his british elites and the

8/13/2019 HIS British Elites and The

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Institute of Historical Research 2007. Historical Research, vol. 81, no. 213 (August 2008)Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKHISRHistorical Research0950-3471 Institute of Historical Research 2007XXXOriginal Article

British elites and the interpretation of ChartismBritish elites and the interpretation of Chartism

Chartism from above: British elites and the

interpretation of Chartism

Robert Saunders

Lincoln College, University of Oxford

Abstracts

Chartism existed to exert pressure on the parliamentary classes, yet theinteraction between Chartism and its audience has rarely been closely examined.

Studies of the political engagement with Chartism have usually focused onquestions of policing and control, but such an emphasis was only possible ifChartism was first delegitimized as an authentic popular voice. This articleexplores the upper-class engagement with Chartism, arguing that it wasinterpreted not as a political movement but as a social pathology. Neither thecharter nor its spokesmen were accepted as representative of the people, withobservers instead projecting their own interpretations onto the movement. As aresult, the Chartists were unable to force serious constitutional debate or to

confront M.P.s with a compelling popular authority distinct from their own.

Between 1838 and 1848, the campaign for the Peoples Charter createda new popular politics in Britain, built around a programme of democraticreforms.

1

As the first mass movement to be staffed overwhelmingly byworking men, it left a lasting imprint on the social and political life ofthe labouring classes, providing thousands of future activists with atraining in journalism, mass organization and public speaking. Notsurprisingly, it has exerted a particular fascination for social historians and

historians of popular culture, generating an extensive literature on thecomposition of the movement, the language in which it defined itself andits legacy for Liberal and Labour politics.

Historians have rightly paid close attention to the social culture ofChartism: its local and national structure, the literature it generated andits tremendously varied activities on the ground. Yet, Chartism wasfundamentally outward looking, and its most important goals lay outsidethe movement itself. Chartism existed to exert pressure on the governingclass, in order to compel action by those who wielded social and political

1

It is impossible to assign precise dates to Chartism, but the publication of the PeoplesCharter in 1838 and the failure of the third petition 10 years later frame the period in whichChartism compelled the attention of parliament and the parliamentary classes. It is this periodwhich is of interest for the purposes of this article.


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Institute of Historical Research 2007. Historical Research, vol. 81, no. 213 (August 2008)

464 British elites and the interpretation of Chartism

power. The public meetings and torchlit processions, the monster petitionsand the crowds by whom they were delivered, were ultimately intendedto project an image, impressing upon government the popular authority

of the movement.Chartism was built around the strategy of mass petitioning, encapsulated inthe three great petitions of 1839, 1842 and 1848. Petitioning was not anact of hopeless naivety but a shrewd attempt to exploit the popularrhetoric of the parliamentary tradition. The will of the people enjoyeda privileged place in English political debate, notwithstanding the limitedreach of the electoral franchise. It was a commonplace that the authorityof parliament was rooted in popular consent, generating a political culturethat privileged public opinion.

2

The scale of the petitions easily

dwarfing the reformed electorate was intended to prove beyond disputethat the people had lost faith in their institutions and desired reform.Faced with such a demonstration, M.P.s would be compelled either toact on the theory they proclaimed, or, more probably, to abandon theveneer of popular legitimacy. If they adopted the latter course, governingin defiance of the people, they would undermine the popular consentwhich underpinned the system, strengthen the claims of the Chartistconvention to act as an anti-parliament and, under certain circumstances,legitimize the use of violence in defence of the peoples rights.

3

It was this intellectual challenge that posed the most serious problemfor the parliamentary classes. To the extent that it was recognized as atruly popular movement, Chartism could not be treated solely as aquestion of law and order: it also required an intellectual response. Studiesof the political engagement with Chartism have usually focused on issuesof policing and control, yet such a response was only possible if Chartismwas first delegitimized as an authentic popular voice.

4

It was this that gavethe special constables their significance in April 1848. The men whorallied to the defence of London were celebrated not just as an auxiliary

to the police, but as a symbol of popular loyalty and a rebuke to thecritique of the Chartists. The more successfully governments deflectedChartist claims to speak for the people, the more difficult it became tocompel a meaningful discussion of that movements demands. A clearerappreciation of the dialogue between Chartism and its audience is thusessential to any understanding of the history of that organization.

2

For statements privileging the will of the people, see L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox

(1992), p. 150; L. G. Mitchell, The Whig World, 17601837

(2005), p. 140; Joseph Hume,Hansard, Parliamentary Debates

, xcix (20 June 1848), col. 907; B. Disraeli, Vindication of the

English Constitution, in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord

(1835), pp. 1823; Whigs andWhiggism: Political Writings by Benjamin Disraeli

, ed. W. Hutcheon (1913), pp. 81, 109.

3

For the concept of the anti-parliament, see T. M. Parssinen, Association, convention andanti-parliament in British radical politics, 17711848, Eng. Hist. Rev.

, lxxxviii (1973), 50433.

4

F. C. Maher, Public Order in the Age of the Chartists

(Manchester, 1959); H. Weisser, April10: Challenge and Response in England in 1848

(Lanham, Md., 1983); and J. Saville, 1848: theBritish State and the Chartist Movement

(Cambridge, 1987).


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Historical Research, vol. 81, no. 213 (August 2008) Institute of Historical Research 2007.

British elites and the interpretation of Chartism 465

This article explores the upper-class engagement with Chartism: theirunderstanding of its origins, the context in which they experienced it andwhat they meant when they invoked that term. It argues that, while the

popular disaffection exploited by Chartism was taken very seriously, itwas believed to have only the most tenuous relationship with the ideasexpressed in the charter. Neither the charter nor the six points wereprominent in discussion, and none of those who sponsored the petitionsin parliament was recognized in any meaningful sense as a spokesman forthe masses.

5

The demands both of the petitions and of their parliamentaryagents appeared vague and malleable, leaving M.P.s uncertain either ofthe precise nature of the Chartist programme or of its authority amongthe people at large. Chartist leaders were treated not as representatives but

as interpreters, engaged, like any other commentator, in an attempt toexplain and articulate mass disaffection. Unwilling to recognize anyspokesman from within the movement, observers projected their ownanalyses onto it, in the pursuit of what Thomas Carlyle called a genuineunderstanding by the upper classes of society what it is that the underclasses intrinsically mean.

6

In the words of the Morning Herald

, Chartismmay be contemptible, but the causes of chartism constitute the greatpolitical problem of the age.

7

Viewed from above, Chartism was not a doctrine but a social

pathology, a corrosion of the bonds uniting the different classes of society.This did not diminish its significance, for the social and political orderswere closely related, but its political dimension was refracted away fromthe structural demands of the charter and into the emerging Conditionof England debate. Interpreted in this fashion, church extension, sanitaryreform and even a regeneration of aristocratic leadership were all logicalresponses to the Chartist challenge, while constitutional reform could bealmost an irrelevance. As long as even sympathetic observers refused todiscuss Chartism on its own terms, it had little chance of directing

attention towards the question of representation, or of confronting M.P.swith a compelling popular authority distinct from their own.

For most observers, the ideas that underpinned Chartism were lessimportant than its existence as a new kind of social organization; a factthat owed much to the forms in which they first encountered it.Newspapers did not immediately identify anything new in the Chartistprogramme; only gradually did the term Chartist begin to displace themore familiar Radical. What was new, and drew comment as such, was

the emergence of a widespread and in some respects mysterious massmovement. For most contemporaries, their first encounter with Chartism

5

Thomas Attwood in 1839, Thomas Duncombe in 1842 and Feargus OConnor in 1848.

6

Thomas Carlyle, Chartism

(1840), p. 6.

7

Morning Herald

, 5 May 1842, p. 4c.


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came not through the National Petition or the columns of the NorthernStar

, but as witnesses to popular mobilization at a local level. Chartismwas an intensely visual phenomenon. In the weeks before a demon-

stration, the walls of every village and town would be covered by placardsinviting the working classes and labourers to attend.

8

The largestmeetings could attract up to half a million people and were preceded byprocessions through the surrounding districts, often accompanied, asat Hawkshead Moor in Cumbria, by bands of music, and upwards of200 flags.

9

At a lower level, Chartists exploited clothing and civic ritualto maintain a profile. In August 1839, the Chartists of Merthyr processedto church for a Sunday service, wearing the blue waistcoat by whichthey are distinguished here.

10

At a Chartist tea party in Halifax in 1847,

all the women wore green: some had their caps beautifully decoratedwith green ribbons, others had green handkerchiefs, and some even hadgreen dresses.

11

What was novel about Chartism was not its programme but its self-sufficiency and the determination with which it resisted co-option fromabove. Men who had been popular leaders in 1832 found themselvesabruptly displaced, treated either with indifference or hostility. LadyCharlotte Guest, whose husband had been a leading reformer in Merthyr,could not bear the contrast of the present with the past, or to be

reminded of [her husbands] former popularity.

12

Where relationsbetween labour and capital were already poor, Chartists were more likelyto define themselves by opposition to local elites, heightening thetendency to view the movement as a new form of class polarization.

13

Writers like Carlyle, Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Kingsleywere quick to explore what they perceived as a new social phenomenon,and their accounts provided one of the most common media throughwhich Chartism was transmitted to a wider audience. They triedconscientiously to give voice to the feelings and opinions of the labouring

poor, but in so doing they assumed that the masses were not able to dothis for themselves, and that those who claimed to speak on their behalfmight safely be ignored. Thomas Carlyle offered his pamphlet on Chartismas an interpretation of the thought which at heart torments these wild,

8

The Times

, 18 Oct. 1838, p. 6a.

9

The Times

, 18 Oct. 1838, p. 6a.

10

Lady Charlotte Guest: Extracts from her Journal, 1833-52

, ed. earl of Bessborough (1950), p. 94.

11

B. Wilson, The Struggles of an Old Chartist

(Halifax, 1887); repr. in Testaments of Radicalism:Memoirs of Working Class Politicians, 17901885

, ed. D. Vincent (1977), p. 206.

12

Bessborough, p. 122.

13

For an excellent account of the local engagement with Chartism, see M. Chase, Chartism,183858: responses in two Teesside towns, Northern Hist.

, xxiv (1988), 146 71; repr. in ThePeoples Charter: Democratic Agitation in Early Victorian Britain

, ed. S. Roberts (2003), pp. 15273. Strikingly, Chase makes only two references to the doctrines of democracy (Roberts,p. 154) and the democrats (Roberts, p. 170), since local interest focused more on industrialaction, mass protest and the co-operative movement.


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inarticulate

souls, while Elizabeth Gaskell described her Chartist novel, MaryBarton

, as an attempt to give some utterance to the agony which, fromtime to time, convulses this dumb people.

14

Carlyles likening of the

Chartist to a dumb creature in rage and pain was typical, invoking aclass that was not merely inarticulate but in some way dehumanized.

15

Gaskell drew an analogy between the labouring poor and Frankenstein that monster of many human qualities while the industrial class inDisraelis Sybil

are so depraved as to be barely recognizable as men.

16

Itis not that the people are immoral, Disraeli observed, for immoralityimplies some forethought; or ignorant, for ignorance is relative; but theyare animals, unconscious, their minds a blank; and their worst actionsonly the impulse of a gross or savage instinct.

17

In Yeast

, Charles Kingsley

described a degraded race whose speech was half-articulate, nasal,guttural . . . like the speech of savages, uttering coarse, half-formedgrowls, as of a company of seals.

18

When Lady Charlotte Guest actuallymet a Chartist in 1839, she was struck by how much people and thingsare exaggerated; yet she could still write during later eruptions of therabble of Birmingham and the urgent necessity of humanising

thelower grade.

19

What this organization believed was of only peripheral interest; indeed,Chartism tended to be bundled together with communism, trade

unionism, atheism and other dimly understood but evidently distastefulideologies. In Mary Barton

, the heroines father is described vaguely as aChartist, a Communist, all that is commonly called wild and visionary;what matter are not his political principles but the anger and disaffectionthat drive him to murder.

20

Strikingly, in a novel with a Chartist as itsprincipal character, Gaskell does not so much as mention the charter, thesix points or constitutional reform. Charles Kingsley urged his readers toconsider why working men turn Chartists and Communists, while theYoung England M.P. Lord John Manners conflated Infidelity, Chartism,

and Socialism.

21

Thomas Carlyle cast his net still wider, invoking TheseChartisms, Radicalisms, Reform Bill, Tithe Bill, and infinite otherdiscrepancy.

22

The point at issue was not what working men nowbelieved, but the kind of people that they had become.

14

Carlyle, p. 6 (authors italics); E. Gaskell, Mary Barton: a Tale of Manchester Life

, ed. M.Daly (1996) (hereafter Mary Barton

), p. 3.

15

Carlyle, p. 52.

16

Mary Barton

, p. 170.

17

B. Disraeli, Sybil

, ed. T. Braun (1985) (hereafter Sybil

), p. 204.

18

C. Kingsley, Yeast

, ed. J. Wolfreys (Stroud, 1994), pp. 125, 127.

19

Bessborough, pp. 91, 122, 211 (authors italics).

20

Mary Barton

, p. 170.

21

C. Kingsley, Recent novels, Frasers Magazine

, xxxix (1849), 41732, at p. 430; YoungEngland: the New Generation. A Selection of Primary Texts

, ed. J. Morrow (1999), p. 82.

22

Carlyle, p. 42.


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Even in parliament, the existence of Chartism was of much greaterconcern than the demands to which it gave voice. The Chartists ownproposals came before the Commons only three times in ten years,

whereas Chartist violence and the measures for its prevention were muchmore frequently discussed. It can hardly be overstated that the documentsigned by millions of people, the document presented to parliament anddebated by M.P.s, was not the Peoples Charter, nor was it thenotorious five or six points. It was the National Petition, a catalogueof demands and grievances of which the charter formed only a part. Thefirst of the three Chartist petitions, presented in 1839, described how thepeople were bowed down under a load of taxes; our traders aretrembling on the verge of bankruptcy; our workmen are starving; the

home of the artificer is desolate, and the warehouse of the pawnbroker isfull; the workhouse is crowded, and the manufactory is deserted. Itdemanded the abolition of the laws which make food dear, and . . . moneyscarce and a redistribution of taxation from industry to property. Thesecond petition (1842) went further, attacking the national debt, the civillist, the unconstitutional police force, Poor Law Bastilles, the establishedchurch, tithes, excessive factory hours, starvation wages in agriculture, thewealth of bishops and clergy, and the monopolies of land, printing,religious privileges and the means of travelling and transit.

23

As Gareth Stedman Jones has shown, the prominence of such grievancesdoes not mean that Chartism was really an economic movement, or thatthe constitutional programme of the charter was somehow peripheral toits true meaning.

24

For the Chartists, the poverty of the masses and thegrievances under which they laboured could be traced directly to thedistribution of political power. Listing the scale and range of thosegrievances was necessary to demonstrate the neglect and misrepresentationof their interests and to explode the myth that the people were alreadysufficiently represented.25The petitions were not a distraction from the

constitutional programme of the charter, but proof of its urgency.Nonetheless, it was easy to dismiss them as a rag-bag of particulargrievances, encouraging even sympathetic observers to look past thecharter itself at the wants and wishes that lay behind it. It was perhapsunhelpful that those who sponsored the first two petitions in parliamentwere not themselves Chartists. By focusing almost exclusively on populardistress, they represented the charter not as a prerequisite to practicalreforms but as an alternative to them. Thomas Attwood, presenting thefirst petition in 1839, dwelt on the long sufferings, the injuries, the

23 The 1839 petition is reprinted in William Lovett, The Life and Struggles of WilliamLovett . . . with a Preface(repr. 1967). The 1842 petition is printed in Hansard, lxii (2 May 1842),cols. 137681.

24 G. Stedman Jones, Rethinking Chartism, in G. Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studiesin English Working Class History, 18321982(Cambridge, 1983), passim.

25 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), col. 235 (Fielden); lxiii (3 May 1842), col. 16 (Duncombe).


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wrongs, the distress of the working classes; the petitioners asked theright of living by their labour; and, if that should be refused, they demandedtheir ancient rights and liberties in the constitution. If [M.P.s] would do

nothing to increase the liberty of the people, would they do nothing toincrease their prosperity?26James Scholefield, Attwoods colleague in therepresentation of Birmingham, claimed that the Chartists only desiredthat they should not pay more than a fair share of taxation.27

Attwood had spent twenty years campaigning for currency reform, andhe narrated the Chartist movement as a revolt against the cruel andmurderous operation of the gold standard.28 However, although hisdemands found their way into the petition, his plans for the currencywere rejected by the Chartist convention only shortly before its presentation

to parliament, a fact of which Russell was quick to remind the House.29

This was embarrassing to Attwood, but more importantly it cast doubtover the unity of purpose of the whole movement. If ordinary Chartistshad no interest in the favourite remedy of their parliamentary spokesman,a measure enshrined in the petition itself, it was clearly legitimate to askwhether they were any more committed to the rest of its demands.

In a semi-literate society, there were obvious questions to be askedabout the relationship between a petition and its signatories. How manyhad actually read the document? Of those who had, to which of its

demands were they consenting? Were they aligning themselves with amovement or attaching themselves to its programme? Attwood insistedthat the signatories were serious-minded and literate, the elite of the workingclasses, but he could offer no proof.30Some doubted whether the signatureswere even genuine. When the Chartists claimed over three million in1842, The Timesenquired icily why they had stopped short at this particularnumber. Six million would have been just as easily manufactured by a reallyzealous committee, would have sounded much more imposing, and thedifference in point of credibility would have been in no way worth

considering. Signatories, it lamented, are so very easily manufactured,that the evidence which they afford can scarcely be held very conclusive. 31

Even its parliamentary spokesmen seemed anxious to distance themselvesfrom the 1842 petition, with its assault on the national debt and itsquestioning of the comparative usefulness of the royal family. ThomasDuncombe acknowledged that it contained many paragraphs from whichthe majority of those who hear me will dissent and admitted that he didnot subscribe to them all myself.32J. A. Roebuck, the radical M.P. for

26 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), cols. 220, 226, 233 (authors italics).27 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), col. 274.28 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), cols. 2245.29 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), cols. 2413.30 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), col. 226.31 The Times, 3 May 1842, p. 4f.32 Hansard, xliii (3 May 1842), col. 29.


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Bath and an advocate of the six points, dismissed the petition as thework of a foolish, malignant, cowardly demagogue, a trashy doctrineof which he accepted not a one-hundredth part. He denied that it was

at all representative of the labouring classes and urged M.P.s to vote notfor the petition as a whole, not for everything contained in the petition,but for what was called the Charter.33

Yet, in trying to release the charter from the stigma attached to thepetition, they undermined the credibility of both. As Sir Robert Peelobserved, Roebuck was asking M.P.s to act on the basis of an absurdity. . . a petition which does not represent the sentiment of those who signedit a petition that is utterly at variance with the judgement and goodsense of the 3,000,000 of petitioners.34Others remarked that it said little

for the sagacity of the people that they had been taken in by a malignantand cowardly demagogue, or for the calibre of M.P. they might elect ifgiven the opportunity.35 Roebuck might deny that the petition wassupported by the masses, but why then should this be true of the charter?

If Roebuck appeared semi-detached from the petition, there was someambiguity about Duncombes commitment to the charter. Duncombemoved only that the petitioners be heard at the Bar of the House, so thatthey could testify to the scale of popular distress. This was one of twodemands in the petition, the second being for the immediate

promulgation of the charter, but the relationship between the two wasuncertain. Duncombe himself implied that the desire for the charter wasmerely contingent and would be dropped if M.P.s would grant thepetitioners a hearing; when Russell insisted that the petitioners woulddemand the charter, Duncombe interjected If their first request isrefused. He was seconded by J. T. Leader, who spoke of a real principleof Chartism, which would never be put down till they had reduced thegrievances, and remedied the complaints of the people, orhad included[them] within the pale of the constitution.36 Another radical, Thomas

Wakley, disclaimed the question as being one which involved theadoption or rejection of the charter; it was simply whether 3,300,000 oftheir fellow-countrymen would or would not be permitted with theirown tongues to state their grievances at the Bar of the House.37 Peeldrew the understandable conclusion that the question of the charter [is]not before us, and ignored it in his speech, while Gaskell described thepetition in Mary Barton simply as a document imploring Parliament tohear witnesses who could testify to the unparalleled destitution of themanufacturing districts.38

33 Hansard, lxiii (3 May 1842), cols. 54, 567.34 Hansard, lxiii (3 May 1842), col. 78.35 Hansard, lxiii (3 May 1842), cols. 601 (Egerton), 62 (Hawes), 72 (Russell).36 Hansard, lxiii (3 May 1842), cols. 32, 34 (authors italics).37 Hansard, lxiii (3 May 1842), col. 68.38 Hansard, lxiii (3 May 1842), col. 77; Mary Barton, p. 86.


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nothing to their ill-judged theories, there is nothing we will not give totheir real physical distress.44

Rooting Chartism in poverty was most common among the whigs, for

the alternative was to accept that their own conduct had alienated thepeople. As a political critique, Chartism was a repudiation of everythingthat the whigs had done in government, beginning with the allegedbetrayal perpetrated by the Reform Act. According to the Chartists,reform had not vested power in the hands of the people but had merelyreplaced one self-interested elite with another. That elite had used powerruthlessly to its own advantage, with a new Poor Law to drive downwages, police forces to suppress dissent and a judicial assault on the tradeunions. For the whigs, that such an account could be true or even widely

held was unthinkable, making it more attractive to see the Chartists as asmall band of malcontents, cresting a larger wave of popular suffering.

If Chartism was a political response to economic discontent, it restedon what almost all parties acknowledged as a most grievous error: thefallacy that economic prosperity lay in the gift of the legislature.45Sucha belief was widely blamed on agitators, often middle-class men, whoexploited popular suffering for their own ends. In 1842, The Times laidthe blame for the Plug Plot riots squarely at the feet of manufacturersassociated with the Anti-Corn Law League, who had tried to turn to

account that very distress which is due to their own mistakes by tellingthe men to demand of Government an increase of trade. By teachingthe masses to repair to Government for the redress of [their] grievances,they had created Chartists and turn-outs.46 Macaulay complained of aconstant and systematic attempt to represent government as omnipotent,able to provide bread from the clouds and water from the rocks. Thebest corrective for Chartism would be education, giving the masses thepower of forming a better judgement; or, as another M.P. hoped,infusing foresight and providence into their habits.47

No-one disputed that Chartism drew on a deep well of economicdistress. Charles Kingsley devoted a chapter ofAlton Locketo the questionHow Folks Turn Chartists, describing the misery and squalor of workinglife.48 Gaskell argued that suffering and gradual starvation wereexhibit[ing] themselves in rabid politics.49Yet, poverty was not a newphenomenon and nor was it a sufficient explanation. Disraeli argued thatChartism could not be solely an economical movement, since povertygave rise to tumult, not to organization. Nor, however, could it beanimated by the desire of political rights, for these were so abstract and

44 The Times, 4 May 1842, p. 6f.45 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), cols. 237 (Russell), 246 (Disraeli).46 The Times, 14 Sept. 1842, p. 4ab.47 Hansard, lxiii (3 May 1842), cols. 4950 (Macaulay); xlix (12 July 1839), col. 259 (Slaney).48 C. Kingsley,Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet(Letchworth, 1970), pp. 10719.49 Mary Barton, pp. 845.


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acted so slightly on the multitude that they could never be the originof any great popular movement.50Some further explanation was requiredto show why distress was taking a political expression, directed against the

very form of the constitution.Disraeli proudly asserted that, however much he disapproved of theCharter, he sympathized with the Chartists.51 It was not solely that heshared many of their antipathies, notably towards the Reform Act, thenew Poor Law and, in the eighteen-forties, the Anti-Corn Law League.More importantly, the assertion that the Reform Act had empowereda self-interested and essentially anti-popular class resonated with whathe had been arguing since its inception. According to Disraeli, theunreformed constitution had located power in a class which, although

few in number, was invested with extensive social duties, notably theadministration of justice, the regulation of parishes, command of the armyand militia, and the provision of poor relief. In consequence, the welfareof the governing class was bound up with the interests of the masses,because society was so constituted that they were intrusted with dutieswhich they were obliged to fulfil. The whigs, however, had given powerto a class only slightly larger than the old, which did not exercise suchduties. Possessing power without responsibility, they were anxious tokeep it without any appeal to their pocket, and without any cost of their

time; to which end they developed the policy of laissez-faire, dignifyingwith the authority of a creed a squalid disregard for the masses. The newPoor Law was its natural harvest. Based upon a principle that outragedthe whole social duties of the State, it taught the labourer that he hadno legal claim to relief that the relief he should receive must be an affairof charity.52

Chartism, for Disraeli, was a social insurrection, a revolt against afalse philosophy and a system of government not suited to the characterof this country.53In this respect, his argument was similar to that of his

fellow tory radical, Thomas Carlyle, in a pamphlet of 1840. Carlyleinsisted on a distinction between the distracted, incoherent embodimentof Chartism and the living essence by which it was animated. TheChartists were wild inarticulate souls . . . unable to speak what is in them,while their charters and petitions were inarticulate cries as of a dumbcreature in rage and pain. What the Chartist truly wanted though asyet he knows it not was to find a superior that should lovingly andwisely govern on his behalf. Chartism only existed because the Chartistcould not govern himself, because he needed the care and protection of

those above him. Food, shelter, due guidance in return for his labour:

50 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), col. 246.51 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), cols. 2501.52 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), cols. 24652.53 Hansard, xlix (12 July 1839), cols. 247, 252.


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As the same character observes elsewhere, There is no community inEngland, only aggregation.60

The concept of the two nations made such an impact because it

articulated an idea that was already in general circulation. It was takenfurther by Elizabeth Gaskell, first in Mary Bartonand then later in Northand South. In the very first chapter of the earlier novel, John Bartoncomplains that masters and men live as separate as if we were in twoworlds . . . with a great gulf betwixt us. The parable of Dives and Lazarusis a recurring motif, and as Barton sinks deeper into Chartism hisoverpowering thought becomes the gulf between rich and poor; whyare they so separate, so distinct?61In Gaskells account, the sufferings ofthe masses only exhibited themselves in rabid politics because social

antagonisms had obscured the community of interest between classes. Thetrade depression had produced a bad feeling between working men andthe upper classes, fuelled by a suspicion among the operatives that theirlegislators, their magistrates, their employers, and even the ministers ofreligion, were, in general, their oppressors and enemies. The mostdeplorable and enduring evil of the depression was not starvation, butthis feeling of alienation between different classes.62

The squalor of Gaskells Manchester and the fictional settings for Sybilare themselves the products of class separation.63Marney, the rural slum

at the heart of Sybil, is the creation of a selfish aristocrat, who has driventhe labourers from his estates the more easily to be rid of them in sicknessor old age. The duty of care once professed by the church now devolvesupon the workhouse; the priest is the plaything of his patron and thenearest that most inhabitants come to religion is the local alehouse,known mockingly as The Temple. Disraelis second creation, Wodgate, isan industrial town with no landlords . . . [n]o church . . . no municipality,no magistrate. Just as Marney has its Temple, so Wodgate has itsBishop, the brutal and bloodthirsty master locksmith.64

Most writers presented the Chartist leadership as a small band whowere largely peripheral to wider discontent. In Mary Barton, the idea of apetition originated with the Chartists, but soon acquired much widercurrency not as a means to reform but as a way of confronting M.P.swith the scale of suffering.65 When Alton Locke, Kingsleys Chartistorator, explained the charter to a crowd of labourers, they answeredsurlily, that they did not know anything about politics that what theywanted was bread.66Disraeli was unusual in presenting an eloquent and

60 Sybil, pp. 94, 96.61 Mary Barton, pp. 11, 16970.62 Mary Barton, p. 85.63 Sybil, pp. 801; Mary Barton, p. 60.64 Sybil, pp. 2023, 2078.65 Mary Barton, pp. 869.66 Kingsley,Alton Locke, p. 259.


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not be overstated: the League urged fiscal rather than political reform andtrained its fire on a landed aristocracy whose influence had survived theReform Act. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of the League provided a further

incentive to defuse popular unrest and to demonstrate the goodwill of thegoverning classes.This found its perfect exponent in Sir Robert Peel. As a former home

secretary and chief secretary for Ireland, Peel was deeply concerned withsocial stability, and he took an interest in the French Revolution thatbordered on obsession.70The son of a spectacularly successful industrialist,Peel was uncomfortably aware of the transformative power of modernindustry, which had doomed numberless millions . . . [to] perpetuallabour, to profound ignorance, and to sufferings as difficult to remedy as

they are undeserved. What ferments will not be produced in thesecramped intelligences, these embittered hearts?71His statecraft sought tocontain the revolutionary threat by a dual strategy, which would raiseliving standards among the masses while taking the heat out ofcontroversial constitutional questions. Defending the repeal of the CornLaws in 1846, he told M.P.s that he had sought to promote so muchhappiness and contentment that the voice of disaffection should be nolonger heard, and that thought of the dissolution of our institutionsshould be forgotten in the midst of physical enjoyment.72In vindication

of this approach, he could point to the absence of a single Commonsdebate on reform from May 1844 to April 1848, the longest such gapbetween 1832 and 1867.73

Peels success was thrown into relief by the continental revolutions ofFebruary and March 1848, which coincided with the preparation of athird Chartist petition. The revolutions acted on British politics like anelectric shock.74The diarist Charles Greville recorded that: There arepeople alive who remember the whole of the first Revolution, and weof middle age are familiar with the second; but this, the third, transcends

them both, and all the other events which history records, in theastonishing political phenomena which it displays.75 Because hardlyanyone had seen the revolutions coming, it was difficult to be certain thatthey would not spread to England, contributing to the febrile atmospheresurrounding the presentation of the national petition on 10 April.76As the

70 P. Ghosh, Gladstone and Peel, in Politics and Culture in Victorian Britain: Essays in Memoryof Colin Matthew, ed. P. Ghosh and L. Goldman (Oxford, 2006), pp. 4573.

71 M. Brock, The Great Reform Act(1973), p. 323.72 Hansard, lxxxvi (15 May 1846), col. 706.73 C. Barnett, Fears of revolution, finality and the reopening of the question of parliamentary

reform in England, 183267 (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1982), p. 130.74 Illustrated London News, 1 Apr. 1848, p. 207.75 The Greville Memoirs (Second Part): a Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1852,

ed. H. Reeve (3 vols., 1885), iii. 1323.76 L. Mitchell, Britains reaction to the revolutions, in The Revolutions in Europe, 18489: from

Reform to Reaction, ed. R. W. Evans and H. Pogge von Strandmann (Oxford, 2000), pp. 845.


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Morning Herald confessed, the political class had gazed so intently atrevolutions . . . that we cannot look at ordinary movements amongourselves through any other than a continental medium.77 Against the

backdrop of affairs in Europe, the actual events of 10 April inevitablyrepresented something of an anti-climax: fewer turned out than expected,the march was abandoned and the petition was delivered to parliamentin a cab. It was not the Chartists fault that their revolutionary ambitionshad been absurdly over-inflated, but they suffered the consequencesnonetheless.

On one level, the events of 10 April and, in particular, the musterof the special constables vindicated optimistic assessments that Britainssecurity rested not on military force but on the intrinsic loyalty of her

people. The English, it seemed, were not of the kind we saw over thewater, and the trivial and partial disturbances had only served toshow . . . how thoroughly sound . . . is the heart of our people.78 Yet,the spectacle of the duke of Wellington organizing the defence of Londonwas undeniably troubling, and it ensured that the crass triumphalismassociated with that day went alongside a renewed anxiety to identify theproblems that underlay the Chartist challenge. As in 1839 and 1842,however, the Chartists own utterances played little part in this analysis.However unfairly, their perceived failure at Kennington Common further

eroded the popular authority permitted to the Chartist leadership, whilethe petition itself experienced a catastrophe from which the wholestrategy of mass petitioning never recovered. A committee of the houseof commons concluded that almost two-thirds of the signatures werefraudulent. Whole pages were written in the same hand, many signatorieswere women and the remainder included such unlikely revolutionaries asQueen Victoria and Mr. Punch. It did not matter that the number oflegitimate signatures remained larger than the existing electorate. Thepetition became a laughing stock, OConnor withdrew his motion that

it be considered by the House and the document itself seems to havedisappeared without trace.79

The events on Kennington Common and the disgrace of the petitionundermined both the Chartists and their programme as authenticrepresentatives of the people. Richard Cobden, whose authority in theHouse depended on his own claims to popular leadership, mockedOConnor as the leader of a small, insignificant and powerless party whohad no right to be identified with the working classes of this country.80

Russell claimed that the petition had been signed by idle people and

passers by who, seeing a petition at the corner of the street, might have

77 Morning Herald, 11 Apr. 1848, p. 4d.78 Hansard, cix (28 Feb. 1850), col. 188 (Roebuck); The Economist, 30 Dec. 1848.79 Hansard, xcviii (13 Apr. 1848), cols. 284301.80 Hansard, xcviii (23 May 1848), col. 1311.


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thought fit to sign it, without having any wish for the Charter. Theveteran tory Sir Robert Inglis dismissed the petition as hardly worth thepaper on which it was written.81The Times told of an errand boy who

had signed several times a day, and mocked the result as a mere heap ofrubbish . . . a bundle of sheets exposed at the corners of streets, to bescribbled upon by every knave and fool that has nothing better to do withhis time.82

Nonetheless, it was possible to despise the Chartist programme whileacknowledging the scale of popular disaffection. It was widely acceptedthat the Chartists were tapping into genuine social discontent. As theIllustrated London Newsobserved, once the fear of revolution had passedit became possible to consider seriously whether this despised Chartism

have not, after all, some possible truth and some real vitality in it, andto investigate what social fire it is which produces the ugly smoke ofChartism, and sends up such dangerous sparks as Mr. OConnor and Mr.Ernest Jones.83

Discussion followed the same lines as in previous years. There wasgeneral agreement that Chartism, as Taitsasserted, was a war of bread,with material distress as its root cause.84A writer in Fraserspointed out that

It is not natural for hungry men to reason as coolly as sleek economists. Theycannot understand that the inequalities in mens condition, and the periodical

inflictions of extreme poverty, are not the result of the laws, and for this reason,they naturally desire to have the making of those laws. This is the normalcondition of Chartism.85

As in previous outbreaks, however, it was argued that poverty onlyproduced Chartism because it was mediated through certain experiences,which encouraged the poor to blame their condition on their superiors.The most important of these was the apparent indifference of the upperclasses. Berating his own backbenchers, Disraeli accused them of leavinga vacuum that had been filled by knaves and demagogues:

Why are the people of England forced to find leaders among these persons? Theproper leaders of the people are the gentlemen of England. If they are not the leadersof the people, I do not see why there should be gentlemen. Yes it is becausethe gentlemen of England have been negligent of their duties, and unmindful oftheir station, that the system of professional agitation . . . has arisen in England.86

There were widespread appeals for a new spirit in legislation. TheMorning Heraldimplored ministers to quit [their] position of coldness and

81 Hansard, xcviii (13 Apr. 1848), cols. 287, 289.82 The Times, 13 Apr. 1848, p. 5a.83 Illustrated London News, 15 Apr. 1848, p. 239 (authors italics).84 G. Troup, The Chartists of Britain and the Repealers of Ireland, Taits Edinburgh

Magazine, xv (1848), 295300, at p. 295.85 Chartism, Frasers Magazine, xxxvii (1848), 57992, at p. 591.86 Hansard, xcix (20 June 1848), col. 964.


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neutrality and to set to work, in good earnest, in the task of amelioratingthe condition of the working classes. Writing shortly before thedemonstration, it predicted that if 50,000 protested at Kennington

Common, 45,000 of them will be inhabitants of homes if such a termcould be applied to them in which a decent pig would find himselfill-accommodated.87Blackwoods interpreted Chartism as a demand forpaternal government, adding that what is required is not to augmentthe political power of the working classes, but to remove theirgrievances.88Frasers, which saw both Chartism and the revolutions as themanifestations of a deeply-rooted and widely extended social disease,advised parliament to set to work at once, in right earnest, to equalizethe burdens of the country and to purify institutions and individual laws,

in order to preclude even the shadow of justice to that demand forextension of the suffrage.89Lord Dourso told John Cam Hobhouse thatthe lower working classes could only be pacified by some decidedlegislation in their favour, providing for the poor by a large taxation. 90

Lady Charlotte Guest, who witnessed the industrial depression inWales at first hand, warned that the euphoria of 10 April must not blindus to the future. Something must be done for our unemployed. Thesuffering of the unemployed I was almost going to say our uncared for was very great indeed. How can we expect these poor breadless

creatures to be wise and not to fall into the delusions of the tempters?91

Charles Kingsley joined with F. D. Maurice and J. M. Ludlow to foundthe Christian socialist movement, which berated the competitive system andurged a refurbished sense of Christian community that would transcend class.

The discrediting of the Chartist leadership in April enabled theparliamentary radicals to reassert their own popular authority. Just as in1842, when Joseph Sturge had founded the Complete Suffrage Union onthe wreck of the second petition, the radicals stepped quickly into thevacuum left by the failure of the third.92 On 13 April 1848, fifty-one

radical M.P.s elected Joseph Hume to the leadership of what wouldbecome the National Reform Association. Lacking the social baggagewith which Chartism was encumbered, it was better positioned tocompel a debate on the constitution, which it achieved on 20 June witha motion calling for household suffrage, secret ballot, more equal electoraldistricts and triennial parliaments.93

87 Morning Herald, 7 Apr. 1848, p. 4c.88 A. Alison, How to disarm the Chartists, Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, lxiii (1848),

65373, at pp. 6578, 665.89 Current history, Frasers Magazine, xxxvii (1848), 47488, at p. 476; Frasers Magazine,

xxxviii (1848), 23344, at p. 239.90 Broughton Diary, 14 Apr. 1848 (British Library, Additional MS. 43751 fo. 40).91 Bessborough, pp. 2078, 210.92 A. Tyrell,Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain(1987).93 N. Edsall, A failed national movement: the Parliamentary and Financial Reform

Association, 184854, Bull. Inst. Hist. Research, xlix (1976), 10831.


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It has been suggested that a cocktail of Chartism at home andrevolution abroad ensured that the attitude of the party leaders in thehouse of commons to parliamentary reform changed fundamentally in

1848.94

There is no doubt that the revolutions acted as a stimulus toreformers of all kinds, including middle-class men like Cobden and Brightwho stood outside the Chartist movement, and contributed to a determinationwithin parliament to tackle the root causes of disaffection. However, aswe have seen, that determination manifested itself in a range of social andmoral outlets that frequently had little to do with reform. Even those whocalled explicitly for reform must often be treated with care. It is true thatwhen the Commons met on the evening of 10 April, Even a Tory,Henry Drummond, advocated franchise extension, and that his remarks,

according to John Cam Hobhouse, were very well listened to.95

How-ever, Drummond was a notorious eccentric who had long considered reforma necessity, a view that owed less to the Chartists than to a convictionthat the 1832 settlement was inherently unstable.96Furthermore, Hobhouseschoice of words suggests a more equivocal response from M.P.s:

Mr. Henry Drummond was speaking & very well listened to. He showed thatthe Chartists were but imitators of the Socialists of France and that their doctrineswould end in their own ruin; but he ended queerly with recommending anextension of the suffrage in order that the lower classes might have their attention

diverted from bad designs to the making of members of Parliament!!97

This indicates that it was Drummonds comparison with French socialismthat won the ear of the House; his remarks on the franchise were a typicaleccentricity, meriting not one exclamation mark but two.

It is also doubtful whether Russells response to Hume constitutedan abandonment of finality.98 Russell acknowledged defects in therepresentation and hinted that a time may come perhaps it is notdistant when reforms of the kind to which I adverted in 1839 may beusefully introduced and carried into effect.99 However, his allusion to1839 was not merely cosmetic. It referred to a public letter in whichRussell had sought to clarify his conception of finality and to defend theReform Act against a radical campaign similar to that now waged by

94 R. Quinault, 1848 and parliamentary reform, Historical Jour., xxxi (1988), 83151,at p. 832. Though disagreeing with Dr. Quinault on this point, this author would like toregister his sincere appreciation of his work , and in particular his determination to take Victorianreform seriously and to set it in international context.

95 Quinault, p. 838.96 Hansard, xcviii (10 Apr. 1848), cols. 11617; see Henry Drummond, On Government by

the Queen, and Attempted Government from the People(1842), p. 21.97 Broughton Diary, 10 Apr. 1848 (Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 43752 fo. 35).98 Quinault, pp. 8445. Russells second reform period is discussed at greater length in R.

Saunders, Lord John Russell and parliamentary reform, 187867, Eng. Hist. Rev., cxx (2005),pp. 1289315.

99 Hansard, xcix (20 June 1848), cols. 9289.


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Hume.100Russell had distinguished between two types of reform: that whichretained the balance of interests established in 1832, while modifyingdefects in its operation; and that which sought to overthrow the Reform

Act and to replace it with something different. The changes to which headverted in 1848 were entirely in keeping with those discussed in 1839; evenworking-class suffrage was to be a substitute for the condemned freemanfranchise. There was nothing here that he had not said before, and themost vigorous anti-reformer in the cabinet noted approvingly that Russellhad made an excellent speech & concluded with a decided negative.101

It was not Chartist pressure that precipitated the Reform Bill of 1852but the manner in which it was perceived to have been defeated. Itbecame a commonplace among free-traders that the chief obstacle to

revolution in 1848 had been the repeal of the Corn Laws, which removeda focus for discontent and provided a symbol of benevolent anddisinterested government. Peel claimed in his memoirs that the changehad conspired in the hour of danger to promote loyalty to the Throneand confidence in the justice of Parliament. When told of the Parisrevolution in 1848, he was said to have replied that this comes of tryingto govern the country through a narrow representation in Parliament,without regarding the wishes of those outside. It is what this party behindme wanted me to do in the matter of the Corn Laws, and I would not

do it.102

Sir James Graham insisted that the safety of our institutions wasmainly to be attributed to repeal, while Edward Cardwell asserted thatSir Robert Peels party saved England from confusion.103Russell askedM.P.s how, without the achievements of 1832 or 1846, they would havemet the revolution which was attempted; and even ten years after the event,Sir Charles Wood could remind Palmerston that he had always thought[it] the greatest advantage that the Corn Laws were repealed in 1848. 104

The logic of this position was that a government elected in defianceof public opinion to restore protection might have calamitous effects

for public order.105

The protectionist revival between 1847 and 1852suggested that such a government might indeed be possible under theexisting franchise, offering a powerful case for its reform. It was nocoincidence that the National Reform Association operated from theheadquarters of the Anti-Corn Law League, or that Peter Locke King,

100 Letter to the Electors of Stroud.101 Broughton Diary, 20 June 1848 (Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 43752 fo. 103).102 Memoirs by the Right Honourable Sir Robert Peel, ed. E. Cardwell and Earl Stanhope

(3 vols., 18567), ii. 313; J. Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden(2 vols., 1903), i. 436 7.103 C. S. Parker, The Life and Letters of Sir James Graham(2 vols., 1907), ii. 84; J. B. Conacher,

The Peelites and the Party System, 184652(Newton Abbot, 1972), p. 47.104 The Times, 27 Sept. 1852, p. 7c; York, Borthwick Institute, Hickleton Papers, A4/63/

93, 2 Apr. 1858.105 E.g., Graham to Aberdeen, 1 Sept. 1852 (Selections from the Correspondence of George, Earl

of Aberdeen, ed. A. Gordon (14 vols., privately printed, 185488), ix. 359); The Economist, 13March 1852, p. 280.


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who carried the first reading of a County Franchise Bill in 1851, urgedreform on the grounds that the great cause of free trade was in danger.106

During the contest for the Navigation Acts in 1849, protectionists were

threatened at court with an agitation of free traders for an extensionof the suffrage, and Russell told Graham ominously that the existingfranchise was hardly fitted to bear the strain of an election upon the priceof bread.107When Russell introduced his new Reform Bill in 1852, thePeelites worried that the franchise had not been lowered sufficiently toliberalise the counties.108The shock of a protectionist government laterthat year, even a minority one, was sufficient to overcome the last obstaclesto a whig-Peelite coalition, with reform as one of its leading priorities.

Measured by the goals it had set out to achieve, the Chartist movementmust be considered a failure. None of the six points was secured duringthe lifetime of the movement and the policy demands outlined in thethree national petitions were largely ignored. Inherent in this failure wasan inability to persuade the upper and middle classes that Chartismrepresented the authentic voice of the people, or that the masses wereunited behind any particular programme of demands. Instead, Chartismregistered primarily as a movement of social protest, fuelled by materialhardship and a growing estrangement between classes. In seeking to identify

its demands, few paid much attention to those who claimed to be itsleaders, or indeed to the charter and the national petitions. Instead, themovement had to be interpreted, enabling observers to project ontoChartism their own diagnoses and prescriptions.

Nonetheless, few doubted that there had been an alarming breachbetween different classes of society, ensuring that Chartism had a lastinginfluence on the political style of the eighteen-fifties and sixties. Its legacywas most evident in the mid Victorian obsession with blurring the classdivide: the increased patronage of working mens clubs and reading

rooms, the new rhetorical engagement of politicians like Gladstone andPalmerston with ordinary working people, and the anxiety of the upperclasses, during the Lancashire cotton famine of the eighteen-sixties, to bevisibly associated with the relief of suffering. By the eighteen-sixties, itwas a commonplace that a new relationship had been established betweengovernment and people. Writing a new introduction to Alton Locke in1862, Charles Kingsley reflected on the altered tone in speaking to andof the labouring classes. He felt it necessary to explain that the novel had

106 Hansard, cxv (2 Apr. 1851), col. 910; see also col. 929 (Thompson) and cxiv (20 Feb.1851), col. 869 (Cobden).

107 Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party: the Political Journals of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley,184969, ed. J. R. Vincent (Sussex, 1978), p. 6; Bodleian Library, Clarendon Papers, Box 44,Russell to Clarendon, 25 March 1851.

108 Newcastle, reported in London, Barings Bank, George Grey Papers, vol. iii, 1 Jan. 1852,p. 54.


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been written at a time of hateful separation between the classes, whenthe old feudal ties between class and class, employer and employed, hadbeen severed and young men believed (and not so wrongly) that the

masses were their natural enemies. How changed, thank God! is all thisnow.109 In the same year, Gladstone toured the north of England in acelebration of the age in which we live . . . the age of warmer loyaltyand more firmly established order.110Four years later, he reflected on thechanged relations between the different classes of society:

It has been our privilege to see a process going forward in which the throne hasacquired a broader and deeper foundation in the affections of the country; inwhich the laws have commended themselves more and more to the respect andattachment of the people; in which the various classes of the country have come

into closer union one with another. . . [so that a man,] looking over the broadsurface of society, may thank God and say, Behold, how good and pleasant it isfor brethren to dwell together in unity.111

As one of the special constables who had patrolled the streets of Londonin 1848, it was fitting that Gladstone should have been both an architectand a beneficiary of the new politics that the Chartists had helped toinspire.

109 Preface to the undergraduates of Cambridge [1862], in Kingsley, Alton Locke, pp. 23.110 The Times, 25 Apr. 1862, p. 7c.111 The Times, 15 Sept. 1865, p. 7e.

his british elites and the

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