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conscious of its extent and its severity. Early in May ministers advised the queen to issue a letter recommending the collection of subscriptions for the poor in every parish church; they sent down a Commission to Paisley, and provided funds for the relief of that district. These arrangements, however, made no perceptible impression on the vast load of suffering under which the population was sinking; the almost universal poverty which was the lot of the spring became even more marked in the summer. The Opposition endeavoured to deduce from these circumstances the necessity for fresh laws. In the beginning of July, Wallace, in the Commons, proposed that the session should be prolonged until after an inquiry had been made into the cause of the people's misery. Ten nights afterwards, Brougham, in the Lords, suggested the appointment of a Select Committee to undertake the inquiry. Brougham and Wallace were unable to secure any effectual support for their motions.2 Peel, convinced of the wisdom of his own measures, declined to be forced into exceptional or additional legislation, and the long debates which Wallace and Brougham originated were only useful in acquainting the people with the price which they were paying for the dying system of protection.

The cost of

In fact, the consequences of the old policy of protection, which Peel had not yet abandoned, had been only imperfectly understood before the debates of 1842. Educated protection. men, indeed, capable of appreciating the deductive reasoning of Adam Smith, were acquainted with his objections to the commercial system of the eighteenth century. But the people had not read the "Wealth of Nations," and could not have understood it if they had done so. For their information the cost of protection was translated into plain figures. It was shown that the differential duties on foreign and colonial timber virtually imposed a tax of £2,000,000 a year on the people; that the same system raised the price of sugar by 20s. a cwt., or, on an average consumption of 4,000,000 cwt., imposed 1 Hansard, vol. lxiii. pp. 685, 886.

2 Ibid., vol. lxiv. pp. 861, 1238, 1241, 1288.

a tax of £4,000,000 on the nation. It was estimated that the average duty on wheat amounted to 10s. a quarter, and that, as the people consumed 24,000,000 quarters a year,1 the bread tax was equivalent to an annual tax of £12,000,000. Protection, therefore, in the case of these three articles was imposing a charge of £18,000,000, a sum exceeding one-third of its revenue, on the overtaxed people of this country. The three interests, indeed, in the eyes of agitators resolved themselves. into one interest. The country gentlemen of England were interested in the Jamaica plantations. The country gentlemen of England, while nominally protecting the forests of Canada, were in reality thinking of their own woods. The country gentlemen of England were inflicting dear bread on the poor for the sake of maintaining their own rents. "Was ever an aristocracy so endowed?" asked Cobden in Parliament. "They had the Colonies, the Army, the Navy, the Church; and yet they condescended to contend for a slice from the poor man's loaf." "If devils were lords in England," wrote Ebenezer Elliott, "they could but tax our bread." 2

Beaten on the Corn Laws, beaten on the tariff, beaten on the proposed inquiry into the causes of the distress, the Opposition yet decided to make one more effort for the sake of a suffering people. The price of corn had been high in 1841, a wet autumn had interfered with the sowing, and speculators anticipated that the price would be still higher in the autumn of 1842. They kept, therefore, their corn in bond, and declined to import it even under Peel's Corn Law. Sixteen years before, in a period of distress, the Liverpool Ministry had suspended the Corn Law, and temporarily sanctioned the importation of foreign corn. The precedent of 1826, it was urged, was exactly applicable to the situation of 1842. "The people were hungry; let them eat," said O'Connell in the

1 It is variously estimated. The estimate in the text is from the Report of the Handloom Weavers, and is quoted in Hansard, vol. Ixiv. p. 336.

2 For the estimated loss by timber, ibid., vol. lxiii. p. 1281; for that on sugar, ibid., p. 1163; for the extract from Cobden's speech, ibid., vol. lxiv P. 1361.

3 Ante, vol. ii. p. 208.

VOL. V.

B

simple language in which his most forcible appeals were couched. "But they said there was no food. Let them tell him no such thing. There were, at this moment, 1,500,000 quarters of wheat lying in bond, waiting until prices became high enough for the landlords to allow the people to be fed."1

Peel, however, relying on his new policy, declined to give way. He had chosen his part, and nothing that the minority could do could move him from it. The debates which the Opposition continued to raise could only in consequence be injurious to the public interests. They encouraged the cornjobbers to keep back their corn in the vain hope that the law would be suspended, and that it would be admitted free of duty. Throughout the earlier months of the year, moreover, the weather had promoted the speculation for a rise in prices. A wet autumn was followed by a wet spring; and an unusually cold May induced the best authorities to predict a late and bad harvest. Suddenly, however, the barometer rose, the clouds cleared away, and one of the wettest of Mays was followed by one of the hottest of Junes. The summer sun removed the effects of the spring clouds. The hot weather exerted an almost miraculous influence. The quality of the grain proved as good as the yield was satisfactory, and the whole of the harvest was cut and garnered a fortnight earlier than usual.

The summer

The sudden change in the weather in the summer of 1842 produced a marked effect on prices. During April, May, and June the price of wheat gradually rose from 58s. 5d. of 1842. to 64s. 5d. the imperial quarter. The corn-jobbers, anticipating a further rise, and speculating on a possible suspension of the new Corn Law, kept back their corn, retaining no less than 2,000,000 quarters in bond. The price, instead of rising, remained almost stationary until after the 18th of August. The jobbers, by that time convinced that their

1 Hansard, vol. lxiv. p. 1177.

2 Tooke's Hist. of Prices, vol. iv. pp. 11, 12. Mr. Tooke is responsible for the "miraculous influence," and I have endeavoured in other respects to preserve the language of this very exact observer. The rainfall is recorded in Ann. Reg., 1842, Chron., p. 378.

speculation had failed, suddenly poured the whole of their corn on the market. An addition of 2,000,000 quarters of corn-nearly one-tenth of a year's consumption-had a necessary and immediate effect on prices. The home yield, proving one-fourth larger than usual, stimulated the reaction; and the price of wheat, which had averaged 64s. 5d. in July, fell to 40s. in the autumn.?

Its effect

So sudden was the revulsion in prices that many persons were ruined by it. The corn-jobbers experienced the fate which is the natural result of an unsuccessful speculation. The farmers were deprived of the advan- on prices. tages which the good harvest might have brought them, by the panic fall in the value of their produce. Even the poor, starving in their miserable habitations, were not relieved by cheaper food. They could not procure the wages, without which they could not buy even cheap bread.

During the first half of 1842 the poor had endured with patience the fate which was apparently overtaking them. Their conduct had received on more than one occasion the cold approval of the authorities. Poor ignorant men, they had listened to the only advisers who condescended to instruct them. The Chartists told them that they were poor The Charbecause they were not represented in Parliament;

and that their political enfranchisement could not be refused if they had only the courage to insist on it. Many people thought with Sybil that the people had "learnt their strength," 3 and that the doors of Parliament would fly open before its peaceable demonstration. The first step in the demonstration was to petition the House of Commons. Three years before, indeed, the Chartists, in resolving on a similar attempt, had experienced an unexpected reverse. They succeeded, notwithstanding their previous failure, in obtaining 3,315,752 signatures to the petition which they presented to Parliament in 1842. They induced Duncombe to move that they should

1 Tooke's Hist. of Prices, vol. iv. p. 13.

2 Ann. Reg., 1842, Chron., p. 377.

4 For the petition of 1839, ante, vol. iv. p. 385.

3 Sybil, bk. iv. ch. xv.

be heard either by themselves or by their counsel at the bar of the House. But the petition of 1842 proved as abortive as the petition of 1839. The Government refused to listen to a plea which it was resolved to reject. The most prominent members of the Opposition supported the policy of the Administration; the majority readily adopted the advice of its leaders; and the hearing which the petitioners claimed was accordingly refused.1

Such a refusal was perhaps inevitable; but it sounded like a death knell on the ears of the hungry men who had based their hopes on the petition. "We mun speak to our God to hear us, for man will not hearken; no, not now, when we weep tears o' blood," was poor Barton's reflection on the rejection of the petition of 1839.2 Thousands of workmen, lapsed into despondency, unconsciously repeated the wail of despair in 1842.

of 1842.

Yet, amidst the general dejection, a few men clung to the idea which had animated them in 1839, and which still inThe strikes spired them in 1842. Labour, they thought, could still obtain its rights if the labourers were only true to themselves. The various unions, in which they were organised, afforded the working classes the requisite machinery for maintaining a struggle against their employers, and their own voluntary abstention from work would force the capitalists to come to terms. The old eternal struggle between capital and labour was thus to be renewed, and the sole distinction of 1842 was that the campaign was to cover a wider area than usual, and to be conducted to a more decisive issue.

A pretext for a strike soon occurred. In July some colliery owners in Staffordshire reduced the rate of wages from 4s. to 3s. 6d. a day. It had previously been the custom of the district to give the men a fortnight's notice of any such reduction. Notwithstanding this custom, an employer gave notice that the reduction would take effect in forty-eight hours' time.3 1 Hansard, vol. lxii. p. 1373; and vol. lxiii. pp. 12-88. 2 Mary Barton, ch. ix.

3 I have followed Graham's explanation of the original cause of the strike, in Hansard, vol. lxv. p. 438. Disraeli apparently founded on this speech the

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