this Act very few parish
infants survived to trouble the authorities. Hanway
himself estimated the annual death-rate as 60 to 70 per
cent. The Act, according to Hewlett, caused " a defici-
ency of 2100 burials a year." 2 To the parish authorities,
encumbered with great masses of unwanted children,
the new cotton mills in Lancashire, Derby, and Notts
were a godsend. It must be remembered that, as a com-
mittee in 1815 pointed out, hi London relief was " seldom
bestowed without the parish claiming the exclusive right
of disposing, at their pleasure, of all the children of the
person receiving relief." 3 The manufacturers were anxious
to oblige, and in one case, at least, a Lancashire millowner
agreed with a London parish to take one idiot with every
twenty sound children supplied. 4 The guardians had thus
available a system of transportation for poor children,
which was cheaper and more effective than the trans- \t
portation system that had brought relief to the London - ^/^\
prisons.
These children were consigned to their employers at the /
age of seven and upwards, till they were twenty-one.
Next door to the mills prentice-houses were built, and in
1 7 George in. c. 39. * See Eden, The State of the Poor, i. p. 338.
Report of Committee on Parish Apprentices, 1815. See Annual
Register for 1815.
4 See Horner's Speech, Hansard, June 6, 1815.
K
146 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
these two buildings their young lives were spent, at best in
monotonous toil, at worst in a hell of human cruelty. If
their master failed in business, their labours ceased and
they were cast adrift on the world. A model mill at Styall*/
near Manchester employed from seventy to eighty children
procured from the Liverpool workhouse, living in a small
prentice-house near the mill. Here, where kindness was
the rule, and the children's education was supervised by./
members of the owner's family noted for its benevolence/
the working hours were seventy-fou/ a week or over twelve
a day, Saturdays included. 1 The majority of mills worked
fifteen hours^vln many of them, work, like the stream,
never stopped by day or night, and the children who had
tended the machines by day crept into beds just left vacant
by the children who were to tend them through the night.
For this system of double shifts, in spite of its unhealthi-
ness, it could indeed be said that the day children's hours
were shortened by the fact that there were other workers
to replace them, and that the night children had the com-
pensation of time to play by day. d v>)os * x '
A vivid picture of life in these prentice mills was
given before the 1816 committee by a certain Mr. John
Moss, governor of the workhouse at Preston. 2 For a
year, from February 1814 to March 1815, he had been
master of about one hundred and fifty parish apprentices
at a cotton mill at Backbarrow in Lancashire. Most of
these children came from London, a few from Liverpool.
The London children came at ages ranging from seven
to eleven, the Liverpool children came from eight to
fifteen : all were bound till they were twentj^one. Their
regular working hours, Saturdays included, were from 5 A.M.
till 8 P.M., and, with the exception of half an hour at 7 A.M.
for breakfast, and half an hour at 12 for dinner, they were
working continuously the whole time. They were, however,
allowed to eat something whilst working in the afternoon.
1 Factory Commission, Supplementary Report, 1834, part ii. p. 302 f.
* Report on Children in Manufactories, 1816 (Peel's Committee), pp.
178-85.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 147
There were no seats in the mill. When lost time had to
be made up, the hours were from 5 A.M. till 9 or 10 P.M.,
and this sometimes lasted for three weeks on end. There
were two mills, and if the water was insufficient for both,
one was worked with day and night shifts. On Sundays,
always some, and sometimes all, were employed from
6 A.M. till noon cleaning machinery. Those who were not
so employed were supposed to go to church, three miles
away. It is not surprising to read that churchgoing was
unpopular, and that the children would absent themselves
under pretence of being needed at the mill. At night
Mr. Moss regularly inspected their beds " because there
were always some of them missing, some sometimes might
be run away, others sometimes I have found have been
asleep in the mill." The children often lay down on the
mill floor and went to sleep before their supper. The
bedding was simple and unclean ; a blanket to lie on and
another blanket, with a horse cover, to throw over them.
During his time sheets were introduced. Nobody from
London ever came to look after the children, who, according
to Mr. Moss, developed into depraved characters. Once
before Mr. Moss's time, when the mill had stopped payment
under its former proprietors, the children were taken from
the mill in a cart and turned adrift near the sands on the
Lancaster road.
The story of the Backbarrow mill is interesting, if only
for the light it throws incidentally on the mental attitude
of the powers to whom these prentice children were con-
signed. The evidence of Mr. Moss pained the proprietors.-
of the mill. They did not attempt to deny the length of the
hours, but they repudiated with righteous indignation the
insinuation that the children were not healthy and happy,
and the still baser insinuation that they had neglected
the Sabbath and failed in their duties as Christians. They
forwarded to the Committee the following remarkable
papers : l
1. " I do hereby certify that I have attended the apprentice
1 Report on Children in Manufactories, 1816 (Peel's Committee), p. 210*
148 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
house of Ainsworth, Catterall and Co. of Backbarrow, upwards of
6 years, and that during that time the children have been par-
ticularly healthy, and the numbers of deaths very few. I con-
sider the treatment of the children very good in all respects.
JOHN REDHEAD, Surgeon"
CABTMEL, May 25, 1816.
2. " These are to certify that the children or apprentices,
belonging to the cotton factory of Messrs. Ainsworth, Catterall
and Co. at Backbarrow in the parish of Cartmel in the County of
Lancaster, generally and regularly attend divine service in the
chapel of Finsthwaite every Sunday when the weather will
permit : that during the service they behave with great pro-
priety : they appear neat and clean, and in all respects demean
themselves in a decent and orderly manner.
Given under my hand this 25th day of May 1816.
HENBY SEATLE, Minister of Finsthwaite.
P.S. I beg leave to state that out of 150 children, the
number employed, there have been only six deaths in the
seven last years : and three of these came to the place in
a very sickly state and one was drowned by accident.
HENRY SEATLE."
3. " We the undersigned do hereby certify, That we attend
every Sabbath-day at the apprentice house of Ainsworth,
Catterall and Company and accompany the children to Finsth-
waite Chapel for the morning's service ; that in the afternoon we
teach them to read in the Bible, New Testament, or Spelling
Book, according to their ability, and that every attention is
paid to the strict observance of the Sabbath.
J. SLATER,
WILLIAM FENNIX.
The above certified also by me
THOMAS COWARD,
Governor of the Apprentice House at Backbarrow."
The proprietors also sent up the overlooker to discredit
Mr. Moss's statements. 1 The hours of work indeed were
not disputed, and under judicious pressure the witness
1 Report on Children in Manufactories, 1816 (Peel's Committee), pp.
288-93.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 149
admitted that the machinery was cleaned on Sunday.
But the health and the morals of the children were excellent
now : whatever faults there might have been were due
to Mr. Moss and his wife : for he failed to maintain proper
authority, and she was " too high for her situation, she did
not look after them as she should do." His answer to the
charge that the apprentices were turned adrift when the
mill stopped about seven years before was interesting.
The children were set at liberty, not forced to go. There
were provisions in the house, if they did not stop too long :
they were not hi a miserable situation, though, "to be
sure, they would not be well off : they would have to beg
their way or something of that sort."
These cotton mills, crowded with overworked children,
were hotbeds of what was called putrid fever, and it was
an epidemic at Radcliffe in 1784 that first drew public
attention to the condition of the apprentices. In con-
sequence of the recommendation of Dr. Percival (1740-
1804), a public -spirited Manchester doctor, the Manchester
magistrates passed a resolution that in future they would
refuse to sanction indentures of parish apprentices to
cotton mills where they would be worked at night or
more than ten hours by day. Similar resolutions were
passed by other northern magistrates later. 1 But these
resolutions, unfortunately, did not affect the magistrates
of the districts which supplied most of the children. Nc\v/
outside person, whether parent or magistrate, had any\|
right to enter a mill or a prentice-house : the apprentices ||
were, in fact, absolutely at the mercy of their employers.
The law in theory gave them a remedy ; by 20 Geo. n. c. 19
(1747) an apprentice could appeal to a magistrate against
his master's ill-treatment, and if the case were proved,
could obtain his or her discharge ; by 32 Geo. in. c. 57
(1792) a successful complaint of this nature might even
entail a 10 fine ; but the risk that a child who passed his
life shut up in the prentice-house and the mill would find
his way to a magistrate was not very serious, and, if he
1 See Report on Parish Apprentices, 1815.
150 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
succeeded, it was as likely as not that the magistrate would
turn out to be his own or a neighbouring employer. Gis-
borne tells us that cruej punishments were inflicted on those
ywho found some means of complaint. 1
J The epidemics in cotton factories continued unchecked.
A Board of Health, formed in Manchester in 1795, urged
the necessity of regulations, and at last, in 1802, Sir Robert
Qpeep himself one of the chief offenders, brought in a Bill
on the subject.
Peel's character is an interesting study. A man who
has been enriched by some abuse is generally too much
afraid of the charge of hypocrisy, and the anger of those
who are not yet satisfied with the profits they have derived
from such a source, to attempt to reform it. This is per-
haps the reason why it is so hard to act on the insidious
maxim of Phocylides, to acquire a competence and then to
practise virtue. It is human to be morbidly conscious of
one's own history, to dread the taunt of insincerity and
cant, to shrink from calling for virtue when your neighbours
know that your pockets are bursting with the revenues
of vice. The first Sir Robert Peel showed, like his greater
son, that whatever his faults, he could break free from the
most compromising past, and face the most biting of all
charges. His mills had been notorious for their scandals,
and in 1784, and again hi 1796, the magistrates had made
complaints. 2 Under the shadow of this record Peel dared
to turn reformer. With an intellectual honesty that is
rare, he disowned the illusion with which most millowners
satisfied their consciences, that the victims of this system
were really gainers by it. " Having other pursuits," he
wrote afterwards, " it was not often in my power to visit
_the factories, but whenever such visits were made, I was
struck with the uniform appearance of bad health, and in
many cases, stunted growth of the children ; the hours of
labour were regulated by the interest of the overseer, whose
remuneration depending on the quantity of work done, he
1 Eden, op. cit., i. p. 422.
* See speech of the younger Peel, Hansard, February 19, 1818.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 151
was often induced to make the poor children work excessive
hours, and to stop their complaints by trifling bribes." l
The result of his attention was the 1802 Act. 2
The original Bill was " for the better preservation of the
Health and Morals of Apprentices and others employed hi
cotton mills and cotton manufactories " ; in deference to
Wilberforce's appeal the last words were changed to " cotton
and other mills, and cotton and other manufactories," but
in its final form, though this title remained, the regula-
tions applied only to cotton and woollen mills. There were
several debates on the Bill, 3 and unsuccessful efforts were
made by Lord Belgrave, Burton, Wilberforce, the Attorney-
General (Perceval), and Lord Stanley to include free-labour
children in the scope of the measure, Lord Belgrave declar-
ing with vehemence that " Wealth was pursued in this
country, with an eagerness to which every other considera- .
tion was sacrificed, and with excesses calculated to call
down the vengeance of Heaven, if the Legislature did not
put a sjop to them." Burton contended that the children
living at home were even worse off than the apprentices.
Sir Robert Peel, who thought that the Bill, as it stood,
" would render the cotton trade as correct and moral as it
was important," 4 refused to extend its scope : on one occa-
sion, indeed, he urged that if regulations were necessary
for the free children, they should be made the subject of a
different Bill, but later on he declared his conviction that
any such regulations must be prejudicial to trade.
The Act prescribed that all cotton or woollen mills or "
factories where three or more apprentices or twenty or
more other persons worked, must be kept clean and any.
Most of the provisions applied only to apprentices. These
children were not to work more than twelve hours a day,
exclusive of meal times, and these twelve hours must
be taken between 6 A.M. and 9 P.M. Night work was
prohibited after June 1803, except in the case of the bigger
/
1 1816 Committee, p. 132. 42 George in. c. 73.
8 Parliamentary Register, April 6 and 14, May 4 and 18, 1802.
4 Parliamentary Register, April 6, 1802.
152 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
mills, which were given from six months to a year to prepare
for the change. Part of the working day was to be given
up to instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic : each
apprentice was to have one new suit of clothing every year,
^nd boys and girls were to sleep in separate rooms and not
more than two in a bed. The Act made ample provision
for their religious duties : for an hour every Sunday they
were to be " instructed and examined hi the principles of
the Christian religion, by some proper person provided by
the master or mistress " ; once a year the clergyman of the
parish was to examine them, once a month, at least, they
were to go to church, and in England they were to be con-
firmed, in Scotland they were to receive the sacrament,
between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. The Justices
of the Peace at their Quarter Sessions were to appoint two
visitors, unconnected with the mills, one a magistrate, the
other a clergyman, who should have full power to inspect
the mills and enforce the Act.
It is interesting to notice the welcome given by the
employers to this, the first Factory Act. From Manchester,
Glasgow, Preston, Leeds, Keighley, Tutbury, and Holy-
. well came protests from millowners, declaring the Act to
be " prejudicial to the Cotton Trade " and also " imprac-
ticable." l A further light is thrown on these objections,
and also on the treatment of the children, in some papers
about the Act printed in the Reports of the Society for
Bettering the Condition of the Poor. One of these papers
consists of Observations on the Act, drawn up by the pro-
prietors of some mills at Burley, near Otley. 2 They point
out that the cotton trade cannot go on unless about a sixth
of the apprentices can be worked at night. " Free labourers
cannot be obtained to perform the night work, but upon
very disadvantageous terms to the manufacturers," besides,
night work " is incontestably proved not to be injurious "
to the health of the apprentices, so why should the legis-
1 House of Commons Journal, February 11, 14, 22, and 25, 1803.
2 Vol. iv., App. p. 9. The Society refuted the arguments of the pro-
prietors.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 153
lature interfere ? As for the clause about the education
of the children in working hours, no doubt education is
desirable, " and is what all humane masters would wish
to see accomplished " ; but to take an hour or two from
the twelve working hours " would amount to a surrender
of all the profits of the establishment." The severest
strictures are reserved for the clause which gives the two
visitors power to inspect the mill. The apprentices, especi-
ally those from London, come from low and vicious sur-
roundings, and need very strict discipline to reform them
and to keep them in the narrow path. " What effects
will be produced in such establishments by the introduction
of visitors (whom the children will regard as invested with
a controuling power over their masters) it is easy to foresee.
All subordination will be at an end, let the visitors conduct
themselves with what discretion they may ; the Mills and
Factories will become a scene either of idleness and dis-
order, or of open rebellion ; or the masters, harassed and
tired out by the incessant complaints of their apprentices,
and the perpetual interference of the visitors, will be
obliged to give up their works ; and some of them, after
being involved in difficulties (resulting from the operation
of the Act) may perhaps become bankrupts, or be obliged
to remove to a foreign country, leaving their apprentices
a grievous load upon the parish where they were employed."
In their last sentence they demand either a repeal or a
modification of the Act, as " indispensably necessary to
the future success of a great number of persons embarked
in the spinning and manufacturing of Cotton ; who have
not only contributed largely to the public revenue, but,
after having rescued a great number of children from vice and
misery, have at a heavy expense trained them up in the
habits of industry and religion, and rendered them (before
a load upon society) now some of its most useful members."
These gloomy anticipations were soon found to be base-
less. The bark of the Act was worse than its bite ; the
magistrates and parsons appointed as visitors did not push
matters to uncomfortable extremes, and in most places it
154 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
was left to the employers to decide whether or to what
extent they should obey the law. The instance of Back-
barrow, quoted above, shows how this discretion was some-
times exercised. 1 An attempt to help the parish apprentices
at the other end, by forbidding them to be sent more than
forty miles from the indenturing parish, was made in 1811
by Mr. Wilbraham Bootle, who brought in a Bill to this
effect, 2 but faced with determined opposition from the
London parish authorities, who were in no mind lightly to
resign their liberty to dispose of superfluous children,
Mr. Bootle dropped the Bill and obtained the appointment
of a Committee instead. 3 This committee, of which
Romilly, Homer, and Whitbread were members, reported
on May 19, 1815. 4 " It would have been," they said,
" obviously an impracticable task to have attempted to
ascertain the number of parish apprentices bound from
various parts of England, to a distance from their parents,"
hence their inquiries were confined to parishes within the
Bills of Mortality, 5 where since 1767 (by 7 George in. c. 39,
1 Some returns relative to mills and factories pursuant to an Address
of the House of Commons of March 8, 1810, are contained in H. O., 42. 104.
In them the Middlesex Deputy Clerk of the Peace makes the pertinent
remark : "If the Parliament intended this Act should have any Effect the
Entry should have been enforced by a penalty, and it should have been
someone's Business to see it enforced ; as it is, it will ever remain a Dead
Letter, and will soon be ranked amongst the Obsolete Acts."
2 In 1807 a Bill for the better regulation of Parish Apprentices, intro-
duced by Colonel Bathurst, had passed the House of Commons. Curwen,
on its introduction, remarked that he had recently met a caravan in the
north of England with sixty children crowded into it. The Duke of Norfolk
obtained the rejection of the Bill in the House of Lords on the grounds that
a clause which bound children to attend the Established Church every
Sunday unless they were of a different persuasion, might induce some of
them to say that they were of a different persuasion " in order that they
might obtain the day for the purposes of play." See Parliamentary Register,
June 30, July 13, July 16, and July 27.
3 See Romilly on this in his Diary (Life, ii. 188 and 203). Romilly had
suggested the inclusion in the Bill of a clause postponing the payment of
premiums. " Instances (and not very few) have occurred in our tribunals,
of wretches who have murdered their parish apprentices, that they might
get fresh premiums with new apprentices."
4 The Report is printed in the Annual Register for that year.
* The Bills of Mortality were annual returns of births and deaths within
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 155
Hanway's Act) lists of parish apprentices had been kept.
It is noteworthy that Peel estimated the number of parish
apprentices hi cotton mills to whom his 1802 Bill would
apply as 20,000^ The demand for parish children, owing
to changes in the system of manufacture, had fallen con-
siderably since then. The committee found that in the
ten years from 1802-11 inclusive, out of 5816 children
in all from these parishes, 2026 were bound to persons
in the country, and of these three-quarters were bound
to masters in the cotton trade. Inquiries were made about
the fate of these two thousand children, with results which
are startling, when we recollect that public attention
had long been drawn to these apprentices, and an Act
passed on their behalf thirteen years before.
Now serving under indenture .... 644
Served their tune, and now in the same employ . 108
Served and settled elsewhere .... 99
Dead 80
Enlisted in the army or navy .... 86
Quitted their service, chiefly run away . . .166
Not bound to the person mentioned in the return
kept by the company of parish clerks . . 58
Sent back to their friends ..... 57
Transferred to tradesmen in different parts of the
kingdom ........ 246
Incapable of service . . . . . . 18
Not accounted for or mentioned 5
In parish workhouses ...... 26
Not satisfactorily or intelligibly accounted for by the
persons to whom they were bound, or by the over-
seers where the masters have become bankrupts . 433
2026
various parishes in London and Westminster, and some out-parishes in
Middlesex and Surrey.
1 " Was it a small matter that twenty thousand children, who hitherto
had been abandoned to ignorance, were to be instructed ? That so many
children, before neglected, naked, and given up to all manner of profligacy,
should now be instructed in religion and morality, made good members of
the Christian Church, and good subjects of the Government ? " Parlia-
mentary Register, May 18, 1802.
156 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
The committee passed severe strictures on the system
of binding children to masters at a distance, and a few
days after their report Mr. Wilbraham Bootle again pre-
sented a Bill to limit the radius within which they might
be apprenticed to forty miles. This Bill passed the
Commons, but met with opposition in the Lords, and was
held over till next session. The following year (1816) it
passed both Houses, 1 and the carts ceased to dump their
^ living freights at the mill doors.
(/ If we date the factory system as beginning in 1775, 2
we see that it took over forty years for the rulers of England [
to stop this wholesale cruelty. But the system was dying
of itself, and another form of child labour had grown up. \
The change from water power to steam made it possible
to build mills and factories in towns, and to employ the
children of the neighbourhood instead of imported appren-
tices. In the early days of the factory system the
operatives refused to let their own children enter the mills,
but economic pressure in time wore down this reluctance.
The hand-loom weavers during the slow decay of their
industry could only keep the wolf from their doors by
means of their children's earnings. 3 " Formerly," said
one of them, " when weaving was better, the weavers hi
general employed the children in their own houses ; in
consequence of that, they had an opportunity of bringing
them up, and giving them good moral instruction ; now,
since the weavers' wages have been reduced so extremely
low, they send them to the factories, and that is one great
grievance to the feelings of a moral man, that he is not
able to bring up his children under his own eye. . . ." 4
When a weaver's wages had sunk to 6s. 6d. a week, the
1 56 George in. c. 139. London children might not be apprenticed more
than forty miles away, children from parishes over forty miles from London
might be apprenticed at a greater distance, provided the justices specially
authorised it.
8 Cunningham, op. cit., p. 346.
s Cf. "Printed Addresses from an Old Weaver" in H. O., 42. 122 and
40. 1.
Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p. 397.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 157
earnings of his children in the factory became an integral
part of the family income, and parish relief was refused if
he had children whom he could send into the mill. Some-
times, too, an adult worker was only given work on con-
Uition that he brought children with him. 1 Thus grew
p that disastrous system under which the children of the
family were looked upon as breadwinners, and the prosperity
of the English manufactures was based on this helpless
misery. How, Robert Owen was asked, could the children be
supported if they did not go to work till they were twelve ?
" I recollect the period well," he answered, " when there
were not any manufactories in several parts of the country
(I speak of England and Wales) and the children, as far
as I recollect, of the poor, were then as well fed, as well
clothed, and, as far as my memory serves me, looked as
well as now, and few or none of them were employed regu-
larly until they were twelve, thirteen, and fourteen years
of age." 2 The usual, and so to speak, the official age, at
which these free children began their mill life was six or
seven, but Robert Owen stated that many were employed
under that age, at four or five, 3 and in one instance he had
heard of a baby of three working. " The way," he said, T| i
" in which many of these infants are first employed is to \^
pick up the waste cotton from the floor ; to go under T
the machines, where bigger people cannot creep, and the \
smaller they are the more conveniently they can go under
the machines." 4
When once children had become wage earners, their
working life differed little from that of the apprentices
already described. They entered the mill gates at 5 or
6 A.M., they left them (at earliest) at 7 or 8 P.M., Saturdays
included. All this time they were shut up in temperature
varying from 75 to 85. The only respite during the fourteen
1 See Sadler's Committee, 1832, pp. 124-6.
Before Peel's Committee, 1816.
* In the Baptist Sunday-school at Manchester there were two factory
children of five years old and five of five and a half years. See Whitelegg'a
Evidence before Peel's Committee, 1816.
4 lbid. y p. 88.
158 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
or fifteen hours' confinement was afforded by meal hours,
at most half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner.
But regular meal hours were privileges for adults only : l
to the children for three or four days a week they meant
merely a change of work ; instead of tending a machine
that was running, they cleaned a machine that was stand-
ing still, snatching and swallowing their food as best they
could in the midst of dust and flue. Children soon lost
all relish for meals eaten in the factory. The flue used
to choke their lungs. When spitting failed to expel it,
emetics were freely given. 2
The work on which these children were engaged was
often described as light and easy, in fact almost as an
amusement, requiring attention but not exertion. Three-
fourths of the children were " piecers " that is, engaged in
joining together or piecing the threads broken in the various
roving and spinning machines. Others were employed in
sweeping up the waste cotton, or removing and replac-
ing bobbins. 3 Fielden (1784-1849), the enlightened and
humane employer who represented Oldham with Cobbett,
and shares the laurels that grace the memory of Shaftes-
bury and Sadler, made an interesting experiment to measure
the physical strain that the children endured. Struck
with some statements made by factory delegates about the
miles a child walked a day in following the spinning machine,
he submitted the statements to a practical test in his own
factory, and found to his amazement that in twelve hours
the distance covered was not less than twenty miles. 4
There were indeed short intervals of leisure, but no seats
to sit on, sitting being contrary to rules. The view that
the piecers' work was really light was best given by Mr.
Tufnell, one of the Factory Commissioners. Three-fourths
of the children, he says, are engaged as piecers at mules,
1 Baines, History of Cotton Manufacture, p. 462, quotes a mill where
mechanics have half an hour for tea, but this is not allowed to children
and other workers.
a See Mr. Price's evidence before Peel's Committee, 1816.
8 See Baines, op. cit., pp. 456 and 459.
4 Fielden 's Curse of the Factory System, p. 40.
!
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 159
and whilst the mules are receding there is nothing to be
done, and the piecers stand idle for about three-quarters
of a minute. From this he deduces the conclusion that
if a child is nominally working twelve hours a day, "for nine
hours he performs no actual labour" or if, as is generally the
case, he attends two mules, then " his leisure is six hours
instead of nine." l
The fourteen or fifteen hours' confinement for six days .
a week were the " regular " hours : in busy times hours I
were elastic and sometimes stretched to a length that seems
almost incredible. Work from 3 A.M. to 10 P.M. was not
unknown ; in Mr. Varley's mill, all through the summer,
they worked from 3.30 A.M. to 9.30 P.M. 2 At the mill,
aptly called " Hell Bay," for two months at a time, they
not only worked regularly from 5 A.M. to 9 P.M., but
for two nights each week worked all through the night
as well. 3 The more humane employers contented them-
selves when busy with a spell of sixteen hours (5 A.M.
to 9 P.M.).
It was physically impossible to keep such a system work-
ing at all except by the driving power of terror. The
overseers who gave evidence before Sadler's Committee
did not deny that their methods were brutal. They said
that they had either to exact the full quota of work, or to
be dismissed, and in these circumstances pity was a luxury
that men with families depending upon them could not
allow themselves. The punishments for arriving late in the
morning had to be made cruel enough to overcome the
temptation to tired children to take more than three or
four hours in bed. One witness before Sadler's Committee
had known a child, who had reached home at eleven o'clock
one night, get up at two o'clock next morning in panic
and limp to the mill gate. 4 In some mills scarcely an hour
passed in the long day without the sound of beating and
1 Quoted Baines, op. cit., p. 459.
Evidence of Richard Cotton before Sadler's Committee.
* Evidence of Alonzo Hargraves before Sadler's Committee.
4 Evidence of A. Whitehead (a clothier) before Sadler's Committee.
160 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
cries of pain. 1 Fathers beat their own children to save
them from a worse beating by other overseers. In the
afternoon the strain grew so severe that the heavy iron
stick known as the billy-roller was in constant use, and,
even then, it happened not infrequently that a small child,
as he dozed, tumbled into the machine beside him to be
mangled for life, or, if he were fortunate, to find a longer
Lethe than his stolen sleep. In one mill indeed, where the
owner, a Mr. Gott, had forbidden the use of anything but
a ferule, some of the slubbers tried to keep the children
awake, when they worked from 5 in the morning to 9 at
night, by encouraging them to sing hymns. As the evening
wore on the pain and fatigue and tension on the mind
became insupportable. Children would implore any one
who came near to tell them how many hours there were
still before them. A witness told Sadler's Committee that
his child, a boy of six, would say to him, " ' Father, what
o'clock is it ? ' I have said perhaps it is seven o'clock.
' Oh, is it two hours to nine o'clock ? I cannot bear it.' " 2
Oastler was once in the company of a West Indian slave-
master and three Bradford spinners. The four fell to
talking about their different labour systems, and when the
slave-master heard what were the children's hours he was
astounded. " Well," he observed, " I have always thought
myself disgraced by being the owner of slaves, but we never
in the West Indies thought it possible for any human being
to be so cruel as to require a child of nine years old to work
twelve and a half hours a day, and that, you acknowledge,
is your regular practice." 3 The little factory slaves were
the children of free men : some of brutal and callous parents,
many of parents who took them to the mill with broken
hearts, knowing the life that was before them, knowing
1 Evidence of M. Crabtree and Bennett (a slubber) before
Sadler's Committee.
Evidence of John Allett before Sadler's Committee.
* Oastler's evidence before Sadler's Committee. A doctor, J. R. Farre,
who gave evidence before Sadler's Committee, had formerly practised in
Barbadoes, and he said the adult negro slave worked shorter hours than
the factory child.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 161
also that unless they took them the parish would leave
them to starve.
We have seen that as early as 1802 speakers in Parlia-
ment declared the condition of these children to be as bad
as or worse than that of the apprentices. This was quite
true, but it was not till 1815 that any steps were taken to
reform it. It was Sir Robert Peel again, incited by Robert
Owen, who took the first step in Parliament. In 1802
Peel had deprecated any interference with the labour of
children living at home. Yet here again he had the courage
and honesty publicly to change his mind when Owen proved
to him that he was in the wrong. He saw that the growth
of factories in towns had created new conditions, and that
to call the children employed there free agents was a bitter
mockery. Peel began his efforts on behalf of the free
children by introducing, in June 1815, a Bill, drawn up at
Owen's instigation, to amend and extend the 1802 Act.
According to this Bill, which applied to all cotton, woollen,
flax and other mills, manufactories and buildings, no child,
whether apprenticed or not, was to work under ten years
old, and the factory hours for children were limited to
twelve and a half a day, of which ten and a half only were to
be spent in " laborious employment " and the remaining two
in meals and education. As the inspection under the 1802
Act was admittedly inefficient, Peel proposed that proper
persons should be appointed for the work at Quarter
Sessions, and paid for their trouble. Peel did not wish
the Bill to pass that session, but wished it to be printed
and circulated during the recess. William Smith and
Horner welcomed the proposal, but Philips, a big mill-
owner, gave a foretaste of the stubborn opposition he was
to offer later. 1 The Bill was put off for three months on
the report stage, and next year (1816), instead of reintro-
ducing it, Peel, to Owen's disgust, moved for a committee
to consider the state of children in manufactories. This
1 Brotherton, M.P. for Salford, said in the House of Commons on May 9,
1836, that all the master spinners of Manchester except himself opposed the
Bill (Wing, Evils of the Factory System, p. 397).
L
162 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
committee took the evidence of forty-three witnesses, not
one of them a worker. The witnesses fall roughly into
three groups, doctors, advocates of the children's cause,
and employers or their agents. The first group, of doctors,
all agreed with more or less emphasis that the existing con-
ditions of work must be deleterious to the health of young
children, one of them basing his objection to long hours
on " the natural appetency of all young creatures to loco-
motive exercise and the open air." l The second group
of advocates of the children were many of them merchants,
and most of them had come into contact with the chil-
dren through Sunday-schools. Some were men who from
motives of sheer humanity devoted their lives and incomes
to the effort to obtain legislation. They all testified to
the misery and to the ill-health of the children. One of
them, Theodore Price, a magistrate, declared, " I never
will sign an indenture to a cotton mill so long as I live
that is, under the present existing laws." Some laid stress
on the injury to morals as well as to health, disregard of
the Sabbath and grosser crimes being mixed up in the
indictment. The generation that was being reared in
these conditions was vividly described by one witness :
" Their conduct on a Sunday is such, that females as well as
men, insult often their well-behaved superiors in the streets,
and that to such a degree that well-behaved, discreet
gentlemen, even if they meet the factory people, will, if pos-
sible, go on the other side of the street to avoid them." 2
The third group of employers or employers' spokesmen,
with the exception of Robert Owen and Sir Robert Peel,
ridiculed the idea that the children were overworked.
They admitted that the regular factory hours varied from
thirteen to fifteen a day : that is, from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M., or
from 5 A.M. to 8 P.M., with sometimes half an hour, some-
times an hour for dinner, and other meals usually taken
at work, but these hours, they said, agreed with the children
wonderfully. Factory children, they urged, were healthier,
1 Sir Gilbert Blane, p. 45.
8 Evidence of Mr. George Gould, fustian merchant.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 163
more intelligent, more moral than others : looks, they
pleaded, are deceptive : when long hours have to be
worked, said the manager of Mr. Gott's mills, the children
are less tired than the adults. For the children's sake they
deprecated shorter hours, it would be exceedingly prejudicial
to their morals to let them out earlier. " Nothing," said
one of these philanthropists, who worked his children from
6 A.M. to 8 P.M., " is more favourable to morals than habits
of early subordination, industry, and regularity." l They
all agreed that legislative interference would spell ruin to
the country and put money into foreigners' pockets. Some
of these employers came from other trades, dreading
inclusion in the Bill : amongst them was Josiah Wedgwood
the younger, who had never heard of any evil effects of
overwork in the potteries.
The unanimity of the employer witnesses was broken,
as we have said, by Owen and Peel. Owen might be, in
some respects, a man of splendid visions, but in this matter
he was a man of practical experience, who had tested the
effect of different hours on output. Peel underwent a
searching cross-examination, in which his past misdeeds
and his inconsistencies were mercilessly exposed. He
suggested certain alterations in the 1815 Bill, made, no
doubt, in deference to the millowners' cry of foreign
competition. The age at which children might be employed
was put at nine instead of ten, and the factory hours were
lengthened to thirteen, of which one and a half were to be
spent in meals and recreation. Here again his honesty
prevented him from thinking such a proposal the best thing
for the children. " At present," he said, " the hours
allotted to the employment of children may be said to
exceed their strength, but that being a peculiar business in
which adults and children are employed promiscuously,
we could not do justice to one without injury to the other,
and therefore the time allowed for the working of those mills
being thirteen hours, deducting one and a half hours for
meals and recreation, will not place our foreign trade in any
1 Evidence of Mr. G. A. Lee, cotton millowner.
164 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
unfavourable situation, because no foreigners are known
to work the same number of hours."
The evidence given before this committee was published,
but, owing to Peel's illness, no measure was brought for-
ward in Parliament till early in 1818. It was preceded
by two significant petitions from the grown-up cotton
factory operatives of Manchester and Bolton, for a shorten-
ing of their hours. The Manchester petitioners pointed
out that they worked in the factories " from fourteen to
fifteen hours, including the time allowed for dinner, every
day of the week, except Saturday, when the working hours
are somewhat reduced," that this work, performed in ill-
ventilated, over-heated rooms, with dust and cotton flying
about, had most injurious consequences to their health,
and " that the Petitioners, in representing their unfortunate
situation, beg leave to observe, that they also feel the un-
happy condition of young children working in factories,
who in many instances are connected with the Petitioners
by the dearest ties of relationship." They ended by pray-
ing " that a law may be passed to restrict the time of actual
labour in Cotton Factories to Ten hours and a half each
day, so as to allow within the ordinary space of twelve
hours, half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner." l
The petition from Manchester was presented by Sir
Robert Peel, who declared that the sight of the miserable
men who brought it up had moved him v to tears. A few
days later (Feb. 19, 1818) he presented a Bill applying to
cotton mills and factories only. This Bill, in which, as
he afterwards explained, he had tried to reconcile the relief
of the labouring class with the interests of the proprietors,
was less drastic than the 1815 measure. It prohibited any
children under nine from working. The factory hours, as
in the 1815 Bill, were to be limited to twelve and a half,
but now one hour was to be taken for dinner and half an
1 House of Commons Journal, February 10, 1818; Cf. Chapman, Cotton
Industry, p. 97. Cf. also H. O., 42. 179. Hollis, one of the spinners sent
up to London with petitions, said many petitions were sent up after the
end of the sessions.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 165
hour for breakfast, so that the time for actual " laborious
employment " was to be eleven hours. The important
clause, that, instead of the magistrate and clergyman
visitors of the 1802 Act, duly qualified persons should be
appointed by Quarter Sessions and adequately paid for their
trouble, was retained. This Bill passed safely through
the House of Commons, hi spite of .a good deal of vehement
opposition. 1 Most of the protagonists on either side
spoke more than once. The Peels, William Smith, Burdett,
and Wilberforce spoke for the Bill, and Philips and Finlay
(both millowners), Lord Lascelles, Lord Stanley, and Sir
James Graham spoke against it. The " established prin-
ciple which gave the parent the labour of his child during
his minority so long as he gave him adequate support "
was invoked against the Bill. Philips grew so eloquent
about the healthy ' Delights' of life in cotton mills, that the
younger Peel retorted that cotton factories had better be
erected by the State as health resorts. Philips also attacked
the idea of interference with a candid avowal that " The
low rate at which we had been able to sell our manufacture
on the Continent, in consequence of the low rate of labour
here, had depressed the continental manufactures, and
raised the English much more than any interference could
do." 2 He also warned the House that the consequence
of an attempt to regulate labour would be to " spread
Luddism through the whole country." 3 Canning probably
represented the majority of the House when he declared
himself anxious to hear the question discussed, " If ever
he came to the House without prejudice respecting any
subject, it was with respect to this subject. The only
prejudice he felt was the conviction resulting from all
speculations on political economy, in favour of non-inter-
ference between man and man. But that degree, not of
prejudice, but of disinclination, was, by mere examination,
he would not say changed, but become the ground of much
1 For an excellent summary of the Debates, see Smart, Economic Annalt,
chap. xxx. Hansard, April 27, 1818.
Hansard, February 23, 1818.
166 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
desire to hear discussion upon the subject." 1 Sir Robert
Peel stated that the master manufacturers who supported
the Bill were more numerous than those who opposed it ;
and the Stockport petition for the Bill was signed by seven-
teen master manufacturers. Many of them, he added,
wished the provisions to be extended to adults. It was
clear that the adults would have welcomed shorter hours,
even at the price of lower wages. 2
Though the 1818 Bill passed the Commons, it was
killed in the other House by Lauderdale, the inveterate
opponent of all measures to protect the weak by State
interference. Lauderdale (1759-1839), who had been a
fierce opponent of Pitt, was now on the brink of the
political change, which he formally made hi 1821, but
his economic ideas remained throughout fixed and un-
yielding. His Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of
Public Wealth had given him a certain position as an
economist which survived even his heavy and awkward
humour. Sheridan once said about a good story : " Don't
tell that to Lauderdale, for a joke hi his mouth is no laugh-
ing matter." This was very true of the witticisms with
which he enlivened his exposition of laissez-faire doctrine,
and no man contrived to make political economy so terrible
a muse for the poor. Lauderdale destroyed the Bill for
the session by persuading the House of Lords to ask for
further evidence. He professed himself able to produce
medical witnesses to prove that factory children had
excellent health, and that employment in cotton factories
tended to promote growth. He kept his promise, and
certainly undermined the position of those who had relied,
in their advocacy of the Bill, not on common-sense but on
medical evidence. Lord Liverpool said bluntly that all
the medical staff of Manchester could not make him believe
that children would not be overworked by fifteen hours
a day, but these distinguished doctors would not commit
themselves to such bold generalisations. At the invitation and
under the auspices of some of the masters they had visited
1 Howard, April 17, 1818. See speeches of Peel and William Smith.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 167
factories, or specially selected rooms in factories, and had
seen that everything was satisfactory. They would only
testify to what they had seen, and refused to be inveigled
into any a priori opinions as to the length of time a child
could work without injury to health. One well-known
doctor even refused to commit himself to the statement
that a child's health would be injured by standing for
twenty-three out of the twenty-four hours. As a result
of their evidence l Lauderdale could declare it proved that
parents of weakly children eagerly sought for their admis-
sion into factories.
The master spinners of Manchester evidently thought
that the agitation was safely over. A curious light is
thrown on their attitude by Mr. Norris, the Manchester
stipendiary. In September 1818 he wrote to the Home
Office to say that the master spinners had been consider-
ing the question of hours, and had resolved " to restrict
them to twelve working hours per day. This may prevent
any further discussion on this point in Parliament." 2 The
resolution however does not seem to have taken effect,
and in January 1819 he wrote again : " Great and I think
not unfounded apprehension of some mischief again occur-
ring is entertained by the master spinners from the manner
in which Mr. Gould is again moving amongst the operatives
the question of time, etc. They believe that this was the
main origin of the late turn out, and that if again agitated
the same result is sure to follow ; this is an uniform opinion
amongst them." 8
Next year (1819) Lauderdale was less successful. The
friends of the Bill proposed another committee to take
more evidence. Lauderdale, who the year before had
been indignant at the suggestion that their lordships should
" encroach upon that great principle of political economy,
that labour ought to be left free " without investigating
the subject, was now averse to further inquiry. Thanks,
however, to the earnest advocacy of the Bishop of Chester
1 House of Lords Committee, 1818.
8 H. O., 42. 180. H. O., 42. 183.
168 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
(George Henry Law (1761-1845), afterwards Bishop of Bath
and Wells), who, since the question had been discussed,
had taken the trouble to visit the mills in his diocese, and
declared the conditions destructive to children's lives ;
and thanks also to the support of Lord Liverpool and
Lord Holland, Lord Kenyon succeeded in getting another
committee appointed. To those who pinned their faith
to medical evidence the results must have seemed bewilder-
ing, for the medical men who appeared before this Committee
gave opinions diametrically opposed to those of their
colleagues before the 1818 Committee. The most interest-
ing evidence was that of some operatives, who told of
the long hours, the heat, the food made nauseous by flue
and dust, the use of the lash to enforce attention. One
portrait of a master is perhaps worth quoting : the witness,
John Farebrother, was explaining that his master made
him, when he was overlooker, beat the children when he
failed to extract a certain quantity of work from them :
" Which master was that ? ... Mr. Luke Taylor ; I have
seen him with a horsewhip under his coat waiting at the
top of the place, and when the children have come up, he
has lashed them all the way into the mill if they were too
late : and the children had half a mile to come, and be
at the mill at five o'clock." l These operatives paid the
penalty of their courageous revelations, and on their return
to Lancashire had very great difficulty in getting employ-
ment again. 2
The result of this inquiry was the passing through both
Houses of the 1819 Cotton Factories Regulation Act. 3
This Act is often called Peel's Act, but it is perhaps unfair
to his memory to give it this name, for it was Peel's Bill
altered, with its best features eliminated. It was intro-
1 House of Lords Committee, 1819.
1 See Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p. 412 f. "When
they returned home they were flung out of employment, and so persecuted
by the masters throughout the country that they had no employment for
weeks and months after ; and some of them were obliged to leave the
country for America, in consequence of giving evidence.'*
* 59 George ni. c. 66.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 169
duced by Kenyon in the Lords, and passed thence down
to the Commons, where it was not debated. By this Act,
which applied to cotton mills and factories only, no child
under nine was to be employed, and for children between
the ages of nine to sixteen the factory hours were to be
limited to thirteen and a half, of which half an hour was
to be spent on breakfast and one hour on dinner, leaving
twelve, or the same number as that allowed by the 1802
Act, for actual work. Night work was also forbidden. It is
worth noting that Peel had originally, in 1815, in his first
speech, proposed ten hours as the period for actual work.
The great blemish of the Act was that it left the old arrange-
ments for inspection by a magistrate and a clergyman
unchanged, thus destroying its whole efficacy. An amend-
ing Act allowing greater latitude for overtime was passed
next year (1820), but, except for the purpose of relieving
employers with specially sensitive consciences, this Act
was unnecessary, for the 1819 measure was a dead
letter. 1 In 1825 John Cam Hobhouse could state that
only two convictions had ever taken place under the Act,
although it was well known that in the best managed
mills the children's actual working hours were twelve and
a half, and in other mills fifteen or sixteen.
Hobhouse himself brought in a Bill in 1825 with the
object of preventing evasions of the 1819 Act, by making
the attendance of witnesses compulsory. This Bill, in its
original form, also reduced the hours of actual work from
twelve to eleven, as Peel had proposed hi 1818. Hornby
objected to this reduction as being equal to a diminution
of the total annual production of two and a half million
1 For Reports from Visitors in 1823 and 1824, see H. O., 62. 3 and
44. 14. The committee appointed for the hundred of Leyland reported
to the Quarter Sessions at Preston " that they have not found any instance
whatsoever in which the Acts . . . have been observed either as respects
the employment of children being less than nine years of age, or as to
whitewashing or ventilating the said manufactories." The visitors for
the parish of Winwick profess that they are ashamed to send their report,
knowing that it is " replete with equivocation and deceit," i.e. that they
have been deceived. Colonel Fletcher of Bolton reports that the children
under nine were hidden from the visitors' sight.
170 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
pounds. Hobhouse boldly retorted that it would be
" better to give up the cotton trade altogether than to draw
such a sum out of the blood, and bones, and sinews of
these unfortunate children." * Peel the younger gave but
a lukewarm support to Hobhouse's proposal, doubting the
policy of limiting hours. Philips again argued that
managers of cotton mills were the best judges of what
regulations were necessary, and Hobhouse, in face of
opposition, found it necessary to drop his proposal to
shorten hours to eleven, and to confine himself to a reduc-
tion of hours on Saturday from twelve to nine. Altered in
this fashion, Hobhouse's Bill was allowed to pass both
Houses, Huskisson admitting that, though he disliked any
interference with free labour, yet, as Parliament had
decided on that policy in 1819, its action should be made
effective. Peel the younger, much changed from the
earlier Peel, who had declared it " disgusting " 2 to see
children sent to school after thirteen or fifteen hours of
bodily exertion, deprecated even the shortening of Saturday
hours without a Commission. A good feature of Hob-
house's Act 3 was that it forbade proprietors of mills or
their fathers or sons to hear complaints under the Act as
magistrates.
It is significant that Parliament had again refused to
go so far as the better masters themselves were willing to go.
During the course of the debates a petition was received
from several cotton employers in the Manchester district,
urging Parliament to prescribe an eleven and a half hours'
day, with eight and a half on Saturdays for all classes of
operatives, and stating that " the Petitioners would cheer-
fully of themselves adopt the above regulation, provided
there was a fair prospect of its becoming general." 4
History repeated itself hi 1831. Hobhouse, with the
full concurrence of the big manufacturers, brought in
another Bill, limiting the factory hours to thirteen, of which
Hansard, May 16, 1825. Hansard, April 27, 1818.
8 6 George iv. c. 63.
4 House of Commons Journal, May 16, 1825.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 171
eleven and a half were to be actual work, and prohibiting
night work to all persons under twenty-one. The provisions
were to apply not only to cotton mills as before, but to all
textile industries. This Bill met with a good deal of
opposition in the Parliament elected to pass the Reform
Bill. The Bill ultimately became an Act in a mutilated
form, cotton mills only being included in its scope, and the
old hours remaining unchanged. This Act ends the factory
legislation of our period. Children were left entirely
unprotected, except in the cotton industry, and in the
cotton industry their masters might work children of nine
for twelve hours a day exclusive of meal times. Such
regulations, however, as were imposed were academic,
for no effective machinery was provided to 'enforce them.
The struggle for the ten hours' day, led by Oastler and
Sadler, falls outside our scope ; but one of its incidents
fitly closes this subject. During the agitation over the
Reform Bill, Sadler was President of a Select Committee
of the House of Commons appointed to examine into
Factory Children's Labour. Before this committee there
files a long procession of workers, men and women, girls and
boys. Stunted, diseased, deformed, degraded, each with
the tale of his wronged life, they pass across the stage,
a living picture of man's cruelty to man, a pitiless indict-
ment of those rulers who in their days of unabated power
had abandoned the weak to the rapacity of the strong.
CHAPTER IX
THE EMPLOYMENT OP CHILDREN (II.)
MINES AND CHIMNEYS
WHEN the opponents of factory legislation found it
difficult to persuade reformers that the children working
in their mills were happy and well, they tried another
argument and asked why it was only children in the factories
that deserved the protection of the State. There was some
point hi the challenge. It was perhaps due to the general
habit of regarding the miners as a special and isolated world
that the scandal of the employment of children under-
ground attracted scarcely any notice at all. When the
Northumberland miners put their grievances before the
public in 1825 l they made a special point of the long hours
worked by boys, but Parliament seems to have ignored the
subject. We have occasional glimpses of this side of the
life of the pit in papers of the time, in references in the
Reports of Committees on Accidents, and in some infor-
mation collected by a Factory Commissioner in 1833.
But the earliest systematic presentation of the facts was
made hi 1842 in its First Report by the Commission on
the Employment of Children and Young Persons which was
appointed hi consequence of Lord Shaftesbury's efforts.
At that time boys were employed everywhere, girls in
certain districts, Lancashire, Cheshire, the West Riding
and South Wales, besides Scotland. In some of the dis-
tricts where girls were employed, they were apparently
employed as often as boys. Children were employed as
trappers, that is to open and shut the doors that guided
1 See A Voice from the Coal Mines.
1T2
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN
173
the draught of air through the mine ; as fillers, that is to fill
the skips and carriages when the men had hewn the coal ;
and as pushers, or hurriers, that is to push the trucks along
from the workers to the foot of the shaft. But in some
mines these trucks were drawn instead of being pushed.
" A girdle is put round the naked waist, to which a chain
from the carriage is hooked and passed between the legs,
and the boys crawl on their hands and knees, drawing the
carriage after them." l In the early years of the century
this arrangement was very common, and women and girls
were so employed. By 1842 it was more usual to have
small iron railways, and the carriages were pushed along
them. The trapping was done everywhere by children,
generally from five to eight years of age. 2 A girl of eight
years old described her day : " I 'm a trapper in the Gamber
Pit. I have to trap without a light, and I 'm scared. I go
at four and sometimes half -past three in the morning and
come out at five and half -past. I never go to sleep. Some-
times I sing when I 've light, but not in the dark : I dare
not sing then/' 3 One of the sub-commissioners remarked :
I can never forget the first unfortunate creature (of this
class) that I met with : it was a boy of about eight years
old, who looked at me as I passed through with an expres-
sion of countenance the most abject and idiotic like a thing,
j a creeping thing peculiar to the place." 4 The trappers ,
generally sat in a little hole, made at the side of the door,
holding a string in their hand, for twelve hours. As a rule
} they were in the dark, but sometimes a good-natured collier
1 would give them a bit of candle. In the West Riding the
1 Children's Employment Commission, First Report, Mines, 1842, p. 67.
" There are very few under six or seven who are employed to draw weights
with a girdle round the body, and those only where the roof of the pit in
so low for short distances as to prevent horses of the smallest size, or asses,
from being employed." Evidence of a medical gentleman about Shrop-
shire, ibid., p. 10.
1 A witness or viewer before the 1835 Select Committee on Accidents in
Mines declared that the mines would be " unworkable to profit " if adults
were employed as trappers.
* Children's Employment Commission, First Report, Mines, 1842, p. 71.
Ibid., p. 77.
174 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
work of hurrying or pushing the corves was often done by
girls at the time of the Report : " Chained, belted, harnessed
^ e ^S S m a " car ^> black, saturated with wet, and more
than half naked crawling upon their hands and feet,
and dragging their heavy loads behind them they present
an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural." l
" The hours varied in different parts of England. 2 The
Commission put them at twelve in Staffordshire, Shropshire,
Warwickshire, and Leicestershire, and at from thirteen to
sixteen in Derbyshire. In the north of Lancashire they
varied from eight to twelve, whereas in Oldham they were
sometimes fourteen or fifteen. In North Durham and
Northumberland they were sometimes as long as in Derby-
shire. Night work was common in Warwickshire, and
the usual practice in Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumberland,
and North Wales. It was not uncommon in Northumber-
land and North Durham, and cases had occurred of boys
working for forty-eight hours on end. The conditions and
treatment varied. The children who suffered most were
the apprentices from the workhouses : " these lads are
made to go where other men will not let their own children
go. If they will not do it, they take them to the magis-
trates, who commit them to prison." 3 There were more
apprentices in Staffordshire than anywhere else, but there
were a good many in the West Riding and in Lancashire.
Derbyshire was singled out as the worst county by the
Commission. This was partly due to the system of letting
the mines to " butties " or small contractors, partly to the
nature of the mines. In mines with thick seams it was
usual to make good roadways, but in less profitable mines
the roads were only just large enough to enable small children
1 Children's Employment Commission, First Report, Appendix;
Part ii., 1842, p. 75.
2 The Commission found considerable discrepancy between the state-
ments of hours from employers and employed, e.g. in the south part of the
West Riding the coalowners stated the working hours at six or seven a
day, the managers, agents, etc., at ten or eleven, the colliers at eleven,
and the children at twelve. The trappers, of course, were the first to come
and the last to go. * First Report, p. 41.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 175
to get the corves along them. " In many mines which are
at present worked, the main gates are only from twenty-
four inches to thirty inches high, and in some parts of these
mines the passages do not exceed eighteen inches in height." l
In this respect Derbyshire and the West Riding were among
the worst counties. It was reported that there was much
more cruelty in the Halifax pits than in those at Leeds
and Bradford. A sub-commissioner met a boy crying and
bleeding from a wound in the cheek, and his master ex-
plained " that the child was one of the slow ones, who
would only move when he saw blood, and that by throwing
a piece of coal at him for that purpose he had accomplished
his object, and that he often adopted the like means." 2
The witnesses, examined by a Factory Commissioner at
Worsley near Manchester in 1833, said that " purring,"
which was Lancashire for kicking, was a common way of
punishing boys and girls in the mines there. The Commis-
sioners of 1842 found that the coalowners took very little
interest in the children employed in their mines after their
daily work was over, and it is certainly not difficult to believe
this, seeing that when Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister,
and delighting England by his graceful friendship with
the young Queen, the children were working in his mines
from 6 o'clock in the morning to 8 o'clock at night. In
Lord Balcarres's pits at Aspall Moor the children worked
from 5 A.M. to 6 P.M., and some of them were workhouse
apprentices. The conditions seemed scandalous enough
to the Commission in 1842, but in some respects, at any
rate, the children were worse off twenty years earlier. 3
Thus one witness said that when he began to work, at eight
years old, as doorkeeper in Felling Pit in 1798, he used
to be eighteen or twenty hours down the pit without coming
up. Another witness, an underviewer, said that thirty-five
1 Children's Employment Commission, First Repoi ;, p. 45.
2 Ibid., p. 130.
8 George Stephenson told the Select Committee on Accidents in 1835
that children were formerly employed at a younger age, and used to be
carried on their fathers' backs to the mines. He was not aware that it hurt
their health.
I
176 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
years back the boys used to work from 2 A.M. to 8 or
9 P.M. Another witness described the life of a pit-boy
fifty years earlier. The boys began at six to eight years
old, as trappers, and were paid fivepence a day. From
twelve or fourteen to seventeen or eighteen they worked
as putters or drivers, being harnessed two together to drag
their heavy loads. Their hours were from 2 A.M. to 8 or
7 10 P.M. every day except Saturday. In busy times they
never saw the daylight from Sunday to Saturday afternoon.
The Commissioners reported in 1842, speaking of the
worst practices in the West Riding, that the proprietors
disclaimed all responsibility and concern. It is difficult
to imagine that the proprietors anywhere else were more
sensitive. They included men of great power and
influence, men like Lord Londonderry, Lord Durham,
Lord Melbourne, Lord Granville. These noblemen did not
wash their hands of the business that made their wealth,
for they took an active part in putting down strikes
and crushing Trade Unions. 1 They differed on many
questions, but on those questions they were in agreement.
Lord Melbourne made it pretty clear in 1832 that he would
have liked to re-enact the old Combination Law, in order
to deal with the Miners' Unions. 2 But not one of them
seems ever to have opened his mouth on the subject of
the slave children in their mines, or supposed that they
were under the slightest obligations to the society that
gave them their wealth and power. 3
The factories and the mines were responsible for the
greatest sum of infant misery, but there is an instance of
the refusal of protection to children which is, in a sense,
more surprising. Throughout this period efforts were
being made to rescue the little children whose business it
1 Lord Granville gave his manager in his Staffordshire pits orders to
discharge any men belonging to the Union (Select Committee on Accidents
in Mines, 1835, Wm. Forrester's evidence).
8 See Speech in House of Lords, June 29, 1832.
8 The coalowners, in their manifesto during the strike of 1832, said that
they paid trappers tenpence a day for work that merely required attention.
See Coalowners' Manifesto, Newcastle Chronicle, March 17.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 177
was to climb the chimneys in large houses, and yet the
period closes without the passing of a single measure to
protect them beyond the Act of 1788, which was very
modest on paper, and absolutely ineffective in practice.
In this case there were no powerful interests concerned ;
even the most vivid imagination could not discover any
danger from foreign competition, and the miserable little
boys were not shut up in some remote factory, but were
crawling about in the arteries of the great houses occupied
by the legislators themselves. It is worth while to tell in
some detail the story of the chimney-sweepers' apprentices.
The use of children for sweeping chimneys was a practice
peculiar to the British Isles. It came into vogue in English
towns early in the eighteenth century, but did not spread
to Scotland till about 1788. 1 On the Continent it was un-
known. As chimneys developed from wide funnels into
narrow and complicated flues their cleaning became a more
difficult matter ; and the discovery of human brushes that
could crawl along any flue, however sharp the angles and
however winding the passage, encouraged builders to
further feats of complexity. This change in chimneys,
which reflected a change in domestic habits, is well described
by a correspondent in the Annual Register of 1787. 2 This
gentleman went to live in an old mansion near Exeter in
1777. " But as in most of the old houses in England," he
says, " the chimneys, which were perhaps originally built
for the purpose of burning wood, though they had been
contracted in front, since coal fires came into general use, to
the modern size, yet they were still above, out of sight,
extravagantly large. This method of building chimneys
may perhaps have answered well enough while it was the
custom to sit with the doors and windows open ; but when
the customs and manners of the people began to be more
polished and refined, when building and architecture were
improved, and they began to conceive the idea of making
their chambers close, warm, and comfortable, these chimneys
1 Evidence before Lords Committee, 1818, p. 88; and Report, House of
Lords Journal, May 18, 1818. P. 85.
M
178 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
were found to smoke abominably, for want of a sufficient
supply of air." He explains how he contrived to contract
the chimney, leaving only a space of twelve by fourteen or
sixteen inches for a boy to go up and down.
There are no exact records of the number of chimney-
sweeps, masters, journeymen, and apprentices. Two
hundred masters is the number estimated for London in
1797, 1804, and 1817. 1 In all these estimates, twenty only
are stated to be hi easy circumstances, and hence able to
treat their apprentices well. In the estimates of 1804 and
1817, five hundred is given as the total number of apprentices
hi London, of whom eighty to a hundred were bound to
the twenty prosperous masters. A witness in 1817 cal-
culated that in England, exclusive of London, there were
about five hundred climbing boys, 2 so that the whole
number may be roughly put at four hundred masters and
one thousand boys.
The boys were, as a rule, children whom nobody wanted.
Many were paupers apprenticed to their masters by parish
authorities, who were too glad to get rid of the burden of
their maintenance to trouble about their fate. Others were
sold by inhuman parents for two or three guineas : the
smaller the child, the better the price : and the parents
would take them round and dispose of them to the highest
bidder. A few were kidnapped or enticed away. In one
instance of this kind, which created a good deal of com-
motion, the little victim of four was sold by a beggar woman
for as much as eight guineas. 3
" Is not 8 a large price ? " a master chimney-sweep,
who had been offered a boy for that sum, was asked in
1818. " Oh yes, very large." " Why was so large a price
asked for that boy ? " " Because this is a free country."
" Was he a small boy ? " " Yes, very small of his age." 4
1 See Reports of Society on the Poor, i. p. 110; and House of Commons
Report on Chimney Sweeps, 1817, p. 7.
* Mr. Wm. Tooke, before 1817 Committee, Evidence, p. 33.
1817 Report, Evidence, p. 34.
4 House of Lords 1818 Report, p. 40.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 179
Some were the children of master chimney-sweeps. When
girls were employed, as was sometimes the case (e.g. two
girls of the name of Morgan swept the chimneys of Windsor
Castle 1 ), they were usually the children of the sweeps. The
age at which the children began their career in climbing
varied : some were apprenticed as young as four or five,
most were from six to eight.
They started with a period of extreme misery, mental
and physical, until they became inured to their trade.
Their terror of the pitch-dark and often suffocating passage
had to be overcome by the pressure of a greater terror below.
In order to induce them to climb up, the more humane
masters would threaten to beat them, or perhaps only
promise them plum-pudding at the top ; the less humane
would set straw on fire below or thrust pins into their
feet. A careful master would send an experienced child up
behind to show the newcomer how to place his feet and to
catch him if he fell. Sometimes the seasoned boy would
bring up pins to prevent halts in mid-chimney. When
the " repugnance " of ascending the chimney, as it was
euphemistically called, had been overcome, there followed
many months of acute physical suffering from the sores
on elbows and knees. Gradually these parts would grow
insensible. " Some boys' flesh," said a master in 1817,
" is far worse than others, and it takes more time to harden
them." He estimated that it took six months, as a rule,
for the parts affected to grow " cartilaginous." 2 The
more humane masters would work them leniently during
this time, but " you must keep them a little at it even
during the sores, or they will never learn their business."
When their extremities were hardened and their fears
subdued, they settled down to their grimy lives. The best
masters made a practice of washing them once a week ;
the less careful would leave them unwashed from year's
end to year's end. A witness in 1788 stated that he had
known many boys serve four or five years without being
1 1817 Report, Evidence, p. 29.
1 Ibid., p. 19.
180 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
once washed. 1 Some masters used to take them to the
New River on Sunday mornings in the summer, but leave
them coated with soot all the whiter. 2 They slept almost
invariably, with the soot, in a cellar : sometimes on bags
of soot, with another bag to cover them : sometimes on
straw, and occasionally on a mattress. Part of the appren-
tices' duty was to advertise their masters by " crying the
streets," a practice deprecated by the more prosperous
sweeps, who did not need this advertisement. " There is
nearly as much reason/' wrote the Bishop of Durham in
1799, "for sending round the bricklayer's lad, with his hod
of mortar ajid a few bricks, screaming his master into that
employment which neither his situation or character would
otherwise give him any pretension to, as the loading with
his bag and implements of trade, a little child already
suffering by dirt, hunger, cold, and the want of domestic
comfort ; and sending him to disturb the streets by his
cries, till some unknown person calls him in, and employs
him hi his trade." 3
rAs may easily be imagined, the occupation of a chimney-
sweep was both dangerous and unhealthy. A disease known
as chimney-sweep's cancer was common, and unless it
was treated with the knife at an early stage it was fatal.
Apart from the dangers of suffocation in narrow or hori-
zontal flues, the boys ran the risk of being burnt either when
they were sent up, as was a common custom, to extinguish
a chimney on fire, or when they lost their way in a maze
of flues and found themselves in a lighted one. Most
boys in the trade were stunted hi growth, blear-eyed from
the soot, and " knapped-kneed " from climbing when their
bones were soft and from dragging heavy loads. " The
knees and ancle- joints mostly become deformed, hi the
first instance, from the position they are obliged to put
them in, hi order to support themselves, not only while
climbing up the chimney, but more particularly so in that
1 House of Commons Journal, May 1, 1788.
8 1817 Report, Evidence, p. 9.
8 Reports of Society on the Poor, ii. p. 111.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 181
of coming down, when they rest solely on the lower ex-
tremities, the arms being used for scraping and sweeping
down the soot in the meantime : this in addition to that
of carrying heavy loads confirms the complaint." l
The first attempt to improve the condition of these
climbing boys by Act of Parliament was made in 1788, and
the credit for it must go to Mr. David Porter, a benevo-
lent master chimney-sweep of Little Welbeck Street. Mr.
Porter had first interested that many-sided philanthropist,
Mr. Jonas Hanway, in the subject. Mr. Hanway died
before anything was done, and Mr. Porter next induced
" a Committee of very respectable Gentlemen " to inquire into
the state of the boys. This Committee and Mr. Porter pre-
sented petitions to Parliament in April 1788 for legislation,
and stated " that, if the Petitioners were to enumerate such
Hardships and Cruelties as have come to their Knowledge
in the Course of their Enquiries upon this Subject, it would
almost exceed Belief, and is better suppressed than made
public in a Country renowned for its Humanity." 2 The
dangers of legislative interference with freedom of contract
had not yet sunk deep into the Parliamentary mind, and
a Bill, introduced by Mr. Robert Burton, was passed that
same session without any difficulty. According to a witness
in 1817, 3 it was maimed in the Lords by the omission
of clauses for licensing masters, registering appren-
tices, and prohibiting calling the streets. 4 This Act (28
Geo. in. c. 48) talked in its preamble of the " various com-
plicated Miseries, to which Boys employed in climbing and
cleansing of Chimneys are liable, beyond any other
Employment whatsoever in which Boys of tender Years
are engaged . . .," and it sought to mitigate them by order-
ing that no boy should be apprenticed before he was eight
years old, that no master should have more than six appren-
1 Evidence of Mr. R. Wright, surgeon, 1817 Report, p. 24.
* House of Commons Journal, April 22, 1788.
* Mr. Wm. Tooke, 1817 Report, p. 7.
4 Lord Thurlow was credited with erasing this laat clause. Evidence
before Lords Committee, 1818, p. 177.
182 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
tices, each of whom must have his master's name and
address on a brass plate stuck in front of his leathern cap,
and that no boy should be let out for hire or " call the
streets " after midday, and before seven in winter or five
in summer. A schedule to the Act gave the form of in-
denture which a master must sign, by which he pledged
himself, amongst other things, to cause the apprentice " to
be thoroughly washed and cleansed from Soot and Dirt at
least once a Week," to send him to church on the Sabbath
day, not to make him climb any chimney actually on fire,
" nor make use of any violent or improper Means to force
him to climb or go up any such Chimney " ; and, lastly
an ominous clause "in all Things [to] treat his (or her)
said Apprentice with as much Humanity and Care as the
Nature of the Employment of a Chimney Sweeper will
admit of."
This Act was a dead letter. No machinery had been
provided to carry it out ; the masters who had been cruel
before did not change their habits because they had placed
a signature on a piece of parchment, and the traffic in tiny
children went on unchecked. The happy owners of the
smallest-sized living brushes used to let them out to other
masters for special jobs, and handbills advertising " small
boys for small flues " were common. To save appearances
before the magistrates, indeed, the parents would state
the age as eight years, or else the boys would be employed
without regular indentures, till they reached a more mature
age. One master sweep, Thomas Allen by name, who gave
evidence before a Committee in 1817, had been articled in
a public house in 1795 at the age ef three and a half. 1
In one case that has been handed down to us the Act
proved of real use. In the absence of his mother, the
father of a boy of five sold him for three guineas to Henry
Doe, a master sweep. When the mother returned she
was frantic at the fate of her child, and, with the help of a
kind-hearted solicitor, informed against the master and got
back her boy. 2 Most of the boys had, of course, nobody
1 1817 Report, Evidence, p. 46, * Ibid., pp. 35-36.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 183
who was interested in them except the very persons who
consigned them to their lot. It must be remembered also,
in excuse for the master sweeps, that, if all the chimneys
were to be swept by boys, tiny children were indispensable.
Incredible though it may sound, some flues which children
swept were only seven inches square. For such chimneys
not only a tiny child but a naked tiny child was necessary.
" If the Chimneys happen to be too small," said a witness
in 1788, " they call the Boys down, strip them, and beat
them, and force them up again, by which means they become
crippled." l In 1817 things had not changed much. " I
have seen them," said a master sweep, " make them strip
themselves naked and threaten to beat them ; I have been
obliged myself to go up a chimney naked, but I do not like
to see my children do so." 2
In the small flues the children had to keep their arms
straight up above their heads ; "if they slip their arms
they get jammed." 3 If their shirt was crumpled, they
might be stuck fast, unable to move.
A master sweep in 1788 estimated that a chimney should
be twelve inches square for a boy of seven to go up with
ease. 4 In 1818 chimneys seven inches square which boys
swept were still being built. 5 A graphic description of the
attempted sweeping of one of these small chimneys, which
was about a brick and a half square, was given by its owner
in 1817. 6
The chimney went nearly straight up from a copper :
a young boy was brought in to sweep it : " there was a hole
made in the side for the boy to go up, and the boy was
repeatedly driven in at the hole, but the mortar and soot
fell in such great lumps upon his head, and with such
force, that if he had not had a cap upon his head it would
have been broken. Upon seeing the boy writhing in order
1 House of Commons Journal, May 1, 1788.
* 1817 Report, Evidence, p. 23.
1 1818 Lords Report, Wm. Cooper's evidence.
4 House of Commons Journal, May 1, 1788.
6 See Bonnet's Speech, House of Commons, February 18, 1818.
1817 Report, Evidence, p. 32.
184 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
to get into the chimney, and being satisfied he could not
conveniently get up, although the man who was his master
being without feeling seemed to say it was mere idleness
in the boy, and that he would force the boy up, I would not
suffer it, and the chimney was not swept.''
The Act of 1778, as we have said, was a dead letter.
Occasionally individuals interested themselves in the boys :
Sir Thomas Bernard related with enthusiasm how on a
surprise Sunday visit to Mr. Porter's establishment he
found the apprentices fresh from church eating boiled
mutton and rice pudding ; * and at Kingston-upon-Thames,
in 1798, a lady in the neighbourhood, " distinguished as
much by her benevolence as her rank," presented the boys
with clothes so that they might attend Sunday-school. 2
It may be noticed that Sabbatical_obgprvfl.no.pa \\a.$ a.n
_ hygienic^ag_well as a religious importance for these soot-
r~ caked^^hfldren. Attendance at church ensured a weekly
wash. Some London master sweeps, at the instigation of
Mr. Porter, and under the guidance of the Society for
Bettering the Condition of the Poor, instituted a Friendly
Society in 1SOO, 3 in order amongst other things to enforce
the regulations of 1788, but only the better-class masters
joined, and nothing came of it. In 1803 a Society for Super-
seding Climbing Boys was formed with Mr. Wm. Tooke as a
leading spirit, and this Society took the excellent practical
step of offering a reward for a sweeping machine. They
also, in 1804, promoted a Bill which passed the Commons,
by which all sweeps within ten miles of the Royal Exchange
had to be licensed and registered, the apprentices were not
to be hired or lent out by their masters, and none but
apprentices were to be used as climbing boys. No record
has survived of any debate on this mild Bill, but its pro-
visions proved too much for the Lords, who, after recom-
mitting it three times, rejected it on July 19, in a House
composed of one Archbishop, five Bishops, three Dukes, five
Earls, one Viscount, and ten Barons.
1 Reports on the Poor, i. p. 112.
8 Ibid., ii. p. 108. 8 Ibid,, ii. p. 316.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 185
For the next thirteen years the London Society for Super-
seding Climbing Boys set itself the uphill task of overcoming
prejudice by proving that machinery could be employed
with success instead of boys. The machine that was most
satisfactory was one invented by a Mr. Smart in 1803.
Mr. Smart himself estimated after fourteen years' experience
that 99 per cent, of existing chimneys could with care be
swept by his machine. The Society furnished likely men
with this machine, and endeavoured to create a demand
for its services. A similar society was formed in Sheffield
in 1807. 1
Some interesting experiments by a Society formed at
Leeds for superseding the use of boys gave the following
results. 2 The machine was applied to 1411 different
chimneys of all kinds. Two men sent with machines to the
larger houses succeeded in 89J per cent. A man sent to
both big and small houses succeeded in 95 per cent. A
man " more exclusively employed in the Small Houses,
in Cottages, Workshops, and Farm Houses where less
attention is paid to external or internal appearances in
the Chimnies," succeeded in every case.
It was, in fact, in big mansions and public offices that the
difficult chimneys were found, and it was precisely in these
chimneys with their horizontal reaches that there was
danger of suffocation for the human brush. The child
would make his way up to the top of the chimney, and then
descend slowly, sweeping the soot down as he went. When
he reached the bend where the flue turned at right angles,
he would find great masses of soot into which he might
slide as into a death trap. If he lost his head and got
jammed, his fate was sealed, unless his cries could bring
help in time. Opposition to the use of machines came chiefly
from the more prosperous master sweeps and from the
servants in big houses. The Sheffield Society already
mentioned, after ten years of vain attempts to improve
the lot of the apprentices by voluntary effort, petitioned
1 See Report in Annual Register, 1809, p. 827.
* House of Lords Journal, May 8, 1818.
186 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Parliament in 1817 for the prohibition of climbing boys.
Master sweeps, they pointed out, would never use machinery
in place of boys so long as boys were allowed to climb,
for this reason, that a man had to work a machine himself
with a boy as an assistant only, whereas, under the existing
system, a man could have as many apprentices as he liked
(the law being a dead letter) and could send them out in
all directions, " satisfied if they do but bring back every
day a certain sum of Money, and a certain quantity of
Soot, he may all the time be indulging himself at his Ease." l
Another reason for the hostility of the master sweeps was
the fear that others might take their business or " mystery "
from them. This fear was sharpened by the fact that the
different societies for superseding climbing boys, finding
it impossible to enlist the help of the regular sweeps, had
often been forced to employ outsiders to work their machines.
Many masters in London took machines with the object
of showing how unsatisfactory they were, and by pur-
posely creating dirt created also a prejudice.
The experts, in fact, constantly assured the housekeepers
and servants that machinery was useless, and would not
only leave their chimneys dirty, but cover the room with
soot. If required they were ready to demonstrate this.
A striking illustration of this temper was shown in the case
of the House of Commons, where the Speaker directed that
machinery should be tried. The master sweep who came
to apply the machine pretended that he could manage
only nineteen out of sixty-one chimneys. Here the matter
might have ended but for the intervention of the house-
keeper, 2 who determined to have them swept under his
own superintendence. The result was that sixty out of
sixty-one were swept by the machine, and the sixty-first
merely required some slight alteration to make it amenable
to machinery. 8
1 House of Commons Journal, 1817, June 5.
* The housekeeper was Mr. John Bellamy, famous for the stories of his
pork pies.
* Hansard, House of Lords, March 15, 1819, Lord Auckland's speech.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 187
The story of the attempts made in 1817, 1818, and 1819
to prohibit the use of climbing boys is sad and strange
reading. The hero is Henry Grey Bennet, 1 the Radical
M.P., who attacked the Game Laws and the barbarities
of the Penal Code, the friend and correspondent of
Creevey ; the villain is Lauderdale. The proceedings began
hopefully with the presentation of several petitions in
favour of abolishing climbing boys, and the appointment
of a Committee in 1817, which took the evidence of philan-
thropists, doctors, and master sweeps, most of whom had
been apprentices themselves. The Committee's Report
was of a sensational kind, and its authors did not, like the
respectable gentlemen of 1788, think it necessary to spare
the feelings of " a Country renowned for its Humanity."
The evidence in favour of prohibition was overwhelming.
A Bill was brought in by Bennet with Wilberforce's help,
enacting that in future no boy should be bound till he was
fourteen, and that no apprentice should henceforth climb
chimneys. An exception was made for existing appren-
tices over fourteen years old. But the session was too
far advanced for the Bill to make further progress. Next
year (1818) Bennet brought in a Bill on February 9th, similar
to that of the last session, except that the prohibition
of the use of climbing boys was not to be enforced till May
1819. Bennet could quote five fatal accidents to climb-
ing boys in the course of the previous year, two of them
" attended with circumstances of peculiarly aggravated
cruelty," as a further argument for the Bill, if any were
needed. 2 He pointed out, in reply to Lord Milton's plea
1 The Hon. H. G. Bennet, 1 777-1836, second son of fourth Earl of Tanker-
villo, M.P. for Shrewsbury, 1806 and from 1811 to 1826.
2 Hansard, February 18, 1818. Just four months before a boy of
twelve had been suffocated in a baker's chimney in Somers Town. He
had been sent by his master, in an exhausted condition, up a flue so hot
that potatoes were baking in the oven. He reached the top and was
heard " sobbing and crying very much " as he came down. He was
finally taken out with his skin scorched, about four feet from the oven.
It is fair to the baker to say that when he came home and found the boy
up the chimney, he broke away part of the flue in hopes of saving his life,
but it was too late. See Evidence of Clerk and Middlesex Coroner before
1818 Lords Committee.
188 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
for delay, that the only chimneys that could not be swept
except by boys, " belonged to those who could well afford
to alter them if they pleased," and denounced with feeling
the policy of " sacrificing the children of the poor in order
to preserve the chimneys of the rich." The Bill passed,
the Commons, but the Lords, who owned so many of these
tortuous chimneys, thought proceedings had been too
much hurried and appointed a Committee to take evidence.
The minutes of evidence are very full and particularly
interesting. The master chimney-sweeps who opposed the
Bill had marshalled many witnesses, but it is doubtful
whether their testimony would always have precisely the
desired effect. Some of them were enthusiastic, for example,
in their approval of the use of children to extinguish
chimneys on fire, a practice prohibited by the Act of 1788,
but still universal.
" Have you ever known an Instance of a Boy sent up a
Flue on Fire ? " was asked of one master sweep, who answered,
" Yes, and rejoiced I have been many a Time, when such
a Job has come to my Master, to get Sixpence for myself,
or a Shilling ; an active Child will not let the Fire rest on
him ; we pin the Bosom of the Shirt over, secure it in
every Way, so that the Fire cannot get at him ; we wet
the Brush and then when one Boy is tired, we send up
another, and if he keeps in Motion, the Fire will not lodge ;
if he is sluggish, he will be likely to be burnt." 1 "A Boy
need never be burnt up a Chimney on Fire," said another,
"if he is a good Boy for Work." 2 One of the witnesses
against the Bill was Mr. David Porter, who had done so
much to promote the Act of 1788. He had left the trade
fifteen years before and had turned builder. He dis-
played a strange ignorance of abuses more recent than
1788, and declared that he had never seen a flue up which
it was dangerous to send a boy of eight. By a strange
irony of fate he himself had built the chimney in Cumber-
land Street, where one of the five fatal accidents of the
previous year had taken place. " The Chimney," he said,
1 Lords Committee, 1818, Evidence, p. 135. * Ibid., p. 220.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 189
" is horizontal, and the Boy should have had another Boy
to take the Soot as he travelled on, and then the Accident
would not have happened." l As it was, the boy was
suffocated.
. The Lords Committee reported that there was not yet
enough evidence to justify the Bill, and advised delay till
the Surveyor-General should have furnished the report that
he had been asked to make. The Bill was accordingly
dropped. The Surveyor-General's report on the prac-
ticability of superseding climbing boys was published on
February 1, 1819. It was based on a number of careful
experiments made under the supervision of "an active and
intelligent clerk " in the Board of Works, of the name of
Davis. Davis divided the London flues into four classes
according to their complexities. The first three classes,
which embraced 990 out of 1000, could all be swept either
by a machine or, where that failed, by ball and brush ;
the fourth class of very complicated flues, or ten out of
1000, could be partly swept by ball and brush, but there
were left some " which have several bends and are fre-
quently horizontal." Opponents always pointed to the exist-
ence of these flues as an unanswerable objection to the
abolition of the use of climbing boys. Mr. Davis took a very
different view. " In these cases," he reported, " it is alike
necessary to let in registers or doors, whether they are
swept by Boys or Machines, there being no other security
for the safety of the Boys than this measure, which when
done, actually presents the means of sweeping by a common
machine."
Next year (1819) Bennet introduced his third Bill.
His case was now fortified by the experiments detailed in
the Surveyor-General's report. Unfortunately, the Sur-
veyor-General himself had inserted a sentence into his
covering report to the effect that total abolition was at
present impracticable, an opinion entirely at variance with
Da vis's report, unless the Surveyor-General merely meant
that time must be allowed to make the necessary altera-
1 Lords Committee, 1818, Evidence, p. 112.
190 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
tions. The Bill of 1819 resembled Bennet's earlier Bills,
except that the time limit of prohibition was now extended
to May 1821.
Opposition to the measure in the House of Commons
had stiffened, and there were considerable debates. 1 The
arguments against the Bill followed the usual lines :
first, the abuses did not exist, or were exaggerated ;
secondly, if they existed, they were necessary ; thirdly,
if they were abolished, greater evils would follow. Sir J.
Yorke and Denman were the chief speakers against the
Bill, Denman in face of all the facts refusing to " con-
ceive that the people of this country were so attached to
cruel treatment, merely because it was cruel, as to continue
to sweep with children, when it would be better to sweep
with machinery." 2 Amongst others Brougham spoke for
the Bill, justifying interference in the present case on the
ground that " little less than crime was attempted to be
practised." Wilberforce retorted on Denman's argument
with the crushing illustration of the slave trade, where
interest and humanity might have been supposed to prompt
the owner to look after his human cargo. Perhaps the
most original argument produced against legislation was
that of Mr. Ommaney, who asserted that " The boys
generally employed in this profession were not the children
of poor persons, but the children of rich men, begotten in
an improper manner." In spite of opposition the Bill
passed safely through the Commons, but, like its predecessor,
was wrecked in the Lords, though Lord Auckland, Lord
Grosvenor, and Lord Harrowby made efforts to save it.
Lauderdale attacked it with vehemence, using what Lord
Harrowby described as the resources of Joe Miller, for
lack of valid arguments. Even the fact that fire insurance
offices had not petitioned against the Bill was adduced as
a proof that the Bill would increase the risk of fire, and
therefore the profits of these offices. He urged that reforms
of this kind should be left " entirely to the moral feelings
1 Hansard, February 12, 17, and 22, 1819.
8 Hansard, February 17, 1819.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 191
of perhaps the most moral people on the face of the
earth " ; l and also, it might have been retorted, the only
people who practised this particular species of cruelty.
The Bill was thrown out at the committee stage by
37 to 20. Bennet, baffled but still undaunted, pro-
ceeded on May 19 of the same year (1819) to introduce
a new Bill, not to prohibit climbing, for he saw that
this was hopeless, but to improve conditions. In this
reform he had on his side the principal master sweeps
who had protested against prohibition. By this Bill no
boy was to be apprenticed till he was ten, no girl was to
be employed, no apprentices were to be let out for hire,
and nobody in the employment of chimney-sweeps was to
call the streets. This Bill passed the Commons without
opposition, but again the House of Lords refused all help
to the little grimy victims of their chimneys. It was in
vain that Auckland pointed out that the Bill simply laid
down practical rules approved by the trade. The scare
of fire could not be produced now. Instead, the Lord
Chancellor (Eldon), with a lawyer's subtleties, mocked at
the wording of the Bill : it was absurd to talk of a " female
girl or woman." 2 How could crying the streets be pro-
hibited ? Might not the doors be knocked, and so a
greater nuisance ensue ? Lauderdale, who in one stage
of his opposition to reform had announced himself willing
to support prohibition, if satisfactory machinery were
invented, now took up a broader ground of objection.
" If the legislature attempted to lay down a moral code
for the people, there was always a danger that every feeling
of benevolence would be extirpated." 3 Their Lordships
were so much alarmed by this prospect that they promptly
threw out the Bill by 32 votes to 12, and the old evils
went on unchecked except by private benevolence till after
the period with which we deal. 4
1 Hansard, House of Lords, March 8, 1819.
1 Hansard, House of Lords, May 24, 1819. The actual words, as Lord
Lansdowne pointed out, were " female child, girl, or woman."
* Hansard, May 24, 1819.
4 The later history of the chimney-sweep's boy may be given briefly.
L
192 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
The history of the chimney-sweeper's boy is in some ways
the most remarkable phenomenon of this period. It seems
incredible that Parliament should have refused to reform
so inhuman a system when virtually the only difficulty
was the taste for elaborate chimneys in grand houses. An
architect, who appeared as a witness before the Lords
Committee in 1818, admitted that the horizontal flues
were only needed because the owners of mansions wanted
greater comfort and luxury, and it was frequently objected
to the proposal to have a register door that it would dis-
figure " a handsome apartment." In this case Lauder-
dale and his friends were in fact obstructing the develop-
ment of machinery, and behaving precisely as they accused
the workmen of behaving in regard to factory improvements,
the interests at stake being not the bread of thousands
of poor men and women, but the display and pomp
of a handful of very rich families.
It requires an effort as we think of the children in the
^f mill, punished with the punishment of Sisyphus for the
^ pleasures of a life they had never tasted, and of the children
in the mines, keeping their blind vigil before the sun had
risen, and keeping their blind vigil after the sun had set,
to remember that this was an age in which childhood and
all the promise and mystery of childhood were taking a
new place hi the affections of the cultivated classes.
Rousseau's spell had less power in England than on the
In 1834 an Act was passed (4 and 5 William iv. c. 35) which forbade the
binding of any boy under ten, and the employment of children under
fourteen unless apprenticed or on trial. Boys were to have a two months'
trial before being apprenticed, to be examined by a magistrate at the
end of that time, and not to be bound unless willing. This was the Act
in force at the time Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, published in Bentley's
Miscellany, 1837-39. Blake's poems on the chimney-sweeps had been
published in 1789 and 1794. In 1840 an Act was passed (3 and 4 Viet. c. 85)
by which nobody under twenty-one was to be allowed to climb chimneys,
and no child under sixteen was to be apprenticed to a chimney-sweep.
This Act was amended in 1864 (27 and 28 Viet. c. 37), when a chimney-
sweep was forbidden to employ any child under ten except on his own
premises. Bennet, the best friend of the climbing boys in Parliament,
only lived to see the first of these Acts passed ; he died in 1 836.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN 193
Continent, but even in England the book, which as Lord
Morley has said, " filled parents with a sense of the dignity
and moment of their task," had given an eager life to the
study of the play and development of children's minds.
Charles and Mary Lamb were publishing Poetry for Children
and the Tales from Shakespeare which are still in common
use, and the Edgeworths, the Aikins, and the Taylors, who
were all writing at this time, were to rule the imaginations
of children for many generations after their own, with a
sway as absolute as the sway of Scott or Mayne Reid over
the imaginations of boys. The greatest portrait painter
of the age was describing the charm and grace and laughter
of happy and careless childhood. But so deep and distant
was the underworld where children were stolen from the
sunshine as soon as they could creep beneath an engine
or watch a trap-door in a mine, that the sleep of those rulers
who admired Sir Joshua's portraits of innocence, and took
pride in their sensibility and tenderness, was never broken
or haunted by an echo of the
" Voces, vagitus et ingens
Infantumque animae flentes in limine primo,
Quos dulcis vitae ezsortes et ab ubere roptos
Abstulit atra dies."
CHAPTER X
THE MIND OF THE RICH
IN this chapter we shall try to understand the temper and
the reasoning of the society that passed the Combination
Laws, tolerated the horrors inflicted upon children, and
accepted the standing misery of the poor as a recognised
and indispensable condition of national welfare. How did
such men and women interpret society and its duties,
economic relationships and economic laws, religion and its
message of brotherhood and pity ?
We do not mean, of course, that men and women go
through life asking themselves at every turn, how they
justify their own special good fortune in the social system
under which they live, any more than the poor man or the
unfortunate man goes through life thinking from morning
till night of his grievances against that system and of nothing
else. Most people take the gifts that life sends them without
asking of life that it shall provide a soothing philosophy
as well. To the average successful employer, or to the
gentleman living on an inherited property, or to the younger
member of a noble family living on an ancient sinecure, the
reflection that nine out of ten of their countrymen were
finding life a much more difficult and painful business
was not always knocking with a disturbing summons at
heart and conscience. They had not made the world, and
the power that had made it was wiser than such wild men
as Paine or Cobbett, or the workmen wh*b cheered a mounte-
bank like Hunt, broke up good and expensive machines,
and were so stupid as to think that strikes and quarrels
with their employers could mend anybody's fortunes. Life
194
THE MIND OF THE RICH 195
was full of strange phenomena, and the Bible, with its shrewd
outlook, had prepared the world for the poverty of the poor.
Men and women who reasoned like this were not particu-
larly heartless or cruel. They took the world as they
found it. This is the attitude of all people to some of the
facts, and of some people to all of the facts, that meet them
day by day. One of the most powerful and passionate
leaders of the crusade against the long hours of the factories
has told us how he lived for many years in Yorkshire with-
out discovering that there was any cruelty in the mills,
and that John Wood's appeal came to him as a revelation.
The story of Richard Oastler is a sufficient warning against
the temptation to see the facts of an age apart from their
atmosphere.
But if the established order is its own justification to
many minds, it remains true that the turn which social
history takes in any age results in part from the ideas
and opinions that are in the ascendant. To understand
the resignation, we might almost call it satisfaction, with
which this generation accepted a state of things that seems
to the modern mind to mark so definite a catastrophe of
civilisation, we must examine the intellectual currents of
the period. There was no lack of speculation or discussion.
The House of Commons listened at one time to Burke, at
another to Ricardo. Adam Smith and Malthus were becom-
ing as familiar in parliamentary debates as Cicero or Virgil.
Bentham and James Mill inspired Joseph Hume. In the
House of Lords there was King who used Political Economy
to threaten the rich, and Lauderdale who used it to punish
the poor. Brougham, with an energy like that of steam
that could be harnessed to almost any task, was never tired
of explaining everything to everybody. There were other
prophets and critics who were less successful in reaching
the upper classes Godwin, Paine, Hodgskin, Thompson,
Ogilvie : economists who ploughed an unpromising furrow
at the time, though some of them were to reap a rich harvest
later. For the moment their message seemed wicked and
ludicrous enough, but Owen, scandalously as he appeared
196 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
to misconceive the blessings of the new industrial system,
once had a debate all to himself in a House of Commons
a little shocked by its own boldness. 1
There was then no lack of discussion, and the age that
established the new industry on the basis of exploited labour
would have resented the suggestion that it was acting
blindly or carelessly. And with justice, for the general
economic view that grew up in this period, reconciling the
intelligence to this inhuman spectacle, lived and flourished
long after the generation of Peterloo had gone to its grave.
In some senses, indeed, their explanation of economic
society was not less important in its consequences than the
laws that Sidmouth and his friends passed in defence of
that society. That explanation was a conclusion from a
number of principles, so combined and arranged as to
present a solid obstacle to all plans of social reform. It
is worth while to glance at the stages by which the fatalist-
view of the condition of the working classes came to
dominate politicians, and to see how, by taking this truth
from one economist and that from another, the educated
classes built up an edifice of gloomy error which earned for
their political economy its just title of the dismal science.
We do not propose, of course, to describe all the economic
doctrines that influenced or failed to influence the govern-
ing classes during this period ; that would be a theme not
for a chapter but for several volumes. We are concerned
only with the way in which the political economy they
learned led these classes to regard the main problems
discussed in this book ; from this point of view we may
trace the development of economic fatalism through four
stages.
1. Adam Smith, releasing economics from the old
mercantilist superstitions, set the whole world in a new
light, displaying trade as an elaborate and varied life of
mutual service, a system in which men and nations were
not all engaged in snatching advantages from each other,
but unconsciously Jhelging^aiid developing each other. He
1 Hansard, xli. 1189; House of Commons, December 1819.
THE MIND OF THE RICH 197
examined all the restrictions and regulations by which
nations had tried to increase their prosperity at the expense
of the rest of mankind, and governments had tried to
direct the operations of traders and capitalists, and argued
that they had done harm rather than good to the peoples
who thought they were benefiting by them, because they
interfered with " the obvious and simple system of natural
liberty." The upper classes took that phrase from Adam
Smith, and applied it to the relations of capital and labour,
but it was rarely and only after a long interval that they
applied it to anything else. There is a well-known story
that Pitt, present at a dinner where Adam Smith was also
a guest, insisted on standing till Adam Smith was seated,
declaring " we are all your pupils." The description was
not true, even of Pitt, but it was truer of Pitt than of most
people, for he carried the Commercial Treaty with France,
and was only prevented by a factious Opposition from
carrying a Commercial Treaty with Ireland. Pitt had, at
any rate, risked his popularity for the sake of Adam Smith's
principles. For the upper class in general Adam Smith's
teaching had a narrower theatre. The doctrine that trade
was mutual service, that the activities of individuals
enriched the community, under " the obvious and simple
system of natural liberty," undermined the basis of the
legal regulation of commerce and industry. Politicians
who had been brought up in a society which had on its
Statute Book innumerable laws designed to prevent the
exploitation of the public by monopolists, or to limit, hi the
defence of order and peace, the access to particular trades
and careers, or to protect private accumulations and
interests, or to maintain a standard of life, found in the
new philosophy a summons to disentangle industrial life
from all this web of prudence. All this machinery dis-
appeared. The Assize of Bread in London was one of the
latest survivals, and it was abolished in 1815. The regula-
tion of wages had often been in the past the weapon of the
employers, but at the end of the eighteenth century a situ-
ation had arisen in which the labourers looked to it for help.
198 THE TOWN LABOUEER, 1760-1832
The politicians who rejected their appeal did not pretend
to reject it on the ground that, as the rich were more powerful
than the poor, such a law would always be administered
hi then* favour. 1 Pitt rejected it hi the name of the new
political economy, arguing that " trade, industry, and
barter would always find then* own level, and be impeded
by regulations which violated their natural operation and
deranged their proper effect." This meant that it was
bad for trade to attempt to interfere with wages, and
therefore bad for all the interests affected. In 1813, when
the statutes prescribing the regulation of wages were
formally repealed, Sidmouth said that their existence had
only just been discovered, and that it did not require such
enlightened minds as those he was addressing to under-
stand how pernicious such regulations must be. On all
such questions the ruling class borrowed readily from
Adam Smith the general notion that perfect freedom was
the best stimulus to production, and that all the apparent
or temporary disadvantages resulting from uncontrolled
competition would sooner or later be eliminated by the
natural operations of economic forces. This was almost
the only lesson they learnt from him.
2. The second stage is represented by the doctrine of
the employers' enlightened selfishness. The first dis-
covery, that the State could not really protect the work-
man, was followed by another, even more interesting, that
the employer could not really hi jure him. The workmen
were hi the hands of a power that was obliged by the law
of its being to secure them all the comfort and freedom of
which they were capable. This doctrine was pushed to its
extreme by a thinker who might have been expected to
revolt against this mechanical analysis of society ; for it
is nowhere laid down with more unquestioning confidence
than hi Burke's Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795) :
1 Adam Smith had put it that " Whenever the legislature attempts to
regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors
are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the
workmen, it is always just and equitable ; but it is sometimes otherwise
when in favour of the masters." Wealth of Nations, bk. i. chap. x.
THE MIND OF THE RICH 199
" But in the case of the farmer and the labourer, their
interests are always the same, and it is absolutely im-
possible that their free contracts can be onerous to either
party. It is the interest of the farmer, that his work should
be done with effect and celerity : and that cannot be,
unless the labourer is well fed, and otherwise found with
such necessaries of animal life, according to his habitudes,
as may keep the body in full force, and the mind gay and
cheerful. For of all the instruments of his trade, the
labour of man (what the ancient writers have called the
instrumentum vocale) is that on which he is most to rely
for the repayment of his capital. The other two, the
semi-vocale, in the ancient classification, that is, the working
stock of cattle, and the instrumentum mutum, such as carts,
ploughs, spades, and so forth, though not all inconsider-
able in themselves, are very much inferior in utility or
in expense ; or, without a given portion of the first, are
nothing at all. For, in all things whatever, the mind is
the most valuable and the most important ; and in this
scale the whole of agriculture is in a natural and just order ;
the beast is as an informing principle to the plough and
cart ; the labourer is as reason to the beast ; and the farmer
is as a thinking and presiding principle to the labourer.
An attempt to break this chain of subordination in any part
is equally absurd ; but the absurdity is the most mischievous
in practical operation, where it is the most easy, that is,
where it is the most subject to an erroneous judgment.
"It is plainly more the farmer's interest that his men
should thrive, than that his horses should be well fed,
sleek, plump, and fit for use, or than that his waggon and
ploughs should be strong, in good repair, and fit for service.
" On the other hand, if the farmer cease to profit of the
labourer, and that his capital is not continually manured
and fructified, it is impossible that he should continue that
abundant nutriment, and clothing, and lodging proper for
the protection of the instrument he employs.
" It is therefore the first and fundamental interest of the
labourer, that the farmer should have a full incoming profit
200 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
on the product of his labour. The proposition is self-evident,
and nothing but the malignity, perverseness, and ill-
governed passions of mankind, and particularly the envy
they bear to each other's prosperity, could prevent their
seeing and acknowledging it, with thankfulness to the
benign and wise Disposer of all things, who obliges men,
whether they will or not, hi pursuing their own selfish
interests, to connect the general good with their own indi-
vidual success.
" But who are to judge what that profit and advantage
ought to be ? Certainly no authority on earth. It is a
matter of convention dictated by the reciprocal conveni-
ences of the parties, and indeed by their reciprocal neces-
sities. But if the farmer is excessively avaricious ? Why,
so much the better the more he desires to increase his
gains, the more interested is he in the good condition of
those upon whose labour his gains must principally depend." *
Similarly Burdett, whose political views were very different
from Burke's, in replying to Curwen, who was in favour
of a minimum wage for agriculture (1818), dismissed all
discussion of the rate of wages with the assertion that " no
one gave less to labour than it was the interest of the
labourer to receive." This belief that the more selfish the
employer, the more certain he was to treat his employees
well, was carried by some of the new economists to ex-
travagant lengths. 2 It was against this opinion, held with
religious tenacity, that factory legislation made its slow
way, and the opposition to Peel's Bill for reducing the
actual working day of children between nine and sixteen
to eleven hours was led by Lauderdale : " The employer
was the person most likely to be acquainted with the
different degrees of strength possessed by his workmen,
and most likely to avoid overworking them with a view
1 Burke's Works, ed. of 1826, vol. vii. p. 383 ft.
1 Cf. Report of House of Commons Committee on Poor Laws, 1817:
" By following the dictates of their own interests, landowners and farmers
become, in the natural order of things, the best trustees and guardians
for the public."
THE MIND OF THE RICH 201
to his own advantage." " The workmen " who were com-
forted with this aphorism were children of nine and ten. 1
3. This doctrine was supplemented by another that turned
the key more effectually still on the labourers' position.
This third stage is associated with the name of Malt bus.
At the end of the century the belief took root among the
governing class that the recompense of labour was fixed
by natural laws, and that no human efforts could really
alter it. Any struggle against this decree of nature would
cause trouble and disorganisation, and in that way would
inflict injury on the labourers themselves, but it could not
increase their share in the national wealth. That share
must always remain somewhere about the level of subsist-
ence. This belief was introduced by the Physiocrats, who
had their eyes on the peasant of eighteenth -century France.
As Turgot put it, " In every sort of occupation it must
come to pass that the wages of the artisan are limited to
that which is necessary to procure him his subsistence. II
tie gagne que sa vie" If this doctrine were true the only
changes in real wages would be those consequent on changes
of diet ; if labourers took to living on cheaper food their
wages would go down, if on dearer they would go up. It
was the appreciation of this fact that set Malthus in opposi-
tion to Eden and all the other food reformers who wanted
to simplify the labourer's meagre diet still further. Now,
during the last phase of the ancient regime, this Physiocrat
idea became naturalised in England. Both Malthus and
Ricardo contributed to this result. Malthus, who started
in revolt against the optimism which believed in the benefi-
cence of nature, laid down a principle of population which,
by explaining poverty, robbed it of its horrors for the rich.
Population, he argued, tends to multiply faster than sub-
sistence. Poverty is therefore inevitable, and unless
mankind deliberately sets itself to check the increase of
the race, vice and misery are the only means by which
1 It is important to point out that not all economists took this view,
and M'Culloch himself was a strong supporter of factory legislation for
children. See letter to Shaftesbury, Life of Shaftesbury, i. p. 157.
202 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
population and food can be adjusted to each other. This
is, of course, a very general sketch of his teaching, and if
we were discussing Malthus himself we should be obliged
to qualify this summary by noting a number of important
considerations that enter into his argument. We are con-
cerned not with what Malthus taught the world, but with
what the upper classes learnt from him. 1 For them his
teaching was simple and soothing enough. The doctrine
that poverty was inevitable and incurable put a soft pillow
under the conscience of the ruling class. But his teaching
offered still greater consolations to the anxieties of the
benevolent, for it seemed to show that poverty was the
medicine of nature, and that the attempts of Governments
1 to relieve it were like the interference of unintelligent
f spectators with the skilful treatment of the doctor. The
U relief of poverty meant the increase of poverty, for if the
J| conditions of the poor were improved, population would
Yiuicken its pace still further. Melbourne, who thought
that to apply economic principles to the Corn Laws would
be " the wildest and maddest scheme that has ever entered
the imagination of man to conceive," thought that it was
just as wild and mad to question the finality of those prin-
ciples in sentencing the poor to eternal misery. For some
years the influence of Malthus was supreme and fatal.
Shelley, hi the preface to his Prometheus Unbound, says
that he had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon
than go to heaven with Paley and Malthus. It was a
strange heaven that Malthus, as he was interpreted by the
rich, offered to the poor.
4. A critic who splashed without ceremony into this
argument might have accepted the main doctrine that
food cannot be made to go round, without accepting the
existing distribution of food as just or inevitable. But he
was confronted with an explanation of that distribution
which was as scientific as the explanation of poverty. As
1 It must be remembered that it was the first edition of Malthus that
really counted : the qualifications introduced into his second got no
hearing. See Dr. J. Bonar on this, Malthus and his Work,
THE MIND OF THE RICH 203
Professor Marshall has shown, the course of economic
opinion has been profoundly affected by the fact that at
the beginning of the nineteenth century the mathematical
and physical groups of science were in the ascendant, and
thus at a moment of critical importance in the develop-
ment of economic speculation, all reasoning inclined to
the deductive and abstract method. Both sides in politics
gave their countenance to these economics of possession.
Bentham, who laid the foundation of a philosophy that
was fatal to the political pretensions of the aristocracy,
and invented a formula that challenged the whole theory
of a serf class on which his generation worked, was at the
same time a warm defender of unlimited competition.
Ricardo's brilliant and rather labyrinthine deductive
reasoning has led later students to the most diverse con-
clusions. No thinker has been so variously interpreted,
and Socialism and Individualism alike have built on his
foundations. But of the character of his immediate in-
fluence there can be no doubt. The most important effect
of his teaching in this particular sphere was to create the
impression that every human motive other than the
unfailing principle of self-interest might be eliminated
from the world of industry and commerce ; that the forces
of supply and demand settled everything ; that the laws
governing profits and wages were mechanical and fixed.
The share of labour was ttius decided just like the price
of an article, by the sheer power of competition. And
his share gravitated towards the minimum of subsistence.
The natural price of labour, he argued, depended on the
price of the food, necessaries, and conveniences required
for the support of the labourer and his* family. " The
market price of labour is the price which is really fixed for
it from the natural operation of the proportion of the supply
to the demand : labour is dear when it is scarce and cheap
when it is plentiful. However much the market price of
labour may deviate from its natural price, it has, like com-
modities, a tendency to conform to it." To do justice to
Ricardo's theory of wages, it would be necessary to take
204 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
into account many important qualifications that enter
into his analysis, and we do not pretend that these sen-
tences exhaust his contribution. But we are not discuss-
ing Ricardo's economics, we are discussing Ricardo's
economics as they were interpreted by the powerful classes.
Ricardo's ideas, as they were assimilated, helped to give
a scientific basis to the existing distribution : he did not
himself lay down an iron law, but his doctrine has commonly
been treated as the doctrine of an iron law. Science seemed
to put its seal on the irremediable poverty of the poor.
Neither Malthus nor Ricardo really taught the dogmatic
despair which was generally received as the lesson of their
philosophies. Neither of them really thought existing
society ideal and their own principles entirely at home in it.
Ricardo was a political reformer, and he and Malthus
both helped Hume to get rid of the Combination Laws.
Malthus declared more than once that it was most desirable
that the labouring classes should be well paid. But their
ideas, when adopted by other minds, hardened into a rigid
and inexorable theory from which both of them would have
shrunk : a theory that was a stubborn barrier to all social
agitation. In that theory, tersely expressed in the phrase
that wages depended on " the ratio of population to capital,"
it was laid down that the fund which was employed in the
remuneration of labour could not at any given time be
greater or less than it was. The total of that amount was
regulated by circumstances : it represented the exact
balance of certain economic forces. No human effort
could increase its volume, but human effort could vary its
distribution. Human effort, that is to say, could only
interfere between the recipients, and such interference
would be unjust. 1 " The market rate of wages," as
M'Culloch put it, "is exclusively dependent on the pro-
portion which the capital of the country or the means of
employing labour bears to the number of labourers."
The assumptions of this sterilising theory were denied both
by Malthus and by Ricardo at one time or another, but
1 See Dr. Bonar, op. cit., p. 278.
THE MIND OF THE RICH 205
their language had been hammered into this theory. That
theory became supreme in economics, and the whole move-
ment for trade-union organisation had to fight its way
against this solid superstition. For fifty years it was in
power, until its most distinguished adherent, John Stuart
Mill, disowned it in 1869.
The particular circumstances in which political economy
first became a coherent study, an attempt to explain all
phenomena in an organic sense, had a far-reaching effect
on the development of English politics. From one point
of view the quarrel between the Philosophic Radicals and
the aristocracy is fierce and bitter. The aristocracy enjoyed
certain vested interests which the Radicals attacked : the
corn laws, sinecures, political patronage and power. In
this arena the battle wei^t on with great spirit and fury.
All these questions concerned the poor intimately. It was
of great moment to them that food should not be taxed,
that public money should not be wasted, that govern-
ment should be cheap, that other classes than the rich
should be admitted to a share in power. But if we
look at the supreme anxieties of the possessing classes at
this time, the fear of social revolution, the dread of an
attack on the existing economic order, we find that the
Radicals and the aristocracy were at one. The Radicals
wanted to equalise the conditions of life in so far as they
could be made equal by the destruction of positive and
formal privilege : they wanted to remove the causes that
disturbed the normal balance of markets, and the proper
working of supply and demand. The aristocracy opposed all
these reforms, for they believed in inequalities of every kind,
and they were reluctant to concede any of the immense ad-
vantages which law or tradition gave to their class. But
when they were confronted with revolutionaries who asked
for some kind of social readjustment, who thought that
society did not distribute happiness in ideal or necessary
proportions, who doubted whether cheap government
and free competition could guarantee to the poor and the
206 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
weak all the liberty and wealth of which they were capable,
Radical and aristocrat stood together. The aristocrat
believed in the unqualified rights of private property, the
Radical believed in the unqualified virtue of free com-
petition. The aristocrat traced everything back to
private property : the Radical to private capital. Thus,
as against one kind of State activity they were united.
The Radical said that if the law ought not to intervene
to protect the rich, neither ought it, on the other hand,
to intervene to protect the poor. Hume, in spite of Adam
Smith, condemned legislation to forbid paying wages in
truck as an outrage on Free Trade, and Place said of the
Ten Hours Bill, " All legislative interference must be
pernicious. Men must be left to themselves to make their
own bargains ; the law must compel the observance of
compacts, the fulfilment of contracts. There it should
end. So long as the supply of labour exceeds the demand
for labour, the labourer will undersell his fellows, and
produce poverty, misery, vice, and crime." 1 Thus the
only party that was really able to help the labourers in
their struggles against the social power of the rich was the
prisoner of its own abstractions.
The origin of this association of Radicalism with the
doctrine of laissez-faire is to be found in the circumstances
of the early nineteenth century. In England, unlike
France, the privileged class was the governing class, and the
Statute Book was crowded with laws made to protect their
privileges. To increase the power of Government meant
to increase the power of this class. The early Radicals
were face to face with two great social facts : the first,
the infinite harm done by bad laws ; the second, the infinite
possibilities of human progress as seen in the light of the
1 Wallas, Place, p. 174. It is important to remember that Place preached
the deliberate restriction of the family. He was prepared, when once this
principle had been adopted by the working classes, for land nationalisation.
Whereas politicians argued from Malthus that the poor must be left to
their fate, Place argued from Malthus that the poor, when once they had
learnt this truth, were masters of their fate. Bentham and Mill agreed
with Place, but did not preach the doctrine in public.
THE MIND OF THE RICH 207
new power of capital, the power which was changing the
face of England and throwing up cities under their eyes.
The temptation to men living largely in an atmosphere of
study, to trace all evils to bad laws, and all good to the
unchecked working of that new power, was irresistible.
Such an atmosphere was like sun and rain to the wages
fund theory, and thus a doctrine founded on a misunder-
standing of Ricardo and Malthus, which was the most
powerful sanction of the existing social order, became a
property of Radicalism. The Revolution of 1832 was
more justly estimated by Grey than by Wellington. The
political privileges of the aristocracy were under the ban
of the Radicals, but the estates of the aristocracy were
under their protection.
The case for this political economy was put before the
working classes in 1831 by a society which united Whigs
and Radicals. The chairman of this " Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge " was Brougham ; the vice-
chairman, Lord John Russell ; the treasurer, William Tooke ;
and the committee included, besides Lord Ashley, Whigs
like Althorp and Denman, Radicals like John Cam Hob-
house and James Mill. 1 Peacock immortalised this side
of Brougham's career in Crotchet Castle, where he nick-
named this society " The Steam Intellect Society," and in
Oryll Orange, where he said that he would rather hear the
cook lecture on Bubble and Squeak than hear one of the
Pantipragmatics lecture on the difference between a halibut
and a herring. This society published two books, one
The Results of Machinery, the other The Rights of Industry,
generally supposed to have been written by Brougham, in
which the working of economic law is explained to the
labourers. The books are written in an animated and
graphic style, and the arguments are illustrated by enter-
taining examples that anybody can understand. Capital,
or accumulation of former labour, is necessary because
man " wants the gnawing teeth, the tearing claws, the
1 Some working-class leaders wanted at one time to organise a rival
propaganda. See The Voice of the People, May 28, 1831.
208 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
sharp bills, the solid mandibles, that enable quadrupeds,
and birds, and insects, to secure their food, and to provide
shelter in so many ingenious ways, each leading us to
admire and reverence the directing Providence which
presides over such manifold contrivances." A classical
example of unprofitable labour is found in the people in
France in the thirteenth century, who tried to get rid of a
plague of rats by carrying on a process against them in
the ecclesiastical courts. The dependence of wages upon
supply and demand was explained by means of a curious
illustration. " During a time of wild financial speculation
in Paris, created by what is called the Mississippi Bubble,
a humpbacked man went daily into the street where the
stockjobbers were accustomed to assemble, and earned
money by allowing them to sign their contracts upon the
natural desk with which he was encumbered. The hump-
back was doubtless a shrewd fellow, and saw the difficulty
under which the stockjobbers laboured. He supplied
what they appeared to want ; and a demand was instantly
created for his hump. He was well paid, says the story.
That was because the supply was smaller than the demand.
If other men with humps had been attracted by the demand,
or if persons had come to the street with portable desks
more convenient than the hump, the reward of his service
would naturally have become less." The burden of the
argument of the book is the great danger of making
capital timid, and the supreme interest that labour has
in the protection of the rights of property. No remedy is
tolerable that tends to flutter or disturb capital. If any
labourer thinks his share in the national wealth is inade-
quate, he is warned that capital can enrich or impoverish
a country, according as it pleases to stay or depart, and
that, though the workman is entitled to unite with other
workmen to make as good a bargain as he can, he must
remember that the irritations that come from combina-
tions for raising wages are the chief menace to the security
of property. Labourers should save enough to make
themselves independent of the vicissitudes of the markets.
THE MIND OF THE RICH 209
" When there is too much labour in the market and wages
are too low, do not combine to raise the wages ; do not
combine with the vain hope of compelling the employer
to pay more for labour than there are funds for the main-
tenance of labour ; but go out of the market. Leave the
relations between wages and labour to equalise themselves.
You can never be permanently kept down in wages by the
profits of capital : for if the profits of capital are too high,
the competition of other capital immediately comes in to
set the matter right."
It is easy to see how this kind of reasoning produced the
prevalent view of the capitalist as beneficent whatever
the wages he paid or the conditions he imposed. If some-
body thought that workpeople should have a little of the
daylight for their own lives, the employer had only to say
that all the profits of his industry depended on his last
half-hour, and the kindest people saw that it was cruel
to give the workmen a little leisure at the risk of their
livelihood. Employers passed easily into the position
of landowners. When the landowner looked in the glass
he saw a public benefactor, who incidentally received
sums of money in the form of rent ; when the employer
looked in the glass he saw a public benefactor, who inci-
dentally received sums of money in the form of profits.
There were good landlords and bad landlords, good em-
ployers and bad employers, but the dominant conceptions
of the time made it an act of public virtue in itself to own
land or to employ labour. 1 The employers, who expected
the State to coerce their workmen into accepting their con-
ditions, had really persuaded themselves that they were the
guardian angels of society. The three Estates of the Realm
were now Crown, Landlord, and Industrial Employers.
1 Nine Stockport hatters were sentenced to two years' imprisonment
in 1816 for conspiracy. The judge (Sir Wm. Garrow), in summing up, re-
marked, " In this happy country where the law puts the meanest subject
on a level with the highest personages of the realm, all are alike protected,
and there can be no need to associate." ..." A person who like Mr. Jack-
son has employed from 100 to 130 hands, common gratitude would teach
us to look upon as a benefactor to the community " (H. O., 42. 153).
210 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Under all these influences there grew up a political
economy which bred an equable, or at any rate a resigned,
temperament among politicians towards many of the
miseries of the world, and towards all the suffering that
was a consequence of the system by which the life of
society was explained. Political economy became, as
Sydney Smith put it, a school of metaphysics. For the
revolt against this theory we have to look not to any
political party, but to Owen, Fielden, Sadler, Carlyle,
Dickens, the Socialists and the Chartists.
If twenty persons of different temperaments have the
same philosophy put before them, they will produce twenty
philosophies. Each of them will choose some aspect that
for one reason or another makes a special appeal to his
nature, or his experience, or his habits of mind. The most
remarkable and significant thing about the political economy
that grew up from Adam Smith, is the curiously one-sided
and inconsistent way in which it adapted his teaching.
" The obvious and simple system of natural liberty " was
a captivating formula. It came with a shock to established
prejudices and ways of looking at life, but once the shock
was over, the principle seemed clear and satisfying. What,
in point of fact, did Sidmouth's " enlightened minds " do
with it ? They borrowed from it ideas that served as
weapons for employers, and neglected every truth that
seemed to threaten their own interests. The prejudices
from which they escaped into the new light were the pre-
judices of other people. When they had to choose between
Adam Smith and their own prejudices, it was not their
prejudices that they sacrificed. This was not conscious
hypocrisy, but the kind of recognition of truth that stops
short at taking risks. The landlords and manufacturers
behaved like men who, when a wonderful flying machine
is shown to them, accept the assurance that it will fly well
and safely, call those who doubt it unenlightened, hurry
everybody into it, and will do everything to prove their
confidence except get into it themselves. Adam Smith
preached Free Trade and Individualism, but for every line
THE MIND OF THE RICH 211
he wrote against the regulation of wages, he wrote pages
against import duties and Protection. Yet the land-
lords who deprived the working classes of the protection
of the State in the name of Adam Smith, saw nothing un-
enlightened in protecting their rents by Corn Laws. The
most flagrant violation of the obvious and simple system
of natural liberty was not the regulation of wages for the
Spitalfields weavers, but the Corn Law of 1815. That law
was discussed amid the most violent storms of indignation
from one end of the country to the other, and nobody
could pretend that it was passed by an oversight. The
landlords of the House of Lords were reminded of the
teaching of Adam Smith by Grenville, and King, and half
a score of peers who entered a powerful protest on its
Journals. " Because we think that the great practical
rule, of leaving all commerce unfettered, applies more
peculiarly, and on still stronger grounds of justice as well
as of policy, to the Corn Trade than to any other. Irresist-
ible indeed must be that necessity which could in our
judgment authorise the Legislature to tamper with the
sustenance of the people, and to impede the free purchase
and sale of that article on which depends the existence of
so large a portion of the community." One of the sup-
porters of the Bill pointed to the heavy duties on woollen
goods (100 per cent.), cotton goods (85J per cent.), glass
(114 per cent.), brass and copper goods (59 per cent.),
earthenware (79 per cent.), dressed leather (142 per cent.) ;
and even after the important reforms of Wallace and
Huskisson in 1823, from which the beginnings of the libera-
tion of trade are generally dated, it remained true that
English manufactures were heavily protected. This dis-
crepancy did not escape the working classes, and more
than once in their manifestoes to the public they challenged
the validity of the doctrines of free competition which
landlords and manufacturers refused to accept when their
own interests were at stake. List, the great prophet of
Protection, argued that it would have been the right policy
for England in 1815 to make a clean sweep of protective
212 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
laws and duties, and that if this course had been taken her
position as a manufacturing country would have been
impregnable. As it was, the exclusion of foreign corn
from the English market had the same effect as Napoleon's
continental system ; it drove the other nations of Europe
to take up manufactures and to retaliate on England with
protective duties.
It would, however, give an exaggerated impression of
the consistency of the ruling class, if we were to say that
they talked like Adam Smith when the workers wanted
something, and like an older Adam when they wanted
something themselves. In dealing with the working
classes, too, they discriminated. The Combination Laws
of 1799 and 1800 were a flagrant violation not only of
Adam Smith's general principles, but of his positive and
direct teaching on that very subject. 1 Pitt was silent about
his master, and it was Lord Holland in the other House
who preached from the Wealth of Nations, and reminded
his enlightened audience of Adam Smith's denunciations
of the injustice that punished men for combining, while it
was notorious that masters could combine with impunity.
When Malthus gave evidence against the Combination
Laws in 1824, he used Pitt's favourite phrase. 2 Moreover,
down to 1824 it was still a crime to " seduce " an artisan
to emigrate, and there were constant prosecutions under
these statutes at a time when any master could try his
fortunes in a foreign country, and any investor could
subscribe to a foreign loan. Free labour had not Adam
Smith's meaning : it meant the freedom of the employer
to take what labour he wanted, at the price he chose and
under the conditions he thought proper.
As economic opinion developed, the teaching of Adam
Smith grew fainter and fainter. Thus it became a common-
1 Wealth of Nations, bk. i. chap. viii.
2 " What effect have those laws had on wages ? They have had a partial
effect ; a pernicious effect, I think. Tending to depress them ? They
have no doubt operated against the general principle of wages finding their
natural level." Select Committee on Artisans and Machinery, p. 601.
THE MIND OF THE RICH 213
place among magistrates and politicians that low wages
were a great and necessary encouragement to industry,
enabling England to keep her manufacturing supremacy,
without which supremacy the workmen would have no
employment. This grew into a mechanical formula, and
men repeated it in their sleep
" like a knitter drowsed,
Whose fingers play in skilled unmindfulness."
This argument was produced whatever the circumstances
or industry under discussion, for example by the ship-
owners of the Tyne as a reason for giving low wages on the
boats plying between Newcastle and London, though, as
a local parson pointed out, the trade was an absolute
monopoly. Low wages were also regarded as a valuable
stimulus to the workmen. Arthur Young was enthusiastic
about high prices for the same reason : " The master
manufacturers of Manchester wish that prices might always
be high enough to enforce a general industry." l A good
example of this spirit is seen in the criticisms of the Shear-
men's Union contained in the Report of the Committee
on the Woollen Trade (1806) drawn up by Wilberforce:
' The least of the evils to be apprehended (though an evil
in itself abundantly sufficient to accomplish the ruin, not
only of any particular branch of Trade, but even of the
whole commercial greatness of our country) is, the pro-
gressive rise of Wages which among all classes of Workmen
must be the inevitable, though gradual result of such a
Society's operations ; ... an evil, the fatal though more
distant, and in each particular increase, more doubtful
consequences of which it cannot be expected that the
Workmen themselves should foresee so plainly, or feel so
forcibly, as not to incur them, under the powerful tempta-
tion of a strong and immediate interest."
This belief in the value of low wages as an encouragement
to industry received no sanction from Adam Smith, nor did
the other favourite notion that the manufacturing capitalist
1 Northern Tour, p. 193.
214 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
could do no wrong. Adam Smith favoured high wages,
combating the teaching of Petty and others of the earlier
economists ; he argued that workmen, so far from wasting
away their energies in dissipation, were inclined rather to
hi jure themselves by over-exertion ; that liberal wages, so
far from turning them into drunkards and loafers, were a
great incentive to industry ; and that masters, so far from
being the infallible agents of progress and humanity, often
tried to reduce wages to the injury of society. He was
hi favour of Truck Acts. Again, though he acknowledged
the great services of the Physiocrats, and would have
dedicated the Wealth of Nations to Quesnai, if Quesnai had
lived, he threw overboard their teaching about the sub-
sistence wage. It is indeed no exaggeration to say that his
views about labour, which were entirely disregarded by
the upper classes of the day, stand out in such marked
contrast to his predecessors as to represent an important
part of his contribution to political economy.
The upper classes treated his teaching about the en-
couragement of industry by the right distribution of taxes
hi the same spirit. Adam Smith argued that in levying
taxation, it was important to consider what taxes could be
imposed without putting a burden on industry. From this
point of view he found an ideal tax in a tax on ground rents.
He recommended the taxation of ground rents for two
reasons : the first that such a tax discouraged no industry,
the second that ground rents owed their value altogether
to good government, and it was therefore reasonable that
they " should be taxed peculiarly " for the support of
government. During the Industrial Revolution the value
of ground rents was advancing at a rapid pace, and
any pupil of Adam Smith would have put a tax on the
immense wealth created in the new industrial towns and
taken off the heavy burdens on food, clothing, and the
materials of industry. It was calculated in 1833 that a
labourer earning 22, 10s. was paying in taxes 11, 7s. 7d.
a year. 1 At the same tune the men who were growing
1 See p. 97.
THE MIND OF THE RICH 215
fabulously rich on the process that crowded the poor in
dens and cellars Cooke Taylor spoke of rents increasing in
Lancashire 3000 per cent. contributed nothing of this great
unearned revenue to the expenses of the State. Adam
{Smith's teaching that ground rents ought to be taxed before
the necessaries of life, received just as much attention as his
arguments against Protection.
We have not space to discuss the economic and political
systems that the unfashionable thinkers of the time built
on the basis of Adam Smith's philosophy. They had very
little influence on the ruling class, and it was not until
Dr. Menger made his careful study of the origins of German
Socialism that the importance of this early English school
was appreciated. 1 But they are of great interest in con-
nection with the subject of this chapter, because they show
how widely different an interpretation was put on the
new facts of English life and the new teaching, by persons
who were outside the special atmosphere that produced
the Wages Fund Theory and the general law of beneficent
fatalism. These thinkers all found in the new light an
argument, not for accepting existing arrangements as a
consequence of nature, but for trying to alter them as a
perversion of its salutary principles. We may take one
illustration. In his exposition of Political Economy to
working men, Brougham made great play with the differ-
ence between the conduct and career of the Duke of
Bridgewater, who spent his money in great reproductive
works like canals, and increased employment, and the
Duke of Buckingham who ran through a fortune and died
in a wretched inn " lord of useless thousands." The con-
trast would have served the revolutionary thinkers very
well. Godwin, for example, would have seen in it an
illustration of the importance of his doctrine of distribution,
that he who had the best use for things should possess
them. Charles Hall would have seen in it an argument for
restraining the accumulation of unearned income in the
1 See Professor Foxwell's Introduction to The Right to the Whole Produce
of Labour, by Dr. Anton Menger. (Macmillan, 1899.)
216 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
hands of individuals. William Thompson would have
said that it demonstrated the injustice and the mischief
of a system of distribution that enabled the landlord
and the capitalist to secure the surplus value of industry.
Thomas Hodgskin, who was never tired of reminding
society of Adam Smith's " natural system/' would have
used it as a text to preach his favourite doctrine that
" the law of nature is that industry shall be rewarded by
wealth, and idleness be punished by destitution ; the law
of the land is to give wealth to idleness and fleece industry
till it be destitute." l But for the upper classes the moral
was very different. They argued that if the poor were
restless and discontented, combining and thereby threaten-
ing and reducing profits, rich men would be tempted to
behave like the Duke of Buckingham ; if, on the other
hand, they appreciated the advantages of subordination,
discipline, contentment, and resignation, rich men would
be encouraged to imitate the public spirit of the Duke of
Bridgewater. 2
A recent writer has pointed out that in considering the
procedure adopted by the upper class when it set to work
on the enclosures, we must remember that the eighteenth-
century politician looked upon England as a society of
freeholders, and that they treated all public questions as if
1 A placard that alarmed the magistrates was posted in Manchester in
1819. A number of people had issued a declaration that they intended to
support the Constitution. They called themselves the Police Association.
The Reformers' placard was a reply : "The oppressors have got possession
of a great part of the property of the nation through the operation of Corn
Bills and Combination Acts, which are directly calculated to make pro-
visions dear and wages low." The placard set out the rival principles of
the Police Association and the Reformers in parallel columns :
Principles of Police Association. Principles of Reformers.
The Poor to work 12, 13, or 14 The People to work about 6
hours a day, and almost starve to hours per day and live well :
enrich others ; and themselves to the idle alone to starve,
work none, live luxuriously, and H. O., 42. 189.
heap up riches.
8 During the debates on the Corn Laws in 1816 one speaker said that if
they were not passed, he would shake the dust of England off his feet and
spend his rents in a foreign country.
o
THE MIND OF THE RICH 217
the majority of people were comparatively independent,
whereas, of course, they were in fact powerless and helpless,
needing the protection of the law and of Parliament. 1 This
same kind of illusion blinded the generation that left the
workmen to their fate in the Industrial Revolution. When
Mackintosh talked of property as the cement of society, he
meant that property was the common interest, that Govern-
ment existed to protect the rights of property, and that
if Government protected property the claims of every class
were satisfied, and no class needed anything more. There
were different ways of protecting property, and the differ-
ence between Tories and Whigs was the difference between
antiquated and enlightened ways of protecting it. The
great merit of the Reform Bill, in the eyes of many of its
supporters, was that it called in the middle classes to take
their share in guarding property. It was obvious, of course,
that nine out of ten persons in England did not possess
property, and it might therefore appear that the defence
of property was only the interest of a minority. But
Mackintosh would have answered that, in the first place,
the security of property was the condition of making
capital comfortable and at home, and, secondly, that any
man by industry and self-control could acquire property :
and therefore a society that protected property and all its
rights was really protecting everybody. This view, though
it seems to us strangely at variance with the facts of the
time, received a certain colour from the large number of
persons who passed from the wage-earning class into the
master class. No atmosphere is so favourable to indi-
vidualism as the atmosphere of a society in which genius
and industry carry the exceptional man from one rank to
another. Of those who tried to suppress combination,
some looked on Trade Unions as a menace to order, but
others looked on them as encouraging a false ideal and
a false view of society.
The employers in the northern towns were in many
cases men who had risen from small beginnings, taking
1 See Kennedy, English Taxation, 1640-1799, p. 91.
218 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
advantage of the openings afforded by the Industrial
Revolution for the investment of savings and the applica-
tion of personal pains and capacity, and the small man
who has succeeded in this way is apt to think his own
success a convincing illustration of the admirable order
and arrangement of the world. Who shall say that the
path to riches is barred to merit ? Cannot anybody who
has, in Bishop Berkeley's phrase, his four quarters and his
five senses, do the same ? The Jdea^_pLj i _wQrJkirig-class
agitation are essentially corporate ideas,jthe_ demand for a
better standard for a racejpf men^agfl women: thlT ideas of
the successful small employer areTessentially ^Jn^yj3uJdis_t
i<3eas, the demancTjjiat genius andindustry shall be free.
On_Jiie_jDiie__yiej^ is due to his fellows :
the wage earner thi
belongs primarily to a society, ofjnen. withj^rn mrm
and common hardships, seeking a common_remedy. On
the other, a jnan^Qirst duty is the diity of self -develonmentT
the employer thinks__oi .society as a collection of individuals
pursuing their own ends : he mi* trusts the spirit of co-
operatioh^andTier thinks thatjjTa world where to hisjmow-
ledge, industry and concentration may win the highest
rewards, every man gets ultimately what he is worth. The
ideal working man on the first view tries to raise the status
of his class ; the ideal working man on the second view
tries to change his own status and to become an employer.
On this view of life it seemed specially important to
avoid discouraging private industry and effort by removing
the pressure of want. Society ought to do nothing for its
members that the prudent man would do for himself,
otherwise the motive to prudence would disappear, and
men instead of acquiring property by self-denial would
live on the public funds. Perhaps the most notable illus-
tration of this spirit is the speech in which Brougham
defended the new Poor Law in the House of Lords : a
speech in which social imagination touches its lowest
temperature. Applying this canon of the prudent man,
Brougham argued that the only evils against which society
THE MIND OF THE RICH 219
should protect people were those the prudent man could
not foresee ; he could foresee old age, illness, unemploy-
ment : against these he should make provision. On the
other hand, society might help him in the case of accidents
and violent diseases. It is difficult, when one reads this
speech, to remember that the prudent man who happened
to be a hand-loom weaver in Lancashire (one of the largest
classes of workpeople in the country) was earning a good
deal less than ten shillings a week. It is perhaps still
stranger to remember that no small proportion of the class
that thought all this the wisdom of Solon were living on
the public funds.
The idea of the State as an association for mutual aid
had almost vanished from the mind of a generation that
believed that the degradation of the working classes had
begun with the Speenhamland system, and would cease
with the austerity of the new Poor Law. Paine, who had
presented a programme of old age pensions, maternity
benefits, and free and compulsory education, seemed a
crude and mischievous politician to statesmen who thought-
that the great secret that the State had to learn was to
leave mankind to the steam engine and the railways. The
doctrine that Brougham preached to the poor from the
House of Lords was once preached to the rich in another
aristocratic chamber. Tacitus has described how a descen-
dant of Cicero's great rival, Hortensius, came to the Senate
to ask for a further grant of public money, on the ground
that he had been encouraged by Augustus to raise a family,
in order to keep alive the race of an ancestor whose gifts
unhappily had only been equalled by his extravagance.
The Senate listened with sympathy, but Tiberius made
one of his unfeeling speeches, reproaching Hortalus for in-
terrupting the public business and for putting the Senate
and the emperor in an uncomfortable position. He went
on to state the general objection to public doles to private
persons : " Otherwise industry will languish and idleness be
encouraged, if a man has nothing to fear, nothing to hope
from himself, and every one in utter recklessness, will
220 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
expect relief from others, thus becoming useless to himself
and a burden to me." 1
Tiberius was in advance of his age, and Tacitus tells
us that all except the sycophants listened in a pained
silence, or declared their feelings by subdued murmurs.
Brougham would not have applied this formula to those
who were released by the generosity of the State from the
duty of earning their living. It had been so applied in
the manifestoes of workmen, and the favourite literature
of the Reform movement consisted of pamphlets and
statistics about pensions and sinecures. Brougham and
his friends applied it in all good faith to a race of men and
women to whom the State had presented itself, in Cobbett's
famous phrase, with a bowl of carrion soup in one hand
and a halter in the other. They thought that if society
looked after the capitalist, the capitalist would look after
the workman, and that if society took care of the interests
of property, the deserving poor would become rich. We
have now to see how this view, developed from this strange
blending of optimism and pessimism in the interpretation
of the social phenomena of the time, was modified or affected
by the inspirations of religion and philanthropy.
1 " Languoscot alioqui Industrie, intondetur socordia, si nullus ex se
metus aut apes, et securi omnes aliena subsidia exspectabunt, sibi ignavi,
nobis graves " (Annala, ii. 38).
CHAPTER XL.
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH
THOSE writers who like to dwell on the remarkable success
of the Church of Rome in dealing with its enthusiasts,
find the chief illustration of the corresponding failure of the
Church of England in the history of the Evangelical move-
ment. That movement would have embarrassed any
Church, and it is not surprising that the sleepy and good-
natured Establishment of the eighteenth century, with its
languid and polite piety, its sensible and conventional
sermons, and its free pagan life, dreaded and resented this
outburst of passionate preaching in the fields and the
streets. But the Methodist movement was, after all, a
storm in a teacup in comparison with the great earthquakes
that threw up the Dominican and the Franciscan Orders.
Unfortunately for the Church of England, the Methodist
revival found her more closely entangled than at any
other time in the system and ideas of class domination.
Macaulay has given a vivid picture of the tinker or coal-
heaver who, on finding salvation, determined to devote his
life to the teaching of religion, and, learning that there
was no place for him in the Establishment, left a Church
with whose beliefs and government he had no quarrel, to
found a little Bethel or a little Ebenezer. But even if the
bishop had been ready to welcome him as a fellow-preacher,
the squire would certainly have thought that if this ludicrous
fellow was to be allowed to open his mouth anywhere, it
was less of an outrage that he should preach his crude and
violent religion of terror and rapture outside the Church,
than from a pulpit where he might molest the ears of the
m
222 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
gentry. The history of the Papacy is the history of an
Empire. The history of the English Church in the eigh-
teenth century is one aspect of the history of a class.
Consequently the Church of Rome kept the Franciscans,
and the Church of England lost the Methodists.
But though the Methodist movement finally broke away
from the Church, it was not without influence in the
governing class. For a short time the new preaching
became a fashion, and Lady Huntingdon brought White-
field to her drawing-room to try his spell on the Duchess
of Marlborough, Lady Suffolk (George the Second's
mistress, whose sensitive ear caught a personal allusion in
his sermon), Chesterfield, and Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke
told Whitefield that he had done great justice to the
divine attributes in his discourse. Lord Dartmouth
threw himself into the movement, and Cowper has com-
memorated his conversion in Truth :
" We boast some rich ones whom the Gospel sways,
And one who wears a coronet and prays."
Lady Huntingdon herself was an intrepid missionary.
She had an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury
and his wife, in the hope of persuading them to renounce
their excessive hospitality, and in particular their famous
Sunday parties. The Archbishop showed neither penitence
nor patience, and his wife is said to have allowed her irri-
tation to carry her beyond the bounds of good breeding.
Lady Huntingdon then tried George the Third, who inter-
vened with success. She afterwards became a kind of
archbishop herself when the quarrel broke out between
the followers of Wesley and the followers of Whitefield,
for she was the great lady of the Calvinist movement,
giving money and guidance without stint, and Whitefield
spoke of her in the spirit of Mr. Collins's references to Lady
Catherine de Bourgh.
But the Evangelical revival had, of course, a great
influence within the Church as well, and many people who
would have repudiated the name of Methodist accepted
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 223
its teaching. Wilberforce and his friends in the House of
Commons represented a powerful body of Evangelical
opinion, so powerful indeed that they were able to prevent
Pitt from yielding to Pretyman, when the French Revolution
had frightened the Church from its earlier tolerance, and
the Government was tempted to make war on the Non-
conformists. This group of politicians is famous for its
part in educating England on the iniquities of the Slave
Trade, and for the development of a philanthropy that
became fashionable. What was the character and in-
spiration of this philanthropy ? It is necessary to examine
that influence on the upper classes if we are to understand
the toleration of abuses and cruelties at a time when a
considerable section of the ruling world was seriously
concerned about the responsibilities of wealth and leisure.
Hannah More is indeed as essential an element in the
economy of the time as Ricardo or Malthus, Pitt or Castle-
reagh. The resignation of the upper-class world to the
torture of children in a boyhood such as Mr. Bennett
describes in the early life of Darius Clayhanger, the frank
renunciation of all hope of a decent or civilised life on this
side of the grave for the majority of the people in the new
towns, are not to be attributed solely to the atmosphere
of capitalists and landlords, engrossed in their achieve-
ments or their gains, or to a blinding theory of wealth, or
to the incapacity of a race bewildered by new and stupendous
problems. We must take into account the way in which
men and women capable of self-devotion and sympathy
were brought, through the associations of religion and the
inspirations of the Evangelical Revival, to regard the
world around them.
The devout Christian, confronted with the spectacle of
wrong and injustice, may draw either of two contrary
conclusions. In the eyes of his religion the miner or
weaver is just as important as the landlord or the cotton
lord. Clearly then, one will argue, it is the duty of a
Christian State to prevent any class, however obscure and
trivial its place in the world may seem to be, from sinking
224 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
into degrading conditions of life. Every soul is immortal,
and the consequences of ill-treatment and neglect in the
brief day of its life on earth will be unending. If, therefore,
society is so organised as to impose such conditions on any
class, the Christian will demand the reform of its institutions.
For such minds Christianity provides a standard by which
to judge government, the industrial and economic order,
the life of society, the way in which it distributes wealth
and opportunities. This was the general standpoint of
such a man as Shaftesbury. But some minds drew a
different moral from the equality that Christianity teaches.
Every human soul is a reality, but the important thing
about a human soul is its final destiny, and that destiny
does not depend on the circumstances of this life. The
\ world has been created on a plan of apparent injustice by
a Providence that combined infinite power with infinite
compassion. The arrangements that seem so capricious
are really the work of that Power. But the same Power
has given to the men and women who seem to live in such
bitter and degrading surroundings, an escape from its cares
by the exercise of their spiritual faculties. It is those
faculties that make all men equal. Here they stand, in
Marcus Aurelius's phrase, for a brief space between the
two eternities, and no misery or poverty can prevent a
soul from winning happiness in the world to come. Thus
whereas one man looking out on the chaos of the world
calls for reform, the other calls for contemplation : one
says, Who could tolerate such injustice ? the other says,
Who would not rejoice that there is another world ? One
says, Give these people the conditions of a decent life ;
the other says, Teach them to read the Bible. Thus
whereas religion might make men revolt against the
economic teaching described in the last chapter, and men
like Sadler or Oastler or Fowell Buxton were all influ-
enced in this way, it might add another sanction of its own
to the sanctions of that science. The economist besought
the reformer not to quarrel with nature ; the Christian
might warn him not to quarrel with the dispensations of
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 225
God. 1 For such minds Christianity was not a standard by
which to judge the institutions of society, but a reason for
accepting them.
During this time there were two movements that influ-
enced the upper classes. One was the humanitarian move-
ment that belonged to the general stream of liberal ideas
due to the French Revolution. This was represented in
one form or another by men like Fox, Grey, Meredith,
Romilly, Bennet, Holland, Whitbread, Sheridan, Martin.
These men were not revolutionary ; they made a definite
attack on particular abuses; they took great pains, and
above all they were absolutely fearless. They took up the
cause of men whom they hated and dreaded, when those
men were the victims of oppression. They saw that abuses
could not be suppressed without reform, and they were
not afraid of attacking vested interests, either in industry or
in government. The other movement was the
movement. This movement produced great examples of
personal self-devotion, the most notable being John Howard
and Mrs. Fry. But it produced also a particular spirit in
social politics which had great influence on the general
conduct of the upper-class world. It is represented by
Wilberforce in Parliament and by Hannah More in litera-
ture. It is obvious that much of the sympathy and good-
will that are to be found in every society must have been
attracted to this movement, and the character of that
influence, as guiding and affecting men's ways of looking
at the social abuses of the time, is therefore of great import-
ance. To understand what that influence was on politics,
we must turn to the writings of its two great representa-
tives, Hannah More and Wilberforce.
Hannah More's writings fill several volumes, but those
who want to enter into the social atmosphere in which she
and her friends lived, will find perhaps the best revelation
in a book called The Mendip Annals, or A Narrative of
1 Despsyre put this view :
" Is not His deed, what-ever thing is donne
iu lioaven and earth ? " Fairy Queen, i. canto ix. 42.
P
226 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
the Charitable Labours of Hannah and Martha More in the
Mendip villages. In the year 1789 Wilberforce was taken
to see the famous Cheddar cliffs, but the beauties of nature
were quite overshadowed in his mind by the poverty and
squalor that he encountered in the neighbourhood. On
his return he urged the sisters More to attempt the moral
reclamation of the district, and they took up the task with
great fervour and determination. They started Sunday-
schools and Women's Benefit Clubs in several villages.
These they managed despotically, and they used to pay
periodical visits to see that their teachers and pupils had
not lapsed from virtue and Bible reading, and to address
the villages in a series of charges. The Mendip Annals
gives us, sometimes in the language of Hannah, sometimes
in that of Martha More, the impression that these sur-
roundings made on these two women during a relation-
ship lasting for more than ten years.
The condition of these villages was such that one of
them was popularly known as Botany Bay or Little Hell.
In one place Hannah More mentions that the wages are
a shilling a day ; in another that two hundred people are
crammed into nineteen hovels. Of another parish she
writes : "I will only add that we have one large parish of
miners so poor that there is not one creature in it that can
give a cup of broth if it would save a life. Of course, they
have nothing human to look to but us. The clergyman,
a poor saint, told me, when we set up our schools there
twenty-five years ago, that eighteen had perished that
winter of a putrid fever, and he could not raise a sixpence
to save a life." Nowhere perhaps was there a better
illustration of the great process described in this volume,
the exploitation, that is, of the mass of a race by the classes
holding economic and political power. Now the sisters
More were benevolent women who put themselves to great
trouble and discomfort out of pity for these villages, and
yet from beginning to end of the Mendip Annals there is
not a single reflection on the persons or system responsible
for these conditions. It never seems to have crossed the
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 227
minds of these philanthropists that it was desirable that
men and women should have decent wages, or decent
homes, or that there was something wrong with the arrange-
ments of a society that left the mass of people in this plight.
This is their comment on the overcrowded glassworkers
in the nineteen hovels : " Both sexes and all ages herding
together : voluptuous beyond belief. The work of a glass-
house is an irregular thing, uncertain, whether by day or
by night : not only infringing upon man's rest, but con-
stantly intruding upon the privileges of the Sabbath.
The wages high, the eating and drinking luxurious the
body scarcely covered, but fed with dainties of a shameful
description. The high buildings of the glass-houses ranged
before the doors of these cottages the great furnaces
roaring the swearing, eating and drinking of these half-
dressed, black-looking beings gave it a most infernal and
horrible appearance. One, if not two, joints of the finest
meat were roasting in each of these little hot kitchens, pots
of ale standing about, and plenty of early delicate-looking
vegetables." Thus the guilty in this scheme of civilisation
are not the persons who neglect to provide the decencies of
life and housing and education for the men and women by
whose labour they become rich, but the voluptuous glass-
workers who feed their bodies on shameful dainties and
enjoy delicate-looking vegetables and joints of the finest
meat. The employers and gentry are sometimes blamed,
it is true, in these pages, but they are only blamed for their
want of sympathy with the efforts of the More sisters to
teach religion. They are nowhere blamed for ill-treating
their dependants, or told that they have any duties to them
except the duty of encouraging them to listen to Hannah
More on the importance of obedience, and on the claims to
their regard and gratitude of a Providence that had lavished
such attention upon them.
In the summer of 1792 there was a- colliers' strike to raise
wages in Somerset. We learn from letters among the
Home Office papers l that the men were trying to raise
1 See H. O., 42. 21.
228 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
their wages from ten to twelve shillings a week ; that they
marched in great force through the county ; that they
were joined by two thousand colliers from Gloucester, and
that though determined and united they were perfectly
orderly. Their quiet behaviour was attested by the captain
of dragoons whose duty it was to watch their movements.
To these events, which were of great social significance and
moment to the villages which the More sisters had taken
under their wing, Hannah More makes one allusion : " The
late strike among the colliers for increase of wages had
drawn away some of our great boys who were obliged,
though against their will, to join the common concern.
This day to our no small joy we found them returned."
Martha More refers in another passage in the Journal
to an invitation that came to the sisters from the church-
warden and overseer of Blagdon, asking for a Sunday-
school for their parish. This desire was due to their sense
of the great wickedness of the parish which had been brought
home to the village by the fact that a woman had just
been " condemned to death for attempting to begin a riot
and purloining some butter from a man who offered it for
sale at a price they thought unreasonable." It would
seem to most people that much as the village might need
a Sunday-school, the judges who were responsible for this
piece of barbarity needed one a great deal more, but the
philanthropic sisters, both of whom refer to the case, have
no complaint to make of the sentence. The More sisters
took the parish in hand, with the gratifying result that
they were able to report a few months later that many of
the pupils " understood tolerably well the first twenty
chapters of Genesis."
The period covered by this Journal was marked by two
famines ; they are naturally both discussed by Hannah
More in her charges, and her comments on them are char-
acteristic : "In suffering by the scarcity you have but
shared in the common lot, with the pleasure of knowing
the advantage you have had over many villages in your
having suffered no scarcity of religious instruction." It
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 229
mattered little that wheat was at 134 shillings a quarter, so
long as the labourers who were living on a shilling a day
had the story of Cain and Abel at their fingers' ends.
But the subject of the famine was explored in a more
comprehensive spirit in a charge that Hannah More gave
to the women of Shipham in 1801 : " It is with real concern
that I am obliged to touch upon the subject which made
part of my address to you last year. You will guess I
allude to the continuation of the scarcity. Yet, let me
remind you that probably that very scarcity has been
permitted by an all-wise and gracious Providence to unite
all ranks of people together, to show the poor how imme-
diately they are dependent upon the rich, and to show both
rich and poor that they are all dependent on Himself.
It has also enabled you to see more clearly the advantages
you derive from the government and constitution of this
country to observe the benefits flowing from the dis-
tinction of rank and fortune, which has enabled the high
so liberally to assist the low : for I leave you to judge what
would have been the state of the poor of this country in this
long, distressing scarcity had it not been for your superiors.
I wish you to understand also that you are not the only
sufferers. You have indeed borne your share, and a very
heavy one it has been in the late difficulties ; but it has
fallen in some degree on all ranks^nor would the gentry
have been able to afford such large supplies to the distresses
of the poor, had they not denied themselves, for your sakes,
many indulgences to which their fortune at other times
entitles them. We trust the poor in general, especially
those that are well instructed, have received what has
been done for them as a matter of favour, not of right
if so, the same kindness will, I doubt not, always be ex-
tended to them, whenever it shall please God so to afflict
the land." The lesson was well learnt, and the villages
in which the sisters laboured were conspicuous for their
loyalty to Church and King. In one case it seems to have
been learnt almost too well, with painful results described
tactfully by Martha More : " An affecting circumstance
230 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
took place about this time. Last year, when the common
people showed their excess of loyalty by burning the
effigy of Tom Paine, poor Robert Reeves and two or three
more of our hopeful people, intending to show their zeal
and attachment to their King and country, were tempted
to join the people of Axbridge in this bonfire. The sad
consequence which too usually attends such a public
testimony of loyalty ensued they were overtaken with
liquor, and intoxication followed. Remorse and shame
instantly took place. The following Sunday some could
not appear at the school, and those who did hung their
heads. The greatest apparent repentance succeeded
much praying and reading. In a few weeks all but Robert
became a little reconciled to themselves : his sorrow was
deeper and of long continuance. It preyed dreadfully
upon his mind for many months, and despair seemed at
length to take possession of him. H. had some conver-
sations with him, and read some suitable passages from
The Rise and Progress. At length the Almighty was
pleased to shine into his heart and give him comfort, and
he now, like Philip's eunuch, goes on his way rejoicing."
One of Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts told the
story of a Lancashire colliery girl who was taken down the
pit, when nine years old, to act as drawer with her brother,
who was two years younger : " She cheerfulty followed
him [her father] down into the coal-pit, burying herself in
the bowels of the earth, and there at a tender age, without
excusing herself on account of her sex, she joined in the
game work with the miners, a race of men rough indeed,
but highly useful to the community." The father was
killed by an accident down the pit in the sight of his
children. The girl continued to work in the pit for fourteen
years, at wages of 2s. a day, sometimes earning 3s. 6d. in
twenty-four hours by taking a " double turn," and sup-
porting her mother and two brothers for some years. Then
her health broke down, " and her head was also troubled
by some of those strange and unpleasant imaginations
which are known by persons conversant with the diseases
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 231
of the poor, to be no unusual consequence of bad food,
and great bodily fatigue, joined with excessive grief."
She applied for employment as a servant, but there was a
prejudice against her because she had been a collier, and
her application failed. Fortunately, by that comforting dis-
pensation by which afflictions are turned into blessings,
her bearing and patience attracted notice, inquiries were
made at the colliery, and she received such a glowing
character that she was taken into employment. ' This
story," the tract concludes, " may teach the poor that they
can seldom be in any condition of life so low as to prevent
their rising to some degree of independence if they choose
to exert themselves, and that there can be no situation
whatever so mean as to forbid the practice of many noble
virtues."
Wilberforce, who devoted his life and gifts to a humane
cause, is the best representative of this religion, and a study
of his speeches and writings shows that the tendency to
regard Christianity in politics as only one of the sanctions
of the existing order was no accident, but an essential part
of its spirit. He was, as we have seen, largely responsible
for the degradation of industrial life due to the savage
measures taken by the upper classes to prevent working men
from protecting their standard of living by defensive
organisation. If any one event can be singled out as having
led more than any other to that degradation, it is the
enactment of the Combination Laws of 1799 and 1800 in
which Wilberforce took a leading part. It is particularly
interesting, therefore, to turn to the pages of his Practical
View of the System of Christianity, 1 a work that attained an
immense popularity, in which he has something to say on
the relation of religion to the economic circumstances of
society. There he explains that Christianity makes the
inequalities of the social scale less galling to the lower orders,
that it teaches them to be diligent, humble, patient, that it
reminds them " that their more lowly path has been allotted
to them by the hand of God ; that it is their part faithfully
1 P. 314. The book was first published in 1798.
232 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
to discharge its duties, and contentedly to bear its incon-
veniences ; that the present state of things is very short ;
that the objects about which worldly men conflict so
eagerly are not worth the contest ; that the peace of mind,
which Religion offers indiscriminately to all ranks, affords
more true satisfaction than all the expensive pleasures
which are beyond the poor man's reach ; that in this view
the poor have the advantage ; that, if their superiors enjoy
more abundant comforts, they are also exposed to many
temptations from which the inferior classes are happily
exempted ; that, " having food and raiment, they should
be therewith content," since their situation in life, with all
its evils, is better than they have deserved at the hand of
God ; and finally, that all human distinctions will soon be
done away, and the true followers of Christ will all, as
children of the same Father, be alike admitted to the
possession of the same heavenly inheritance. Such are
the blessed effects of Christianity on the temporal well-
being of political communities." Wilberforce, writing to
Pitt about this book, described the chapter which contains
this passage as the " basis of all politics."
It was perhaps not unnatural that a religion that seemed
to reconcile men and women to the hardships of life by
promising them a happiness that (far from being prejudiced)
was actually enhanced by their disadvantages in this world,
came to be thought of by the upper classes, when the French
Revolution broke into their peace of mind, as designed for
this very purpose. One distinguished churchman, indeed,
deprecated the introduction of Christianity into such dis-
cussions on the ground that the poor were really much
better off than the rich even without allowing for religion
" which smooths all inequalities because it unfolds a pros-
pect which makes all earthly distinctions nothing." His
"Reasons for Contentment addressed to the Labouring
Part of the British Public " is not among the best known
of Paley's writings, though Paley himself, according to Sir
Leslie Stephen, ranked it first, but it is one of the most
interesting documents ever published. In this paper,
THE CONSCIENCE OP THE RICH 233
which appeared in 1793, Paley showed to his own satis-
faction that there was scarcely any respect in which the
poor were not more fortunate than the rich. Their apparent
disadvantages were unreal. " Some of the necessities
which poverty (if the condition of the labouring part of
mankind must be so called) imposes, are not hardships
but pleasures. Frugality itself is a pleasure. It is an
exercise of attention and contrivance, which, whenever it
is successful, produces satisfaction. The very care and
forecast that are necessary to keep expenses and earnings
upon a level form, when not embarrassed by too great
difficulties, an agreeable engagement of the thoughts.
This is lost amidst abundance. There is no pleasure in
taking out of a large unmeasured fund. They who do that,
and only that, are the mere conveyers of money from one
hand to another.
" A yet more serious advantage which persons in inferior
stations possess, is the ease with which they provide for
their children. All the provision which a poor man's child
requires is contained in two words, ' industry and inno-
cence/ With these qualities, though without a shilling
to set him forwards, he goes into the world prepared to
become a useful, virtuous, and happy man. Nor will he
fail to meet with a maintenance adequate to the habits
with wbich he has been brought up, and to the expecta-
tions which he has formed ; a degree of success sufficient
for a person of any condition whatever. . . . With health
of body, innocency of mind, and habits of industry, a poor
man's child has nothing to be afraid of ; nor his father
or mother anything to be afraid of for him." The apparent
advantages of the rich were equally unreal. The owner
of a great estate does not eat or drink more than the owner
of a small one, and he enjoys the pleasures of eating and
drinking much less than the poor man. "The rich who
addict themselves to indulgence lose their relish. Their
desires are dead. Their sensibilities are worn and tired.
Hence they lead a languid, satiated existence. Hardly
anything can amuse, or rouse, or gratify them. Whereas
234 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
the poor man, if something extraordinary fall in his way,
comes to the repast with appetite ; is pleased and refreshed ;
derives from his usual course of moderation and temper-
ance a quickness of perception and delight, which the
unrestrained voluptuary knows nothing of. Habits of all
kinds are much the same. Whatever is habitual becomes
smooth, and indifferent, and nothing more. The luxurious
receive no greater pleasures from their dainties, than the
peasant does from his homely fare. But here is the differ-
ence. The peasant, whenever he goes abroad, finds a
feast, whereas the epicure must be sumptuously entertained
to escape disgust." Such was the transcendental reason-
ing with which the great philosopher of the Church com-
bated the spiritual sorcery of the French Revolution and
the sacramental phrases of the Rights of Man. Paley's
argument that the poor were deceiving themselves in
supposing that they were worse off than the rich under
the British Constitution, was developed by Hannah More
in a series of political tracts that had an immense vogue.
She published a great number o/ dialogues and jingles to
illustrate the theme that the most modest attempt to reform
or relax the ferocious laws that held society together would
inflict great suffering upon the poor. Did not one and the
same system guarantee the property of rich and poor alike ?
But though her trumpery pieces had a huge circulation,
there were many who thought it a mistake to rely solely
on this common-sense reasoning for securing the permanent
tranquillity and contentment of the poor. Among these
was Arthur Young, who published a paper in 1798 with
the title, " An Inquiry into the State of Mind amongst
the Lower Classes," to plead for the building of more
churches. " A stranger would think our churches were
built, as indeed they are, only for the rich. Under such
an arrangement where are the lower classes to hear the
Word of God, that Gospel which in our Saviour's time was
preached more particularly to the poor ? Where are they
to learn the doctrines of that truly excellent religion which
exhorts to content and to submission to the higher powers ? "
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 235
Arthur Young went on to suggest the building of a great
number of churches in the form of theatres, with benches
and thick mats for the poor, and galleries and boxes for
the higher classes. His plea for the " truly excellent
religion," though put in this persuasive form, had no
immediate effect, but twenty years later, one Englishman
out of seven being at that time a pauper, Parliament voted
a million of public money for the construction of churches
to preach submission to the higher powers. In the debates
in the House of Lords, in May 1818, Lord Liverpool kid
stress on the social importance of guiding by this means
the opinions of those who were beginning to receive
education.
But the French Revolution had another effect on the
upper classes, for it seemed to many a warning against
irreligion and the frivolous life. The red skies of Paris
sobered the English Sunday and filled the English churches.
The Annual Register for 1798 l remarks, " It was a wonder
to the lower orders, throughout all parts of England, to
see the avenues to the churches filled with carriages. This
novel appearance prompted the simple country-people to
inquire what was the matter ? " In the merry days of
Archbishop Cornwallis, the Church, to the horror of George
the Third, had set the fashion in Sunday parties. After
the Revolution these dissipations ceased, and Sunday
became much stricter. Wilberforce, in whose mind the
most tremendous problems that the nation had ever faced
did not overshadow the danger that the reassembling of
Parliament on a Monday might cause many members to
travel to London on a Sunday, persuaded Perceval, who
spent a good part of his time in tracing parallels between
Napoleon and the Antichrist of the Book of Revelation,
to alter the day of meeting to Tuesday. " House nobly
put off by Perceval," he records in his diary. A still more
striking reform was the change from Easter Monday to
Tuesday for the opening of the Newmarket Races. In
the old times the villages on the route used to turn out on
1 P. 229.
236 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Easter Sunday to admire the procession of rich revellers,
and their gay colours and equipment. The Duke of York,
in answer to remonstrances, said that it was true he
travelled to the races on a Sunday, but he always had a
Bible and a Prayer Book in his carriage. The general
uneasiness and alarm thus led to a more decorous observ-
ance of Sunday by the rich ; for the poor the religious
propaganda of the day meant something more serious
than a change of fashion : it meant very real punishment
and discipline. Before the Terror, Wilberforce had begun
to concert measures for the stricter regulation of Sunday
and the enforcement of the drastic laws that recommended
Christian observances to the respect and affection of the
poor.
Some particulars of this movement are given in a very
interesting appendix to Mr. and Mrs. Webb's History of
Liquor Licensing in England. In 1790 Wilberforce organised
a national convention of Justices of the Peace, to arrange
a simultaneous attack on loose living and free thinking,
and during the following years a vigorous campaign was
conducted by magistrates in different parts of the country,
directed alike against keepers of brothels, profaners of
the Sabbath, and obscure little printers and booksellers
who passed a copy of Paine's Age of Reason across the
counter. Some, inspired by Wilberforce's spirit, regarded
the time spent by the poor on amusement as time stolen
from the service of God ; others regarded it as time stolen
from the service of their employers. The Home Office
papers contain an account of the measures taken in
September 1802 for the apprehension and punishment of
large numbers of persons, mainly Irish, who played Hurley
in the Tothill Fields and " wickedly profaned the Lord's
Day by exercising unlawful Sports and Pastimes." * About
the same time Lord Pelham, who was then Home Secretary,
was urged by the chairman of the Whitechapel magis-
trates to use his influence to secure the withholding of a
licence from the Royalty Theatre, because " the allure-
1 H. O., 42. 06.
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 237
merits held out by the Performances at that Theatre to
Workmen and Servants of the numerous Manufacturers in
that Neighbourhood may induce them to live in habits of
dissipation and profligacy, become idle and disorderly, and
in consequence may be tempted to rob their Employers." 1
The writer enclosed a copy of a letter that the Duke of
Portland had written in 1798 at the request of "many of
the most respectable and opulent Merchants." A still
more serious abuse of Sunday was brought to the notice
of the Home Office by a parson at Bolton in Yorkshire,
who reported that seditious meetings were held on that
day : it was dreadful " that the leisure allowed on this
sacred day should be prostituted to such mischievous
purposes." 2
It is not surprising that this campaign against the
liberties of the poor awakened a violent hatred in Cobbett.
There was a good deal of the Puritan in Cobbett himself,
as every one knows who has read his Advice to Young Men. 3
If Wilberforce could have reconciled it to his conscience to
read anything that Cobbett wrote, he would have read a
great deal of this book with satisfaction. Yet no man of
his time was hated with such consistent and uninterrupted
fury by Cobbett as was Wilberforce. When Cobbett was
driven from the country by the suspension of the Habeas
1 H. o., 42. 66.
* H. O., 42. 60. The general point of view of the employing class
was put in the Leeds paper quoted by Mr. and Mrs. Webb : " As this
is the season when country feasts, wakes, etc., usually begin, a corre-
spondent earnestly recommends it to the ministers and officers in every
parish to prevent them from being held on the Lord's Day. Indeed, it
would be much better to suppress these feasts entirely, for, as the Rev. Mr.
Zouch justly remarks in his excellent pamphlet on the police, it is found
by long experience that, when the common people are drawn together
upon any public occasion, a variety of mischiefs are certain to ensue ;
allured by unlawful pastimes, or even by vulgar amusements only, they
wantonly waste their time and money to their own great loss and that of
their employers. Nay, a whole neighbourhood becomes unhinged for
many days, quarrels are too often promoted, and the young and inex-
perienced are initiated into every species of immorality." Leeds Intelli-
gencer, June 20, 1786.
8 Note the great resemblance between this book and Wesley's sermon
on Redeeming the Time, Works, vol. vii. p. 67.
238 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Corpus in 1817, he set out the advantages of America in a
passage in which escape from Wilberforce marked the
climax of happiness and good fortune : " And, then, to see
a free country for once, and to see every labourer with
plenty to eat and drink ! Think of that \ And never to
see the hang-dog face of a tax gatherer. Think of that !
No Alien Acts here. No long-s worded and whiskered
Captains. No Judges escorted from town to town and
sitting under the guard of dragoons. No packed juries of
tenants. No Crosses. No Bolton Fletchers. No hangings
and rippings up. No Castleses and Olivers. No Stewarts
and Perries. No Cannings, Liverpools, Castlereaghs,
Eldons, Ellenboroughs, or Sidmouths. No Bankers. No
Squeaking Wynnes. No Wilberforces. Think of that \
No Wilberforces ! " x This is only one of many outbursts
of Cobbett's feelings about Wilberforce and the Saints.
Cobbett, in fact, advised the middle classes to live the sort
of life in respect of enslaving pleasure that Wilberforce
wanted the law to force on the poor, but the point of
view of the two men was quite different. Wilberforce
thought that if the poor were amusing themselves they
were neglecting God and would lose eternal happiness.
Cobbett thought that the middle classes were losing their
independence.
It is in the gradual discovery of the true spirit of this
anti-Jacobin propaganda that the explanation is to be
found of some of the most glaring of Cobbett's apparent
inconsistencies. Cobbett did not start with any quick
sense for freedom. His feelings towards Priestley and
Paine in the Jacobin days were those of any Philistine of
his time ; he regarded people with the " reformers' mind "
with the same impatience as Major Thomas in the Madras
Home? and they found rude and even coarse expression
1 Political Register, October 3, 1818.
1 " It makes a man unhappy and discontented, not with himself but
with other people, mark you, so it makes him conceited and puts him out
of condition both ways. Don't you get to imagine you can make this
country better by tidying it up."
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 239
in his American writings. In 1796 he wrote a scurrilous
life of Paine, giving vent to his chagrin on Paine 's escape
from a French prison in these lines :
" Tom Paine for the Devil is surely a match,
In hanging Old England he cheated Jack Catch,
In France (the first time such a thing had been seen)
He cheated the watchful and sharp guillotine,
And at last, to the sorrow of all the beholders,
He marched out of life with his head on his shoulders."
In 1819 he made a dramatic, or rather a melodramatic,
atonement by bringing Paine's bones back to England, an
act that provoked Byron's bitter epigram :
" In digging up your bones, Tom Paine,
Will Cobbett has done well :
You visit him on earth again,
He'll visit you in Hell." 1
But the inconsistency in Cobbett's behaviour was only
apparent. Never a theorist nor an idealist, he had a power-
ful and candid mind that dealt not with splendid abstrac-
tions but with the realities of society as he saw them.
In 1796 he thought in America that the England which he
observed at a flattering distance was a country without
corruption or injustice where all classes lived in happy
comradeship, and that Priestley and Paine and the rest
were the bad sleepers of the State, always unsettling its
peace and comfort. By 1819 he had found out his mistake.
The first attempts to smother independent thinking had
not seemed to menace the poor, but he had now learnt that
the attack on Paine and the freedom of writing and printing
were closely related to the general oppression and in-
timidation of the mass of Paine's countrymen. Once this
was clear to him he fought for Paine's memory by methods
that some of Paine's followers probably disliked more than
they would have disliked his earlier invective, but those
methods were at least passionately sincere.
But it was not only Cobbett who was embittered against
1 E. I Carlylo, William Cobbett, p. 212.
240 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Wilberforce. Bennet and Place regarded him with similar
feelings, and even Romilly, the gentlest in judging his fellow-
men, could not always restrain his tongue when Wilberforce
was defending some particularly gross outrage on the poor.
Wilberforce showed great independence on occasions,
doing violence both to his party sympathies and his private
feelings on one memorable night when he voted for the
impeachment of Pitt's closest ally, Melville. A vote that
moved Pitt to tears must have cost Pitt's friend a heavy
price. But his strong leaning to authority prevented him
from displaying this independence on behalf of the victims
of Ministers or magistrates. An interesting article was
published in the Scotsman 1 contrasting him in this respect
with Whitbread, whose presence in Parliament " was a
guarantee against a host of abuses," whereas in the case of
Wilberforce, " What jobs of oppression did he ever bring to
light ? What dealer in injustice or corruption was ever
held in awe by his name or exertions ? " Hazlitt, in his
biting sketch, said of Wilberforce's philanthropy that it
was not so ill-bred as to quarrel with his loyalty or banish
him from the first circles. This is less than just to Wilber-
force. It was not the desire for Sidmouth's good opinion
that made him defend injustice : it was this prepossession,
which grew stronger with time, in favour of the claims of
authority.
For two years a handful of men, the chief being Sheridan,
Burdett, and Courtenay, were beating against the con-
servatism of officials and the indifference of politicians in
the effort to obtain some inquiry into the scandals of the
Cold Bath Fields jail. In the end they succeeded : a
Commission was appointed, and in December 1800 it
presented a report that convinced the most incredulous
of the reality of the alleged abuses. A special feature of
this prison was the extraordinary treatment of persons
who were not convicted of any crime. In one case a
young girl had been kept in prison in order to be called as
a witness against a man accused of attempting to rape
1 Quoted in Manchester Observer of March 7, 1818. See H. O., 42. 175.
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 241
her. There was no intention of bringing any charge against
the girl herself. When the trial came on she was too ill
to give evidence. It was discovered that she had been
kept on bread and water for a month, and that though she
was the wronged party in the case that was to be tried,
she had been treated with a cruelty that would have been
indefensible, if it had been inflicted on a convicted and
sentenced prisoner. The Grand Jury and the Traverse
Jury of the County of Middlesex both made presentments
calling attention to the grave abuses of this prison, in which
the fate of persons, who were neither charged nor convicted,
depended entirely on their ability to pay for the neces-
saries of life. It happened that a large number of the
suspected revolutionaries who were swept into prison
when the Habeas Corpus was suspended, were lodged in
the Cold Baths Fields prison, and it was probably due to
this that some interest was taken in the state of the prison,
and that the House of Commons was ultimately brought
to take note of the fact that unconvicted persons were
regularly kept without food for seventeen or eighteen
hours at a time. One of the strongest speeches against
an inquiry was made by Wilberforce, who met the com-
plaint that innocent persons were being used brutally,
with the happy remark that " It ought never to be forgotten
that men who expose themselves to suspicion must often
incur the disadvantages of guilt." l In an illuminating
passage he remarked that " the minutes of the sittings
1 Contrast with Wilberforce's tone that of the Emperor Julian's
" Letter to a Priest " : " And I will assert, even though it be paradoxical
to say so, that it would be a pious act to share our clothes and food even
with the wicked. For it is to the humanity in a man that we give, and not
to his moral character. Hence I think that even those who are shut up in
prison have a right to the same sort of care ; since this kind of philan-
thropy will not hinder justice. For when many have been shut up in
prison to await trial, of whom some will be found guilty, while others will
prove to be innocent, it would be harsh indeed if out of regard for the
guiltless we should not bestow some pity on the guilty also, or again, if on
account of the guilty we should behave ruthlessly and inhumanly to those
also who have done no wrong." Works of the Emperor Julian, with trans-
lation by Dr. W. C. Wripht, vol. ii. p. 303.
242 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
of the Magistrates, to which he had alluded, would serve
to show what had been the conduct of some of the prisoners,
and the necessity there was to watch them with care. It
appeared in these minutes that it was stated by the
chaplain that two of the persons confined in this place,
Burkes and Scott, had behaved so ill at church, had so
openly expressed their contempt of the worship, that he
proposed that their attendance should in future be dis-
pensed with." x
Wilberforce's point of view was quite different from that
of Romilly or Bennet or Sheridan. When it was pro-
posed to suspend the Habeas Corpus, or to give arbitrary
powers over the lives of the working classes to magistrates,
they asked themselves whether such measures would not
lead to the gross oppression of poor and defenceless people.
Each of them had known such cases and brought them
to light. Wilberforce asked himself a totally different
question. He asked himself whether the Christian religion
and the social order would not suffer if men whose principles
and outlook he held in horror were allowed to write and
speak as they liked. His answer to this question led him
to support authority under all circumstances. Before the
French Revolution he had been afraid of liberty of speech :
after it he thought discipline the supreme need of the poor.
In that cause inhumanity might become a duty. Wilber-
force and some of his friends prosecuted a small bookseller
for selling Paine's Age of Reason. The wretched culprit
was found starving in a garret, his children ill with small-
pox, and Erskine, the prosecuting counsel, made a strong
1 Parliamentary Register, December 21, 1798. Aris, the governor of
this prison, who was held up to admiration by Wilberforce, was afterwards
exposed and punished. A story was told of him that recalls an incident in
the history of those political prisoners at Monte Fusco, whose sufferings
are described by Mr. Trevelyan in Garibaldi and the Thousand. The jailer
of the prison at Monte Fusco shot a nightingale because he thought its
song was a consolation to the prisoners. One of Aris's prisoners, spending
fifteen months in absolutely solitary confinement, was comforted by a robin
that came in one cold day and made friends with him. Aris came into the
prison one morning, saw the robin, and killed it. See Burdett's speech
in debate on Habeas Corpus, February 17, 1818.
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 243
appeal for mercy. But Wilberforce boasts in his Diary
that he and his fellow Christians stood firm, and insisted
on the ruin of the man and his home. During the debates
of 1817 on the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, Burdett
put a pointed question to him. 1 He showed that persons
were thrown into prison without trial, that they were kept
for years in solitary confinement, and that they were
forbidden any communication with the outside world.
He reminded Wilberiorce of the saying of* Christ, " I was
sick and in prison, and ye visited me not," and he asked
what a Christian was to think of those who not only did
not visit the prisoner themselves, but would not allow
others to visit him. Wilberforce replied that religion had
taught him to value the blessings which the country enjoyed,
and to hand them down to posterity unimpaired.
When Bennet and other public -spirited men had exposed
the infamous story of Oliver, the spy and agent provocateur
who brought men to the gallows, Wilberforce said that
his confidence in Sidmouth was unshaken, and that he
was satisfied that there was no serious risk of injustice
or oppression. His position was well put in two sentences
of his speech : " He could readily conceive how the lower
orders, that valuable portion of the community whose
labour was so essential to the social system under which
we live, might be tempted by the delusive and wicked
principles instilled into their minds, to direct their strength
to the destruction of the government, and to the overthrow
of every civil and religious establishment." 2 That was
the real danger. As for the danger of the abuse of those
powers, did anybody think it existed, or that the public
press did not provide all necessary security ? Romilly
reminded him that this speech was made after it had been
proved that a large number of innocent people had gone
to prison, when the use of spies had for the first time been
admitted, and that though Wilberforce and men of his
class might be in no danger, obscure weavers might spend
1 Hansard, June 27, 1817.
Hansard, June 23, 1817.
244 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
months in prison without Parliament ever hearing of it. 1
It is not surprising after studying these speeches to find
Wilberforce, two years later, coming forward to express
his approval of Peterloo. 2
Wilberforce 's humanitarian contemporaries thought that
a Christianity which held that it would be wrong to con-
sider Owen's schemes because he did not recognise the
Christian religion, and yet condoned and supported all
the cruelties and injustices of power, was hypocrisy. Here
were men devoting themselves with great courage and
public spirit to exposing abuses and pleading the case of
a class unrepresented in Parliament and viewed with suspi-
cion by magistrates, and at every step they found Wilber-
force resisting them, and throwing the cloak of his character
for independence and moral singleness of purpose over
every species of oppression. Their view that he was a
hypocrite was not unnatural, but it was unjust. Wilber-
force acted consistently on his own principles. His great
mission in life was to make men moral, as he understood
morality. The thought of weavers and printers languish-
ing in prison under Combination Laws, or the laws against
freedom of speech and writing, which filled men of the
world like Fox, Sheridan, Bennet, or Holland with rage
and indignation, left Wilberforce cold. What tortured
him was the thought that a man who read Paine and talked
like a Jacobin, who grudged the rich their wealth, and the
aristocracy their power, might still be at large, spreading
the irreligious spirit of discontent. There was no hypocrisy
in this ; it was the way in which Wilberforce interpreted
his religion. In questions where this disturbing element
did not enter, where the demand was not that working
men should be treated as persons with rights and liberties,
but that suffering unnecessary from the point of view of
1 Romilly quoted the case of a man who had been kept in prison for
seven years. The victim was a youth of seventeen, who was shut up in
1795. See Burdett's speech, Hansard, February 26, 1817.
1 Place wrote against his name in his report of the debate, " an ugly
epitome of the devil " (Wallas. Place, p. 147).
I
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE RICH 245
discipline should cease, Wilberforce was a humane man.
He did not prosecute the cause of the factory children or
the chimney-sweeper children with the zeal that he devoted .
to reforming manners or the zeal that has made his name
immortal in the history of the Slave Trade, but he sup-
ported others when they tried to reform these abuses,
just as he supported the attempts to reform the Game
Laws. He looked upon the cause of the factory children
as similar in kind to the cause of the slaves. Economists
might argue that the cruelties of the factory were essential
to British industry, but he could not regard them as
essential to the British constitution and its civil and
religious establishments.
The religious philanthropy taught two main lessons.
The first was the duty of private_benevpjence. The rich
and comfortable ouglil to visit the poor, to teach them the
Bible, to take an interest in their welfare, to give them
advice, alms, and soup, to found societies like the Society for
Bettering the Condition of the Poor. Many persons carried
out these tasks with great devotion, some, like John Howard
and Mrs. Fry, with heroism. It was in this way, rather
than by seeking to modify the arrangements of society,
that the comfortable should discharge their obligations
to the unfortunate. That a great deal of misery was
alleviated by these ministrations is undoubted. The
second lesson was the lesson of subordinationjind discipline.
The rich and the poor were equal in the sight of God, but
the effective recognition of equality was to come in another
world. In this world the poor were not to presume on that
principle : they were to learn patience and gratitude. The
Evangelical religion made a special feature of gratitude.
Wilberforce used to carry about, for use in meditation and
prayer, a list of the advantages for which he owed gratitude
to Providence, such as his rank in life, his parents, his
home, and in particular his good fortune in being born in
the country and the age that combined the greatest measure
of temporal comforts and of spiritual privileges. A small
weakly man, he would have been exposed at birth if he
246 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
had been born in the days of his painted ancestors, whereas
in eighteenth - century England he had found very little
inconvenience from his poor physique. As Brougham's
ideal was the prudent man, Wilberforce's was the grateful
man. 1 Unfortunately the poor learned gratitude slowly,
and hence it was necessary to make sharp laws for keeping
them in order. The day would come when all classes would
pursue the virtues that respectively became them, according
to the revelation of the Gospel. For the present the poor
must be taught their duties by Combination Laws, and the
rich must be taught their responsibilities by the Bible.
Thus the philanthropy of the rich, like the political
economy of the day, helped to reconcile the conscience of
the upper classes to a servile standard for the poor. For
resignation was the message of religion as it was the message
of nature.
1 The concentration on this aspect of life, by a strange irony, brought
the Evangelical very near to the Gods of Epicurus : " Comprehende igitur
animo, et propone ante oculos, deuni nihil aliud in omni aetermtate, nisi,
Mihi pulchre est, et, Ego beatus sum, cogitantem " (Cicero, De Natura
Deorum, lib. i. cap. 41).
CHAPTER XII
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR (I.)
THE SPIRIT OF UNION
IN his vivid picture of Latin society under the Empire, Dr.
Dill has described the "colleges " in which the obscure work-
man, shut out from the brilliant world of power and fashion
and pleasure, contrived to satisfy his desire for comradeship,
for the warmth of sympathy in life, and the promise of
memory after death. The English workman under the
new industrial system found himself receiving government,
justice, discipline, the ordering of most of his comfortless
life, from magistrates and masters, in a world not less
separate and cold. Like the cloth worker of Brescia or the
boatman of Lyons in the second century, the Gateshead
miner or the Bradford weaver was conscious of tastes and
faculties and needs for which no provision was made in
the scheme of his life, as that scheme was drawn by his
superiors. The man who has no share in the government
of his parish or mill needs some scope for his political
capacities ; the man who spends his life " making the
twenty-fourth part of a pin " needs some sphere for his
imagination ; the man whose only provision against
accident or illness or the loss of his livelihood is the
reluctant succour of the poor law, needs some protection
against fortune ; the man who lives under the unbridled
power of employer and magistrate needs some protection
against that power, some pledge of help and friendship in
the hour of struggle and tribulation. These .necessaries
of his larger life the English workman sought during the
Industrial Revolution in organisations that he created and
developed under the fierce discouragement of his rulers.
. 247
248 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
These institutions took the place in his life of the sodalicia
that had consoled the loneliness of the Latin poor.
For it was in those years that the institutions that are
now so pronounced a feature of artisan civilisation first
became positive forces in the life of the working classes.
To trace the history of Trade Unions, Friendly Societies,
Co-operative Societies, Mechanics' Institutes, Sunday-
schools, Methodist Chapels, and all the various influences
that helped to keep the soul alive hi a population living
under conditions that degrade the mind, is clearly beyond
the scope of this work. To do justice to that theme it would
be necessary to describe the Reform movement with its
apostles and martyrs, Paine, Hardy, Thelwall, Watson the
Chartist, Muir, Gerrald, Place, Cobbett, and in the north
hi particular, men like Knight, Bamford, Prentice, Baines
of Halifax, Taylor, Pilkington, and other brave men and
good citizens whose names are only preserved hi the criminal
records of their country. Robert Owen, again, who taught
a religion that borrowed too directly from the unsophis-
ticated doctrine of Christianity to please the more cautious
and experienced Christians of the House of Commons, 1
would occupy a place of his own as the prophet of co-
operation in a wider and fuller sense than that term
pommonly bears. The Union Shop movement (1828-32)
and one important phase in the Trade Union movement
drew their inspiration and energy largely from his teaching. 2
In education of one kind or another there are the names
of Raikes, Bell, Lancaster, Hannah More, Mrs. Trimmer,
Birkbeck, Brougham, and Cobbett, a genius of a different
temper from all the rest, whose papers and pamphlets were
read with all the greater zest, as literature forbidden by
a power that could punish disobedience with swift and
arbitrary strokes. Sadler, Oastler, Fielden, Bennet, and
Ashley, the leaders of the revolt against the sacrifice of
1 See Wilberforce's speech, Smart, op. tit., p. 707 (1819).
1 Though Chartism as a political movement ran counter to his doctrine,
suoh notable Chartist leaders as Lovett and Hetherington Cleave and
Watson had all been his pupils (Dolleans, op. cit., i. p. 197).
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 240
infant life, have crossed these pages from time to time. Then
there are the two men whose names Carlyle coupled together
as an astonishing and alarming phenomenon to the idle
rich, Ebenezer Elliott and Rowland Detroisier. One came
from Yorkshire, the other from Lancashire. Elliott, a
Sheffield ironworker who picked up some kind of education
at a small Presbyterian school in Rotherham, is chiefly
known as the Corn Law rhymer, but he covered a wide
range, and he was the poet of Chartism as well as of Free
Food. Detroisier, the son of a Manchester man and a
Frenchwoman, who deserted him when a month old, was
brought up by a benevolent fustian cutter and apprenticed
to that trade. He learned to read and write at a Sunday-
school. He had a chequered career, married early, and was
often in want. His great strength of character showed
itself in the use he made of his intervals of unemployment,
for though almost destitute he turned his misfortunes to
account by learning Latin, French, Physics, Mathematics.
He embarked on more than one venture in commerce and
industry, but he found his mission as a public lecturer,
and he established some of the first Mechanics' Institutes in
England, at Hulme and Salford. With human sympathies
and democratic beliefs he combined Brougham's enthusiasm
for education, giving popular addresses on such subjects as
' The Benefits of General Knowledge, more especially the
Sciences of Mineralogy, Geology, Botany, and Entomology."
An address that he published on the importance of moral
education to the working classes captivated enlightened
London, and brought him into correspondence with Bentham.
His eloquence on Reform platforms caused him to be
chosen as secretary of the Political Union, and Prentice has
described the effects of his speaking on an audience. He
was a man of unbounded public spirit, a powerful force in
the education of Lancashire.
But more important than Elliott or Detroisier was John
Doherty, the chief working-class leader of 4he time. Doherty ]
began life hi a cotton mill near Lame, and migrated to i
Manchester in 1816 at the age of seventeen. He rapidly *
250 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
reached a position of influence among the cotton workers,
and he took a prominent part in the agitation against the
re-enactment of the Combination Laws hi 1825. After
leading the cotton spinners in their great but unsuccessful
strike in 1829, he tried to turn the lesson of that failure to
account, and to organise the forces of the working classes
in the National Association for the Protection of Labour.
The Voice of the People, which he edited, was the organ
of that association, and afterwards, when apparently he
had quarrelled with the executive committee, he edited
The Poor Man's Advocate. At the time of the Com-
mittee on Combinations (1837) he was a bookseller in Man-
chester. Doherty's democratic convictions were genuine
and ambitious. He wanted the working classes to organise
their own education, in opposition to upper- and middle-
class movements like the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge. Readers of the Voice of the People will be
struck, too, by its modern spirit on the subject of the control
of industry ; for, in contrast to some other working-class
leaders, he held that the development of machinery was
inevitable, and in contrast to the economists of the day he
held that if the new society was to have tolerable conditions
of life, machinery must be brought under the direction of the
. > , working classes themselves. At a time when the working
classes were tempted to adopt the materialist standards
taught by the ruling class, Doherty was a powerful prophet
of the creed that the aim and goal of human effort was
not wealth but freedom.
Lastly, as our period closes, a battle began for a cheap
Press. Birkbeck and Chad wick were agitating against
the heavy tax on newspapers, and a whole army of working
men defied the law and published journals without a stamp.
In October 1830 Henry Hetherington began to publish
the Penny Papers for the People. The battle was won in
1836, when the stamp was reduced from 4d. to Id., but
in the five years 500 persons had been sent to prison. 1
1 See for description of the movement, Collet, History of the Taxes on
Knowledge.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 251
Each of these influences had its share in modifying, in
this or in that respect, the brutal results of a system that
treated human life as one among several forces which drove
the wheels of rapid wealth, and as nothing more. Each
of them, in one way or another, taught either the rich or
the poor that men, women, and children were not merely
so much machine power in a world that had no use or
care for anything but their fingers and their muscles. But
the main burden of building up this side of life, of giving
to classes that seemed to exist only for other people's
ends a value and purpose of their own, of making wider
and deeper the range and play of imagination and sympathy,
of cherishing a spirit of association more daring and more
ambitious than the spirit of the old sodalicia : this burden
fell in the main on the nameless working classes themselves.
They had to overcome all the obstacles that were put in
their way by a class holding the power that law, custom,
education, and wealth can bestow. Of all the documents
in the Home Office papers, none illustrates better the diffi-
culties of that struggle than a confiscated copy-book,
seized by an active magistrate and sent to the Home Office
in a time of panic as a dangerous piece of sedition, in which
a working man, secretary of a little society of working-men
Reformers, had been practising his elementary powers of
writing and spelling. 1 Reform, education^ combination
wore a very different look to the rich and the poor. To
the working classes they were ladders from a prison : to
their rulers they were ladders whereby the proletariate
might one day take the State by storm.
One form of association had been countenanced and even
befriended by the ruling class. George Rose had passed
more than one Act of Parliament to protect the funds of
Benefit Clubs and to regulate their management. 2 Benefit
Clubs were, of course, no new feature of English life. Eden
wrote an interesting chapter on them in his great work,
pressing with an enlightenment unusual in his day for the
1 H. O., 42. 157.
8 33 George in. o. 54 (1793) and 36 George ra. c. Ill (1795).
252 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
recognition of the property of women. They increased
rapidly at this time, and Rose stated in 1816 that there
were 700,000 members of these societies in England. They
were specially common in Lancashire and the new indus-
trial districts ; 1 in 1801 Lancashire had 820 registered
societies, 200 more than any other county. These societies
were very various in character. A few were connected
with a mine or mill. Curwen told the House of Commons
in 1816 2 that for thirty years he had made it a rule that
every man employed at the Workington and Harrington
collieries should contribute 6d. a week to a benefit fund,
the employers paying a third of the sum subscribed. The
fund was managed by a committee of workmen chosen
by themselves. Curwen proposed a universal system of
contributory insurance on this model as a substitute for
the Poor Law. But the great majority of these societies
were, of course, unconnected with the employers. They
- were indeed viewed with great suspicion by many magis-
trates as a disguise for combination of a less innocent
k^d- Colonel Fletcher of Bolton wrote, in 1817, that the
weavers east of Manchester were about to strike, and that
they had broken up a Friendly Society in order to provide
themselves with strike pay. 3 In the same year the funds
of a sick club were used for the maintenance of the Kidder-
minster weavers on strike. 4 Mr. Lloyd of Stockport, clerk
to the magistrates, complained in 1818 that Friendly
Societies were helping a man named Temple, whom he was
prosecuting for conspiracy, 5 and he pressed for legislation
to prevent this. An Act of Parliament 6 was passed the
next year to strengthen the control of the magistrates,
and also to make it necessary for the magistrates to satisfy
themselves that any table of benefits that they sanctioned
had been approved by two actuaries. A more important
Act was passed in 1829 7 setting up an official corresponding
to the modern Registrar of Friendly Societies.
1 Chapman, op. cit., p. 182 n. May 28, 1816. H. O., 42. 165.
H. O., 42. 172. 6 See p. 255. e 59 George m. c. 128.
7 10 Gorge iv. c. 66.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 253
The suspicions of the magistrates were well founded,
for a witness told the Committee on Artisans and Machinery,
hi 1824, the secret history of a Spinners Union to which
he had belonged hi 1810. 1 This Union extended on all
sides of Manchester, to Stockport and Macclesfield in the
south, Staleybridge, Ashton, and Hyde in the east, and
Oldhain, Bolton, and Preston in the north. Business was
conducted by a general congress of fifty deputies. The
meetings were carried on under the sanction of Sick Club
articles legally enrolled at Manchester, but the Society
was governed by a set of private rules. This means of
disguising a Trade Union was hi common use, according
to the Report of the Committee on Friendly Societies hi
1825, and it has been said that "most alliances to raise
wages cloaked themselves under the rules of Friendly
Societies. . . ." 2
The great modern Friendly Societies, with few exceptions,
trace their origin to this period, and to the districts that
were the home of the new industry. The Industrial
Revolution transformed the old village club, with its easy-
going finance and its convivial life, into the great Orders
that we know to-day.
The Co-operative movement also made its first start at
this time. In 1831 the dressers and dyers, in the course
of a quarrel with their employers, set up an establishment
of their own ; according to the Voice of the People it was a
great success. Doherty wanted other workpeople to copy
this example. Mrs. Webb has described, in her brilliant
little sketch of that movement, the early adventures of this
principle. In 1832 there were some five hundred co-
operative societies, predecessors of the great Rochdale
experiment of 1844, and though they came to grief, they
are significant as the first trial of strength in this important
and difficult form of association.
But, of course, the chief of the movements that developed
the mind and determined the history of the working classes
1 Artisans and Machinery, p. 573.
* See Chapman, op. cit., p. 181.
254 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
was the new Trade Union. Doherty thus described the
main object of the National Association for the Protection
of Labour (the combined Union of 1830), " to raise the
working classes from that state of moral degradation in
which they were at present sunk." During this time, as
Brofessor Chapman has pointed out, the Trade Union
acquires a ne~w significance, becoming less an organisation
for protecting the industry and more an organisation for
fighting employers. 1 This is true, not only of spinners who
worked in factories and colliers who worked in mines, but
also, though more gradually, of weavers working in their
homes. Not, of course, that these workpeople had yet
settled or permanent unions of the kind that we know
to-day hi the great majority of industries, with highly
organised schemes of government and a salaried staff.
In this period these organisations were struggling into life,
and struggling against the power of wealth and the power
of law : against master, magistrate, and spy. Under the
Combination Laws, as we have seen, men and women could
not take a single step for the purpose of raising wages, or
resisting a reduction of wages, or helping the victims of
a lock-out, without risk of prosecution. Combinations of
this kind were not always prosecuted. A man or woman
trying to organise against the masters was like a person
trying to get out of an unfamiliar room in the dark. His
shins may escape nine times out of ten, but it is due to
luck rather than to dexterity. Leadership or responsibility
\ of any kind involved the gravest risks. Such a position
brought no dignity or social repute : it invited the special
* hostility of magistrates and employers. Detroisier said
that the employers' prejudice against intelligence and
education was largely due to their animus against the
leaders of their workmen, who were generally chosen for
their superiority in those respects. These men were the
1 Mr. and Mrs. Webb have given, in the opening pages of Industrial
Democracy, an account of some of the early Trade Clubs, with their rules
regulating the distribution of liquor, and forbidding obscene or seditious
language.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 255
natural victims, and at the first breath of trouble their
houses were searched, their papers seized, and they them-
selves thrown into prison. Gravener Henson, the historian
of frame-work knitting, was imprisoned when the Habeas
Corpus was suspended, although his energy had been
directed to restraining the workmen from violence, and
he had recommended them to combine as an alternative
to Luddite methods. But he had committed the crime
of prosecuting employers for an offence under the Truck
Acts. 1 Leaders were in a particularly dangerous position,
because when a large number of workpeople were in prison,
in peril of their lives, there was a considerable risk that
one of them might succumb to the temptation of ingra-
tiating himself with the authorities, and saving his neck,
or lightening his punishment, by making charges against
public men who were known to be obnoxious to the Govern-
ment or the magistrates. Thus a man, under sentence of
death for frame breaking at Loughborough, tried to
extricate his life by promising important disclosures in-
criminating Gravener Henson, and to whet the appetite of
the magistrate he declared that Henson was equal to
anything that ever Robespierre committed. At the very
moment that this painful piece of perfidy was acting inside
the prison walls, Henson was himself on his way to London
to petition, at no small risk to himself, for mercy for the
poor wretch who was trying to sell his advocate's life for
his own. 2
The story of William Temple is a good illustration of the
difficulties and dangers to which a man who took any
step for defending himself and his fellows was exposed.
We can put together the main facts from two sources :
Temple told his story to the Committee on Artisans and
Machinery, and Lloyd, a chief actor, tells it in the Home
Office papers. 3
Temple was a spinner near Stockport. An old soldier,
* H. O., 42. 166. H. O., 42, 163.
* Committee on Artisans and Machinery, p. 414 f . ; H. O., 42. 179,
42. 180, 42. 184, 42. 186.
256 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
he had been in the ranks of the dishevelled army that
dragged itself to Corunna with Sir John Moore. After the
war he returned to civil life, resuming his employment
as a spinner. He was soon to know that peace had only
brought him a change of warfare. He and twenty of his
fellows gave notice to their employer, a manufacturer
named Smith, of Heaton Norris, near Stockport, but in the
parish of Manchester, that they intended to quit his em-
ployment unless he raised their wages by a penny a hundred
hanks. Other factories were giving three halfpence or
twopence more than Smith for a hundred hanks. Smith
refused, and they left his employment. Smith then sent
the names of the twenty-one to all other manufacturers
in the neighbourhood, asking them not to give them employ-
ment, with the result that six of the men who had already
obtained work were turned off. Temple and his friends
consulted a lawyer, instituted proceedings against Smith,
and raised subscriptions. Mr. Lloyd of Stockport, clerk
to the magistrates, replied by arresting Temple and four-
teen others for conspiracy. The factory was in Lanca-
shire, and on this ground the men could be prosecuted in
Lancashire. But Lloyd reflected with great satisfaction,
that as Temple and four others had appealed for sub-
scriptions at Stockport in Cheshire, they were liable in
that county also. In Lancashire the charge was " assem-
bling together and refusing to work for Mr. Smith " : in
Cheshire, " conspiracy to raise wages and control their
.)/* ^s masters." Temple got bail for the Lancashire charge, on
' J*s* which a true bill had been found in August, the trial being
fixed for the Assizes of the following spring. He then
hurried off to Chester, and at the Assizes at the end of
August he traversed his case till the ensuing Assizes. He
was ordered to find 200 bail himself, and two sureties in
100 each. This he could not do until December 14, so
from August to December he spent in prison. On coming
out of prison, he had still three months before his next
trial was to come on, and he thought he could use the time
for raising funds for the defence, so he published a broad-
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 257
sheet appealing to every mechanic, every friend of liberty,
and every lover of justice to snatch him and his friends
from " the savage grasp of an overbearing and hard-
hearted employer." Lloyd of Stockport pounced on this,
ordered Temple into custody, and called on him to find bail
of two sureties in 50 each, to answer to a charge of libel
at the next Chester Assizes. But Lloyd was evidently
anxious to separate the case of the leaders from the cases
of the others, and after some negotiations with Smith
he arranged that the charges at Lancaster should be
dropped, after an expression of regret and of submission
from the culprits, and that the more serious offenders should
be dealt with at Chester. There Temple and four others
were tried in April, on a charge of " conspiring, confederating,
combining, and agreeing for the price of their labour."
Temple was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment :
Barnett got a similar sentence for calling a meeting,
Swindells and Gooch three months for calling a meeting,
and Bolton three months for meeting a person in the street
and saying, " I wish you would come forward for these
men, otherwise they will fall through." Thus Temple spent
sixteen months in prison for the offence of leaving his em-
ployment and for asking for help to defend himself and his
friends against Smith's proscription. Smith, on the other
hand, was allowed to file a plea of justification. On coming
out of prison, Temple was of course a marked man, and it
was a year before he could get employment.
Temple's story before the Committee on Artisans and
Machinery is instructive reading, but the Home Office
papers are an invaluable supplement. For they show, in
Lloyd's letters, that the magistrates made no pretence
of acting impartially in these disputes. All that Smith
had to do after writing to his fellow-manufacturers and
setting the prosecution in motion, was to leave his
workmen to Lloyd's tender mercies. The brilliant idea
of prosecuting in two counties, which kept the wretched
Temple flying from one court to the other, and of course
made the defence infinitely more difficult and expensive,
F
258 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
was his, and he chuckles over it. When Temple issued his
appeal, it was Lloyd who seized him and asked for bail,
adding in his letter to the Home Office " which I don't
think he will be able to provide." Refusal to accept
employment on their masters' terms was in the eyes of
the magistrates an offence against society, and to demand
better wages, or even to resent a reduction of wages, was
to demand revolution. The meshes of the law were infinite,
its penalties brutal, and its powers in the hands of men
for the most part without imagination or sympathy,
strangers to all the experiences and the difficulties of the
poor. In such an atmosphere a Trade Union was a school
of heroism and public spirit.
There was one danger from which the trade unionists
of the industrial districts were rarely free, the danger of
the serpent in their councils. The arts by which Castles,
Oliver, and Edwards won their reluctant fame were the
arts by which many of their contemporaries earned their
living. The use of spies was common in all times of
popular excitement or upper-class panic, and in some
districts in the north and Midlands they became part of
the normal machinery of the law. Bills for spies are for
.1 many years a regular feature of the Home Office papers.
K , orf^ Spies were employed by the Home Office itself, by some
l>- ***" of the officers commanding in the industrial districts,
and by several of the more active magistrates or their
clerks, notably by Fletcher of Bolton, Lloyd of Stockport,
Enfield at Nottingham, and Parsons Ethelston and Hay
in Lancashire. It sometimes happened that one magis-
trate arrested another magistrate's spy by mistake, with
embarrassing consequences. This system was in force in
the industrial districts long before the Luddite disturb-
ances, for Bolton Fletcher sent up a bill for 123 in 1805,
his agents being used on that occasion to watch a Weavers'
Combination. 1 As spies had to justify themselves and
to encourage the authorities to continue their employ-
ment, their trade was rather that of the artist than of the
1 H. O., 42. 82.
\jrS
fijp*P**
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 259
detective. If they had relied for their living on their
observations, they would soon have starved. What was
needed was imagination, the more finished the better,
but the rudest gifts of the kind commanded a market,
for the wildest legends were swallowed by many of the
magistrates. Though in many cases men of the worst
character, and some of them ex-convicts, their uncorro-
borated statements were accepted as valid evidence, and
five men were transported in 1813 on the unsupported
evidence of a spy, and a spy with a particularly scandalous
past. Spies were well paid. 1 But there were obvious
drawbacks to the occupation. The authorities kept the
spies up their sleeves as long as possible, but if once they
had to produce a spy in court 2 and confront working men
with one of their own comrades in his true character, it
became necessary to move him and his family to another
part of the country. 3 Sometimes it was possible to smuggle
him into the army, but his after career was often an embar-
rassment, and the Home Office papers contain many
pitiful appeals. A Sheffield spy wrote to the Home Office
in 1818 describing his difficulties. 4 He had found employ-
ment in Wardour Street, but had been identified, insujted,
1 For an example of payment see, in H. O., 42. 83, one of Bolton Fletcher's
bills from July 8 to December 21, 1805 :
B. Time . . .950
Expenses . . 17 2 11
26 7 11
C. 4 11
T. Time . . . 4 12
Expenses . .486
906
L. F. Time . . . 18 8
Expenses . . 4 18
23 6
63 5 5
In 1816 the bill for the half-year had gone up to 226 (H. O., 42. 160).
2 Mr. Coldham, Town Clerk of Nottingham in 1814, argued that a spy
should not be produced as a witness in court, then we should have
** the source of our information pure and uncontaminated " (H. O., 42. 137).
Cf. H. O., 40. 1. 4 H. O., 42. 182.
260 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
and spat upon. He then tried to get away to America,
but the friend who was to accompany him robbed him and
decamped. He enlisted in the Marbles, but one of the
men there knew him, so he had to fly again. He got tem-
porary work on a canal in Gloucestershire, wandered
through Wales into Lancashire, and enlisted once more at
Manchester, but this time he was recognised not by the
class he had hunted but by the class that had used him,
and he found himself in the Manchester New Bailey as a
deserter. He hoped the Government would arrange to start
him in a colony. Another spy wrote to say that nobody
would work with him, and that though Colonel Fletcher of
Bolton was anxious to put him into the Manchester police,
Norris, the stipendiary magistrate, thought he was too well
known and that it would not do. 1 The Home Office seem to
have acted handsomely in some cases, for the orphan child
of a spy who had given evidence against Hardy and Home
Tooke was given 30 a year. 2 Perhaps the most impor-
tunate spy was Fleming, the hero of the trial of the Thirty-
Eight. 3 Originally a cotton weaver, he had learned his
new trade in a school where the necessary accomplishments
were easily acquired, for he served hi the yeomanry in
Ireland during the Rebellion. 4 Taking the name of
Edwards, he joined the Manchester Society for Consti-
tutional Reform, and sent his employer, Parson Ethel-
ston, such stories of its designs as kept that zealous justice
in a perpetual fever of excitement and expectation. 5 He
had one disagreeable experience early in 1817, when he
and another spy went into Yorkshire, with 10 in their
pockets from Mr. Ethelston, to discover depots of pikes.
At Huddersfield they began to talk with some Democrats
from Sheffield, whereupon " they were seized as a matter
of course by the officers of Justice and thrown into Prison,
after a night's confinement they were taken before a Justice
of the Peace (Mr. Haigh) who, conceiving them to be
1 H. O., 44. 7. 2 H. O., 42. 67.
* This trial will be described in the succeeding volume.
H. O., 40. 10. 6 H. O., 42. 156,
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 261
Rogues and Vagabonds, would hear nothing in their defence,
but sent them out of the Town immediately." 1 He had
another disagreeable experience in Stockport hi 1818,
being denounced as a spy and expelled from a weavers'
meeting. The weavers on this occasion passed a resolu-
tion that, as the " notorious villain " had entered their
meeting, they proposed to ask the Chief Constable to attend
as a protection against his perjuries. 2 This exposure put
him on the shelf for a time, and Ethelston got 10 out of
the Home Office for him as a kind of unemployment pay. 3
Next year he was back at work sending Ethelston the news
that Cobbett's arrival in Lancashire was to give the signal
for a general rising : by this time he had clearly taken the
measure of his employer, and discovered that the larger
and stranger the fly that was offered to that open mouth,
the more eagerly would it be swallowed. Fleming deposed
to an interview with Cobbett, hi which Cobbett deplored
the fact that the general rising had not taken place earlier,
whilst Cobbett's companion declared that he would give
no quarter, but would hang, burn, and destroy everything. 4
There was no influence at the Home Office check-
ing this abuse until Peel became Home Secretary. He
extinguished ono promising career hi espionage, and
had he gone to the Home Office some years earlier, the
adventures of Oliver would have followed a very different
course. 5 With local authorities as credulous as Ethelston,
as arbitrary as Lloyd or Hay, with a Home Secretary like
Sidmouth, to whom every poor man was a Jacobin, a
detective system based on spies who had every induce-
ment to spin legends and to promote crime gave the excite-
ment of peril to the daily life of the workman, and taught
him honour and loyalty hi the face of the temptations,
1 H. O., 42. 160. H. O., 42. 179.
H. O., 42. 180. He had already received 100 for his baulked enter-
prise in the trial of the Thirty-Eight at Manchester (see H. O., 42. 132).
* It is interesting to notice that General Byng at this time wrote : "I
think Cobbett might be had without much trouble. He is poor, and I re-
mark very cautious in what he says " (H. O., 42. 199 ; cf. H. O., 42. 200).
* The story of Oliver will be told in the succeeding volume.
262 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
not only of greed, but also of fear. Every little combina-
tion for raising wages or helping comrades lived in some-
thing of the atmosphere of a Russian revolutionary society :
the blow might never fall, but the sword was always there.
The solemn oaths and ritual that terrified the Government
had a real meaning when men and women were trusting
their liberties and their lives to each other.
In spite of these difficulties and dangers such associations
were common. Occasionally women combined as well as
men. From two documents seized and sent to the Home
Office hi 1818 it is clear that in the strike of that year
men and women received equal strike pay. 1 A parson
magistrate at Loughborough was much alarmed in 1811
by the conduct of the women lace workers, who had shown
" a Spirit of Combination to dictate to their Employers
and to raise the price of their Wages." These daring women
had held meetings and sent emissaries to the neighbouring
towns to extend their organisation and to collect funds,
whereupon the parson had issued a warning that all such
proceedings were a breach of the law. 2
These associations were not confined within boundaries
of place or trade. It is evident from the letters of magis-
trates, and the still better evidence of letters intercepted
in the post or seized hi other ways, that even hi these early
days there was a great deal of mutual encouragement and
aid between different districts and different industries.
Several cases were reported to the Home Office in 1801.
A parson wrote in alarm that Holcroft of Bolton was in
correspondence with the weavers of Scotland over the
Weavers Bill ; 3 the Mayor of Leeds forwarded a letter
from a Leeds correspondent to somebody at Trowbridge
stating that two men were going from Leeds to Wiltshire
as delegates ; 4 and a Midhurst employer sent a letter seized
in his mill, which showed that a combination of paper-
makers, spreading to Manchester and Wells, was concerting
a uniform demand for higher wages. 5 The dispute in the
H. O., 42. 179. H. O., 42. 118.
H. O., 42. 62. H. O., 42. 62. Ibid.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 263
clothing industry next year revealed a similar spirit. The
shearmen of Wiltshire professed to have all the shearmen
of England, Scotland, and Ireland l behind them, and
though this may have been an exaggeration, it is evident
that Wiltshire and Yorkshire were acting in concert. The
Wiltshire shearmen printed a ticket with the motto,
" May Industry and Freedom unite us in friendship," and
Cookson, a Leeds magistrate, wrote to say that the Leeds
shearmen had the same ticket and were, he believed,
responsible for the Wiltshire policy. Cookson added that
meetings were being held in a lonely place near Birstall, and
that his informer had been too much frightened by the
temper of the meeting to stay for its proceedings. He was
so much impressed himself with the danger that he had
dissuaded two manufacturers from carrying out their
intention of introducing gig-mills. " Every Class of Work-
men make a common cause with that of the Cloth-workers,
and every turnout for advance of Wages is supported by '
general contribution from almost every other Class." 2 From __j
the books of the Shearmen's Society, which somehow got into
the hands of the Committee on the Woollen Manufacture
in 1806, it appeared that contributions were received in
1802 from " clothiers, colliers, bricklayers, wool-sorters, from /
the clothiers' community, joiners, sawyers, flax-dressers,
shoemakers, turnpike-men, cabinet-makers," also from Man-
chester, from patten-ring-makers and paper-makers. 3 Mr.
Cookson drew a picture of successful combination in another
letter the same year, in which he pressed for the further
strengthening of the Combination Law. 4 He contended that I
great evils would follow if " the working people were allowed '
to feel and make known the extent of their power," and
he wanted to " repress if not extirpate the Combination
system. . . . Indeed the evils call aloud for a Cure, or
would soon extend beyond computation, perquisites,
priviledges, Time, Mode of Labour, Rate, who shall be
1 H. O., 42. 65. H. O., 42. 66.
* 1806 Report on Woollen Manufactures, p. 355.
H. O., 42. 66.
264 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
employed, etc. etc., all are now dependent on the Fiat of
our Workmen. ... It is now a Confirmed thing that a
Bricklayer, Mason, Carpenter, Wheelwright, etc., shall
have 3s. per Week higher Wages in Leeds or in Manchester,
than at Wakefield, York, Hull, Rochdale and adjacent
Towns, it is in orders too that Bricklayers and Masons
Labourers at Leeds shall have 2s. per Week extra no
Workman will or dare deviate from these Terms, no Matter
from whence he comes, and there arrived here last week
on their way to Manchester Two Delegates from Carlisle
summoned by the Lancashire Cotton printers, to agree
upon certain advances in their Wages, who made no secret
of their Mission." During a strike at Knaresborough in
1805, a man was caught carry ing a letter to the weavers
of York, and given three months' imprisonment under
the Combination Law. 1 There were combinations spread
over great districts among calico printers, frame-work
knitters, coachmakers, coal-miners. During the trial of
calico printers for combination hi 1816, it appeared that
they received help from musical-instrument makers, brush-
makers, bellows-makers, shoemakers. 2 In the spinners'
strike of 1818 there were subscriptions for the men hi the
towns of the Potteries. 8
An example of an extended combination in an old trade
is furnished by the letters and papers that were intercepted
during a strike of bootmakers in 1802 and 1804. 4 There was
correspondence between Unions in London, Wakefield, York,
Bath, Portsmouth, Liverpool. The papers contain a defini-
tion of a " scab " : " And what is a Scab ? He is to his trade
what a traitor is to his country : though both may be useful
to one party in troublesome times, when peace returns they
are detested alike by all. WTien help is wanted he is the
last to contribute assistance and the first to grasp a benefit
he never laboured to procure. He cares but for himself,
but he sees not beyond the extent of a day, and for a
1 Committee on Artisans and Machinery, p. 540.
8 H. O., 42. 158. 8 H. O., 42. 179.
H. O., 42. 77 and H. O., 42. 59.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 266
momentary and worthless approbation would betray
friends, family and country. In short he is a traitor on a
small scale. He first sells the Journeymen, and is himself
afterwards sold in his turn by the Masters, till at last he
is despised by both, and deserted by all. He is an enemy
to himself, to the present age and to posterity."
A letter from the Liverpool Union, dated November 14,
1803, gives a picture of some of the difficulties of a Union in
these days :
LOVING SHOPMAITBS, I hope you will Excuse our neglect
in not wrighting before now to return you our gratefull thanks
for your timley asistance in our last contest with our tyrant,
hopeing you will retain the same regard wich you have shown
in your last contribushion towards us at a time when we was
so much nesseated at any time should any thing of the kind
happen to you you lose no time to inform us of your sittuashion
that we may shew ourselfs as much in your intrest and well
faire as lyes in our power as we still and allways shall think our
indeted to you for the suploys we received from you without
wich we must a suffered verrey much as we did not receive the
suploys from the other towns as we Expected, but since we have
got partley through our distresses we hope you will not omitt
wrighting to us as we shall be obliged to you for your asistance
in all cases to conduct us as we are but indiffrientley sittuated
for we have so maney disarters the cause on a count of contri-
bushions but this we dispise for if a man will not contribute to
the suport of his fellow shopmates he is better at a distance
than preasant.
Amongst disarters Wm. Hall our last preasident wo has gone
to phillipps purposley to instruct his aprentises on acount of
wich he is going to ogment them to 30 he is hired for som time
at so much pr week to instruct 2 boys at one time and John
Welch and Thomas Richards and all the others has reduced
there wages 2 pence pr paire wich we you will make as publick
through your meetings what villands we have had amongst us
I suppose you have beared of the death of Mr Taylor our last
clark wich has put us much about or we should a rote before.
P.S. at the request of Mr Richardson our Seckeretary I was
to inform you of the conduct of Charles Duggeon wo with 2
others dubblin Boot men has gone to our tyrant phillipps a
,
266 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
longue with the other scabbs So I conclude hopeing this will
find you in good health.
I remain yours truley,
in defence of the trade,
THOS. FREASON. FYR. CAPPER
Clark.
This letter from Liverpool brings home to the mind the
difficulties that beset working-class organisation at this
time. Communication between different sets of people
in different parts of the country, knowing comparatively
little of each other, presented hard problems to a class in
which reading and writing were not common accomplish-
ments. If there had been no Combination Laws, this would
not have been too simple a matter. As it was, any letter
or messenger might fall into the hands of a magistrate
or spy, 1 and to print a manifesto was to give the employer
all the evidence he wanted if he wished to prosecute. In
the case of the weavers the difficulties were especially
serious, for whereas the spinners in the factory or the
colliers down the mine were in daily touch with each other,
the weavers could not discuss grievances or policy without
holding a meeting or publishing some document. Then
there was the danger of fraud and embezzlement. The
funds of a Trade Union or of a temporary strike combina-
tion were at the mercy of any unscrupulous leader, and
yet these combinations flourished and strikes were sup-
ported, as we have seen, by subscriptions from persons
with very little money to spare, who knew nothing about
the strike leaders. Mrs. Sidney Webb says justly, 2 " It is
assuredly to the credit of the English working man that
numerous associations, both for trade union and industrial
purposes, should have existed continuously for half a
century with no other security but the personal honour
of members and the personal honesty of officials." Mr.
Fortescue, discussing the militia riots of 1809, caused in
1 Letters could often be seized by Government warrant at post offices,
e.g. Post Office warrant, 1812 and 1817 (H. O., 42. 165 and H. O., 42. 163).
* The Co-operative Movement, p. 52.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 267
part by the belief among the working classes that they
were being swindled by their officers, makes the following
generalisation : " No man likes to be cheated, and no
men enjoy it less than those who spend their lives in en-
deavouring to get the better of their neighbours. No class
is so suspicious as the waged class, and thus its feelings
are easily worked upon by unscrupulous men." l It would
be interesting to know whether any other class of English
society has ever shown such readiness to trust its fellows
as the men and women who subscribed to Trade Unions
when they were illegal associations. One working man
put as much confidence in the public spirit of the manu-
facturers as these trade unionists put in the public spirit
of their secretaries, and the fate of Samuel Crompton, the
inventor of the spinning mule, should be kept in mind by
those who blame the working classes, because they were
less ready to trust their rulers than their leadere.
1 County Lieutenancies, p. 246.
CHAPTER XIII
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR (II.)
THE SPIRIT OF RELIGION
IT was in the new industrial districts that the Evangelical
revival had the most rapid and lasting influence in build-
ing up a religious life outside the Established Church. A
Table published in the Annual Register for 1824 1 gives the
distribution of the members of the Methodist Connections
throughout England. The counties in which the Methodists
were strongest were the following : Yorkshire, Lincoln-
shire, Cornwall, Derby, Durham, Stafford, Nottingham,
Leicester, Cheshire, Lancashire. In Yorkshire one person
out of 23, in Lancashire one out of 51 was a Methodist ;
in Surrey the proportion was one to 249, in Sussex one to
211, and in Middlesex one to 152. According to Baines's
Lancashire, 2 there were 292 churches in Lancashire in 1824,
85 Catholic chapels, and 346 Nonconformist chapels.
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the Estab-
lished Church hardly counted in the spiritual life of the
districts where mines and factories began to collect these vast
populations. In most of the places that were turned from
rural solitudes into mining camps or textile towns, the Church
scarcely existed for the poor except as the most unrelenting
of the forces of law and order. Not, of course, that humane
and sympathetic parsons were unknown. We have referred
to Hodgson of Jarrow, and his efforts on behalf of the miners;
one of the great leaders of the movement for the ten hours'
day was the Rev. G. S. Bull, Vicar of Bierley near Brad-
ford ; the Vicar of Hinckley preached a sermon in 1820, a
report of which was sent to the Home Office as a seditious
1 Annual Register (1824), Chronicle, p. 180. a Vol. ii. p. 739.
268
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 269
document, 1 and more than once the parson sided with the
workers in a strike. In 1817 the Derbyshire magistrates
asked for a warrant against the curate of Pentridge, who
had addressed the people at the funeral of a man who
had been hung for arson, and declared that the man had
been murdered. This curate was also supposed to have
given shelter to one of the Derby rioters or traitors. " Wool-
stonholme," wrote the authorities, "is of the lowest order
of clergymen, uneducated, of vulgar habits, and low connec-
tions." 2 But, generally speaking, the parson was first and
last a gentleman, and often a magistrate. When Blomfield
became Bishop of Chester in 1824, he was horrified to find
that many of his clergy proved their mettle in the society
of gentlemen not only in the hunting field by day, but over
the bottle at night. Men who had more zeal and an active
sense of responsibility threw themselves into their duties
as magistrates with an ardour and a thoroughness that
made the discontented look upon them as the most unpity-
ing of the justices. 3 In the riots that broke out during
the miners' strike in 1822 against a reduction of wages
and for the abolition of truck, the Vicar of Abergavenny
put himself at the head of the yeomanry and the Greys.
He wrote to the Home Office in great spirits about it,
adding that all that remained was to apprehend the rioters,
" and then I shall be able to return to my Clerical duties."
He wrote later that the miners were returning to work
slowly because of " sinister influences," and that he had
put six of the most obstinate in prison. 4 Lancashire
possessed the two richest rectories and the richest vicarage
in England : one of these, Rochdale, was given to Parson
Hay as a reward for his exertions as a magistrate. 5 Hay
H. O., 44. 8. H. O., 42. 170.
3 A correspondent, writing to the Home Office in 1817, noted the great
increase of parson magistrates (H. O., 42. 160). 4 H. O., 40. 17.
6 See Prentice, op. cit., p. 169. The Bishop of Durham suggested in
1815 that a living should be given to a parson in recognition of his father's
activity as a magistrate in the disturbances at South Shields. " The
kindest act of remuneration for the father's services would be obtaining,
through the Regent, a Chancellor's living for the son " (H. O., 42. 146).
270 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
was formerly a lawyer, and had thus received a training
which had added to his influence as a representative of
Christianity on the Bench.
But there was a great tract of this new life into which
the Church did not enter at all. In 1792 the Mayor
of Liverpool wrote to the Home Office, urging the
Government to build churches in the numerous villages
that had sprung up with the great growth of manu-
factures, giving as his reason, not the advantage of spiritual
exercises, but the danger of leaving these places to the
Methodists. " For, Sir, in all these places are nothing but
Methodist and other Meeting Houses, and as the people
in the Country are in general disposed to go to some place
of Worship on the Sunday, they go to these because there
is none other ; and thus the youth of the Country are
training up under the instruction of a set of Men not only
ignorant, but whom I think we have of late too much
reason to imagine are inimical to our happy Constitution." l
It is interesting to note that the grant of a million for build-
ing churches in 1818 was justified on this very ground. 2
On this population, partly neglected, partly dragooned
by the Church, there descended a religion that happened
to supply almost everything that it wanted. The Church
offered no function to the poor man : his place was on a
rude bench or a mat, listening to sermons on the import-
ance of the subordination of the lower classes to the grand
family worshipping amid the spacious cushions of the
squire's pew. The Chapel invited him to take a hand in
the management of the affairs of his religious society :
perhaps to help in choosing a minister, to feel that he had
a share in its life, responsibility for its risks and under-
takings, pride in its successes and reputation. As a mere
1 H. o., 42. 20.
1 In 1816 a gentleman wrote from Preston with regard to the proposal
to build these churches, that he hoped they would appoint energetic young
clergymen who could keep in touch with families of labouring classes, and
so " strengthen a Link in Society almost broken in some Districts, and
which has by its want of support enabled the Dissenters to extend them-
selves as they have done " (H. O., 42. 151 ).
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 271
exercise in self-government and social life, the Chapel
occupied a central place in the affections and the thoughts
of people who had very little to do with the government
of anything else. The management of common enter-
prises, involving relations with others, bringing in their
train friendships, quarrels, reconciliations, all the excite-
ments that spring from the infinite surprises and subtleties
of human character, brought too the exchange of ideas
and prejudices, not only within a small circle, but outside :
the diplomacy and agitation of controversy, the eager and
combative discussion of rival doctrines. If there was too
little vitality in the Church of the day, nobody could
complain that the Chapels, contending for Wesley or
Whitefield, were in any danger of falling asleep. Steele
distinguished between the Roman Church which said it
was infallible, and the English Church which only said it
was always right. There was no paralysing hesitation
hi the Calvinists who excommunicated Wesley, and the
famous prayer that Toplady launched at him, the prayer
that " He in whose hands the hearts of all men are, may
make even this opposer of grace a monument of His almighty
power to save," would have done credit to the self-con-
fidence of either Church, or to the ecclesiastics who wrestled
in hot and angry conflict for three days before that culti-
vated man of the world, ^Eneas Sylvius, over the question
whether the blood shed by Christ during the Passion had ^Wtr
or had not lost the hypostatic power of the Logos. The~"A *
men and women who were drawn into the brisk, alert, and
ardent life of the new religion found plenty to occupy
their minds and to stimulate faculties and interests that
were otherwise left neglected. 1
For the Methodist movement carried the self-governing
tradition of the old Nonconformist Chapel, which had
shared in some degree the cold and calm philosophy of
1 Cf. amongst the papers found on Pilkington, one of the Habeas Corpus
prisoners of 1817, a discussion of Manichaeism, that " 'orrid doctrine "
. . . " that the good and evil that was in the world was the effects of two
hopposit principles in the deety " (H. O., 40. 9).
272 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
the Church, into a wider world and touched that world
with a living passion. The old Jewish civilisation became
actual and vivid to the men and women who listened to
the rhetoric of the new type of preacher. The Sunday-
schools, that spread rapidly over the north of England
and the industrial districts, were primarily institutions
for interpreting this civilisation to children brought up in
factories and mines. These schools were not, of course,
peculiar to the Nonconformist societies. Readers of Shirley
will remember the great Whit Monday scene, when Mr.
Helstone and his marching Sunday-school, playing " Rule,
Britannia! " put to flight " the unholy alliance " of Baptists,
Independents, and Methodists, who stepped out to the less
bracing tone of a dolorous canticle given out by a fat dis-
senter, a spirit merchant by trade, who was said to have
drunk more water in that one afternoon than he had
swallowed for a twelvemonth before. But the great motive
force hi the founding and developing of these institutions
had been the periodic Revival. A Revival fed the imagina-
tion of the new population on the exciting history of a fierce
and warlike race living under conditions very unlike those
of Manchester or Leeds, leaving a literature rich in metaphor
and image, which awakened amid the bare and colourless
life of the new civilisation dreams and reveries and visions
full of awe and splendour. It is significant that this religion
spread most quickly, and in its most extreme form, among
the workers living in the deepest gloom, for the miners
were particularly given to Methodism. Perhaps the very
dangers of their employment prompted them to seek this
special and miraculous sense of protection, just as the
belief in the miraculous salvation of religion is particu-
larly strong among the deep-sea fishermen of Brittany. 1
This religion did for the working class what Greek and
Roman literature did for the ruling class : drawing aside
/ n the curtain from a remote and interesting world, seeming
thus to make their own world more intelligible. How far
either class understood the world into which it was thus
1 See Let P&heurs cTIalande.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 273
introduced is, of course, open to question, but nobody
would deny that the imagination received nourishment
and something of the education that comes with an escape
from visible surroundings. For the miner or weaver,
the Chapel with its summons to the emotions, its music 111
and singing, took the place that theatres, picture galleries, '{/
operas, occupied in the lives of others. 1
There was, however, a deeper element in the fitness and
relevance of the new religion. It can perhaps be described
best by recalling a passage from Professor Gilbert Murray's
discussion of Greek religion : " Any one who turns from
the great writers of classical Athens, say Sophocles or
Aristotle, to those of the Christian era, must be con-
scious of a great difference in tone. There is a change
in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him.
The new quality is not specifically Christian : it is just as
marked in the Gnostics and Mithras- worshippers as in the
Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus as in
Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise
of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism ; a loss
of self-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal
human effort ; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for
infallible revelation ; an indifference to the welfare of the
State, a conversion of the soul to God. It is an atmosphere
in which the aim of the good man is not so much to live
justly, to help the society to which he belongs and enjoy
the esteem of his fellow creatures ; but rather, by means
of a burning faith, by contempt for the world and its stan-
dards, by ecstasy, suffering and martyrdom, to be granted
pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasur-
able sins." 2
1 It is significant that Cooke Taylor found that Ashton was the metro-
polis of the followers of Joanna Southcote. He gave as one reason for the
greater popularity of Nonconformity in the north than in the south, that
" there is a spice of the wild man in the foresters of Rosendale and Pendle."
His appreciation of the advantages that Nonconformity derived from the
system of giving functions to laymen made him favourable to Dr. Arnold's
plan for copying this in the Church of England (Tour in the Manufacturing
Districts, pp. 230, 292, 294).
1 Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 103.
274 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Now the England of 1800 belonged to both of these
ages, for the ruling class lived in the atmosphere of
Sophocles, and the poor in the atmosphere of Epictetus
or St. Paul. The governing class consisted of gentlemen
who were not merely politicians and sportsmen. No stories
of their dissipations can obscure the truth that they were
essentially scholars, men of taste and refinement, who
enjoyed nothing more than talking about literature, the
meaning of words, the ideas of writers, or history, or
pictures, or travel. They were at least as happy in a
library as they were hi the saddle or round the card table.
They knew what they liked, they were at ease about their
taste, they could act as patrons of art and letters with the
security of persons trusting their own judgment, rather
than the nervous capriciousness of persons following any-
body's judgment in preference to then" own. They found
the world interesting, satisfying, and complete. This
happy and well-rounded civilisation proved its power not
only at the time but by the spell it has cast over later
generations. If we could forget the boys of six buried for
fourteen hours out of the twenty-four in Lord Melbourne's
mines, or the Wiltshire labourers suffering a lifelong exile
from their homes for refusing to keep body and soul together
any longer on cold potatoes, we might feel as those gentle-
men felt for some of them could put this background
from their minds as successfully as some of Sophocles'
contemporaries could overlook the truth about slavery
that no age had better reason to be contented with its life
and conduct. This life found its religious expression in
a calm, dispassionate optimism. The extreme theories
of eternal punishment were forbidden by good taste and
an instinctive respect for the normal. Violent contention
over doctrine had no attraction for a class that cared much
more for literature than for metaphysics, for light verses
than for heavy argument. Their own age had found the
key to every problem, and the revelations of Locke were
worth all the revelations of religion. Thackeray said of
Sterne's sermons that they had not a single Christian
THE DEFENCES OP THE POOR 275
sentiment. The ruling class found more reason to complain
when Crabbe introduced heaven and hell into his dis-
courses, and begged him to leave those extravagances to
Methodists and confine his teaching to the prudence and
reasonableness of virtue during this life. Religion was, in
fact, part of the civil constitution of society. The English
Church accepted that position. It knew its place in the
domestic establishments of the State, and it took its colour
for good and for evil from the world of the ruling class.
It had no persecuting spirit, 1 no patience with emotion,
no curiosity about doctrine, no prejudice against " this
wicked world." Above all, it did not obtrude any view
of life that made men less able or less likely to
enjoy it.
The working classes had no use for this religion. They
did not find themselves in a world of congenial occupation,
with leisure graced by art and literature, rounded off by
the polite worship of reasonableness and moderation that
chose to call itself Christianity. Life did not seem to them
the simple flow of satisfactory and sensible consequences
from satisfactory and sensible causes. For them, as a
great scholar said of the age of Marcus Aurelius, " Le monde
s'attristait." Many things existed or happened that
called for an explanation or a protest. Moreover, while
the ruling class looked with composure on a civilisation
that they guided, elegant masters of their world, the work-
ing classes were conscious of an overwhelming burden \
in the mass and power of the forces that seemed to hold
them captive, and to reduce their place in the scheme of
the universe to one of mean and helpless insignificance.
A religion that tended to be little more than a religion of j /
manners, teaching its adherents to admire the framework \
of a world made and ordered by a Providence of good >
taste and discreet conduct, offered neither explanation \
nor consolation in the depths of the mine or the heat i
and rage of the furnace. Sophocles taught a religion for /
1 Down to the French Revolution. From that time it became intolerant,
but not from a religious spirit.
276 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
citizens, for men with power and responsibility, with some
control over their lives, a religion that could make citizen-
ship a sacred calling, and add a new sanction to the claims
of patriotism. But the miner or weaver was not a citizen ;
he had no power ; he seemed the slave of the sternest
destiny, and the good working religion of the mean, the
religion of normal life, bore no relation to his circum-
stances. What he wanted was a religion that recognised
that the world did not explain itself, and that it was full
of seeming paradox and hi justice and tragedy, for men
and women ground beneath a power to which no man
could assign limits, looked to religion for rescue from
bondage, for an assurance that their obscure lives had
some significance and moment. 1 This release they found
in the spirit that had comforted the poor and the perplexed
of the human race whenever the facts of life seemed to
throw too violent a discredit on the justice of heaven.
The Methodists told the miners what Seneca told the
unhappy rich in the Claudian Terror, or Epictetus had
told an age seeking for new reconciliations amid the ruins
of the old religions, or St. Augustine had told the distracted
peoples of Europe after the sack of Rome, that every man
carried within him his own fate, and that the sovereign
happiness of all, the happiness of faith and resignation,
was not the prize of wealth or power or learning or conquest,
but of a state of mind and heart that poor could attain
as readily as rich ; the slave as readily as his master.
" Even to the poor, the lame, the blind, if they have the
divine love, the universe is a great temple, full of mystery
and joy, and each passing day a festival," was the message
of Epictetus. 2 " Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,"
was the message of Wesley. " God has the love of a father
for good men, and from love of them He orders that they
shall be afflicted with toil, sorrow, and hardship, that they
may find their true strength. ... It is not what man
1 Readers of Mrs. Gaskell's North and South will recall Higgins's outburst
after his daughter's death.
Dill, Roman Society, p. 393.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 277
bears, but how he bears it that matters," 1 was the message
of Seneca. And whereas the ruling class could not imagine
a heaven that would be an improvement on this world,
the Methodists taught that heaven was really the Fifth
Act, in which the supreme artist would give a happy issue
to the tribulations of this life, and that the greater the
sufferings endured with patience in these passing scenes,
the greater would be the triumph of faith and courage in
the day when the plot of the life of humanity received its
final disentanglement.
What was the effect of this religion on the mind of the
working classes ? Many magistrates wrote to the Home
Office that it helped to make them discontented and to
strengthen the forces of working-class organisation. Thus
the Vicar of Sandal near Wakefield, writing in 1819, asserted
that the greater part of the people called Methodists were
united with the Radicals, that under the pretence of
religious worship they met in private houses, some of them
houses licensed under the Toleration Act, and formed
plans for advancing wages. The Vicar wanted an amend-
ment of the Toleration Act. 2 The Nottinghamshire magis-
trates were much alarmed by the popularity of ranters'
meetings in 1817, and took the advice of the law-officers
about forbidding them. 3 Other magistrates, particularly
parsons, thought the Government ought to watch them.
But magistrates were not discriminating when discussing
obnoxious persons or movements, and the term Methodist
served as well as the very different term Jacobin for a
description of the disreputable. Hannah More complained
that malevolent critics even applied the term to her
respectable philanthropy. Those who read more closely
will observe that whenever any particular person is men-
tioned as seditious, he generally turns out to be a Baptist
1 " Patrium habet Deua adversus bonos viros animum, et illos fortiter
amat ; et operibus, inquit, doloribus, ac clamnis exagitentur, ut verum
colligant robur. . . . Non quid sed quemadmodum ferae interest "(De
Providentia, ii. ).
H. O., 42. 200. H. O.. 42. 166.
278 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
or Presbyterian. 1 The Dissenters had always been more
or less radical, and a parson magistrate had a quick sense
for sedition in those quarters. One parson wrote in 1798
that he was surrounded by Dissenters, who, though they
thought it prudent to conceal their sentiments, were not
to be trusted. He added that it was a misfortune that his
living was so small, as his influence suffered in consequence. 2
The energetic Dr. Booker, Vicar of Dudley, took a gloomy
view of the prospects of those who could find no room
in his church. They have to go without God, he wrote,
"or go to some of those Sectarian places of Worship,
which are so promptly open to receive them : places, I
am grieved to say, whither Traitors and Murderers think
they may resort as to a Sanctuary from their crimes, and
blaspheme a God of Righteousness and Purity by their
addresses to his throne." He adds, however, " All sects
are not included in this censure. Some I believe to be
pious, exemplary, and loyal." 3 Those persons who had
the good fortune to secure seats in Dr. Booker's church
could during the service contemplate the Arms of the
Prince Regent emblazoned on one of the principal windows
of the " fine Gothic Sanctuary." 4
The other point of view was also put before the Home
Office and Parliament. A Dr. Coke wrote to the Duke of
Portland in 1801 : "I was not a little alarmed two or three
days ago in hearing that three Methodists were taken up
on suspicion or proof of being engaged in this rebellion
business. But on the strictest scrutiny and fullest satis-
1 E.g. in 1793 in Manchester, the Presbyterians were supposed to be
corrupting the Scots Greys (H. O., 42. 25). There is a letter from Bishop
Horsley to Pitt saying that Dr. Stennett, who had just died, had been in
charge of the money called " The King's Gift," a fund of 2000 distributed
among the Dissenting teachers of the different denominations. The choice
of a successor was important, as if put in the right hands the sum might be
of much benefit to Government. He wished to recommend a Mr. Martin,
a " Particular Baptist." The Particular Baptists were unlike the Pres-
byterians and Independents, and were quiet and orderly people : Mr.
Martin had been a strenuous opponent of the application to Parliament for
the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (Chatham MSS., 146).
H. O., 42. 42. 3 H. O., 42. 174. * H. O., 42. 172.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR
279
faction, I was happy enough to find that these three men
had been expelled the late Mr. Wesley's Society about five
years ago solely for their democratic sentiments." l Joseph
Butterworth, the well-known Wesleyan philanthropist,
wrote to the Home Office, at the time of the Luddite dis-
turbances, to complain of the arrest of a Methodist preacher
near Bolton, for preaching in an unlicensed house. He
argued that it was a very foolish proceeding to disturb the
religious societies. " I have had ample information that
the lower orders who are not religiously inclined are in
a very disaffected, discontented state, and are almost ripe
for a general revolt." 2 Butterworth's impressions were
confirmed by a statement made by Brougham hi the House
of Commons when criticising the Preservation of the
Public Peace Bill. 3 Brougham stated that the Methodists
had proved themselves " lovers of peace." A charitable
association, to which he belonged, was engaged in reliev-
ing distress in the worst districts in the bad times. At
one place where the association had offered help, they
had been told that the distress was so extensive that the
whole fund of the association would not suffice, that every
one was out of work, and that there had been no disorder.
This was attributed to " the happy prevalence of the
Principles of Methodism." A similar testimony was given
to the effect of Wesleyan teaching on the Cornish miners
during the riots of that year, 4 and in 1819 a Mr. Marris
of Ardwick sent up handbills to show that the Wesleyan
Methodists were loyal " even in Manchester." He men-
tioned that certain Sunday-schools had been started, in
opposition to the Methodists, by a man who had been
expelled from the Methodist society, " because he had
imbibed the principles of French Jacobinism." 6
The official attitude of the Methodist leaders seems to have
been quite clearly conservative in the years of crisis, 1817
1 H. O., 42. 61. Stephens, the Chartist orator, had originally been ex-
pelled from the Wesleyans for attacking the factory system (Dolteans.
op. cit., i. p. 170). H. O., 42. 124.
1 House of Commons, July 13, 1812.
* Political Register, April 25, 1812. 6 H. O., 42. 198.
280 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
and 1819. In 1817 the Reformers appealed to them,
reminding them of their success in evading Sidmouth's
attack on their religious liberties in 1800, 1 but they seem to
have replied by warning then* congregations to keep away
from Reform meetings. 2 In August of 1819 one of the
secretaries of the Wesleyan Missionary Society sent to the
Home Office an address that had been adopted at a Con-
ference of Methodist Ministers at Bristol. The text of
this manifesto is worth giving in full : 3
" We deeply sympathise with those of you, dear Brethren,
who, from the pressure of the times, and the suspension of
an active commerce, are, hi common with thousands of
your countrymen, involved in various and deep afflictions.
rWe offer up our prayers to God for you in this dark season
of your distress, ' that you may not be tempted above
what you are able to bear ' ; and that he who ' comforteth
the distressed/ may comfort you. ' Cast all your care on
God, for he careth for you ' : and fail not to remember,
and to comfort one another with these words, ' that in
heaven, you have a better and enduring substance/ In
the present changeful scene of things, one event happeneth
to the righteous and the wicked ; but you are nevertheless
still under the care and the eye of your Father in heaven.
Such afflictive events he will sanctify to those who trust
in him : his promises cannot fail because he changeth
not. * He knoweth the way you take, and when he hath tried
you, he will bring you forth as gold. 9 Never fail, dear brethren,
to commit your cause to him, who has a thousand ways to
* deliver the godly out of temptation,' or to render their
temptations the over-ruled instruments of putting them
hi possession of a good which shall remain their portion
and their joy, when their spirits shall be for ever beyond
the reach of the joys or sorrows of this present state. ' In
patience possess ye your souls' And remember him who
hath said, ' I will never leave you, nor forsake you. 9
1 For history of that attempt, see G. M. Trevelyan, Clio, and other Essays,
p. 114.
H. O., 42. 161, and H. O., 42. 164. * H. O., 42. 192.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 281
" As many of you to whom this measure of national
suffering has been appointed reside in places where attempts
are making by ' unreasonable and wicked men/ to render
the privations of the poor the instruments of their own
designs against the peace and the government of our
beloved country, we are affectionately anxious to guard
all of you against being led astray from your civil and
religious duties by their dangerous artifices. Remember
you are Christians, and are called by your profession to
exemplify the power and influence of religion by your
patience in suffering, and by ' living peaceably with all men'
Remember that you belong to a Religious Society which
has, from the beginning, explicitly recognised as high and
essential parts of Christian duty, to * Fear God and honour
the King ; to submit to magistrates for conscience* sake,
and not to speak evil of dignities' You are surrounded
with persons to whom these duties are the objects of con-
tempt and ridicule : show your regard for them because
they are the doctrines of your Saviour. Abhor those
publications in which they are assailed, along with every
other doctrine of your holy religion ; and judge of the
spirit and objects of those who would deceive you into
political parties and associations, by the vices of their
lives, and the infidel malignity of their words and writings.
' Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? '
It is not surprising, in view of this manifesto, that some
of the leading working-class Reformers regarded the
Methodists quite definitely as enemies* Cobbett said in
1824 that " the bitterest foes of freedom in England have
been, and are, the Methodists. Amongst the people of
the north they have served as spies and blood-money men.
. . . The friends of freedom have found fault, and justly
found fault with the main body of the established clergy
. . . but, hostile to freedom as the established clergy have
been, their hostility has been nothing in point of virulence
compared with that of these ruffian sectarians. . . . Books
upon books they write. Tracts upon tracts. Villainous
282 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
sermons upon villainous sermons they preach. Rail
they do, like Cropper and Bott Smith, against the West
Indian slave-holders ; but not a word do you ever hear
from them against the slave-holders in Lancashire and in
Ireland. On the contrary, they are continually telling the
people here that they ought to thank the Lord for the
blessings they enjoy : that they ought to thank the Lord,
not for a bellyful and a warm back, but for that abundant
grace of which they are the bearers, and for which they
charge them only one penny per week each/' x
Cobbett splashed his accusations pretty freely when he
disliked a class or a man, and as he expresses his regret in
this same article that hooligans are no longer allowed
to break up Methodist meetings, asking for what else
rotten eggs were meant, his statement that the spies were
Methodists could not be accepted without confirmation
from other sources. There is no hint to that effect in any
of the Home Office papers on the subject. But his general
view of the attitude of the Methodists and their influence,
if it breaks out with a rage and vehemence peculiarly his
own, does not differ from the accounts of his contemporaries. 2
If we look into the life and teaching of this new religion,
we can see that the whole spirit of its mission was unfavour-
able to the Democratic movement and the growth of the
Trade Union spirit. The Methodist movement was a call
not for citizens, but for saints : not for the vigorous, still
less for the violent redress of injustice, but for the ecstatic
vision : the perfect peace of expectation. The brutal
inequalities of life, the wrongs inflicted on man by man,
the hardships of poverty and suffering, these vexations of
a passing world were merely trials of faith for the true
Christian, who could escape from them and sustain his
soul with dreams of a noble and confidential companionship
in this world and of radiant happiness hereafter. The
reforms that he wanted had nothing to do with Parliament or
Corn Laws or Combination Laws. Among the papers at
1 Political Register, January 3, 1824.
2 See, for example, the address quoted in chapter xv. c
\
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 283
the Home Office bearing on the great distress and dis-
content of 1819, the reader comes upon a copy of the Leeds
Independent, containing, side by side, announcements of a
great Reform meeting on Hunslet Moor, and of a Methodist
meeting at Skipton assembled to pass the following resolu-
tion : " This meeting deeply deplores the religious and
moral state of the world, but especially of the Pagans,
Mahommedans, and Jews." l The original societies broke
up into several bodies, as one set of devotees after another
took fire over some special doctrine or method, and each
new body tended to cany this missionary spirit, this habit
of forgetting the new Manchester in the New Jerusalem,
to a wilder length. The early history of the Primitive
Methodist connection reads like the history of the Early
Christians in its isolation from the world and its expecta-
tion of an imminent day of judgment ; and its ardent
apostles would certainly have said with Tertullian, " Nee
ulla res magis aliena quam publica." 2
In so far as this religion touched on the affairs of this
world, it tended to reflect the conservative spirit of its first
missionary. The^gpirit of its teaching _wasjust the opposite
of4he spirit of Hie TradeTlnion movement of J/he time. Tb ~
taught patience where the Trade Unions taught impatience.
The Trade Union movement taught that men and women
should use their powers to destroy the supremacy of wealth
ln_a world made by men ; the Methodist that they should
learn resignation amid the painful chaos of a world so made,
for good reasons of His own, by God. The trade unionist
taught that men were not so helpless as they seemed, for
combination could give them some control over the con-
ditions of their lives. The Methodist taught that men
were not so helpless as they seemed, for religion could make
them independent of the conditions of their lives. Further,
1 H. O., 42. 188.
* See Potty's History of the Primitive Methodist Connexion. When
public affairs are mentioned it is to thank God that England is not the seat \^ \ L S'
of the labourers in Hampshire in 1830 is alluded to without any semblance
of war, or that she has escaped the horrors of the Irish rebellion. The rising
of the labourers in Hampshire in 1830 is alluded to with
of pity for their treatment and punishment (pp. 21, 342).
284
THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
K , i**
the Trade Union movement made loyalty to a class a virtue,
teaching men and women to think of themselves as the
citizens of a community struggling to be free. The
Methodist movement had just the opposite effect. It
preached an intense spiritual individualism. It taught
men and women to think of themselves, not as members
of a society with common interests, common hopes,
common wrongs, but as individual and separate souls,
certain to suffer eternal damnation .unless they could attain
by a sudden spring of the heart a victorious sense of
pardon and escape from sin. It was to call down this
lightning flash, this instantaneous revelation, this stroke
of releasing frenzy, that Wesley and his comrades had
faced every kind of obloquy and derision, overcoming by
their heroism the obstacles of a hostility that at first united
rich and poor. It was a gospel that made a duty of
introspection, imposing a self-examination as minute and
engrossing as the discipline of the Jesuits.
To emphasise this aspect of Methodism is not, of course,
to suggest that it ignored man's duty to his neighbour. But
it presented a distracting view of a man's duty and of a man's
neighbour to the population that trade unionists wished
to draw into a militant combination. A man's duty was
to inspire others with his own sense of forgiven sins and
divine compassion : his neighbour, any man or woman
of any class who needed his help in order to attain this
happiness and to live in its glowing peace. The Methodist
societies were intimate communities embracing people of
different classes, united in a spirit that put class grievances
out of sight. George Eliot has described in Felix Holt
a congregation of people living in the intense atmosphere
of a Calvinist chapel, " eager men and women, to whom
the exceptional possession of religious truth was the con-
dition that reconciled them to a meagre existence, and made
them feel in secure alliance with the unseen but supreme
ruler of a world in which their own visible part was small."
The Methodist movement was thus a cross-current amid
the forces that were strengthening the class consciousness
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 285
of the new population. It softened the sense of class and it
soothed the grievances of the poor, for it created new affinities
and sympathies, and brought reconciling dreams into their
lives of hardship. It set up a rival to the ideal of civic free-
dom. It diverted energy from the class struggle at a time \S
when wise energy was scarce, and money when money was
still scarcer. It would be supremely interesting to know what ( -fi^P*'
sum was spent on this religion by a class that was thereby '
diverting its resources from a war for independence. The-'
ruling class used to frighten itself by the nightmare of a
great single homogeneous power, threatening society and
civilisation. But though the industrial system pounded
men and women into a single mass for certain purposes,
they remained men and women, pursuing not one interest
but many. They did not lock themselves up in Trade
Unions, but they were found in the chapels, in friendly
societies, on the race-course, in the public-house. One of
the Reformers in 1818 said wistfully that if only the work-
ing classes would renounce their comforts for a week they
would be masters of the situation. 1 The Napoleon who
could concentrate all the various interests of this vast
world into a single army has never been found. Injbhe
great movement of enthusiasm and hope that followed
Parliamentary reform, the building trades of Birmingham
conceived the project of establishing a great Hall to be at
once a meeting place, a school for adults and children, a
retreat for the old, and a benefit club. It is thus spoken
of in The Pioneer : a
" One of the most important and highly desirable objects,
connected with the present great movement of the working
mass, is about being achieved by the united builders of
Birmingham : namely, the erection of a Union Hall or
Operative Builders' Institution. It is intended to comprise
within this structure an elegant and spacious lodge room,
calculated to afford sitting accommodation to eight hundred
or one thousand members, but nearly three times the
number to stand : an inferior lodge room equal to the
1 H. O., 42. 170. * November 2, 1833.
286 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
wants of any single body : and a suite of committee rooms,
so as to accommodate the whole. This, we believe, will be
the first successful attempt on the part of the operatives
of England to possess their own place of assembly. We
say THEIE OWN : for the Mechanics' Institutes already
established in this country are anything but such : though
we are willing to admit, that in many instances they have
been productive of good." How many chapels had been
built out of the pennies of the working classes before 1833 ?
In these respects the Methodist movement and the
Trade Union movement were rival flags. But the effect
of that movement cannot be defined and limited so nicely
as this. We must beware of thinking that influence
and consequence are quite orderly and regular in human
affairs. A complete surrender to the spirit of a religion
is not characteristic of the English nature. The devotees
who preached in the early Primitive Methodist camps,
and the leaders of the Conferences that laid down the
essential hostility of their religion to the spirit of democ-
racy, were alien or hostile influences, but there must have
been many in the Methodist world who were neither enthu-
siasts nor conservatives. A religion does not affect every-
s body in the same way, or with the same power, or for the
same time. This religion which drew men and women
out of their immediate and visible surroundings would
not necessarily draw them all, or keep them all, under
the spell of its quieting harmonies. Men and women
might put their social indignation to sleep for years in
this atmosphere and yet emerge ardent for reform and
agitation. For Methodism was in a very real sense a
school, and when men and women go to school they may
learn more lessons than those taught on the blackboard.
' Moreover, the early Methodists had the credit of intro-
ducing the teaching of writing in the Sunday-schools.
According to Bamford the Church never taught it, and
the practice was stopped by the Conferential Metho-
dists. 1 The teaching of writing was an enormous boon
1 Early Days, p. 100.
.
THE DEFENCES OF THE POOR 287
to the working classes. And there were other important
arts that might be acquired in this school. The upper
class could learn to speak at Eton : the working class in
the little Bethel. The Methodist Sunday-schools would
attract men and women with the gifts of oratory, leader-
ship, organisation : they gave scope, experience, and
training. It is significant that it is more than once men-
tioned that speakers at miners' meetings were Methodists, 1
and Lloyd of Stockport complained that the Reformers
captured one of the Sunday-schools in that town, 2 holding
meetings partly religious, partly political, in which they
quoted the Bible on the subject of the possessions of the
rich. A working-class leader named Bagguley once preached
a sermon describing Christ as the greatest Reformer, 3 a most
blasphemous libel in the eyes of the magistrates ; and
a man named Harrison, who appears to have had a chapel
and congregation of his own in Stockport, where he pleaded'
the cause of strikers and Radicals, was spoken of by Lloyd
as a Methodist minister. John Fielden himself, brought
up in the ancestral religion of the Quakers, taught in
a Wesleyan Sunday-school at seventeen: ultimately he
became a Unitarian.
The teaching of Methodism was unfavourable to working-
class movements ; its leaders were hostile and its ideals
perhaps increasingly hostile ; but by the life and energy
and awakening that it brought to this oppressed society
it must, in spite of itself, have made many men better i
citizens, and some even better rebels.
Cf. H. O., 42. 179. H. O., 42. 181. * H. O., 42. 179.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MIND OF THE POOR
WHEN the French Revolution broke out there was no
resemblance between the spirit of the working classes in
the north and the Midlands, and the spirit of the Paris
democrat, on fire with vivid and emancipating enthusiasms.
The English working classes in the centres of the new
industry were conservative, insular, Philistine. Manchester,
like Birmingham, was predominantly Church and King ;
and nobody who reads Bamford's description of the treat-
ment his father and his father's friends received at
Middleton will make the mistake of supposing that the
Reformers whom Pitt persecuted were dangerous to the
State by reason of their popularity. The working classes,
as a body, in the north and the Midlands were profoundly
indifferent to ideas or causes. So long as they could drink,
watch a cock-fight or bull-baiting or horse-race, and earn
a reasonable living, they were as contented as the squires
whose tastes, if rather more expensive, were in kind not
dissimilar. No visions exalted or disturbed their souls,
and the sansculottes of Bolton or Wigan were as ready
as the parsons or the squires to put anybody who talked
or looked like a French Jacobin into *the nearest or the
darkest horsepond.
By the end of our period a great change had come over
the working classes. They had become what Pitt and
Castlereagh tried so hard to prevent them from becoming,
\ politicians. They talked about the affairs of the State :
~T3iey"~3iscussed the basis of rights and duties, they took
an ominous interest in taxes and sinecures, and it was not
the phrases of 1789 but the cry of Church and Bang that
THE MIND OF THE POOR 289
awakened their execrations. All the efforts of civilisation
seemed to have been made in vain when the one question
that absorbed the minds of the factory workers as they
poured from the mills was the question whether Cobbett's
Political Register had come with the latest coach.
The working classes were brought to the revolutionary
temper that broke out in 1816 and 1830, and found its most
complete expression in the gospel of the Chartists, 1 through
a number of stages. They were not converted by a lightning
flash or by the magic of a phrase or by some gradual and
liberating philosophy. What came about during this
period was the alienation of the working classes, due not to
the positive influence of ideas or enthusiasms, but to the
effect of experience on ways of thinking and looking at life.
To say this is not to detract from the superb and essential
services to the development of working-class thinking of
such men as Paine, Cobbett, and Place, and the lesser lights
of the Reform movements : it is merely to recognise the
truth that their teaching only bore fruit when actual
experience had made men ready to receive it. There was
no general revolt against the established order in 1790.
The normal working man accepted the government and
institutions of the country with as little question as the
normal aristocrat. But the Industrial Revolution obliged
everybody whom it affected to think about the problems
it raised, and when they addressed themselves to these
problems the rich and the poor started from different
standpoints : the rich from the abstractions of property,
the poor from the facts of their own lives. As a result there
developed two different systems of morality. For it makes
a great difference whether experience is passed through the
sieve of hypothesis and theory, or whether hypothesis and
theory are passed through the sieve of experience. The
upper-class explanations ceased to be satisfying to men and
women who wanted to know why they were starving in the
1 The Chartist movement throws an important light on the previous
half -century, as it represents the climax of the struggles of the working-
olass mind.
290 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
midst of great wealth. Cobbett and Paine were intelli-
gible to them and became their guides, just because they
regarded society as existing for human needs, and asked of
each institution not whether it was essential to an elaborate
theory of property, but how it served men and women.
In the earlier years of the period with which we deal
the working classes were inarticulate and illiterate, without
leaders or spokesmen, but we can learn a good deal about
their temper and their outlook on the changing world
around them from the threatening letters or placards of the
time. These documents form a good part of the papers of
the Home Office during the years of famine at the end of
the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
Popular bitterness is mainly directed against farmers and
dealers. Thus a confused and abusive paper about high
prices, circulated in Swansea hi 1793, begins, " Resolutions
of all the poor who live by their daily labour, both hi the
Town and Country, and a sincere Caution to all the petty
Merchants who has no dependancy but makes a Trade by
imposing upon the poor. . . ." l
Frequently the threatening papers took the form of
doggerel rhymes. One from the Portsmouth Dockyard in
1800 runs as follows :
" Farmers, Bakers, Butchers likewise,
An example there is put before your eyes.
It is the pride of your heart to see the poor starving,
You that have got a plenty do not care a farthing.
These Big dons will do just as they please,
They would make the poor believe the moon is green cheese.
If the yard will all be true and stand to these Rules
We will soon let them know who is the biggest fools." 2
Another paper stuck up within the Portsmouth garrisoi
gate, with three halters beside it, began :
" A caution
To the Farmer, Miller, and Baker.
* H, O., 42. 24 f * H . O ., 42. 50,
THE MIND OF THE POOR 291
Here 's Three you see,
Each of you take your Choice.
The greatest Rogue
May have the greatest Hoist.
But it was not only the farmers and dealers that were
assailed in these philippics. The writer of a threatening
letter sent up from Devonshire, commenting on the saying
of some local woman, " that Barley Bread and Tatoes was
good enough for us Poor," took a broader and deeper view
when he said, " God sent Meat into the World for us Poor
as well as Rich and not to be starved alive." 2 Some
successful food riots at Nottingham in 1800 were de-
scribed in enthusiastic terms by a sympathiser. 8 The price,
he says, was lowered " by nothing but the courage of the
people in Declaring against Oppression, but what scarred
the Gentlemen the most was to see the Union of parties
their being no Scrats nor painites nor no such song as God
save the King to be heard, and the conduct of the people on
tuesday who Stood the fire from the Yeomanry with such
an Undaunted Courage that astonished the Gentlemen. . . .
P.S. I am told that the Gentlemen said if the Farmer
could not live when it was Lowered they would Sink his
Rent. Thus has two Species of Vilains been Brought to
Reason by the Courage of the Tradesmen and Inhabitants
of Nottingham. ..."
The ruling class thought that the poor had to bear mis-
fortunes, but that these misfortunes were greatly alleviated
by the charity of the rich. In the documents that reflect
the spirit of the working classes no language is more bitter
and violent in tone than the language that alludes to alms
and soup. Perhaps the most interesting paper of this sort,
with its allusion to the improving advice of " the soup-
maker," is one which was posted in the market place at
Hitchin in 1800 :
"Advice to all poor tradesmen and labourers. With one
consent lay all work aside and meet together in a body and see
1 H. O., 42. 51. H. O., 42. 50.
1 See intercepted letter from T. E. Golby (H. O., 42. 51).
292 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
what is to be done in this case ; for your work, all you can do,
will not support you and your family. Your vile oppressors,
see how they use ye ; what yoke of bondage you are brought
under. Be not afraid of horse nor standing arms but come
forth with courage and resolution. If you give way to those
villains you (will) always be bound under these chains wherein
your liberty and freedom is entirely lost. Nothing's to be done
without you take this step. Some may pretend to smooth and
calm you, for here's our Soupmaker may come with doctrine of
fine speech, as ' keeping a clean house ' and ' the wife to give a
smile.' Send him to where he comes from, and when we want
him we will send for him. If nothing better can be done than
already is I'd wish every man to leave his family and let the
D d Heathen do as they will, for why should we starve in a
land where there is plenty, never themore. As a well wisher,
God bless the King." 1
Colonel Fletcher of Bolton was scandalised by the bad
taste of the Bolton weavers who carried through the streets
the effigy of an old worn-out soldier calling for soup. 2 Dis-
content took a more aggressive form at Wigan, and the
Charity Committee was interrupted in the midst of its
deliberations by a volley of stones from the objects of its
proposed benevolence. 3 Pitt could persuade the House
of Commons of anything with the charming simplicity of
his formula that wages and prices must be left to find their
own level. It had not occurred to him or to his hearers
that the term could have any other meaning than the
meaning they gave to it ; but during a food riot in Oxford
one speaker incited the mob to take things into their own
hands, using Pitt's own formula as his justification. The
farmers, he argued, were relying on the protection of the
volunteers to keep their corn in their barns, and wait for
starvation prices. The intervention of the mob was needed
to readjust the balance to bring back prices to their natural
level. 4 When the House of Commons discussed low wages
1 H. O., 42. 49. The punctuation has been inserted and the spelling
altered. H. O., 42. 153.
H. O., 42. 154. H. O., 42. 51.
THE MIND OF THE POOR 293
they were apt to think of them as mere symptoms or incidents
of an economic system. During a strike in the Midlands,
a letter sent to a notorious sweater of women drew
attention to another side of the question. The em-
ployer was asked whether he did not think that wages
of half a crown a week would necessarily drive women to
prostitution. 1
The first rebel note that was sounded in this population
was this note of hunger : it is aimed at farmers, dealers,
and other persons suspected of profiteering. A more
general and serious discontent followed the discovery that
Parliament had no ear for working-class wrongs. For it
was to Parliament that the workmen looked, and looked,
at first, with some confidence. They began by asking
Parliament to use its powers and to put in force existing
laws and regulations, designed, as they believed, for their
protection laws regulating wages and the conditions of
apprentices. This policy had, of course, no flavour of revolu-
tion about it, and the men who proposed it had no quarrel
with society and no sympathy with the discontents of
Reformers. But the policy was rejected by Parliament.
The full story falls into our next volume. Here we will
only give an account of the treatment of a petition from
the calico printers in 1804, because it shows the strength
of the prejudice against interference with the control of
the capitalist, for hi this case the petition received powerful
support from a House of Commons Committee.
In 1804 2 a petition was presented to Parliament from
journeymen calico printers in Lancashire, Derbyshire,
Cheshire, Stafford, and in five Scottish counties, complain-
ing of the excessive multiplication of apprentices which
had become a great cause of unemployment. The men
urged that the current price for the sale of goods was based
on a wage of 30s. a week, which was the wage of adults,
and apprentices were only paid from 4s. to 7s. The masters
were, in fact, flooding the trade with cheap labour, and the
journeymen who had served their apprenticeships found
1 H. O., 42. 120. February 22.
294 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
themselves deprived of employment. Under this arrange-
ment the masters got all the benefits without observing
any of the obligations of the apprenticeship system.
The petition was recommended to the House of Lords
by so stern and uncompromising an economist as Lord
King. The petition was referred to a select committee
in the Commons, and the evidence that was given showed
that there were some 900 apprentices to 1500 journey-
men in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Stafford.
The sufferings of the men driven out of employment
were made all the worse by the Combination Laws
which had destroyed their benevolent funds. The com-
mittee adjourned without reporting, in spite of protests
from Sheridan in the House of Commons, 1 but the minutes
of evidence were published. Next year there was another
petition without result, 2 but in 1806 the minutes of evidence
already taken were referred to a select committee, 3 which
reported in July. The Report, 4 which may be attributed
with good reason to Sheridan, who had taken up the cause
of these workmen in Parliament, is one of the most remark-
able documents of the time, and the spirit in which economic
topics are discussed distinguishes it from almost every other
publication that emanated at this time from parliamentary
committees :
" Without entering into the delicate and difficult question,
as to the distribution of profits between Masters and
Journeymen, in this as well as the other mechanical pro-
fessions, Your Committee may venture to throw out,
for the consideration of the House, whether it be quite
equitable towards the parties or conducive to the public
interest, that on the one part there should arise a great
accumulation of wealth, while on the other there should
prevail a degree of poverty from which the parties cannot
emerge by the utmost exertion of industry, skill, and
1 Parliamentary Register, June 27, 1804.
1 House of Commons Journal, March 1, 1805.
* House of Commons Journal, July 9, 1806.
* Report of Committee on Calico Printers, 1806.
THE MIND OF THE POOR
assiduous application, and may, at an advanced period
of life, notwithstanding perpetual labour, be obliged to
resort to parish aid for the support of their families. Is
it just that such a state of things should be permitted
to exist ? Is it fair towards the Landed Interest in those
districts in which Manufactories are established, that they
should be called upon to contribute from the Poor Rates
to the support of the families of those who ought to be
enabled to derive a support from their labour, and who
are at the same time contributing to establish a fortune
for the Principals of such Manufactories ? The applica-
tion of these remarks is obvious : the utmost earnings
of a Journeyman Calico Printer, as appears by the Minutes
referred to your Committee, does not exceed 30s. a week,
and the general average is about 25s. With every con-
sideration, then, for the risk of capital, the exertion and
anxiety of superior mind which may be supposed to belong
to the Principals of a Calico Printing Manufactory, your
Committee submit, that in such a lucrative Trade 25s. or
30s. a week is a very inadequate compensation to Journey-
men : but how must the House feel, when they reflect
that even that compensation is precarious ? "
The Report concludes by declaring that either all re-
strictions should be abolished or else additional restrictions
about apprentices introduced, on the lines of the Spital-
fields regulations. Under those regulations the proportion
of apprentices to journeymen was 37 to 216, whereas in
Lancashire, Derby, etc., it was 1 to 1. Next spring
Sheridan introduced a Bill 1 to forbid a master calico
printer from taking more than a certain number of
apprentices, and from taking any without a regular legal
indenture. His only support came from Peter Moore, the
Radical member for Coventry, a consistent advocate of the
minimum wage ; he was opposed by Sir Robert Peel (who
was himself in this connection a bad employer), Henry
Erskine, and Horner. 2 His Bill was rejected apparently
without a division.
1 Printed March 25, 1807. 8 Parliamentary Register, April 23, 1807
296 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
The weavers, who were originally a conservative element,
were always pressing for a minimum wage, and the treat-
ment of their case by Parliament had a great effect in
embittering and educating working-class opinion. A letter
from the Stockport weavers to the magistrates tells the
story of the conduct of the House of Commons as that
conduct appeared to the workpeople. 1
The weavers said that their troubles began with the
French War. " The Weavers, urged by the difficulties with
which they were surrounded, took means of laying their
case before the Legislature and humbly prayed for pro-
tection from the ruin which threatened to overwhelm them,
they suggested the utility of fixing a minimum on the price
of their Labour but their petitions were of no use to them
and their applications of no avail, the Weavers then im-
agined that if the apprentice Law was enforced it might
be of some benefit to their trade by restraining the influx
of hands, but as soon as they attempted to have recourse
to this measure the apprentice Law was entirely abrogated.
The Weavers then turned their attention to the Law which
enabled Magistrates to fix the rate of provisions according
to the price of Labour, but no sooner did they seek the
protection of that very salutary law than that law was
quickly abrogated and destroyed. . . . When the weavers
petitioned the Government for bread it gave them a stone,
or in other words by those of whom the Weavers sought
protection, they have been awarded with punishment."
The hand-loom weavers never discarded the policy of
State regulation, and they were still pressing for it, many
years after the Reform Bill, with the help of John Fielden.
The reason is obvious. Hand-loom weaving was not a
mysterious or difficult art. It did not call for special
qualities of mind or body : only for personal industry
applied for a very long working day in the home of the
workman and his family. Consequently it was the natural
refuge for the unsuccessful and the dispossessed of other
trades, and it was as true of this industry as of home-work
1 H. o., 42. 188.
THE MIND OF THE POOR 297
industries to-day, that the workmen and workwomen could
not maintain their standard of life against a flood of
immigrants. Frame- work knitting was in the same position.
Both hand-loom weavers and frame-work knitters needed
specially a minimum wage, because the conditions of their
occupations made effective organisation almost impossible.
For the spinners and the miners, on the other hand, the
chief means of success was full liberty to combine. They
could meet easily, they could picket, and, as they were
not living permanently on the brink of starvation, they
could sustain a strike. They might hope indeed, when
their organisation had developed its strength, to gain some
control over the conditions of their employment, and the
Lancashire spinners on one occasion demanded the right
to submit three names for each vacancy in the mill. 1 But
the spinners did not rely solely on combination, for they
appealed to Parliament to legislate on the question of
hours, and during the exciting years of 1831 and 1832 the
agitation for the Ten Hours Bill was as living and eager an
issue in the north of England as the Reform Bill itself. 2
The spinners held that the pressure of competition was so
great that neither the power of the spinners nor the power
of the good employers could secure the ten hours' day
without an Act of Parliament.
By this time the outlook of rich and poor on the life of
their times had become completely estranged. To the
ruling class the laws that governed the economic world
were simple. That world was under the power of a benevo-
lent despot, capital. Where the conditions were favour-
able to production, capital would be encouraged, and men
and women would be well off. There was no problem of
distribution, for economic society divided its gains on lines
of its own, and all that men and women had to do was to
learn to keep their awkward hands off it. Life was full of
1 Chapman, op. cit., p. 213.
1 It was an important feature of the contest between Sadler and
Macaulay at Leeds at the election for the first Reformed House of
Commons.
298 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
hardships and inequalities, but political economy showed
that there was a good reason for them, and that they were
in fact inevitable. A man who knows that there is
no escape from a burden is half-way to resignation ; if
the burden is on somebody else's back he is half-way to
complacency.
The working classes were in a very different position.
The practical difficulty of living kept them more or less
captive to the facts of life and experience. Starting with
this bias they found fault with the ideas of the governing
class alike in respect of their logic and their justice. The
manifestoes published from time to time by the working-
class leaders are of great interest as contemporary criticism
of the political economy described by Sydney Smith as a
system of metaphysics.
In a document that combined good and bad reasoning,
the Manchester weavers criticised in 1823 the fashionable
belief that the English manufacturers owed their success
hi the markets of the world to low wages : l
"... We cannot hear, without strong emotions, our
Merchants boast their ability to undersell all other Nations,
while that ability is acquired by reducing us to the Borders
of Starvation, and keeping us but one remove from Slavery.
They boast of underselling foreigners, while foreigners
oblige them to pay in the shape of duties what they unneces-
sarily take from our wages. The average Wages of some
hundreds of Weavers, for 4 months, as proved from the
Books of their Employers, is now in the Manchester papers :
Their wages for that period was 4s. lOd. per week, to each.
This may suggest to you the condition that Weavers'
families must be in. The application of many thousands
of power-looms to weaving, at the time that many thousands
of manual Weavers returned from the Army was altogether
1 H. O., 40. 18: Letter from Committee of Manchester Weavers.
Philips had declared in the House of Commons that " the low rate at which
we had been able to sell our manufactures on the Continent in consequence
of the low rate of labour here, had depressed the continental manufactures
and raised the English manufactures much more than any interference
could do."
THE MIND OF THE POOR 299
unnecessary, because, by that Reduction the number of
Weavers was more than sufficient to supply the demand.
Power-looms by diminishing the demand for manual
labour, has put the manual Weaver entirely in the power
of his Employer. The Employers can throw their Weavers
out of Employ when they please, without injury to them-
selves, while thousands are glad of Employ at any wages
whatever. And Weavers residing in large towns from the
number of one to twelve thousands, makes it impossible
for them either to withhold their labour or to find other
Employment. And their long endured poverty has made
them incapable of removing to other places. Now, Sir,
in this state of things, is it not evident, that Employers
have more power over Workmen, than any class of men
ought to have over others ? I do not mean to insinuate
that all our Manufacturers desire that gain, which cannot
be had without keeping us at the starving point. No, Sir,
we believe that the greater number of them would rejoice
to pay us well. But however good their wishes be, it is
impossible for them ever to be realised, while the whole
state of our Wages is determined by a few Competitors,
who, to effect speedy sales reduce Weavers' wages.
Others discovering the means by which they are under-
sold, are, as it were, compelled to reduce Wages in their
own Defence. In our opinion, a Committee, of Masters,
or of masters and Workmen, chosen by both, fixing the
prices periodically, or as often as fluctuations in trade
make alterations in the price of labour necessary, would
put it in the power of honest Masters to alleviate the
Distress of half a million. If, from Id. to 4d. per yard,
were laid on Cotton goods, and that added to the Weaver's
Wages, he would not then be half paid as other Branches
of the Cotton manufacture are, but still, this trifling
advance which the consumer would never know unless by
report, would keep the Weaver from pauperism it would,
in a great measure, keep Infancy and age from hunger
it would preserve youth from the demoralisation conse-
quent upon being exposed to all the temptations of want,
300 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
which has, of late, so crowded our prisons with juvenile
Delinquents and too often furnished the platform with
victims. We only wish for such an advance, as the markets
without the smallest stagnation can afford ; and such as
a proper and just regulation would soon produce.
" We are sending a petition to parliament ; praying for
a regulating Committee, such as mentioned above. We
also pray for a tax to be laid on power-looms, which are
now transferring labour from men to Children and Girls ;
and from Cottages to Factories. This by depriving parents
of sufficient Employ, makes them dependant on their
Children for support ; which, as experience too tragically
proves, deprives them of that authority over youth which
is necessary to retard the progress of vice and to promote
Virtue. The evils of a Factory -life are incalculable.
There uninformed, unrestrained youth, of both sexes mingle
absent from parental vigilance ; from Reproof and
Instruction confined in artificial heat to the injury of
health. The mind exposed to corruption, and life and
limbs exposed to Machinery spending Youth where the
40th year of the age is the 60th of the constitution, till
at last themselves become dependant on their offspring
or the parish. This, Sir, is no overdrawn picture, but,
as may be easily proved a very contracted sketch of facts.
" In our humble opinion, the evils of multiplying power-
looms, by first ruining half a million who depend on manual
Weaving for support ; and eventually those unhappy
young people whom they now employ, are such as no
human being can think are counterbalanced by any good
expected from them. And if the Capitals now employed
in power-looms, were applied the common way, the Manu-
facturer would have sufficient profit.
" The Weavers' Qualifications may be considered as
his property and support. It is as real property to him,
as Buildings and Lands are to others. Like them his
Qualification cost time, application and Money. There is no
point of view (except visible and tangible) wherein they
differ. And when Buildings are removed, or Land engrossed
THE MIND OF THE POOR 301
for Roads, Streets or Canals, the proprietors are paid for
them. Then, if two dependencies, of exactly equal value
to the proprietors are sacrificed for convenience ; does not
equity require, that while the one is remunerated, the
other ought not to be totally neglected ?
" Sir, you have now read over the real causes of the
tumult so often excited in our Districts ; but Weavers
too often imputed their misery to other Causes ; and
manufacturers understood their own intrests too well to
undecieve them. Our petition will soon be before you
in parliament, we hope the Justice of our Cause will be
manifest."
The view, again, that economic law governed the distri-
bution of profits, and that the working classes were receiv-
ing all that it was possible for them to receive from employers
who might seem to be selfish, but were by a law of nature
beneficent and public-spirited, was rudely questioned hi
a manifesto that was published in July 1818, called "The
Mule Spinners' Address to the Public." 1 The Spinners'
Committee afterwards repudiated the handbill. This re-
markable address is headed with the text, " The Labourer
is worthy of his Hire. Jesus," and proceeds, " We the
most ingenious and industrious of his Majesty's loyal
Subjects, yet the most abused, and confined in the iron
Bastiles of Manchester, whose Factories are filled with an
artificial Heat, the exhalations create a greater degree of
warmth on the coldest day in Winter, than is known in
the West Indies in Summer, so that our condition is worse,
if we advert to the hours of labour, than even the Africans.
1 Thus are our ungrateful Employers raised from the
lowest Walks in Life, to sport in gilded Carriages sit in
the Senate of our Country dazzle us with the splendor
of their Equipages their very menial Servants pampered
by the Sweat of our wretched Bodies, and thus raised by
our industry, from the lowest State, to outshine even
the ancient Nobility, and fully verifies the Proverb, ' set
a Beggar on horseback, and he will not know when to stop.'
H. o., 42. 178.
302 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760 1832
" P d, 1 the Beggar-maker, who sits on the destinies
of the Poor, we have made a Man of him, whose Mother
hawked about the Streets a small Basket ; on two Spinners
being deputed to ask for a small advance of Price, had the
audacity to thrust one from him with an Umbrella and
discharged them both. Is not this more tyrannic than
even the Dey of Algiers, he hears the complaints of the
people, then let us hear no more of Barbarian cruelty, for
though we work six days and make long hours, on an average
the Mule Spinners cannot earn half a proper subsistence,
as their pale countenances will fully demonstrate, while
their employers gain immense profits ; we know this from
the prices of Cotton, Labour, and the Yarn when sold,
and we shall be obliged to publish them to the world,
while we are famishing, starved, and insulted.
" Spinners, let us swear to no man ! but we declare
before God, our country, our wives, and children, we will
not work and see them starve ; will they call this vagrancy
and immure our bodies in gaols ? Unfeeling Tyrants !
when we refuse to work and starve, you say we are con-
spiring against the Government, charge us with Sedition,
send for soldiers to coherse us, and in the Green Bag stile,
assure the Governors we are plotting against them ; it is
false, we are ready to protect our country against foreign
and domestic enemies, but we will not submit to selfish
Trading Tyrants ; they asserted in the House of Lords
that our employ was the most healthy followed, but Lord
Liverpool detected the trading liars, and said it was impos-
sible : let these miscreants remember what was done in
France at the bridge of Pont Neuf , by a fool of an officer
beating an old man with the flat side of his sword.
" We advise all professions who live by work, to stand
up for a proper remuneration for their labour, and then the
poor rates will lessen, and princely fortunes will not be so
soon made by the speculators who favour a few with good
wheels and work, hi order to divide us and be a check
against the less favoured workmen."
1 Probably Pollard, a big manufacturer.
THE MIND OF THE POOR 303
A good example of the spirit in which the working classes
regarded the fashionable explanation that low wages were
a necessary incident of the warfare for the markets of the
world is provided in a series of resolutions drawn up by the
frame-work knitters of Leicester in 1817 : *
" That in proportion as the Reduction of Wages makes
the great Body of the People poor and wretched, in the
same proportion must the consumption of our manufactures
be lessened.
" That if liberal Wages were given to the Mechanics in
general throughout the Country, the Home Consumption of
our Manufactures would be immediately more than doubled,
and consequently every hand would soon find full employ-
ment.
" That to Reduce the Wage of the Mechanic of this
Country so low that he cannot live by his labour, in order
to undersell Foreign Manufacturers in a Foreign Market,
is to gain one customer abroad, and lose two at home.
" That if the Mechanics of this Country were to work
for nothing, it would not increase our Foreign Trade, as the
Governments of other Countries must, of necessity, in
order to protect their own Manufactures raise the duties
upon our goods in proportion to the cheapness that we can
send them to their Markets."
The secretary of a deputation that represented the men
in an interview with the hosiers, sent these resolutions to
Sidmouth, sending also a letter in which he said that low
wages were due to the Combination Laws, that it was unjust
for a Parliament that legislated to keep up the price of corn
to refuse to legislate to keep up the price of labour, and
that the Poor Relief should be nationalised instead of being
administered by the parishes, in order to get rid of the
vicious system adopted in some places whereby the parish
provided hosiers with cheap labour. Two years later the
same body of men challenged the view that the capitalist's
interest, as he conceived it, was always the public interest,
by describing the pressure of low wages and long hours
1 H. o., 42. 130,
304 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
on the parishes, and showing that if this process was carried
further the parishes would have to take over the manu-
factures or be ruined. The fears of the hosiers that higher
wages would drive the trade away they declared to be
groundless, since no other country had the raw material.
The reduction of wages had lengthened the working day and
increased the number of people out of employment, thus
throwing a greater burden on the rates. " If the demand,"
ran one of the later resolutions, " is not equal to the supply,
an advance of wages to an amount that will enable single
men at least to obtain a livelihood by labour of twelve hours
will tend to remove this evil, as therebye the hours of labour
will be considerably diminished, and consequently em-
ployment afforded to a greater number of hands, while
reducing the wages increases the hours of labour, and
throws a proportionate number of hands out of employ-
ment." l These arguments were presented to the local
authorities as a reason for helping the men to keep up a
I standard of wages. The masters were then offering wages
that made it necessary for a man to work fifteen hours a
day in order to keep body and soul together.
By the end of this period scarcely any aspect of life or
society or politics or economics looked the same to the two
worlds. The ruling class assumed that any punishment
was just if it tended to make property secure. A different
point of view is reflected in a broadsheet picked up in the
streets, professing to be the dying declaration of a Leeds
man, hung for stealing a horse, in which it is stated that by
this theft the man had saved the lives of his wife and four
destitute children : " The laws that condemned me were
made by the great, and have no other object than to keep
the wealth of the world in their own power, and entail
on others the keenest poverty and vilest subjection." 2
Romilly mentions that when Mrs. Fry visited the prisons
she was surprised to find that the convicts thought the
Government much more wicked than themselves : they took
1 H. O., 42. 192. H. O. 42. 82.
THE MIND OF THE POOR 305
property, but the Government took life. 1 The Saints inter-
preted the message of religion as a summons to the poor to
adapt themselves to the inconveniences of life with a pious
gratitude, and to avoid the wicked counsels of Reformers,
and as a summons to the rich to go regularly to Church, send
Bibles to the heathen, and be gracious to their depend-
ants. The Church interpreted its message as a simple gospel
of subordination to authority. A working-class Reformer,
thrown into prison in 1812, asked for a newspaper and was
given the Bible instead. He read it with great interest,
and wrote to say that after making a careful study of the
books of Proverbs, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, he had noted that all these writers
appeared to represent the rich as oppressing the poor,
whereas in England it was the poor who were considered
as a burden to the rich. 2 It was from the gradual dis-
illusionment produced by the experience of hardship and
neglect, and the discovery that the world looked so different
to rich and poor, that there developed the larger movements
to be described in the next chapter.
Romilly, Life, ii. 486. I H. O., 42. 120.
CHAPTER XV
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR
As education of one kind or another led the working classes
to look more closely into their misfortunes and their griev-
ances, there developed two movements of a more general
character : one, a movement for marshalling and organising
the forces of the working classes as a whole for the economic
struggle ; the other, the movement for political reform.
In these movements the sense of particular wrongs and
injustices grew into a wider class consciousness ; the work-
man thought of himself not as a weaver or miner who was
ill-used by the manufacturer or the coalowner, but as the
member of a great class that was being pushed deeper
and deeper into the mire by the power of capital and the
power of law. 1
The first important effort to consolidate the working-
class forces seems to have been made in August 1818. In
the closing hours of the great spinners' strike of that year,
a General Union of Trades was suggested as a last desperate
manoeuvre. , Rumours of this new and dangerous develop-
ment were sent up to the Home Office at the beginning of
August, but the first definite news is contained in a letter,
dated August 5th, from Mr. Norris, the stipendiary magis-
trate of Manchester, enclosing a handbill. 2 This handbill
is addressed " To the Labourers of Manchester and its
Vicinity." " Friends and suffering Countrymen," it begins,
" to whose exertions and talents your Employers are
1 See speech at public meeting at Bury, United Trades Co-operative
Journal, May 1, 1830 : " Sunk as they now were, they would continue to
sink still lower in the scale of being, if a general effort was not made to
protect themselves." * H. O., 42. 179.
306
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR 307
indebted for every thing they possess above common
labourers, and who, hi the fulness of their gratitude for
the Princely Fortunes received at your hands, cannot allow
you a better name than that of Rascal, Ragamuffin,
Vagrant or Pauper I " A comparison of prices was made
in this handbill which showed that wages of 36s. in 1818
were equivalent to wages of 16s. hi 1788. 1
The cause of the difference is attributed solely and "
entirely to the Corn Laws and the Combination Law, and
a long passage sets out the evils and injustice of the Com-
bination Law, declaring with rhetorical exaggeration, that
" Before the enactment of the Combination Law, Labourers
of all classes enjoyed the privilege of taking a part in regu-
lating the price of their labour ; labour being the com-
modity which they had to part with. . . ."
" The road is not long," continues the handbill, " to
that respectable walk in society in which the Labourer
ought to tread ; tho' in the present state of things, I
must confess, it is rather rugged ; yet unless you not only
make the attempt to regain that respectable walk ; but
also be determined to recover it, you may depend upon
it, that both you and your children will be trodden into
the earth by your interested and hard hearted Employers.
The first thing necessary to be done is to take your Masters'
conduct for a model. They call their meetings, at which
every one who has a labourer to oppress, most scrupu-
lously attends ; at which meetings whatever mode of
oppression is agreed upon, it is as coldly, and as religiously
fulfilled, as though they were doing that which was pleasing
their Maker. Every branch of labourers, namely Husband-
men, Weavers of all classes, Dyers, Fustian Cutters, Calico
1 "Hie items are interesting, e.g<,
Then. Now. Then. Now.
s. d. s. d. 8. d. 8. d.
House
3
8
Pork .
.
3
8
Beef
3*
8*
Potatoes
.
4
11
Mutton
3
8
Milk .
.
1*
3
Flour
1
4
3
2
Butter
.
3
1
4
Oatmeal
11
2
2
308 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Printers, Spinners of all classes, Hatters of all classes,
Machine makers, Joiners, Bricklayers, Masons, Shoe Makers,
Tailors, &c. &c., in short every branch of Labourers
necessary in every well regulated society, ought immedi-
ately to call district meetings, and appoint delegates to
meet at some convenient central place, to establish such
a connexion as shall be deemed necessary for the good of
the whole, and also they should be empowered to agree
to the following or similar resolutions :
1. That Labour being the Corner-stone upon which
civilized society is built, no able, active Labourer
ought to be offered less for his labour, than will
support the family of a sober and orderly man in
decency and credit.
2. That whatever trade or employment will not leave
profit sufficient to reward the Labourer, so as to
enable him to live in credit, and respect, provided
he be an able, active, and sober man, the loss of
such a trade is a public benefit.
3. That any Employer offering to recommend a Labourer
to an Overseer for Parochial relief as a part of
the reward for his Labour, is an insult, and such
Employer should be held up to public indignation.
4. That the earnings of the Labourer should increase
in the same proportion as the price of the produce
of the earth increases, and that whatever Law or
Enactment tends to destroy that proportion, is
unjust and oppressive, and of such a Nature is the
Combination Law.
5. That Masters being permitted to lower the price of
Labour since the return of Peace, is the cause
why the Public Revenue is so much diminished,
many of the necessaries of life being put under
the Excise : the Labouring class of the Community
are unable to purchase them so that private
distress] 1 is a public loss."
1 Torn off.
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR 309
On August 19 a meeting l was held in Manchester, at
which representatives were present from the Calico Printers,
Dyers and Dressers, Hatters, Blacksmiths, Jenny Spinners,
Cotton Weavers, Bricklayers, Fustian Cutters, Colliers,
Sawyers, Shoe Makers, Slubbers, Mule Spinners, Machine
Makers. 2 They passed resolutions, reported Mr. Marriott,
J.P., " of a most unpleasant description," 8 which were
afterwards reproduced and circulated on handbills. " At
a General Meeting of Trades," begins the handbill, 4 " con-
vened to take into consideration the Distressed State and
Privations to which the Working Class of Society are
reduced by their avaricious Employers reducing wages to
less than sufficient to support nature, or purchase the
bare necessaries for our existence in the meanest way,
although with great economy and hard labour, therefore
to render redress in such cases of distress to any Body
or Party reduced as aforesaid, we propose the following
Resolutions." Nine resolutions follow :
1. A Union called a " Philantropic Society " is to be
formed. Meetings are to be held every second
Sunday in the month, attended by delegates from
all trades with credentials.
2. Every trade is to raise a fund for the general benefit
of all trades in the Union " and to enable the labour-
ing part of the community to live in comfort and
decency."
3. Any Trade that feels the necessity of an advance
of wages must give notice to a meeting of delegates,
and if their concurrence is obtained all other trades
will support it.
1 For invitation probably to this meeting see printed bill :
" To the . Gentlemen, you are requested to appoint proper Persons
to attend a General Meeting to be held at the Sign of the on the .
To take into consideration the propriety of forming yourselves into a
society for the mutual support of each other, and for establishing such a
connection with other Trades, as may tend to the good of all connected with
thesame"(H. O.,42. 179).
H. O., 42. 180. H. O., 42. 179. Ibid,
310 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
4. No trade is to strike without informing and obtaining
consent from the other trades.
5. The Society is to obtain legal redress for " any body
of Workmen being oppressed or illegally used."
6. The Printing, etc., is to be paid for out of their separate
funds.
7. A Committee of 11 is to be chosen by ballot, and
is to go out by rotation every month so that the
whole Committee is changed every three months.
8. " That in order to preserve decorum in this society
or meeting of representatives, no person shall be
allowed to advance any political or religious argu-
ment, under a forfeit of threepence for the first
offence, & sixpence for the second which must be
paid the night it is forfeited."
9. Representatives may alter and amend the rules pro-
vided that such alteration does not " act against "
any trade or division belonging to the " General
Philantropic Society."
The paper containing these resolutions was circulated
also in the Potteries. An additional resolution dealt with
the appointment of an auxiliary society in each town, and
a list of the trades from which deputies had met was given.
The "Philanthropic Society" had a short life. On
26th August notices were still going out to different trades,
urging them to appoint proper persons to attend a General
Meeting " to take into consideration the propriety of form-
ing yourselves into a Society for the mutual Support of each
other, and for establishing such a connection with other
Trades as may tend to the good of all connected with the
same," but on 7th September Mr. Norris reported that the
General Union seemed likely to be dissolved, and by the
tune the law-officers gave their opinion about the desir-
ability of instituting a criminal prosecution for the pub-
lication of the handbill with resolutions, all danger from the
Union was over. 1 Such a scheme, started towards the
1 They reported against prosecution, 19th October (H. O., 42. 181).
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR 311
end of an unsuccessful strike, could hardly survive the
suspicion and distrust that accompany failure.
In London, however, the scheme went on for some
months longer. The spinners' delegates, who had come for
the double purpose of collecting funds and starting the
General Union, became associated with the more violent
section of the Reform party, and reports of their doings
were sent in by the Government agents.
The project seems to have hung fire, but in September it
was taken up by the energetic John Gast, secretary of the
Shipwrights' Club, afterwards the friend and ally of Place.
He became chairman of the General Union, 1 such as it was,
and in November a fiery address was issued to the General
Body of Mechanics. After a denunciation of that " most
partial and despotic law " called the Combination Act, the
workers are addressed as follows : ' The spirit of your
fathers is fled the hand of poverty has, in conjunction with
methodistical cant and chicanery, benumbed your mental
and physical exertions ; the broad and malignant grasps
of aristocracy, extended out by a cruel and overbearing
number of Employers, have acted as an opaque body over
the sun of your rights and independence have intercepted
all the cheering rays of social and domestic happiness, leav-
ing you nothing but the winter of poverty and tyranny which
has so long intervened between you and your rights." 2
The writer urges the mechanics to subscribe a penny
a week to redress grievances, and to help those who suffer
from asking for fair remuneration. The rules of the society
are to be agreed upon by a meeting of deputies, one from
each trade. Beyond attracting the attention of Place,
and hence causing the alliance between him and Gast, this
project seems to have produced as little effect as the kindred
scheme in Manchester. 3
A more deliberate and important effort was made on
these lines, in 1830, when the National Association for the
1 H. O., 42. 180 (21st September). H. O. f 42. 182.
8 Webb, History of Trades Unionism, p. 100 n., and pp. 76 and 95 for
history of Gast.
312 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Protection of Labour was founded. The moving spirit
was Doherty, who began by organising " The Grand General
Union of Spinners " in December 1829, and then went on
to establish this larger combination in the following summer.
In 1837, when he had become a bookseller, he gave evidence
before the Committee on Combinations, and told the story
of its origin. He said the workpeople had laid to heart the
lesson of the failure of the strike of 1829. " It was then
shown that no individual trade could stand against the
combined efforts of the masters of that particular trade : it
was therefore sought to combine all the trades." For this
purpose he had borrowed some ideas from O'ConnelTs
successful organisation in Ireland. 1 The Association antici-
pated in some respects the modern General Federation of
Trade Unions : it was a combination of existing societies,
each of which paid an entrance fee of 1, together with Is.
for each of its members, and Id. a week per head. The
several Trade Unions in a district were then grouped
together into a branch. 2 The Association started with
great promise. It enrolled 150 societies, and its income
in the first nine months was 1866. 3 The first societies
to join were mainly connected with the textile trades, but
they were soon followed by mechanics and coal-miners.
The Association also had an organ, a paper called The
United Trades Co-operative Journal, and after this paper had
been suppressed by the Commissioner of Stamps, Doherty
established The Voice of the People as its successor, a
sevenpenny paper.
It is evident from the tone of speeches made at the
early meetings, and also from the articles in these papers,
that large and ambitious ideas were in the air on the subject
of the organisation of the working-class movement. Thus
one speaker at Manchester urged that the Co-operative
movement ought to be based on the Trade Union move-
\ment, and he asked why the working classes, confronted
1 O'Connell was on the committee.
1 Doherty 's speech, United Trades Co-operative Journal, July 3, 1830.
3 Webb, op. cit., p. 107.
3
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR 313
with highly organised interests backed by the State, should
not have their own Board of Trade and Chamber of Com-
merce. 1 In practice, however, the immediate object of the
Association was strictly circumscribed : it was limited to
resisting reductions of wages. One of the speakers at a
meeting at Bury declared that there had been a remark-
able change for the worse in the conditions of the working
classes during the last ten years, and that this would con-
tinue until the workers in the different industries united
their forces for defence. 2 At the initial meeting at Man-
chester, the first resolution emphasised this aspect of affairs : 3
' That the miserable condition to which, by repeated and
unnecessary reductions of wages, the workpeople of this
country are reduced, urges upon this meeting the imperative
necessity of adopting some effectual means of preventing
such reductions, and securing to the industrious workman
a just and adequate remuneration for his labour." The
funds were only to be applied to prevent reductions of
wages, and in those cases strike pay was to be 8s. a head
a week.
The authorities soon took alarm, and their alarm was
increased by a successful miners' strike at Oldham, in the
autumn of 1830. Mr. Foster, the Manchester stipendiary
magistrate, wrote in October that the power of the Union
was a public danger, and that legislation was needed to
put down picketing. 4 Sir Robert Peel, in replying, depre-
cated the use of military force, but thought it very possible
that legislative measures against the proceedings of the
Unions might be unavoidable. He was not very hopeful
of Parliament. A few days later he ceased to be Home
Secretary, and he left a note : *' I take the liberty of recom-
mending the whole of this correspondence re the Union,
to the immediate and serious consideration of my successor
at the Home Department." 5 Foster wrote soon after-
wards that it was almost impossible to trace the illegal
1 United Trades Co-operative Journal, May 8, 1830.
1 Ibid., May 1, 1830. Ibid., July 8, 1830.
4 H. O., 40. 27. * H. O., 40. 27.
314 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
acts to the Association itself, particularly picketing, and
that it was very difficult to induce manufacturers to
volunteer evidence. 1 The chief strength of the movement
lay at first in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby, Nottingham,
and Leicester, but in the autumn Sir Henry Bouverie sent
an alarming report from Rotherham, to the effect that
the Yorkshire colliers were about to join, 2 giving an interest-
ing account of the plan of campaign which the promoters
were supposed to have formed : " The Leaders of these
Unions have declared that they will keep the wages of
the men up to what they consider the fair price of labour,
calculated, I presume, upon the profits to be made. Their
system is to order the Hands in only a limited number of
Mills to turn out at a time, in order that, until they shall
have gamed their point, they may be supported by the
Funds of the Union. When they have got their wages
increased to the extent of their demands, another set of
mills are turned out, and so on, so that a constant state
of irritation is kept up. The Turn Out of the Colliers is
regulated much in the same way, but I am inclined to
think that it has gone or is going beyond the wishes of the
leaders, as, if it succeeds in its avowed object, viz. that of
forcing the Mills to stop for want of fuel, the number of
hands which will be turned out of employ will far exceed
what the Funds of the Union will be able to support. . . .
The leaders are men of much penetration." Bouverie
adds that Doherty has 600 a year, and that the other
officers are paid in proportion. " Mixed up with all this
there is a strong and rapidly increasing political feeling."
A week later Bouverie sent some further particulars. 3
He said that at the beghining of October the weekly receipts
were 330, and the number of contributors about 80,000,
but that there had been a great increase since, as many of
the colliers had joined, and also many of the smaller Unions
in Yorkshire at places like Bradford and Huddersfield.
Unfortunately the working classes were too poor alike
in money and in the capacity for organisation and dis-
H. O., 40. 27. * H. O., 40. 26. * H. O., 40. 26.
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR 316
cipline l to sustain so ambitious and difficult a scheme,
and though there was a wave of Trade Unionism through
the northern and midland counties during the next two
years, the Association itself came to an end. It was
succeeded by the Builders' Union, from whose organ, The
Pioneer, we have quoted some passages in an earlier chapter.
It has already been remarked that there was little
sympathy with revolutionary ideas in Lancashire at the
beginning of the French War. In 1801 the authorities
were a good deal alarmed to find a printed paper in the
Manchester market-place, encouraging seditious senti-
ments, and from that time there was always a certain
political element in the industrial unrest of the north.
This particular paper professed to be an extract from a
publication called Les Ruines, by M. de Volney, the famous
traveller, who has been called the French Herodotus,
describing a scene witnessed in a country on the shores
of the Mediterranean. 2 Two bodies faced each other ; the
first large and poor, and miserable-looking ; the second
small, presenting "in the plumpness of their faces,
symptoms of leisure and abundance." The first group
was composed of labourers, artisans, shopkeepers, and all
the professions useful to society ; the second of the civil,
the military, and the religious agents of Government.
A lively dialogue is conducted between the two groups :
" People. And what business do you follow in our society ?
" Distinguished Class. None : we are not made to work.
" People. How then have you acquired your Riches ?
" Distinguished Class. By taking the trouble to govern you."
The three divisions of the distinguished class each in
turn attempts in vain to overawe the people.
" And the Civil Governors said, ' This people is mild and
naturally servile ; let us speak to them of the King, and of the
law, and they will presently re-enter upon their duty. People !
The King wills it, the sovereign ordains it.' "
1 E.g. there was a breach between the Lancashire and Nottingham
branches (Webb, op. cit., p. 109). H. O., 42. 62.
316 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
The people, however, confound the Civil Governors by
pointing out that the King's office originates with the
people. The Military Governors then take their turn,
and, stepping forward, say :
" The people are timid, let us menace them ; they only obey
force. Soldiers, Chastise this insolent rabble.
" People. Soldiers, you are our own blood ! Will you strike
your brothers ? If the people perish, who will maintain the
army ?
" And the soldiers, grounding their arms, said to their chiefs,
' We also are the people we are the enemies of -
" Whereupon the Ecclesiastical Governors said : ' There is
but one resouree left. The people are superstitious ; we must
frighten them with the names of God and Religion. Our dearly
beloved brethren ! Our children ! God has appointed us to
govern you.' "
But the people confound the priests by declaring they
need no mediators, and after much dialogue of the follow-
ing kind :
" Priests. Man is only born into this world to suffer.
" People. Do you then set us the example."
the priests too capitulate ; the small group confess that
their reign is over, since the multitude is enlightened, and
both parties join together and live happily ever after. The
paper ends, " The Voice of the People is the Voice of God."
From this time the Reform spirit is continually appearing
and reappearing in the working-class agitations through-
out the period. The weavers were apparently attracted
to Parliamentary Reform for the first time in consequence
of the treatment in Parliament of their petitions for a
minimum wage, 1 and at the end of the war with Napoleon
the Reformers found the cotton workers of Lancashire
very ready to listen to them. The suspension of the Habeas
Corpus in 1819 checked this propaganda, but only for
a time, and it is significant that at Reform meetings
1 See following volume.
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR 317
in Lancashire and the north great stress was laid on
the Combination Acts, workmen who wished to disso-
ciate their enterprises from schemes of Parliamentary
Reform being reminded that those Acts were passed by
Parliament, and could only be repealed by Parliament. 1
When the National Association for the Protection of Labour
was formed, politics were officially eschewed, 2 but The
Voice, of the People from the very first preached Radical
Reform with great earnestness and ability, taking as its
programme Universal Suffrage, Short Parliaments, and
especially Vote by Ballot.
What was the attitude of the working classes to the
Reform Bill, a Bill that left them in the cold, carried by a
Government that spared no pains to remind them that
in the Whig view they had no business with politics ?
Nobody was satisfied with it, but many accepted it, from
the first, on the ground that, though it was a disappointment,
it would pave the way to further reform later. Another
section argued that it was bad and ought to be resisted.
The first view was preached by Cobbett, who had of course
immense influence in Lancashire, and it was supported by
The Voice of the People. Doherty, though he took this
view in his paper, expressed himself rather differently to
Place in the autumn of 1831, speaking of the Bill as one
that could bring no good to the working man, and arguing
that the people ought to compel the Government by force
to do what was right. 3 Henry Hunt took the view that the
Bill was worse than nothing, and that the working classes
were actually opposed to it. The working-class move-
ment was organised in Unions, distinct in most places
1 See meetings at Ashton, Blackburn, Manchester (H. O., 45. 85, 46.
10, 13, 15, 42. 188).
1 The Mayor of Leicester, writing to the Home Office about a meeting
of the National Association held there in September 1830, says that the
speakers disavowed all political objects. On 30th August the editor of the
United Trades Co-operative Journal advises a correspondent (a weaver)
not to mix up political topics with his argument, since the law forbids us
to discuss such subjects. See also prospectus in first number.
Wallas, Place, p. 265.
318 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
from the middle-class Unions on the Birmingham model.
Many of these working-class Unions were founded by
Owenite working men in London, who, breaking away from
the detachment of their leader, started a Metropolitan
Trades Union with the two objects of securing political
representation for the working classes, and a shorter working
day. 1 Hetherington and Lovett were leading spirits, and
they drew up a programme embracing Universal Suffrage,
Annual Parliaments, and Vote by Ballot, organised classes
hi different parts of London under leaders for discussing
the works of Paine, Godwin, Owen, and Ensor, and gave
themselves the high-sounding title of " The National Union
of the Working Classes and others." Hetherington made
a tour of the country, and similar Unions sprang up in many
places, Manchester one of them. These Unions were a
cause of great anxiety to the Government, and Place
dreaded their influence on the fortunes of the Reform Bill.
" The difference," he wrote afterwards, " between the
Political Unions and the Unions of the Working Classes,
was that the first desired the Reform Bill to prevent a
revolution, the last desired its destruction as a means of
producing a revolution." 2 The Unions, imitating the
Reformers whom Pitt had extinguished in the early years
of the war, arranged a Grand Convention at Manchester to
draw up a Reform Bill. 3 In Manchester itself, the working-
class Union was stronger than the original Political Union :
it had twenty-seven branch lodges, with more than five
thousand members. The extraordinary Sabbatarianism
of the time is illustrated by the general condemnation of
the Reformers for holding a meeting on a Sunday to protest
against the death sentences passed on the Bristol rioters.
A second meeting was broken up by the authorities (it was
1 In this connection it is important to note that the agitation for the
Ten Hours' Day was in progress, and that in Yorkshire it was a more
burning topic than the Reform Bill. Many meetings were held at which
the speakers agreed to leave the question of Reform on one side.
8 Quoted, Butler, The Passing of the Great Reform Bill, p. 382. This
book gives the best account of the political agitation.
* Ibid., p. 311.
THE AMBITIONS OF THE POOR 319
alleged that some of the men had brought arms to the
first), the leaders were arrested, and four of them were sent
to prison for a year. In March the Government proclaimed
a General Fast, partly to please the Saints, and the working-
class Union, pouring ridicule on this way of treating a great
political crisis, organised a demonstration in London, which
was attended by 100,000 persons. At no stage was there
any sympathy between the Government and the working-
class Unions, though Hunt became a convert to the Bill at
the end ; but if the resistance of the Lords had provoked a
revolution, the working-class organisations meant to have
a hand in it. In this sense they counted among the forces
with which the Lords had to reckon. But it was the Bill
and not the Revolution that the Lords gave to England.
The history of the working-class movement in this period
thus exhibits the stormy and difficult birth of a social and
a political consciousness. After the Reform Bill and all
its disappointments (for if the working-class organisations
derided it, there must have been thousands of working men
who shared Cobbett's optimism), the first finds its ex-
pression in the Owenite Syndicalist conception of the
" Grand National Consolidated Trade Union of Great
Britain and Ireland," and the second in Chartism. But
those are tragedies that belong to later history.
CHAPTER XVI
CONCLUSION
AJN artificial atmosphere surrounds the life of the governing
world. For that world is carrying on a system ; it is
responsible for the working of a machine ; it has to con-
sider the claims of precedent, routine, continuity, and the
hundred and one ways in which an organisation is maintained
and made secure ; it asks of every proposal how it will
affect the stability of a great scheme of law and adminis-
tration. It is its instinct to judge problems and affairs
first and last as the guardians of a great bpdyjQlJntereste
committed to its custody, whose duty it is to avert the
immediate danger of disorder. Its reasons are reasons of
State.
During the period we are discussing all the strength and
power of this sentiment were concentrated on one aspect
of civilisation. The classes that possessed authority in the
State and the classes that had acquired the new wealth,
landlords, churchmen, judges, manufacturers, one and all
understood by government the protection of society from
the fate that had overtaken the privileged classes hi France.
Property was the great civilising force of the world, " that
great institution for the sake of which chiefly all other
institutions exist, that great institution to which we owe all
knowledge, all commerce, all industry, all civilisation,
all that makes us to differ from the tattooed savages of the
Pacific Ocean." * But the form that the world of industry
was assuming a form that the age accepted and admired
did not admit of a universal, or even a wide distribution
of property. Hence arose the danger that the ignorant
1 Mttoauloy, Speech on the Reform Bill.
CONCLUSION 321
who suffered from its lack might lay reckless hands on
the very institution which was the origin of all such
happiness and well-being as society had achieved. And
this population, which in fact owed everything to the
principle of private property, but was easily blinded to that
truth, was growing by great strides. The task of govern-
ment in consequence was becoming more complex, more
difficult, and more dangerous.
Different minds, of course, drew different practical con-
clusions. Anybody, said Cavour, can govern in a state
of siege. A permanent state of siege was the vision of
English society that inspired men like Castlereagh and
Sidmouth. In their view, the problem, though formidable
in extent, was in character simple enough. A small class
was set to defend its own property and that of a larger
class against the turbulence of r large unpropertied popu-
lation. This mass of people was liable to be infected with
Jacobin doctrines, and if the State was to be made safe
from revolutionary agitation, it was essential that the
proletariate should be excluded .from all opportunity of
discussion^asspciation, education, and remonstrance. The
more the ignorant masses seemed tempted by dangerous
and seductive principles, the more necessary was it to
drive out that temptation by terror. Bennet, reviewing
the savage punishments inflicted on rioters, summed up
the methods of these statesmen in a bitter epigram,
saying that they had hung a woman to deter women,
and a child to deter children. 1 And to ^ter_was
only recognised .duty of the State to this class. The
pension of Habeas Corpus and the Six Acts were the
concrete expression of the conviction that any hardships
inflicted upon the working classes under this system should
not weigh against the supreme importance of protecting
property. It was shown that a man who had been put
into prison when Habeas Corpus was suspended was left
there for seven years without trial of any kind because
the authorities had forgotten all about him. A cynic might
1 House of Commona, July 16, 1812.
X
322 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
contend that the fate of this man was in truth the fate
of the working classes under Pitt and Castlereagh. The
only problem in their view was the problem of keeping
the working classes out of mischief. Not, of course, that
these statesmen recognised their policy as a policy of
class selfishness : they would have said that they were
preventing the working classes from hurting themselves
and everybody else. And when the agitation for Reform
revived, the opponents of Reform held that if the mysterious
sanctity of property was to be preserved, every brick and
slate of the existing order must be kept iii its place. To
disfranchise Old Sarum would be as direct an incitement
to revolution as to countenance the socialism of Thomas
Spence or the blasphemy of Thomas Paine. So far had
the idea of property been separated from any vital prin-
ciple, that men ceased to ask its uses and had come to
worship an abstraction.
f Other politicians, no less attached to the notion that
[property was the chief interest committed to the care of
government, took a different view of the policy this duty
demanded, and of the measures it warranted. They did
not admit that the rights of property set aside all other
rights, or that it was just to make persecution part of the
normal system of government. A man like Grey regarded
the working classes as an element of danger in the State,
but he would not admit that on that account they were
to be refused all civil rights. Moreover, if it was bad
morality, in his view it was bad policy. The motto of
Castlereagh and Sidmouth was " Oderint dum metuant,"
but the opponents of persecution thought that property
should be made less unpopular. Macaulay put their case
in his clear and eloquent speeches on the Reform Bill.
" To say that Old Sarum was the bedrock of property was
not to make people think well of Old Sarum, but to make
them think ill of property." Moreover, Parliamentary
Reform on prudent lines would reinforce the guardians
of property by associating a new and powerful body of
interests with the government of the state. " At present
CONCLUSION 323
we oppose the schemes of the revolutionists with only one
half, with only one quarter our proper force." Bentham
and his disciples, again, believed that if the political con-
ditions of society were made more fair and more just, no
fundamental antagonism would exist between the interests
of property and the interests of the poor man. So long
as all institutions in the state seemed to reflect the selfish
privileges of a small class, the mass of men would be driven
into a rebellious discontent. The formula that Bentham
laid down, that each man should count for one, and no
one for more than one, was an invaluable protest against
the predominant passion for inequality, but he never
thought out any method by which this principle could
be reconciled with the shape that industrial society was
assuming.
If we wish to understand the strength of this feeling
about property, we have to keep in mind the influence
of the Industrial Revolution on the imagination of the
upper classes. We have seen what this Revolution looked
like to the poor. In the educated world it gave form and
substance to fixed ideas of subordination and discipline.
If a great industrial scheme, increasing the scope and
energy of human faculties a hundredfold, were introduced
into the life of a group of colonists or settlers, living and
working together on terms of equality and freedom, the
new sense of power and confidence would belong to the
whole community. 1 Each man would draw support and
strength from association with his fellows in directing this
1 See Mr. Graham Wallas's The Great Society, p. 393 : " If I try to make
for myself a visual picture of the social system which I should desire for
England and America, there comes before me a recollection of those Nor-
wegian towns and villages where every one, the shopkeepers and the
artisans, the schoolmaster, the boy who drove the post-ponies, and the
student daughter of the innkeeper who took round the potatoes, seemed
to respect themselves, to be capable of Happiness as well as of pleasure
and excitement, because they were near the Mean in the employment of
all their faculties. I can imagine such people learning to exploit the
electric power from their waterfalls, and the minerals in their mountains,
without dividing themselves into dehumanised employers or officials, and
equally dehumanised ' hands.' "
324 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
new engine. Industry, with its new equipment and re-
sources, might be expected to find a form that would do
justice to the claims of human nature, giving responsibility,
freedom, and a greater and nobler range of mind and will
to all who took part in it. But the Industrial Revolution ^
found England in the hands of an oligarchy, and of an \
oligarchy so free from misgiving about its capacity for)
government, that it resented even the smallest abatement-'
of its control. The new industry increased human power
to a remarkable degree, and it seemed to this oligarchy
the most natural thing in the world that the economic
should resemble the political structure, and that in the
mill, as in the State, all this power should be concentrated
in the hands of a few men, who were to act and think for
the rest. Economic science seemed to add a sanction to 1
the law of inequality, for it showed that the sovereign (
authority of capital was the condition of success in the
world of trade. In industrial as in political life, the mass }
of men must be content with an obedience that asks no 1
questions. Thus the new industry, instead of guiding
mankind to a new experience of freedom, common to all
classes, confirmed the power of the few, and made the
mass of men still less their own masters.
The form which the new industry took satisfied the passion
of the ruling group for inequality, but it made them more i
nervous as guardians of inequality as a principle, for though .'
the Industrial Revolution had given to England a great
and decisive instrument of progress, that instrument was
dangerously delicate and fragile, since the workmen, whose
labour was an indispensable factor, might break it to pieces.
This atmosphere gave to the government of England in
the early nineteenth century the character defined by Adam
Smith in a passage in the Wealth of Nations : " Civil govern-
ment, so far as it is instituted for the security of property,
is, in reality, instituted for the defence of the rich against
the poor, or of those who have some property against those
who have none at all." 1 It could not be said that this
1 Book v. chap. i.
CONCLUSION 325
exactly described the government of France under Henry
the Fourth, or that of England under the rulers who tried
in the sixteenth century to check the enclosures. 1 At both
periods there was an active feeling for the quality and char-
acter of the men and women who composed the nation and
made it strong in war and peace. But in the period dis-
cussed in this volume the upper classes allowed no values
to the workpeople but those which the slave-owner appre-
ciates in the slave. The working man was to be industrious
and attentive, not to think for himself, to owe loyalty
and attachment to his master alone, to recognise that his
proper place hi the economy of the state was the place of
the slave in the economy of the sugar plantation. Take
many of the virtues we admire in a man, and they become
vices in a slave. The courage to rebel against a powerful
tyrant or an unjust law, the imagination that inspires a
vision of a better society, the sympathy that prompts to
acts of comradeship, the public spirit that drives a man to
denounce abuses or to lead a movement, all these qualities
make a good citizen, but a troublesome slave. And if you
turn from the language of the Declaration of the Rights of
Man to the language of magistrates' letters, or to the speeches
of Pitt and Wilberforce, you realise that the war between
England and France, which developed or degenerated into
a war for power in Europe, corresponded to a deep and
vital spiritual struggle within the nation. At the time
when half Europe was intoxicated and the other half
terrified by the new magic of the word citizen, the English
nation was in the hands of men who regarded the idea of
citizenship as a challenge to their religion and their civilisa-
tion ; who deliberately sought to make the inequalities
of life the basis of the state, and to emphasise and per-
petuate the position of the workpeople as a subject
class. Hence_it happened that_the French Revolution has
divided the_people of France less than the Industrial
Revolution has divided the people of England. For behind
1 See R. H. Tawney's The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century,
p. 316.
326 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
all the catastrophes and convulsions that seemed to the
English upper classes the sum of the French Revolution,
there was a constant and living inspiration, the sense
for citizenship ; l whereas the Industrial Revolution, that
seemed to represent peaceful and constructive progress,
inspired the separatist notion that the mass of men, women,
and children were not the citizens of to-day or the citizens
of to-morrow, but merely part of the machinery that the
great industry plied and handled.
It followed that every effort of the working-class leaders
to combat the mean temptations of a slave society, and
to prepare a future less hopeless and degraded for their
children, had to make its way against a ruling power that
dreaded the development of the mind of the ruled. Place
has left on record the change that the Reform agitation
produced in the people of Lancashire : " One of its effects
has been almost, if not entirely, overlooked. ... It is
that in spite of the demoralising influence of many of
our laws, and the operation of the poor-laws, it has im-
pressed the morals and manners, and elevated the character
of the working-man. I speak from observation made on
thousands of them, and I hold up this fact as enough of
itself to satisfy any man not wholly ignorant of human
nature as a very portentous circumstance. Look even to
Lancashire. Within a few years a stranger walking through
their towns was * touted/ i.e. hooted, and an c outcomling '
was sometimes pelted with stones. ' Lancashire brute '
was the common and appropriate appellation. Until very
lately it would have been dangerous to have assembled
500 of them on any occasion. Bakers and butchers would
at the least have been plundered. Now 100,000 people
may be collected together and no riot ensue, and why ?
1 Not that the French Governments succeeded in solving the industrial
problems of their time. Those problems were less acute in France than
in England, but the French intellect of the day was dominated by the
reaction against the policy of monopoly, and combinations were made
illegal, not as a measure of class warfare, but as a corollary from the
declaration of the Rights of Man. See Fisher, The Republican Tradition
in Europe, p. 173.
CONCLUSION 327
Why, but for the fact before stated, that the people have
an object, the pursuit of which gives them importance in
their own eyes, elevates them in their own opinion, and thus
it is that the very individuals who would have been the
leaders of the riot are the keepers of the peace. In every
place as reform has advanced, drunkenness has retreated,
and you may assume that a cause which can operate so
powerfully as to produce such a change, is capable of
producing almost anything." l Their concentration on the
abstractions of property and order had so perverted the
upper classes that kindly and humane men preferred the
England of the " Lancashire brute " to the England of the
Lancashire Reformer.
The worship of wealth as an end in itself left no
room for the vital sense of human joy in creation. It
was an age of creation, but it was not the spirit of
creation that men admired. It is one of the ironies of
history that this age admired itself for every reason but
the right one. What men praised was the gr v eai_.civil
order which had survived all the storms ef the Revolution,
and had made property more secure than any other system
in the world. The immense energy that might have created
a society of free men was admired just because it had
created a society in which so few men were free. Simi-
larly a false value was put on all the discoveries and insti-
tutions of the time. To the modern mind the truest thing
that was said about the Industrial Revolution was said
by Doherty in The Voice of the People : that if life
was to be enriched by the new industry, machinery must
be made subordinate to the men who used it. The political
economy of the age valued the new industry as offering
rapid and tempting prizes to the spirit of gain which was
regarded as the great motive power of human progress.
The ideal workman was the man who set his heart on making
money, and had no higher purpose in his toil and in his
abstinence from pleasure. The religion of the age assigned
one virtue to the working classes, the virtue of bearing
1 Wallas, Life of Place, p. 146.
328 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
with Christian patience " the inconveniencies of a lower
station " : inconveniencies that were steadily increasing.
Economist and Evangelical alike judged every movement
by the single standard of its reactions on the existing
order. It was left to a few independent spirits to ques-
tion this amazing complacency, to ask the Evangelicals
whether ninety out of a hundred of their fellow-citizens
had been born for no other purpose than to practise
the virtue of resignation ; to ask the economist whether
the workman was to have no other god in life than the
law of supply and demand, to be worshipped with impartial
enthusiasm whether it found him employment or whether
it put him hi the workhouse ; to ask the politician whether
a government whose dominant object is to preserve its own
existence fulfils any large or noble purpose in the world.
For three main schools combined to create the atmosphere
of the Industrial Revolution. The poh'tical^theogy that~l
was developed from the teaching of Locke acquired a
new and sinister importance in this age, for that theory
treated society as a community of shareholders in which .
a man's stake was his property. There was a large and
increasing population of men without property. The",
economic theory that started with Petty and his contem-
poraries, and followed a course of its own through Adam
Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus, growing into a more elaborate ;
philosophy, assigned to this population the task of serving
the masters of the great industry with a blind and irrespon-
sible obedience. "The poor man," said a working-class j
paper, "is esteemed only as an instrument of wealth."
The Commons of England, as Cobbett said, had become
the labouring poor. Religion, in one form or another,!
might have checked thisTspirit by rescuing society from!
a materialist interpretation, insisting on the conception
of man as an end in himself, and refusing to surrender
that revelation to any science of politics or any law of
trade. Such a force was implicit in the mediaeval re-
ligion that had disappeared, good and bad elements alike,
at the Reformation. Such again was the force, more
CONCLUSION 329
passionate and direct, of that tempestuous religion that
was sweeping over the battlefields of Europe ; the spiritual
message of the French Revolution, trumpeting its sacra-
mental phrases across the world. But in England the
religion that sprang from the Reformation, intensely
individualist in its outlook, alive only at this time in the
teaching of the Evangelicals and of the Methodists, tending
to separate the world of the spirit from the world of public
life, made no such claim for humanity. In the eyes of
that religion the poor were only important as the servants
of the will and intelligence of others, " a necessary part
of the social system,*' looking beyond death for the happi-
ness and dignity that they missed in this life. Thus the
new system grew up, almost without challenge or protest,
in the atmosphere of a discipline as rigorous as that of an
army, for it seemed to the possessing classes that any
acknowledgment of human rights would imperil its power,
and even its existence. Hence it was that amid all the
conquests over nature that gave its triumphs to the
Industrial Revolution, the soul of man was passing into
a colder exile, for in this new world, with all its wealth
and promise and its wide horizon of mystery and hope,
the spirit of fellowship was dead.
TABLE OF DATES
1760 Newcastle Prime Minister.
Accession of George in.
1761 Bridgewater Canal opened.
1762 Bute Prime Minister.
1763 Peace of Paris.
Grenville Prime Minister.
1765 Hargreaves Spinning Jenny.
Rockingham Prime Minister.
1766 Orafton Prime Minister.
1767 Hanway's Act.
1769 Arkwright's water frame patented.
Watt's steam engine patented.
1770 North Prime Minister.
1773 Spitalfields Act.
1775-83 American War.
1778 Death of Chatham.
1779 Cromp ton's Spinning Mule.
1780 Gordon Riots.
1782 Rockingham Prime Minister.
Shelburne Prime Minister.
1783 Peace with America and France.
Duke of Portland Prime Minister (Coalition Ministry).
Dec. Pitt Prime Minister.
1785 Steam first applied to cotton mill.
Power loom invented by Cartwright.
1788 First Chimney Sweep Boys Act.
1789 French Revolution.
1793 War declared against France.
1794 Habeas Corpus suspended.
1799 Combination Law.
1800 Amended Combination Law.
Cotton Arbitration Act.
Union with Ireland.
1801 Addington Prime Minister.
1802 Peace of Amiens.
First Factory Act (Apprentices in Cotton and Woollen
Mills).
1803 War with France renewed.
1804 Pitt Prime Minister.
M
332 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
1806 Death of Pitt.
Grenville Prime Minister.
Death of Fox.
Napoleon's Berlin Decrees.
1807 Orders in Council.
Abolition of Slave Trade.
Duke of Portland Prime Minister.
1808 Peninsular War.
British and Foreign Schools Society founded.
Great speculating craze for South American markets.
1809 Perceval Prime Minister.
1811-12 Ludclite Riots.
1812 National Society for Education of the Poor founded.
Many bankruptcies.
America declares war.
Perceval assassinated.
Liverpool Prime Minister.
Sidmouth Home Secretary.
1813 Steam navigation on Clyde.
Wages Clauses of Elizabethan Act repealed.
1814 Stephenson's first railway engine.
Apprenticeship clauses of Elizabethan Act repealed.
1815 Corn Law (importation of wheat forbidden when price is
under 80s.).
Report of Committee on Parish Apprentices.
Waterloo.
Peace.
1816 Peel's Committee on Factory Children.
Act restricting binding of Parish Apprentices.
Death of Sheridan.
1817 Habeas Corpus suspended.
March of Blanketeers.
Derby insurrection.
Truck Acts extended to steel and coal industries.
1818 Abolition of blood money.
1819 Peterloo.
Six Acts passed.
Peels' Cotton Factories Regulation Act passed.
1820 Death of George ra.
Accession of George iv.
1822 Peel succeeds Sidmouth as Home Secretary.
1824 Committee on Artisans and Machinery.
Repeal of Combination Act.
Robinson and Huskisson's reform of the tariff.
1825 More moderate Combination Act passed.
Hobhouse's Factory Act.
1827 Canning Prime Minister.
CHIEF AUTHORITIES 333
1828 Wellington Prime Minister.
Test and Corporation Acts repealed.
1829 Catholic Emancipation passed.
1830 Death of George iv.
Accession of William iv.
Grey Prime Minister.
Liverpool and Manchester railway opened.
1831 Sadler's Committee on Factory Children.
1832 Reform Bill passed.
CHIEF AUTHORITIES
Home Office Papers in Public Record Office (referred to in this
volume as H. 0.).
Place MSS. in British Museum.
Journals of House of Commons.
Journals of House of Lords.
Reports of Parliamentary Debates in Parliamentary Register,
Parliamentary History, Senator, Cobbett's Parliamentary
Debates, and Hansard's Parliamentary Debates.
Annual Register.
PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS
Report of Committee on Woollen Manufacture, 1806.
Report of Committee on Calico Printers' Petition, 1806.
Report of Committee on Parish Apprentices, 1815.
Report of Committee on State of Children in Manufactories
(Peel's Committee), 1816.
Minutes of Evidence before Lords Committee on Factory Bill,
1818.
Minutes of Evidence before Lords Committee on Children in
Cotton Factories, 1819.
Report of Committee on Chimney Sweep Boys, 1817.
Report of Lords Committee on Chimney Sweep Boys, 1818.
Report of Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824.
Report of Committee on Combination Laws, 1825.
v Report of Committee on Factory Children's Labour (Sadler's
Committee), 1831.
(First Report of Factory Commission (Commission on Employ-
ment of Children in Factories), 1833.
Second Report of Factory Commission, 1833.
Supplementary Report of Factory Commission, 1834.
334 THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Extracts from Information received by Poor Law Commis-
sioners, 1833.
Report of Poor Law Commission, 1834.
Report of Committee on Accidents in Mines, 1835.
First Report of Children's Employment Commission on Mines
and Manufactures, 1842.
There are in existence several excellent bibliographies for the period.
The student may be referred to those published in :
The History of Trade Unionism, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
A History of Factory Legislation, by B. L. Hutchins and A.
Harrison.
La Revolution Industrielle au XVIII* Siecle en Angleterre, by
P. Mantoux.
The following list merely suggests some of the chief authorities for
the use of the general reader :
CONTEMPORARY AUTHORITIES
Aston, Joseph, A Picture of Manchester, 1816.
Baines, Edward, History of the Cotton Manufacture, 1832.
History of the County of Lancaster, 1824.
Bamford, Samuel, Early Days and Passages in the Life of a Radical.
Cobbett's Political Register, 1802-35.
/Eden, F. M., The State of the Poor, 1797.
J Engels, F., The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.
English Economic History, Select Documents, edited by A. E. Bland,
P. A. Brown, and R. H. Tawney.
J Fielden, J., The Curse of the Factory System, 1836.
Gaskell, P., The Manufacturing Population of England, 1833.
Pioneer, The, 1834.
Porter, G. R., The Progress of the Nation' (Modern Edition, edited
by F. W. Hirst).
Prentice, A., Historical Sketches of Manchester, 1850.
Eomilly, Samuel, Life of, 1842.
Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, Reports of (5 vols.),
1795-1808.
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Publications of,
The Results of Machinery, The Rights of Industry, 1831.
Taylor, W. Cooke, Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lanca-
shire, 1842.
Tracts, Cheap Repository (the first in 1792).
United Trades Co-operative Journal, 1830.
A Voice from the Coal Mines, 1825.
, The Voice of the People, 1831.
' Wing, C., The Evils of the Factory System, 1837.
CHIEF AUTHORITIES 335
MODERN AUTHORITIES
Ashley, W. J., The Economic Organisation of England.
Bonar, J., Malthus and his Work.
Butler, J. R. M., The Passing of the Great Reform Bill.
Carlyle, E. I., Life of William Cobbett.
Chapman, S. J., The Lancashire Cotton Industry.
Cunningham, W., The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, u.
Dolleans, E., Le Chartisme.
Fortescue, J. W., The History of the British Army.
French, G. J., Life of Samuel Crompton.
Galloway, R. L., History of Coal Mining.
Halevy, E., Histoire du Peuple Anglais au XIX Sieclc.
Hobson, J. A., The Evolution of Modern Capitalism.
Hutchins, B. L., and Harrison, A., A History of Factory Legislation.
James, J., History of the Worsted Manufacture.
Lloyd, G. L H., The Cutlery Trades.
Mantoux, P., La Revolution Industrielle au XV III* Siecle en
Angleterre.
Meredith, H. 0., Economic History of England.
Prothero, R. E., English Farming Past and Present.
Sadler, M. T., Memoirs of Life and Writings of.
Slater, Gilbert, The Making of Modern England.
Smart, William, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century.
Toynbee, Arnold, The Industrial Revolution.
Veitch, G. S., The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform.
Walpole, Spencer, History of England.
Wallas, Graham, Life of Francis Place.
The Great Society.
Webb, Beatrice, The Co-operative Movement.
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, History of Trade Unionism.
- English Local Government The Manor and the
Borough.
English Local Government The Parish and the
County.
Wedgwood, J. C., Staffordshire Pottery and its History.
INDEX
ABERDEEN, 54 n.
Abergavenny, 71.
vicar of, 269.
Accidents in mines, 24-26.
Adolphus (British Empire), 85 .
Age of Reason, Paine's, 242.
Agricultural labourers : as spinners
and weavers, 12.
Agricultural and Industrial Maga-
zine, 97 n.
Agriculture, Annals of, 43.
Ainsworth, Mr., 80.
Catterall and Co., 148.
Alexander, John, 130.
Alford, Dean, 55 n.
Algar, Mr., 130.
Allen, Thomas, 182.
Allett, John, 160 n.
Althorp, Lord, 207.
America, Cobbett on, 238.
American Wars, 102, 103.
Amusements of working classes, 51,
52 ; attack on, 236, 237.
Ancoats, 43.
Anderson, Sir John, 117, 118.
Anglesey, Lord, 87.
Annual Register, 235, 268.
Apprentices. See Calico Printers.
parish: in factories, 144-156;
committee on, 154-156 ; in mines,
174 ; as chimney sweeps, 178.
laws to protect, 149.
Apprenticeship Laws, 114, 293, 296.
Arbitration Act, cotton, 126.
- clauses, in Combination Act,
126, 134.
Aris, 242 n.
Aristocracy, as mine owners, 9 ; and
commerce, 10 ; and freedom of
speech, 60, 61, 63. See also Govern-
ing class.
Aristotle, 88.
Arkwrighfs machinery, 6.
Army, as police, 83-88 ; disbanding
of, 13, 105, 298.
Artisans and Machinery, Committee
on (1824), 22, 129 ; appointed, 136.
emigration of, 212.
Ashley, Lord, 207, 248. See Shaftoi-
bury.
Professor, 3 n.
Ashton, 55, 82, 273 n.
family, the, 42.
Assize of Bread, 197.
Aston's Manchester, 45 n.
Auckland, Lord, 75, 186 n., 190, 191.
Augustine, St., 276.
Aurelius, Marcus, 224.
BACKBARROW MILL, 146-149.
Bacon, Lord, 73, 88, 93, 202.
Bagguley, 287.
Baines of Halifax, 248.
Cotton Manufacture, 168 n.
159 n.
Lancashire, 48 n., 52, 53 n.
Balcarres, Lord, 175.
Bamford, Samuel, 9 n., 19, 53, 90,
248, 286, 288.
Banking, expansion of, 106.
Barnett, 257.
Barnsley, 82.
Barracks, building of, 83-85.
Bathurst, Lord, 103.
Colonel, 154 n.
Bayley, Sir John, 25.
Beaufort, Duke of, 71.
Belgrave, Lord, 151.
Bell, Dr., 57, 248.
H., 1.
Bellamy, John, 186 n.
Bellingham, 103.
Benefit Clubs. See Friendly Socie-
ties.
Bennet, Henry Grey, 79, 80, 225, 240,
242, 243, 244, 248 ; on blood-money,
78 ; and chimney-sweep children,
183 n., 187, 189-192; on punish-
ment of rioters, 321.
Bennett, Arnold, 223.
Bentham, Jeremy, 55, 61, 135, 195,
203, 206 n., 323.
Berkeley, Bishop, 49, 218.
Berlin Decree, the, 103.
Bernard, Sir Thomas, 184.
Bible, on rich and poor, 305,
338
THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Bilston, 68.
Birkbeck, 248, 250.
Birmingham, 5 n., 78.
builders' hall, 285.
Birstall, 263.
Bishops Wearmoutli, vicar of, 29.
Blackburn, 5 n.
Blacksmiths, 309.
Blaokstone, 55, 83.
Blagdon, 228.
Blake, William, 192 n.
Blane, Sir Gilbert, 162 n.
Blanketeers, march of, 99.
Blomfield, Bishop, 269.
Blood-money, 77-79.
Bolingbroke, 222.
Bolton, 257.
5 n. , 47, 80 ; analysis of popula-
tion of , 110.
Booker, Rev. Dr., 278.
Bootle, Wilbraham, 154, 156.
Bootmakers' Union, 264-266.
Bourne Sturges, 56.
Bouverie, Sir Henry, 314.
Boyd's Coal Pits and Pitmen, 25 n.,
28 n.
Bradford (Yorks), 5 n., 46 n.
(Wilts), 65.
Bragge, Mr., M.P., 118, 119, 123.
Brandlings, the, 25.
Braifield, 62.
Bricklayers, the, 309.
Bridgewater, Duke of, 10, 40, 215,
216.
Brindley, J., 1, 10.
Bristol rioters, 318.
British and Foreign Schools Society,
57.
Bronte, Charlotte, 15, 272.
Brotherton, 8.
J., M.P., 8, 30, 161 n.
Brougham, Lord, 195, 207, 215, 220,
246, 248 ; and education, 56, 57, 58 ;
on justice, 76, 77; and chimney-
sweep children, 190 ; on new Poor
Law, 218, 219 ; on Methodists, 279.
Brown, Hawkins, M.P., 118.
Buckingham, Duke of, 215, 216.
Buddie, Mr., 9 n., 27 n., 142 n.
Builders' Union, 315.
Bull, Rev. G. S., 268.
Bull-baiting, 49, 51, 52.
Bullion Committee, 106.
Burdett, Sir Francis, 114, 165, 200,
240, 242 n., 243 ; and combina-
tions, 118, 140.
Burke, Edmund, 7 n., 195 ; on popular
discontent, 93, 94 ; on employers'
enlightened selfishness, 198-200.
Burkes, 242.
Burnley's Wool and Woolcombing, 14 n.
Burns, William, 90 n.
Burslem, 6, 46.
Burton, Robert, 151, 181.
Bury, 47.
Bute, Lord, 65, 71.
Butler, J. R. M., The Panning of the
Great Reform Bill, 318 n.
Butterworth, Joseph, 279.
' Butties,' 9 n., 174.
Buxton, Fowell, Sir Thomas, 114, 224.
Mr., M.P., 118.
Byng, General, 138, 261 n.
Byron, Lord, 15, 60, 239.
CAERPHILLY, 65.
Calico printers, 119, 264, 309 ; peti-
tion, 293-295.
Calvinists, 271.
Canals, 2, 10, 13.
Canning, George, 64, 60, 136, 140;
and bull-baiting, 52 ; and factory
legislation, 165.
Capitalism, before Industrial Revolu-
tion, 3, 4, 7 ; struggle against, 15 ;
power of, 30 ; supposed beneficence
of, 209.
Capitalist manufacturers, 7, 8, 9, 14.
Capper, F., 266.
Carlyle, E. I., William Cobbett, 239 n.
Thomas, 210, 249.
Carter, Sir John, 86.
Cartwright, Mr. , 29.
Cartwright's Mill, 86.
Castlereagh, Lord, 99, 105, 223, 288,
321, 322.
Castles, 258.
Cavour, 321.
Chadwick, E., 44, 250.
Chapels. See Methodist movement.
Chapman, Professor, 6 n., 9 n., 21 n.,
47, 112 n., 164 n., 252 n., 253 n.,
254, 297 n.
Charitable Endowments Commission,
58.
Chartist movement, 18, 248 n., 289,
319.
Chelmsford, 75.
Cheshire, 26, 27, 54 n., 55, 83, 87.
Chester, Bishop of, 167.
Chesterfield, Lord, 222.
Chester-le-Street, 27.
Chichester, 86.
Children, employment of (tee Chaps,
viii. and IX.), 11, 14, 22-24; in
factories, 32-34, 144-171 ; in mines,
26-28 ; 172-176 ; as chimney sweeps,
176-193.
INDEX
330
Children, death Pentenoes on, 75;
transportation of, 76.
Children's Employment Commission
of 1842, 26, 27, 28, 35 n., 54, 172,
174, 175, 176.
Chimney-sweep children, 176-193 ;
nature of work, 179-181 ; Act of
1788, 181 ; societies for supersed-
ing, 184, 185 ; committees of 1817
and 1818, 187, 188, 189 ; Sennet's
bills, 187-191 ; surveyor general's
report, 189.
Chimney -sweeping, machinery for,
185, 186, 189, 192.
Chudleigh, vicar of, 72.
Church established, 221, 268, 269,
275.
Churches, construction of, 99, 234,
235, 270.
Cicero, 246 n.
Clan Down colliery, 27.
Clay, Colonel, 37.
Cleave, 248 n.
Clergy, established, 268, 269.
Climbing boys. See, Chimney sweep.
Coal mining, 6, 9. See alto Mines
and Miners.
Cobbett, William, 32, 85 n., 89, 98,
99 n., 158, 220, 248, 289, 290, 328 ;
and Combination Acts, 127-129 ;
and Wilberforoe and America, 237,
238 ; and Paine, 239 ; Fleming on
261 ; and Methodists, 281, 282 ;
and Reform Bill, 317, 319.
Cobden, R., 47.
Coke, Dr., 278.
Cold Bath Fields prison, 240-242.
CoMham, Mr., 259 n.
Colliers' strike, 227, 228, 309, 314.
See alto Miners.
submission, 132.
Combination Laws (tee Chap, vii.),
64-66, 74, 99, 176, 194, 204, 212,
231, 244, 246, 250, 254, 263, 282,
303, 307, 308, 311, 317; before
1799, 112; legislation of 1799 and
1800, 115-126; petitions against,
120-124 ; repeal of, 134-138 ; modi-
fied re-enaotraent of, 138-141.
Condorcet, 55.
Conspiracy Laws, 112, 137 n., 140.
See also Temple, William.
Cookson, Mr., 263.
Cooper, William, 183 n.
Co-operative movement, 248, 253,
312.
Corn laws, 99, 105, 107-110,202, 211,
282, 307.
Cornwallis, Archbishop, 222, 235.
Cotton, Richard, In9n.
industry, 15, 31 ; xport, 2 ; in
Lancashire, 6 ; and Orders in Coun-
cil, 103.
Courtenay, J., M.P., 240.
Coventry, Lady, 10.
Coward, Thomas, 148.
Oowper, William, 222.
Crabbe, 275.
Crabtree, M., 160 n.
Craufurd, General R., 88.
Crawshay, W. t 8.
Creevey, Thomas, 187.
Crofters' submission, 133.
Crompton, Samuel, 2, 11, 267.
Cunningham, Dr., 2 n., 156 n.
Currency question, 106-107, 110.
Curwen, J. C., M.P., 26, 154 n., 200,
252.
DARBY, A., 8.
Dartmouth, Lord, 222.
Davis, Mr., 189.
Davy, Sir H., his lamp, 25, 26.
Defoe, 4n., 5, 7, 144.
De Lancey, Colonel, 83, 85.
Denman, Thomas, 140, 190, 207.
Dent, Mr., M.P., 125.
Derby rioters, 269.
Derbyshire, 26, 35 n., 55.
Detroisier, Rowland, 50, 51, 58, 249,
254.
Dewsbury, 82.
Dickens, Charles, 192 n., 210.
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, So-
ciety for, 17, 207, 250.
Dill, Dr., 247, 276 n.
Doe, Henry, 182.
Doherty, John, 249, 250, 253, 254,
312, 314, 317, 327.
Dolleans, E., 32 n., 102 n., 248 n.,
279 n.
Domestic industries, 18, 19.
Dowlais Works, 71.
Dryden, 16.
Dudley, Lord, 9.
Dukinfield, 42.
Dundas, H., 83, 85. See Melville.
Durham, 25, 26, 27, 87.
bishop of, 83, 180.
Lord, 9, 176.
Dyers and dressers, 300.
EAST INDIA COMPANY, 7.
Eckersley, Major, 136, 138.
Economic fatalism, growth of, 196-
205.
ideas of upper classes (fee Chap.
x.), 328, 329; criticised by work-
340
THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
ing classes, 298-304. See alto
Labour.
Eden, Sir F. M., 55, 145 n., 150 w.,
201, 251.
Edgeworth, Maria, 61.
Education of working classes, 248 ;
absence of, in manufacturing dis-
tricts, 54, 55 ; attempts to provide,
56, 57, 58 ; hostility towards,
56, 57, 59.
Edwards, 258.
Eldon, Lord, 56, 137, 191.
Eliot, George, 284.
Elliott, Ebenezer, 249.
Ellison, Mr., M.P., 118.
Emigration of artisans, 212.
Enclosures, 8, 9, 13, 45, 325.
Enfield, Mr., 258.
Engels, F. , 23 n. , 28 n. , 36 n. , 41 , 42 n. ,
44 n.
Ensor, G., 318.
Erskine, Henry, 242, 295.
Epictetus, 276.
Ethelston, Rev. C. W., 258, 260, 261.
Evangelical movement, Chap. XL,
328, 329. See also Methodist
movement.
FACTORY ACTS, 22, 65 ; first of 1802,
151, 152 ; millowners' objections
to, 152-153 ; Factory Act of 1819,
168, 169 ; of 1825, 170.
Commission of 1833, 12, 23 n.,
ct passim.
population, how recruited, 11,
12.
system, 18-23, 32-34, 300.
Farebrother, John, 168.
Farre, J. R., 160n.
Felix Holt, 284.
Felkin, 19.
Felling pit, 25, 28.
Female Political Union of Newcastle,
32.
Fennix, William, 148.
Fielden, John, 22 n., 210, 248, 287,
296; children's work, 18 n., 30, 49,
158.
Fielding, Henry, 61.
Finlay, K., M.P., 165.
Fisher's Republican Tradition, 326 n.
Fitzwilliam, Lord, 9; on Sheffield
volunteers, 88 n. ; and Peterloo, 91.
Fleming the spy, 260, 261.
Fletcher of Bolton, Col., 33 n., 64,
79, 252, 292; on population of
Bolton, 110; and Factory Act,
169 n. ; his spies, 258-260.
Florida, Blanca, 56.
Forrester, William, 176 n.
Fortescue, Hon. J. W., 83, 84 n., 87,
266.
Foster, Mr., 313.
Fox, C. J., 60, 63 n., 79 n., 98, 225,
244 ; and Pitt's military policy, 84,
88.
Frame-work knitters, 15, 31, 96, 264;
and state regulations, 297 ; resolu-
tions of, in 1817 and 1819, 303,
304.
Freason, Thomas, 266.
Freedom of speech, 60, 63.
Free-labour children, 144, 156-161.
French War. See War.
French's Crompton, II n.
Friendly Societies, 89, 126, 248, 251-
253 ; and strikes, 252, 253.
Fry, Mrs., 225, 245, 304.
Fustian cutters, 309.
GALLOWAY, 25 n., 27 n.
Game Laws, 245.
Garrow, Sir W., 209 n.
Gascoyne, Colonel, 125.
Gaskell, P., 8 n., 13 n., 41, 42.
Gast, John, 311.
Gateshead, 27.
German legion, 85 n.
Gerrald, J., 248.
Giddy, D., 56, 57.
Gifford, 142 n.
Gisborne, 150.
Godwin, W., 81 n., 195, 215, 318.
Goldsmith, 61.
Gooch, 257.
Gott, Mr., 160, 163.
Gould, G., 34, 162 n., 167.
Governing class, characteristics of,
274 ; attitude to Industrial Rev-
olution, 324,
Graham, Sir James, 165.
Grand National Consolidated Trade
Union, 319.
Grant, Charles, 139.
SirW., 125.
Granville, Lord, 176 n.
Gregory, Peter, 134 n.
Greg family, 42.
Rathbone, 49.
Grenville, Lord, 211.
Grey, Lord, 54, 207, 225, 322.
Grosvenor, Lord, 190.
Gunnings, the, 10.
Gurney, Mr., 119, 139.
HABEAS CORPUS, 98, 237, 241, 242,
243, 316, 321.
Haden, Rev. A. B., 69, 70.
INDEX
341
Haigh, Mr., J.P., 260.
Hale, Mr., 63.
Halevy, A., 85 n.
Hall, C., 215.
- William, 265.
Hanley, 71.
Hanway, Jonas, 145, 181.
Hanway's Act, 144, 145, 155.
Hardy, Thomas, 98, 248, 260.
Hargraves, Alonzo, 159 n.
Hargreaves, J., 2.
Harrison, 287.
Harrowby, Lord, 190.
Hatters, 309.
Hawkins, Dr., 45.
Hay, Rev. W., 79, 87, 94, 258, 261,
269.
Hazlitt, W., 240.
Henson, Gravener, 66, 255.
Hetherington, H., 248 n., 250, 318.
Hewins, Professor, 14 n.
Hill, Sir Richard, 51.
Hinokley, vicar of, 268.
Hippisley, Sir J. C., 27.
Hirst, F. W., 96 n.
Hitchin paper, 291.
Hobhouse, Benjamin, 74, 118, 123,
140.
- John Cam, 169, 170, 207.
Hobson, J. A. , 7 n.
Hodgskin, Thomas, 195, 216.
Hodgson, Rev. J., 25, 268.
Holcroft, 262.
Holderness, 89.
Holland, Lord, 56, 63, 103, 114, 168,
212, 225, 244; and Combination
Act, 123, 124.
Hollis, 164 n.
Hornby, Mr., M.P., 169.
Homer, Francis, 145 n., 154, 161,295.
Leonard, 55.
Horrooks, 127.
Horge-stealer, declaration of, 304.
Horsley, Bishop, 278 n.
Hotham, Baron, 75.
Hours of work : in factories, 22, 146,
147, 151, 157, 159, 162 ; in mines,
174-176. See also Factory Acts.
Housing, 43, 44.
Howard, John, 225, 245.
Hewlett, 145.
Huddersfield, 89.
Hudson's Bay Company, 7.
Hugo, Victor, 38.
Humanitarian movement, 225.
Hume, Joseph, 195, 204, 206; and
Combination Act, 129, 136-140.
Hunt, Henry, 48 n., 90-92, 194, 317,
319.
Huntingdon, Lady, 222.
Huskisson, William, 109, 136, 138,
139, 140, 211.
Hutchins and Harrison's Fnrlnry
Legislation, 22 n. , 34 n. , 49 n.
B., 44 n.
Hyde, 42.
INDUSTRIAL system, new, features of,
100-102,
Industries, interdependence of, 101,
102.
Institutes, Mechanics, 59, 248, 249,
286.
Ireland, immigration from, 13.
Ire ton, 59.
Irish weavers, 13.
Iron trade, truck system in, 66-71 ;
distress after peace, 105.
JAMES' Worsted, 46 w., 102 n.
Jenny spinners, 309.
Johnson, Dr., 7, 56.
Jones, Mr., 74.
Julian, Emperor, 241 n.
KAY, J. P., 22 n., 40 n.
Kennedy, J., 8.
Kennedy's English Taxation, 217 .
Kent, Duke of, 73 n.
Kenyon, Lord, 168, 169.
King, Lord, 195, 211, 294.
Knaresborough, 65, 264.
Knight, William, 36 n., 248.
LABOUR, resolutions about, in 1818,
308.
Lamb, Charles and Mary, 193.
Lanarkshire, 54 n.
Lancashire, growth of population in,
4, 11-14 ; cotton industry, 6; home
life of, 23, 24 ; mining in, 26, 27 ;
way of fighting, 52; education in, 54 ;
churches and chapels in, 268, 269 ;
effort of reform movement on, 326,
327.
colliery girl, story of, 230.
Lancaster, Duchy of, 64.
Joseph, 57, 248.
Lansdowne, Lord, 191 n.
Lascelles, H., M.P., 118, 165.
Lauderdale, Lord, 195; and truck
system, 41 ; and factory legislation,
166, 167, 200 ; and chimney-sweep
boys, 187, 190-192.
Law, G. H. See Chester, Bishop of.
officers, 73-74, 310.
Leader's Sheffield, 51 n., 52 n.
Lecky, 107 n.
342
THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
Lee, Q. A., 163 n.
Leeds, 5 n., 32 ., 42 ; government
of, 48.
Duke of, 9.
Leicester, 31, 80.
List, 211.
Littlewood, Captain, 89.
Liverpool, 5.
Lord, 137, 166, 168, 235, 302.
Lloyd, Mr., of Stookport, 72, 261,
287 ; and Temple, 252, 255-258.
Lloyd's Cutlery Trades, 15 n., 95 n.
Evening Post, 41.
Locke, 143, 328.
Loffb Capel, 79.
Londonderry, Lord, 9, 176.
Long, Mr., 119.
Lonadale, Lord, 26.
Lords, House of, and factory legisla-
tion, 166-169 ; and chimney-sweep
boys, 188-191; and Reform Bill,
319.
Lovett, 248 n., 318.
Luddite disturbances, 15, 82, 279. x
Lyndhurst, Lord, 79.
MACAULAY, 1, 17, 221, 297 n., 322.
Macclesfield, 22, 23, 43.
M'Cullooh, J. R., 100, 201 n., 204.
Machine makers, 309.
Machinery, hand labour displaced by,
15 ; attitude of workers to, 17, 250,
327 ; strain from, 21.
Mackenzie's Northumberland, 52 n.
Mackintosh, 79, 217.
Macleod, 106.
Madras House, 238.
Magistrates, power of, 63-74 ; manu-
facturers as, 64, 65 ; Brougham on,
76, 77 ; and licensing, 80 ; scarcity
of, 82 ; use of spies, 258 ; parsons
as, 269.
Maitland, General, 83, 86.
Malthus, 55, 195, 206 n., 207, 223,
328 ; and Combination Laws, 137,
204, 212; his doctrines, 201, 202,
204.
Manchester, population of, 5 ; as a
town, 45 ; government of, 47.
Manners-Button, Archbishop, 56.
Thomas, 74.
Mantoux, P., 3, 5 n., 7 n., 8, 143.
Maria Theresa, 55.
Marriott, Mr., 309.
Marris, Mr., 279.
Marshall, Professor, 203.
Martin, R., 225.
Ma we, Mr., 100.
May, Erskiue, 62 n.
Melbourne, Lord, 175, 176, 202, 274.
Melville, 240. See Dundas.
Mendicity, report on, 63 n.
Mendip Annals, 226-230.
Menger, Dr., 215.
Meredith, Professor, 3 n., 106 n.
Sir William, 79, 225.
Merthyr Tydfil, 65.
Metoalf, 1.
Methodist ministers' manifesto, 280.
movement, 53 n., 221, 222, and
Chap. xin. See also Evangelical
movement.
Michelet, 143.
Middleton, 53, 90, 288.
Midland Mining Commission, 6 n.,
9n.
Militia and food riots, 86, 87.
Mill, James, 195, 207.
John Stuart, 205.
Millwrights' Petition and Bill, 115-
118.
Milton, Lord, 187.
Miners, 24-28, 31-32, 52, 297, 313,
314 ; budget, 34 ; Oldham handbill,
35 ; and Methodism, 272.
Mines, accidents in, 24-26 ; and truck
system, 66-71 ; distress after peace,
105. See alto Children.
Minimum Wage. See Wages, regu-
lation of.
j Bill, Whitbread's, 144.
Mining village, 40-42.
Mitcnell, Dr., 54 n.
Mitfofd, Sir John, 125.
Monniouth, 70.
Moore, Peter, M.P., 295.
More, Hannah, 58, 59, 223, 225-230,
234, 248, 277.
Martha, 226-228.
Morgan, 179.
Morley, Lord, 10 n., 193.
Morris, William, 40 n.
Mosley, Sir Oswald, 10 n.
Moss, John, 146-149.
Muir, Thomas, 62, 248.
Mule spinners, 309 ; address to public,
301-302.
Municipal Commissioners, 47.
Murray, Professor Gilbert, 273.
Music, working men and, 50.
NADIN, 47, 77, 78.
Napoleon, 55, 102, 103, 107.
National Association for the Protec-
tion of Labour, 250, 311-315,
Society for Promoting the Edu-
cation of the Poor, 57.
Newcastle Journal, 24.
INDEX
343
Ntwraarket Races, 235.
Newport, 76.
Newspaper Stamp Duty, 250.
Newton, 42.
Nicholson, Professor, 108, 109.
Nonconformists, 278. See alto Me-
thodists.
Norfolk, Duke of, 44, 154 n.
Norris, Mr., 50, 136, 167, 260, 306,
310.
North and South, 276 n.
Northumberland, 25, 26, 52, 87.
Norwich, 85, 102.
Nottingham, 66.
food riots, 86, 291.
OASTLEE, RICHARD, 18, 32 n., 160,
171, 195, 224, 248.
O'Oonnell, 312.
Ogilvie, 195.
Oldham, 5 n., 26, 27, 55, 82, 89;
miners, 35.
Oliver the spy, 243, 258, 261.
Ommaney, Mr., M.P., 190.
Orders in Council, 103.
Osburn, William, 32 n.
Owen, Robert, 8, 31, 195, 210, 244,
248, 318; and factory children,
157, 161-163.
Oxford, 292.
PAINE, THOMAS, 195, 219, 230, 236,
242, 248, 289, 290, 318, 322 ; tract
about, 72, 73 ; Cobbett and, 238,
239.
Paley, W., 202, 232-234.
Paper money. See Currency.
Papermakers Act, 119.
combination of, 262.
Parish apprentices. See Apprentices.
Park, Mr. Justice, 75.
Parliament, workers appeals to, 293-
297.
Parliamentary Reform. See Reform.
Paulus Carolus, 45 n.
Peacock, 207.
Peel, Sir Robert (first Bart.), 14, 101,
295 ; and factory legislation, 150,
151, 155, 161-166, 169.
(second Bart.), 73, 76, 81,
136, 139, 140, 170, 261, 313.
Peel's Committee, 161-164.
Pelham, Lord, 236.
Pembroke, Lord, 74.
Penal Laws, 62 ; and children, 75.
Penny Papers for the People, 250.
Pentridge, Curate of, 269.
Perceval, Spencer, 74, 103, 151,
235.
Peroival, Dr., 149.
Peterloo, 44 n., 72, 89-92, 244.
Petty, W., 214, 328.
Philanthropic Society, the, 309, 310.
Philanthropy. See Evangelical move-
ment.
Philips, G., M.P., 64, 78 n., 161,
165, 298 n.
Phocylidee, 160.
Physiocrats, 201, 214.
Piecers, 158, 159.
Pierrepont, Mr., M.P., 125.
Pilkington, 248, 271 n.
Pioneer, the, 45 n., 285, 315.
/Pitt, William, 0. 54, 57 n., 60, 61,
62, 63 n., 98, 240, 288," 292, 322,
325 ; and the army, 83, 84, 87, 88 ;
and Combination Laws, 115, 118,
1HU23-12M34 ; and child labour,
143, 144 ; and Adam Smith, 19J,
198.J212.
Place, Francis, 54, 206, 240,244 n. , 248,
289, 311 ; and Combination Laws,
129, 133-140 ; on Reform agitation,
326, 327.
Police, and blood-money, 77-79 ; state
of, 81, 83. See also Army.
Political economy. See Economic
ideas.
Political Register, Cobbett's, 289.
Poor Law Commission, 13, 14 n.
Law, New, 218, 219.
Man's Advocate, the, 250.
Society for Bettering the Con-
dition of, 40, 152, 245,
Population, growth of, 4, 13, 14;
redistribution, 11-13; Malthus and,
201, 202.
Porter's Progress of the Nation, 96 n. ,
109.
Porter, David, 181, 184, 188.
Portland, Duke of, 9, 237, 278.
Portsmouth papers, 290, 291.
Posse comitatus, 81, 82.
Potteries, 6, 46, 82 n., 264, 310.
Power looms, 15; Manchester weavers
on, 298, 300.
Prentice, A., 51 n., 92, 248.
Preservation of Public Peace Bill,
279.
Preston, 42, 43, 48.
Pretyman, 223. See Tomline, Bishop.
Price, Mr., 158 n., 162.
Priestley, Dr., 238, 239.
Primitive Methodists, 283.
Property, worship of, 320-324, 327.
Protective duties, 211. See alto Corn
Laws.
Prothero, R. E., 107, 108 n., 110 n.
344
THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
QUESNAI, 214.
RADCLIFFE, 149.
Radicals and laissez faire, 205-207.
Raikes, R., 248.
Redhead, John, 148.
Reeves, Robert, 230.
Reform Bill, 1, 171, 217, 322; work-
ing classes and, 317, 319.
movement, 97, 98, 220, 248, 288,
289, 316-319, 322 ; effect on Lanca-
shire, 326-327.
Reformers and Methodists, 280-282,
287.
working class, 251, 305
Regulation of industry, State, 114,
197, 198, 293-297, 299, 300.
Religion, see Chaps, xi. and xm.,
328, 329. See also Evangelical and
Methodist movement.
Renfrewshire, 54 n.
Remits of Machinery, 17.
Revivals, 272.
Revolution, French, 225, 232, 234,
325, 326, 329 ; effects in England,
( 62, 93, 94, 98, 113, 223, 235, 242,
275 n.\
Whig, 61, 98.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 193.
Riall, General, 29.
Ribbon weavers, 31, 133 n.
Ricardo, D., 195, 201, 203, 204, 207,
223 328
Rochdale, 47, 82 n.. 269.
Romilly, Sir Samuel, 61, 225, 243,
244 n. , 304 ; on blood-money, 78, 79 ;
on parish apprentices, 154.
Rose, George, 119, 251, 252.
Holland, 57 n.
Rouen, 21 n.
Rousseau, 192.
Royal Society, 16.
Ruskin, J., 39.
Russell, Lord John, 207.
Ryding, 127, 128.
SADLER, M. T., 36 n., 158, 210, 224,
248, 297 n.
Sadler's Committee, 159, 160, 171
et passim.
Salt, William, 130, 131.
Sandal, vicar of, 277.
Sarum, Old, 322.
Sawyers, 309.
' Scab,' definition of, 264.
Scott, 242.
Seaford, 86.
Seamen's strike, 28-30.
Seatle, Henry, 148.
Seneca, 276, 277.
Senior, Nassau, 43.
Settlement Laws, 73 n.
Shaftesbury, Lord, 9, 53, 158, 172,
224. See Ashley.
Sharpe, G., 32 n.
Shearmen, 16 ; and gigmills, 74 ;
Society of, 213, 263.
Sheffield, 5 n., 42, 44, 52.
volunteers, 88 n.
Lord, 118.
Shelley, 60, 202.
Sheridan, R., 60, 106 n., 114, 166,
225, 240, 242, 244 ; and bull-bait-
ing, 52 ; and Combination Laws,
125, 126, 134 ; and calico printers,
294, 295.
Sherwin, J., 130, 142 n.
Shipham, 229.
Shipowners and Combination Laws,
138. See also Seamen's strike.
Shipwrights, 133 n.
Shirley, 272.
Shoemakers, 309.
Sidmouth, Lord, 79, 94, 99, 134n.,
196, 198, 210, 243, 261, 280, 321,
322.
Silk mills, 22.
Six Acts, the, 99, 321.
Slater, J., 148.
Slave trade, 223, 245.
Slubbers, 309.
Smart, Professor, Economic Annals,
46 n., 101 n., 102 n., 103 n., 105 n.,
107 n., 109 n., 165 n.
Mr., 185.
Smith, Adam, 3, 7, 55, 118, 134, 195,
206, 328 ; interpretation of his
teaching, 196-198, 210-212, 215,
216 ; and high wages, 213, 214 ; on
character of government, 324.
0., 118.
(manufacturer), 256.
Sydney, 210, 298.
Thomas, 13 n.
William, M.P., 161, 165, 166 n.
William, 21 n.
Smoke, 46.
Sophocles, 274, 275.
Soup, poor and, 291, 292.
South America, speculative trade
with, 100, 101.
Speenhamland system, 14, 219.
Spence, Thomas, 322.
Spies, use of, 243, 258-262, 281, 282.
Spinners, 12 ; fines, 19, 20 ; Union of
1810, 253; and Ten Hours Bill,
297; Grand General Union, 312.
See also Mule Spinners.
ixnrx
148
Spitalfields, 63.
Act, 211, 295.
Statfordshire, 6 n., 9, 26, 51.
Stamp duty, 99.
Stanhope, Lord, 56.
Stanley, Lord, 151, 165.
Steele, 271.
Stinnett, Dr., 278 n.
Stephen, Mr. Justice, 115.
Sir Leslie, 232.
Stephens, 18, 279 n.
Stephenson, George, 1, 175 n.
Sterne, 274.
Stock Exchange, 2.
Stockport, 287.
weavers' letter, 296.
Strutt, Jerediah, 8.
Joseph, 79.
family, the, 42, 49.
Styall, 146.
Submissions, 132, 133.
Suffolk, Lady, 222.
Sunday observance, 222, 235-237,
318.
schools, 63, 93, 248, 272, 279,
286, 287.
Sunderland, 25, 29.
Surrey, 268.
Surveyor-General's Report on Climb-
ing Boys, 189.
Sussex, 6n.,86, 268.
Swansea paper, 290.
Swindells, 257.
Sykes, Sir Mark, 88.
TACITUS, 219, 220.
Talleyrand, 55.
Tarleton, General, 125.
Tawney's Agrarian Problem, 325 n.
Taxation, 97, 102, 214.
Taylor, John, 53 n.
Luke, 168.
R., 133 n.
W. Cooke, Tour, 10 n., 41, 45,
50, 215, 273 n.
Telford, T., 1.
Temple, William, 252, 255-258.
Ten Hours Bill, 297.
Tertullian, 283.
Thackeray, 274.
Thelwall, 248.
Threatening letters and papers, 290-
293.
Thompson, William, 195, 216.
Thurlow, Lord, 181 n.
Tiberius, 219.
Time* reporter and Peterloo, 92.
Tipton, 68.
Toleration Act, 277.
T"mline, Bishop, 57 n. Set Prety-
Tommy shops. Ste Truck system.
Tooke, William (chimney sweep), 17'
n., 181 n., 184.
William, 207.
Home, 260.
Toplady, 271.
Towns, growth and government of.
See Chapter HI.
Toynbee's Industrial Revolution, 4 n. ,
7n., 14 n.
Tracts, Cheap Repository, 230.
Trade Union movement, and Metho-
dism, 282-287. See also Union of
Trades, General, and National As-
sociation for Protection of Labour.
Unions. See Chapter vn. ; also
217, 248 ; difficulties of, 254, 255 ;
dangers from spies, 258-261 ; com-
munication between, 262-266.
Trappers, 26, 173, 176 n.
Trent and Mersey Canal, 6.
Trevelyan, G. M., 42 n., 242 n. ; Sir
G., 79 n.
Trimmer, Mrs. , 58, 248 ; on Tom
Paine, 73.
Trowbridge, 262.
Truck Acts, 41, 65, 67, 206, 214,
255.
System, 40-42 ; in iron and coal
trades, 66-71.
Tufnell, Mr., 158, 159.
Turgot, 55, 201.
Tyburn Ticket, 78.
Tyldesley, 19, 20, 22.
Tyne and Wear, 9 n., 27 n., 28.
Tyne Mercury, 132.
UNION, National, of Work ing Classes,
99, 318.
of Trades, general, of 1818, 807-
11.
Political, 249, 318.
United Trades Co-operative Journal,
312, 317 n.
Unwin, Professor G., 3 n., 100 n.
VAGRANCY LAWS, 67, 69, 72.
Varley, Mr., 159.
Voice from the Coal Mines, A, 24 n.,
25 34
'of 'the People, The, 17 n., 250,
312.
Volney paper, 315, 316.
Voltaire, 10.
Volunteer force, 87, 88.
Vyse, Colonel, 85.
346
THE TOWN LABOURER, 1760-1832
WAGES, payment in lump, 50*? regu-
lation of, 97, 114, 197, 198, 293,
296, 297, 299, 316.
low, as encouragement to in-
dustry, 213 ; this doctrine criti-
cised, 298, 299, 303, 304, 308.
fund theory, 204.
Wakefield, 87.
Wallace, T., 139, 140, 211.
Wallas, Professor Graham, 54 n.,
135 n., 140 ., 323 n., 327 n.
Walpole, Spencer, History of Eng-
land, 11, 54 n., 76n., 104n., 107 n.
War, French, 95, 325 ; effects of, on
industry, 13, 102-105.
Wars, American, 102, 103.
Watch and Ward Act, 82.
Watson, 248.
Watt, James, 2.
Wear. See Tyne.
Weavers, Stockport, letter to magis-
trates, 296.
Manchester, letter from, 298-
301.
hand-loom, 11, 12, 21, 32, 95,
156, 309 ; communication between,
262; and State regulations, 296,
297.
Webb, Mr. and Mrs., 10 n., 46, 47,
48 n., 64 n., 112 n., 137 n., 139 n.,
236, 237 n.
Mrs., 253, 266.
Wedgwood, Josiah, 6, 8.
junior, 163.
Wedgwood's Staffordshire Pottery, 6 n. ,
46 n.
Wellington, Duke of, 207.
Wesley, John, 271, 276, 284.
Whitbread, Samuel, 56, 79, 103, 112,
114, 144, 154, 225, 240.
Whitefield, 222, 271.
Whitehaven, 27.
Whitehead, A., 159 n.
I Whitelegg, 157 n.
| Wigan, 27, 65, 73 n., 292.
Wilberforce, W., 213, 223, 225, 226,
325; and Combination Laws, 115,
117, 134 n. ; Oobbett's letter to,
127-129; and Factory legislation,
151, 165, and chimney-sweep chil-
dren, 187, 190 ; Practical Chris-
tianity, 231, 232 ; campaign against
immorality, 235-237; Cobbett on,
238 ; and Cold Bath Fields, 240-
242 ; his point of view, 242-246.
Wilkinson, 25 n.
J., 8.
Wiltshire, 65, 74, 263.
Windham, W., and bull-baiting, 49.
51, 52 ; and education, 56 ; on bar-
racks, 84.
Wing's Evil* of Factory System, 33 n. ,
40 n., 161 n.
Wood, Alderman, 78.
John, 49, 195.
Woollen factories, 49.
industry, 2, 5, 15, 102.
trade, Committee on, in 1806,
213, 263.
Women's work, 14, 293 ; in factories,
23, 24; in mines, 27, 28; lace-
makers' combination, 262.
Woolstonholme, Rev., 269.
Wright, R., 181 71.
Writing, teaching of, 58, 286.
YEOMANBY, 88, 89.
Yonge, SirG., 84.
York, Duke of, 236.
Yorke, Sir J., 190.
Yorkshire, 26, 27, 28 n., 35 n., 52,
54 n., 82, 268.
Young, Arthur, 7, 213, 234, 235.
ZOUCH, Rev. Mr., 237 n.
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