but directed our Mediterranean fleet to move towards the Dardanelles to be ready if necessary to support Turkey. The Czar was very indignant at this movement, but neither he nor the Emperor of Austria were in a condition to quarrel with Great Britain and France, and their insolent and unrighteous demand was withdrawn. The Sultan undertook to keep the refugees under some restraint, and nearly two years elapsed before Kossuth and several of the more conspicuous of their number were allowed to emigrate to other countries. Hungary, in Transylvania, are only to be equalled by the proceedings of the negro race in Africa and Haiti. . . . The rulers of Austria (I call them not statesmen or stateswomen) have now brought their country to this remarkable condition, that the Emperor holds his various territories at the good-will and pleasure of three external Powers. He holds Italy just as long and no longer than France chooses to let him have it. The first quarrel between Austria and France will drive Austria out of Lombardy and Venice. He holds HunThe whole conduct of the Austrian Gov- gary and Galicia just as long and no longer ernment in the contest with Hungary, their than Russia chooses to let him have them. treacherous and illegal assault on the con- The first quarrel with Russia will detach stitution of that kingdom, and the merciless these countries from the Austrian crown. severity with which they hunted down the He holds his German provinces by a tenure Hungarians at the close of the struggle drew dependent, in a great degree, upon feelings upon them the obloquy of all Europe, and and opinions which it will be difficult for greatly affected the stability of the empire. him and his Ministers either to combine "The Austrians,' Lord Palmerston wrote (9th with or stand out against.' These proof September, 1849) to Lord Ponsonby, our phetic words were in no long time strikingly ambassador at Vienna, 'are really the fulfilled in the ignominious expulsion of greatest brutes that ever called themselves Austria from Italy, Venice, and Germany, by the undeserved name of civilized men. and in the present unstable condition of Their atrocities in Galicia, in Italy, in the remaining provinces of the empire. ¡ CHAPTER IX. The Chartist Agitation in Great Britain-Its Leaders-Feargus O'Connor-The Moral and Physical Force ChartistsArrest and Punishment of J. R. Stephens-Chartist Convention-Riots at Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, &c.— Arrest of Henry Vincent-Outbreak at Newport-Arrest and Trial of Frost and his accomplices-The 'Sacred Month' -Trial and Punishment of the Chartist Leaders-O'Connor's Land Scheme-His Election for Nottingham-Meeting on Kennington Common-The Monster Petition-Exposure of its Character-Illegal Clubs suppressed by the Government-Seizure of Arms-Arrest and Sentences pronounced on the Members-Collapse of the Chartist Organization— State of Affairs in Ireland-The Young Ireland Party-W. Smith O'Brien, Mitchel, and Meagher-Riot at Limerick -Measures taken by the Government-Conviction and Banishment of Mitchel-Rebellion of his Confederates-Its ridiculous Collapse-Punishment of the Leaders-Their ultimate career and fate. ON the continent of Europe, Belgium and Holland remained unaffected by the revolutionary shock which overturned the thrones of so many despots; but the tranquillity of Great Britain was for a few months disturbed by the intrigues and tumults of the Chartists and the Irish Home Rulers. The Reform Bill of 1832, extensive and salutary as were the changes it produced in the representation of the country, failed to give satisfaction to the advocates of universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and triennial parliaments. They were silenced for the time by the popular enthusiasm for the 'Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill;' but in the course of a year or two they commenced an agitation in favour of their political creed. In 1838 Mr. Duncombe, one of the members for Finsbury, brought the question of the adoption of the ballot, and the shortening the duration of Parliaments, before the House of Commons; but only twenty members voted for the amendment which he proposed to the address. Shortly before this a 'Working Men's Association had been formed for the purpose of promoting Radical views; and a conference between six of the members of this society and six of Mr. Duncombe's supporters in Parliament, issued in the preparation of a document called the 'People's Charter,' containing the well-known 'six points'-universal or manhood suffrage; annual Parliaments; vote by ballot; abolition of the property qualification then VOL. III. required for the English and Irish representatives in the House of Commons; the payment of members; and equal electoral districts. Some of the leaders of this association were mere mercenary traders in agitation; but others were undoubtedly both honest and able men, though extreme and violent in their opinions and speeches. The most prominent of the Chartist agitators was an Irishman named Feargus O'Connor, who was originally a Dublin barrister and a follower of O'Connell. Clever, needy, vain, unprincipled, and unscrupulous, he was eagerly welcomed by the Chartists, who belonged almost exclusively to the working classes, and the management of the agitation fell mainly into his hands. Newspapers to advocate the cause were started in London, Birmingham, and other large towns; paid orators were employed to itinerate the country, harangue public meetings, and organize branch societies in the towns and mining and manufacturing districts. The violent language employed by these demagogues naturally produced great excitement among the ignorant multitudes whom they addressed, denouncing the Duke of Wellington, Lord Brougham, Lord John Russell, and Sir Robert Peel as 'knaves by whom the people were kept down.' Some of them openly advocated the adoption of physical force in order to obtain what they regarded as their rights. Others strove to excite popular feeling against the new Poor Law, declared that it was a system 24 The Chartist meetings were now more frequently held, and were attended by much larger numbers than at the commencement of the agitation. The language employed by the speakers had also become more violent and threatening. At one of the torchlight meetings Stephens, at the close of a long and furious harangue, intimated that the multitude present should take care to come to such meetings armed. At another he denounced a millowner of Aston-under-Lyne as 'a devil's magistrate,' and prophesied that his house would soon be to hot to hold him; and this gentleman's factory was set on fire one night soon after, while Stephens was holding forth to a torchlight assemblage. of wholesale murder, and that no one could | among whom were the Rev. J.R. Stephens, blame the poor man who should 'stab the a Methodist minister of Ashton-under-Lyne; workhouse official that attempted to part Richard Oastler of Leeds, an ignorant and him from his wife.' The manufacturers furious demagogue of the Tory class; and were the special object of the detestation O'Connor himself, who was quite well aware of this class, who denounced them as devils of the impossibility of success in any physical that caused children to be tortured in force movement, but found that he could factories for their own amusement, and maintain his authority with his party only hinted not obscurely that these bastiles by chiming in with their violent language deserved to be burned to the ground. and extreme measures. These were the men who moved the adoption of the Charter at anti-corn law meetings, and who declared that the repeal of that law was sought by the manufacturers merely in order that wages might be reduced and their own gains increased. Men of this stamp were not excited to violent measures by any pressure of want or personal wrong. On the contrary, they were in the receipt of excellent wages; and if they had exercised prudence and practised economy might have saved money to provide against a time of distress, and might at the same time have enjoyed the franchise as £10 householders. But in a time of prosperity they squandered their earnings on foolish and mischievous indulgences; and then when they were overtaken by adversity, for which they had made no provision, and they were hungry and idle, they at once poured out their maledictions on those masters who by prudence and self-denial had risen from the ranks, and spoke and acted as if the comforts of the employers had been obtained by robbing their workmen. There were no doubt some among the Chartist leaders who were judicious, intelligent, well-informed, and honest, and were anxious for the extension of the franchise and the possession of political power in order that they might assist in redressing social wrongs and promote the instruction and training of the working classes, so as to fit them for the discharge of their duties. But persons of this class—the moral-force Chartists, as they were called-were comparatively few in number, and they were speedily overborne by the extreme and violent members of the body, conspicuous The Government had hitherto shown the greatest forbearance towards these incendiaries and their wretched dupes, and had in consequence incurred a good deal of blame. But they now felt that lenity had been carried to its utmost limits, and had in fact led men of the Stephens and O'Connor class to imagine that the Ministers were afraid of them. Lord John Russell was convinced that the safety of society required the adoqtion of more rigorous measures. A royal proclamation was issued in December, 1838, enjoining all persons to desist from holding torchlight meetings. Stephens was arrested and brought to trial at Chester, on the 15th of August, 1839, and was condemned to be imprisoned for eighteen months. The punishment of this firebrand had, however, no effect in moderating the violence of his associates, who continued to provide themselves with firearms and pikes, to be in readiness for a rising when the time to take the field should arrive. A monster petition, said to have been signed by upwards of 1,200,000 persons, had been presented to the House of Commons on the 14th of July by Mr. Attwood, one of the members for Birmingham, who was permitted, contrary to rule, on presenting it, to advocate the plea of the petitioners for the recovery of those ancient privileges' which, they alleged, were the original and constitutional rights of the Commons of England.' But a motion, on the 12th of July, that a Committee should be appointed to consider the changes prayed for in the petition, was rejected by a majority of 189 in a House of 281. A Convention of Chartist delegates had for some time been holding its sittings in London, for the purpose of promoting the adoption of the Charter and calling the House of Commons to account for its neglect of the working classes. The physical-force members completely outnumbered the more reasonable and moderate delegates, who withdrew from the assembly, finding it hopeless to resist the violent proceedings of the majority. After making themselves ridiculous by their absurd speeches and their violent proposals, the members of the Convention were induced by Mr. Attwood to adjourn to Birmingham, where their behaviour was so outrageous that the authorities of that town were obliged to suppress the meeting. A riot in consequence broke out on the 4th of July, and a collision took place between the police and the mob, which was not quelled until a troop of cavalry was called in. On the 7th the populace stopped the service at St. Philip's Church, and next day the police and the military had to disperse a meeting. On the 8th another riotous assemblage was held in the open air, but when a troop of dragoons came down upon the mob they at once took to flight. On the 15th, when the inhabitants were indulging the hope that these disturbances were over, they were suddenly renewed with redoubled violence. The rioters began by smashing street lamps and windows; they then proceeded to tear up the iron palisades in front of the houses, which they forced open. The warehouses were next pillaged and bonfires made of the contents, and finally a number of the houses were burned. The appearance of the military at this moment prevented still more serious mischief. As it was, the damage done by the populace was so great that the Duke of Wellington stated in the House of Lords that in all his military experience 'he had never seen a town carried by assault subjected to such violence as Birmingham had been during an hour by its own inhabitants.' After this disgraceful riot was quelled the delegates returned to London to resume their deliberations there. Meanwhile the example set by the Birmingham mob had been followed at Sheffield, Manchester, Stockport, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and other places. At Sheffield the mob, not content with breaking windows and street lamps and pelting the police and the soldiers, planned the murder of their most eminent and benevolent townsmen. At Manchester they extorted money or goods from the shopkeepers by threats and violence, and, in short, conducted themselves everywhere in a manner which alienated their best friends. They tried in every way to make themselves offensive to all respectable and right-thinking persons. Among other expedients for that purpose they attended the cathedrals and other places of worship in great numbers, and wearing a badge expressive of their opinions. Five hundred of them went one day in August in procession to St. Paul's Cathedral, London. On the next Sunday the Norwich Chartists crowded the cathedral of that city. At Manchester they took possession of the Old Church, but speedily quitted it in a body when the preacher, instead of the text they had prescribed for him, read out the words-very appropriate to their depredations in that town-'My house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.' They soon abandoned this mode of action, 'ment which varied according to the degree finding that it led to no disturbances and did not promote their cause. One of the expedients that had been proposed in the Convention was an entire cessation from labour during a whole month, in the hope that the upper classes would in this way be compelled to concede the, Charter. At that time, owing to the depressed state of trade, this preposterous project, if it could have been carried out, would have been a benefit rather than an injury to the capitalist, but to men who had never saved a shilling it would have simply brought starvation. After the rejection of the Chartist petition by the House of Commons, this mischievous proposal was urged with great vehemence by a person of the name of Lowery, one of the most violent of the physical-force party. 'It is useless,' he said, 'to expect anything more from the House of Commons. Belgium and America did not obtain their liberty till they took it, nor will the people of this country. I have been in Scotland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, and the people are of opinion that the best time for commencing the sacred month will be when the potatoes are in the ground.' Lowery's motion that the people should work no longer after the 12th of August, unless the power of voting for members of l'arliament to protect their labour is guaranteed to them,' was adopted by the Convention, notwithstanding the opposition of Attwood, Fielden, and other comparatively moderate leaders. But a Committee of five was appointed to determine as to the time at which the sacred month' should commence, and on their advice it was decided to abandon it for the present. The dissolution of the Convention speedily followed. The Government was now thoroughly alarmed at these foolish and mischievous schemes, and resorted to vigorous measures for the suppression of the revolutionary agitation. A number of the most violent of the Chartist leaders were apprehended, tried, and sentenced to periods of imprison of their guilt. Henry Vincent, the most eloquent and popular of their number, was imprisoned at Newport in Monmouthshire, and it was reported that he had been treated with great severity by the prison authorities. The Chartists in that quarter, consisting mainly of rude and ignorant miners, determined to make an attempt to release him by force. Their leader was a linen-draper of the name of Frost, a magistrate of the borough of Newport, who had been called to account by the Home Secretary for his violent language at a public meeting in February of this year. By an undue and ill-advised stretch of lenity he had been allowed to remain in the magistracy; but so far from feeling grateful for the forbearance shown him, he now put himself at the head of a body of miners, whom he brought down from the hills in arms to attack the town on the evening of 3rd November, 1839. They were arranged in three divisions-one under the command of Frost, another led by Zephaniah Williams, a beerhouse keeper, and the third under the direction of a watchmaker of the name of William Jones. They were to meet at midnight at a public-house near Risca, and thence to make a combined march upon Newport. It appears that the liberation of Vincent was only a part of their plan. They intended to break down the bridge over the river Usk, in order to prevent the mail from going to Birmingham, and its failure to arrive there at the usual time was to have been the signal for a rising in that town also. Fortunately, a heavy rain delayed so long the divisions under Williams and Jones, that Frost, after waiting a considerable time at the place of rendezvous, started with his own division alone for Newport, which he did not reach until nine instead of two in the morning. The rioters were men of great physical * Vincent was an honest as well as an able man. After the bursting of the Chartist bubble he devoted views, and conducted successfully a private academy himself to education, on which he held enlightened in the vicinity of London. |