Patriot and the Christian fail in the discharge of their duty, if they do not by all peaceable and legitimate means strive to remove the enormous evil of class legislation. … I earnestly recommend these conclusions to the candid and impartial consideration of those who wish to be guided in their political as well as religious conduct by the precepts of the Gospel."[1] Sturge's political ideas were, therefore, very much like the Christian Chartism which flourished at Birmingham. He entirely adopted the Chartist point of view with regard to the Free Trade agitation. Though many other middle-class people adopted the class-legislation theory, they did not apply it in the same way as Sturge did.
The Complete Suffrage Movement originated at an Anti-Corn Law Convention, held in Manchester on November 17, 1841. The delegates had met and the main business of the Convention was over, when Sturge commenced an informal talk about the "essentially unsound condition of our present parliamentary representation." The other delegates expressed their agreement with these sentiments, and requested Sturge and Sharman Crawford, M.P., to draw up some sort of a manifesto on the subject. This was done, and a number of the delegates, including a majority of the Manchester Council of the Anti-Corn Law League, put their signatures to the document, which became widely known as the "Sturge Declaration." In December the Declaration was printed and circulated, mainly amongst middle-class Radicals, and in January 1842 a number of the Birmingham signatories united under the name of the Birmingham Complete Suffrage Union. This body, following the lines laid down by Sturge in the "Reconciliation," decided to appeal to the industrious classes. This was done by circulating the Declaration and inviting signatures from those who approved. The Declaration reads thus:
Deeply impressed with the conviction of the evils arising from class legislation and of the sufferings thereby inflicted upon our industrious fellow subjects, the undersigned affirm that a large majority of the people of this country are unjustly excluded from that full, fair and free exercise of the elective franchise to which they are entitled by the great principle of Christian equity and also by the British Constitution, "for no subject of England can be constrained to pay any aids or taxes, even for the defence of the realm or the support of the Government, but such as are imposed by his own consent or that of his representatives in Parliament."[2]
- ↑ Reconciliation, Introduction.
- ↑ Quotation from Blackstone.
