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DOCUMENT BASED QUESTION: CHARTISM
Sue Blanchette
Hillcrest High School
Dallas, Texas
NEH Summer Seminar 2000
Historical Interpretations of the Industrial Revolution in Britain
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth at the University of Nottingham
Consider the political, economic and social implications of these primary and secondary sources to assess the validity of the following statement:
Chartism was a movement ahead of its time.
DOCUMENT: A
A Chartist meeting in 1848
Source: Illustrated London Times
April 10, 1848
DOCUMENT: BTHE SIX POINTS OF THE PEOPLE’S CHARTER
- A VOTE for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.
- The BALLOT – To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
- NO PROPERTY QUALIFICATION for Members of parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.
- PAYMENT OF MEMBERS, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the Country.
- EQUAL CONSTITUENCIES, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of large ones.
- ANNUAL PARLIAMENTS, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since thought a constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelve-month; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituencies as now.
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DOCUMENT: C
The Factory Town by Ernest Jones
The night had sunk along the city,
It was a bleak and cheerless hour;
The wild winds sung their solemn ditty
To cold grey wall and blackened tower.
The factories gave forth lurid fires
From pent-up hells within their breast;
E’en Aetna’s burning wrath expires,
But man’s volcanoes never rest.
Women, children, men were toiling,
Locked in dungeons close and black,
Life’s fast-failing thread uncoiling
Round the wheel, the modern rack!
E’en the very stars seemed troubled
With the mingled fume and roar;
The city like a cauldron bubbled,
With its poison boiling o’er.
For the reeking walls environ
Mingled groups of death and life
Fellow-workmen, flesh and iron,
Side by side in deadly strife.
There amid the wheel’s dull droning
And the heavy choking air,
Strength’s repining, labour’s groaning,
And the throttling of despair.
With the dust around them whirling,
And the white, cracked, fevered lips,
And the shuttles ceaseless twirling,
And the short life’s toil eclipse:
Stood half-naked infants shivering
With heart frost amid the heat;
Manhood’s shrunken sinews quivering
To the engine’s horrid heat.
Woman’s aching heart was throbbing
With her wasting children’s pain,
While Mammon’s hand was robbing
God’s thought-treasure from their
brain.
Yet the master proudly shows
To foreign strangers factory scenes:
“These are men – and engines those –“
“I see nothing but – machines!”
Hark! amid the bloodless slaughter
Comes the wailing of despair:
“Oh! for but one drop of water!
“Oh! for but one breath of air!
“One fresh touch of dewy grasses,
“Just to cool this shriveled hand!
“Just to catch one breeze that passes
“From our blessed promised Land!”
On the lealand sleep the cattle,
Slumber through the forest ran,
While, in Mammon’s mighty battle
Man was immolating man!
While the great, with power unstable,
Crushed the pauper’s heart of pain,
As though the rich were heirs of Abel
And the poor the sons of Cain.
While the priest, from drowsy riot,
Staggered past his church unknown,
Where his God in the great quiet,
Preached the livelong night alone!
Still the bloated trader passes,
Lord of loom and lord of mill;
On his pathway rush the masses,
Crushed beneath his stubborn will.
Eager slaves, a willing heriot,
O’er their brethren’s living road
Drive him in his golden chariot,
Quickened by his golden goad.
Young forms-with their pulses stifled,
Young heads-with eldered brain,
Young hearts-of their spirit rifled,
Young lives-sacrificed in vain.
There they lie – the withered corses,
With not one regretful thought,
Trampled by thy fierce steam-horses,
England’s mighty Juggernaut!
Over all the solemn heaven
Arches, like a God’s reproof
At the offerings man has driven
To Hell’s altars, loom and woof!
And the winds with anthems ringing,
Cleaving clouds, and splitting seas,
Seem unto the people singing:
“Break your chains as we do these!”
And human voices too resound:
Gallant hearts take better cheer!
The strongest chains by which you are
bound,
Are but the chains of your own fear!
Weavers! Tis your shrouds you’re
weaving,
Labourers! Tis your graves you ope;
Leave tyrants toil-deceiving!
Rise to freedom! Wake to hope!
Up in factory! Up in Mill!
Freedom’s mighty phalanx swell!
You have God and Nature still.
What have they, but God and Hell.
Fear ye not your master’s power;
Men are strong when men unite;
Fear ye not one stormy hour:
Banded millions need not fight.
Then, how many a happy village
Shall be smiling o’er the plain,
Amid the corn-field’s pleasant tillage,
And the orchard’s rich domain!
While, with rotting roof and rafter,
Drops the factory, stone by stone,
Echoing loud with childhood’s
laughter,
While it rung with manhood’s groan!
And flowers grow in blooming time,
Where prison-doors their jarring
cease:
For liberty will banish crime –
Contentment is the best Police.
Then palaces will moulder,
With their labour-draining joys;
For the nations, growing older,
Are too wise for royal toys.
And nobility will fleet,
With robe and spur and scutcheon
vain;
For Coronets were but a cheat,
To hide the brand upon a Cain!
And cannon, bayonet, sword and
shield,
The implements of murder’s trade,
Shall furrow deep the fertile field,
Converted into hoe and spade!
Then, up, in one united band,
Both farming slave and factory
martyr!
Remember, that, to keep the LAND,
The best way is – to gain the
CHARTER!
SOURCE: The Laborer, 1847
Volume I
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DOCUMENT: D
CHARTIST CANDIDATES AT ELECTIONS
The Chartists of Great Britain have made a constitutional effort to carry their point; but, we are sorry to say, in consequence of the want of a well defined plan to act upon, aided by sound legal advice in the elections, they have not been able to carry on the good work in an organized and effective manner. The squabbling of leaders has contributed in no small degree to weaken the masses and the personal denunciations, and scurrilous language used in many towns by overzealous and mistaken friends, have done much to injure our cause.
Source: Richardson Newspaper Cuttings
Manchester Central Reference Library
DOCUMENT: E
The failure on the part of the House of Commons to alleviate the condition of the distressed revived the feeling of hostility towards the government, and political agitators soon emerged from obscurity. Parliamentary reform was again urged as the panacea for all social evils. But this time the demand emanated from a group of men entirely different from their predecessors. . . They came not from the ranks of the aristocracy and they appealed not to the aristocracy. They were humble writers of “two-penny trash,” and their writings were intended for the still humbler workingman. . . . The later reformers cared very little for abstract ideas; they demanded political equality as a necessary weapon in the daily struggle for the existence of the lower classes.
Source: The Chartist Movements in the Social and Economic Aspects
DOCUMENT: F
CONFIDENTIALWhitehall
23rd February, 1839
My Lord Duke,
Upon considering Your Grace’s letter, it appears to me that the most effectual as well as least alarming method of meeting the present inflamed spirit, which is stated in your letter to prevail in some parts of Nottinghamshire will be to send down a body of the Metropolitan Police, sufficient in numbers to form a nucleus upon which a large number of Special Constables can rest.
In this manner, the loyal and well disposed may be organized, and protection will be given against the designs of those, who intend to promote tumult and disorder.
I should be unwilling to see armed associations formed for the protection of persons and property. Such a measure would incite great alarm and many would doubt its necessity. The 60 Geo III, C. 1 is still in force.
I request Your Grace to inform me if any training goes on in the County of Nottingham.
I have the honour to be
My Lord Duke
Your Graces
very obedient servant.
RUSSELL
Source: East Midlands Collection
University of Nottingham
DOCUMENT: G
Newport Uprising in 1839
Source: Mansell Collection
British Economic and Social History
DOCUMENT: H
What do you want Annual Parliaments for? You will say that if a man does his duty for one year, cannot he do it for seven years? Why I say yes, if he did it one year, he could. But look at selfishness; take a man like Sir John Cam Hobhouse when standing at the Hustings at Westminster, he said in one of his flourishing speeches, “I am Radical, I am for Universal Suffrage, Annual Parliaments and no Corn Laws.” Look what selfishness has done; he has got in place, he is now ruler, and he turns his back on those principles, kicks the ladder by which he ascended, fills his pocket and laughs at our credulity. Now if we have annual parliaments, we could call him at the end of one year to account, and say, we must part, you have proved a traitor, you have proved untrue, you have done much for yourself but nothing for us, we won’t have you, we don’t like you nor men of your character. . . .
Source: Speech by James Woodhouse
Nottingham Journal
9th November, 1838
East Midlands Collection
University of Nottingham
DOCUMENT: I
The strength of Chartism had lain . . . in an unquestioning belief in the efficacy of political change to bring about social improvement.
Source: The Chartists
Dorothy Thompson
DOCUMENT: J
The political situation must, of course, serve as a background for the picture of a movement carried on ostensibly for political reform. But the study of none of the social and political conditions can be compared in weight with the analysis of the strictly economic state of that period. Indeed, whatever we may think of the Materialistic Conception of History as a general philosophy, there can hardly be any doubt that in all the struggles of labor, the “bread and fork question” is the very seed of historical causation.
Source: The Chartist Movements in the Social and Economic Aspects
DOCUMENT: K
Look at the young women in Nottingham. This town is disgraced every day by the footsteps of poor young females, from 18 to 21 years of age who plod along after having been in your accursed lace mills from 14 to 15 to 15½ hours a day, all the week round; from 5 in the morning till eight and half past eight at night; without any meal hours whatever. They never leave the mills, they take their meals standing, some having to walk miles to and from work besides. And it is to support a system like this that your accursed Whig blood hounds think to set the Royal Lancers upon us . . . .
I never recommended the people to arm in associations. I recommend a man arm in his own cottage, to be able to stand on his own threshold in the habitments and equipment of a free man, and then be able to talk to his enemy in his own gate.
Englishmen, patriots, Christians, arm, arm, arm, and preserve the rights your forefathers died to purchase.
Source: Speech by Richard Oastler
Nottingham Journal
29th March, 1839
East Midlands Collection
University of Nottingham
DOCUMENT: L
WHAT HAVE WE DONE, AND WHAT HAVE WE TO DO?
To the Workingmen of every kind within Great Britain.
I have in the two previous numbers of the Journal, contented myself with simply recommending union, energy, perseverance, and continued agitation at the present crisis. I have now to lay before you a plan by which to organize your numbers, and centralize your intelligence.
Recollect that no body of workingmen, whether included under the names of trades, agricultural, mining, or factory workmen can be socially prosperous or independent unless they are also politically free.
. . . . We must pursue the sure plan as long as we are weak. The moment we are powerful enough, then the petty trammels of the new law will be like a thistle under the foot of an elephant.
Source: Peter Murray McDouall
McDouall’s Chartist and Republican Journal
24th April, 1841