THE dreaded tenth of April, 1848, had passed over without harm. Not a drop of blood had been shed. A soldier had not been seen in the thoroughfares of London, but two hundred thousand of its inhabitants, from the peer to the coal-whipper, had patroled the streets, to maintain the supremacy of Law and Order. A self-styled National Convention had interrupted the usual course of industrious occupation by an attempted display of brute force, which they believed to be all-powerful, as they affirmed, “to defy the Parliament, to overawe the Government.” The impostors and fanatics who constituted this Convention called themselves “The People.” They had taken up the notion, so industriously propagated in the French Revolution of 1848, that the noncapitalist portion of the industrious classes were exclusively the People. There were many delusions connected with this dominant idea, not only of Chartists, but of moderate and sensible Reformers. In the endeavour to combat them by argument, I set up a Weekly Journal, “The Voice of the People.”
In this undertaking I had the assistance of writers who, like myself, were
not politicians in the ordinary sense of the word; who were not anti-reformers whilst they
combated the abuse of the democratic principle. But we were too moderate to produce
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Without dwelling too much upon the characteristics of this little publication, of which there is probably no perfect copy in existence, I may mention one or two particulars that may have something of an abiding interest, especially when they refer to the condition of society as it existed about the tenth year of our present Queen. The first Article, written by myself, is entitled “What is ‘The People?’” M. Michelet had recently produced two works which had a great reputation in France, and were popular in this country by their translations,—the one, “Priests, Women, and Families,” the other, “The People.” In one of these he says, “Next to the conversation of men of genius and profound erudition, that of the people is certainly the most instructive.” He then defines what is the People, by asking, “What is to be learned from the middle class?” adding, “as to the salons, I never left them without finding my heart shrunk and chilled.” The question then arises, Are the middle classes and the wealthy classes to be no longer a part of the People? The complicated state of Society, which we call the British People, was, at this period, made up of various elements, which I will briefly notice.
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The most numerous division was that of the Agricultural Labourers,
amounting to about twelve hundred thousand. The farmers and others (exclusive of
labourers), amounted to four hundred thousand. I asked, “Are they not all workers?
Is not each class in its several capacities, promoting the prosperity of the country?
There is inequality of condition, no doubt, between the one-fourth who exchange wages
for labour, and the three-fourths who exchange labour for wages. There are inequalities
which might be mitigated; and inequalities which no wisdom could remove, nor should
attempt to remove.” The second great class was that of all persons engaged in
manufactures, amounting to about twelve hundred thousand. The miners, and others of the
labouring class, not agricultural or manufacturing, amounted to nearly eight hundred
thousand. The employers in manufacturing and mining industry were not separated in the
Population Returns from the employed. One of the first acts of the Provisional Government
of France, which had undertaken to guarantee employment to all citizens, was to expel from
France English artisans and railroad-workers. It was the French fashion to look with the
most profound contempt upon the English workman. “He excels not as man, but as a
useful and powerful thing—as an excellent tool,” says M. Michelet. He despises the living tool who is not
diverted from his work—who employs all the resources of meat and drink to execute quickly
and earnestly the task imposed upon him. “The manufacturer and the enterpriser of
every kind prefer this man-machine. The Frenchman must not attempt to offer himself in
competition. He is a man, and
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M. Michelet, as the Apostle of War and Democracy,
says, “Ancient France had three classes. New France has but two,—the People and
the Bourgeoisie.” The latter class in England embraces two millions and a
quarter of individuals, all engaged in trade and commerce, and in the professions. The
socialists wished to draw a nice distinction between the draper and the draper’s
assistant,—the one was a bourgeois, the other a son of the people. A great deal of this
nonsense was exploded by the issue of the tenth of April. On that day I saw this bour-
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There were in England, at this period, five and twenty thousand teachers of Religion, of every denomination. I asked, Did they not belong to the People, in the broad sense of the word, although the laity and the clergy belonged to two parts of the Church? These were the reformers—the civilizers. They had their work to do at a period when they were awakened to their duties; without them the demon of avarice would have been in constant antagonism with the demon of ignorance,—cold-heartedness would have looked with contempt upon misery,—vice would have fortified itself in its resentment to pride. I said, “They live much for the people; they must live more for the people—Interpreters, teachers, friends.”
In the Population Returns there were five hundred thousand persons
described as of independent means; two-thirds of this class were females. The philosophers
of the National Convention had their especial eye upon that portion of the class which we
call gentlemen. It was time that many of the landed proprietors should have been stirred to
a sense of their obligations as well as their rights. The English absentees in their terror
of the turmoil that was going on in Europe, were rushing home, without
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Concurrent with the movements of the English Chartists was an outbreak in
Ireland, which only looked formidable in the bloodthirsty declarations of some of its
leaders. “The God of battles” was to be invoked; a War Directory was to
be appointed. There was no exaggeration in the tone, nor even in the phrase, of a Parody
which I wrote in “The Voice of the
People,” of the loving correspondence of Mr.
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Mea. Bold Guido
Vaux devised a ready way His long arrear of sacred debts to pay. Mine every street; in air the Saxons fly! A carcase-cloud shall blacken all the sky. |
Mit. Open your windows wide,
angelic fair! Arm’d be your holds with missiles new and rare: The legions rush!—hark to their dying cries As showers of vitriol sear their sightless eyes. |
Mea. Is there an alley where
some scared dragoon May rush for safety in that blazing noon? Vainly the horse with broken bottles strives,— Falls the dragoon beneath a hundred knives. |
The street-fight never took place. The insurrection came to an end when Mr. Smith O’Brien led his warriors to a pitched battle with the Police. Some of the insane leaders escaped. Others were tried and convicted, but their capital sentence was commuted for transportation. In the summer of 1849, I saw the ship lying in the bay of Dublin which was to convey these erring men to Australia. Even Repealers acknowledged the justice of their punishment.
The great Irish famine of 1846 and 1847 had reached its highest point of
misery two summers before that in which I looked upon some of the evidences which it had
left behind of its ravages. The lives of three millions of persons were being wholly
preserved in July, 1847, by administrative regulations under which they were daily fed in
the
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I had never seen Dublin. Its noble public buildings claimed my admiration,
especially when I contrasted them with the low architectural pretensions of the greater
number of civil edifices that had been erected since the beginning of the century, and were
still in progress, in our own capital. We enjoyed the hospitalities of Dublin for a day or
two, and I was glad to make the personal acquaintance of a rising barrister, who had
contributed to the Penny Cyclopædia, and
was known as a poet of no common order, especially by his “Forging of the Anchor.” When we set out on our
Killarney expedition, at six o’clock on a brilliant morning, to our surprise and
pleasure, Mr. Samuel Fergusson appeared, with his
wife, on the platform, with the purpose of
accompanying us. How much the company of a man of letters, well versed in the history and
legends of his
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The forty miles which we had to travel by car were not very interesting,
and there was little consolation in the refreshments provided at Millstreet, the only stage
between Mallow and Killarney. Distant mountains appeared as if we should never reach them
through some miles of dreary bog. At length, at a turn of the road, we are in the long
street of Killarney, and are welcomed by such a clamour of mendicancy that the change to a
real rickety Irish car, shaking one to pieces, is welcomed as a blessing. The driver whips,
and the horse gallops, and, scarcely
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The glorious scenery of Killarney is not for me here to describe.
Sufficient to say that I saw it under every possible advantage of brilliant weather, and of
society unusually agreeable. We climbed the hills, we explored the lakes. “The
boys,” as we soon learned to call our boatmen, were for awhile silent,
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Amidst the immediate scenery of the Lakes, we saw very little, of the
desolation of the country. But a mile or two from Mucross there was ample testimony of the
change which the famine had produced in the habits of the people. As we ascended the
Mangerton mountain on sure-footed ponies, we were surrounded by troops of girls offering
goat’s milk and potheen. They were not dirty beggars. If their garments were ragged,
they knew how to conceal their penury under their shawls, arranged with that grace which
seems to belong to the Irish female before she has sunk to those lowest depths of want in
which self-respect is utterly forgotten. But they all implored us to give. They clung to
our stirrups
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We quitted Killarney with the intention of exploring the wonderful scenery
of Glengariff, and then returning to Dublin by Cork. The morning was bright when we had our
last look of the mountains from the road to Kenmare. The town and its neighbourhood bore
the marks of a beneficent proprietor the late Lord
Lansdowne. There were cottages in this district which contrasted happily
with the customary mud-cabins. We saw the wondrous prospect of mountains, bays, islands,
and the Atlantic, as we descended the hill to Glengariff. But we saw no more of the
picturesque. A rain set in. A mist hung over the whole region the next morning. We pursued
our journey, shut up in a car; but there was one sight not to be passed by or forgotten. As
we emerged from the pass of Camineagh we witnessed a strange procession of laden carts,
followed by crowds of women shrouded in their dark blue cloaks
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When I left home for Ireland at the end of June, 1849, the cholera had
appeared in London; but there was no great apprehension of its ravages, for the weekly
average of deaths from that mysterious scourge was under fifty. But in the month of July,
the weekly average of fatal cases in the metropolis was nearly five hundred. In August it
was above a thousand; in September, thirteen hundred. In October the epidemic had nearly
disappeared. At this period throughout England and Wales, with the exception of the
metropolis, there was a far more effective organization ready to meet the evil by sanitary
precautions than in 1831-2. The Health of Towns Act of 1848 established a General Board of
Health, for the purpose of improving the sanitary condition of towns and populous places.
Many Local Boards were formed, after a searching inquiry by the Inspectors of the General
Board. In 1857 two hundred and fifty places had been brought within the operation of the
Health of Towns Act. London,
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Cholera (without).
Sister! Sister!
Typhus.
I am here
Doing my work for to-morrow’s bier.
Nine and seven lie each in a row—
Two are gone, and two will go.
Cholera (enters).
Sister! Sister! you work too slow;
For here, where the tide has left its slime
To mix with the filth of a hundred drains,
And the hovels are rotting in damp and grime,
While the landlord is counting his daily gains,
And his slaves are groaning with chronic pains,
You linger about, till famine and gin
Must finish the work which you begin.
Typhus.
Chide me not, Sister! My work is sure.
The days are many since last you came;
But you pass’d away, and your fearful name
Was soon forgotten; but I endure.
Cholera.
Again I come.
The knell shall be toll’d,
But not for one:
Ere set of sun
Some work shall be done;
For a hurried grave shall these sleepers hold,
And the proud shall then think of the earth’s poor scum.
Typhus.
No meddling spies disturb my reign,
The black ditch creeps in the populous lane;
In the mouldy cellar the infants huddle;
The alley is dank with the filthy puddle;
And the breath of heaven ne’er visits the den
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Where the poorest dwell. Leave, leave me here.
I make no noise, and the well-fed men
See my victims die,
And pass quietly by,
With no vain lament, and no idle fear.
Cholera.
Me they shall fear.
Typhus.
But stay not long.
Take a few away that are wholly mine;
My pleasant places are willingly thine,
But go not the rich and the happy among.
Cholera.
I’ll take thy leavings, with nobler prey.
Shall wretches pine beneath thy sway,
And those escape who have known the wrong?
Typhus.
Leave me, rash Sister, leave me here,
To fill the graves from year to year;
For our trade shall go to a swift decay
If you gather the crop from day to day.
Then the hovels will fall and houses rise;
The rich and the poor will both get wise;
And the Law will open its hoodwink’d eyes.
No more shall we ride on the tainted gale,
Where foul trades flourish and men grow pale;
Where the slaughter-house floods the slippery stones,
And the reek is heavy of boiling bones.
They will drain their streets, and build their schools,
And hunt us out.
Cholera.
Twice warned, the fools
Still keep us here, and they still will keep;
For the Justices wink and the Vestries sleep,
And Red Tape ties the willing hand,
And Laissez-faire still rules the land.
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