CHAPTER XIII
CHARTISM VERSUS FREE TRADE
(1842–1844)
Revived Chartism found itself competing, both for the attention of the public and the allegiance of working people, with a very powerful rival. This was the Anti-Corn Law League, whose agitation began almost simultaneously with the publication of the Charter and ran alongside it until 1846. The Chartists early discerned the danger to their cause which was threatened by the Free Trade agitation, and took up a definitely hostile attitude to it. But the earlier years of the Anti-Corn Law movement gave little promise that it would become a very serious rival to the Chartist propaganda. Its petitions and motions in the House of Commons were rejected with little ceremony, and the Chartists only saw in these non-successes further proofs of their belief that without political reform no important social improvement could be achieved. During 1839 the working classes were preponderatingly on the side of the Charter, but the ignominious collapse of Chartism, the imprisonment of the leaders, and the temporary abandonment of agitation, gave the Anti-Corn Law League an opportunity which it did not let slip. With large funds, able and eloquent leaders, and unswerving purpose, the Free Traders made great headway. The solid mass of the middle-class was behind them, and this was the class which had the preponderating influence in the majority of the electorates which returned the reformed House of Commons. Moreover, it probably required no great persuasion to bring over all the better-paid and more educated artisans and operatives, who were beginning more and more to share the political and economic ideas of the Radical middle class. The extent of the Free Trade forces in 1842 may be gauged from the fact that in the Parliamentary Session of that year 2881 petitions, signed by 1,570,000 persons, were presented; and this was repeated year after year.
When the revival came the Chartists took up with vigour the task of counteracting the Free Trade Campaign. By debates, polemics, and the smashing of meetings they carried on for three years the hopeless struggle, until in August 1844 a personal meeting between O'Connor and Cobden destroyed the Chartist case and ended the feud.[1] The Chartist arguments against the rival agitation were derived largely from James O'Brien. It was detested as a middle-class movement, started to suit the interests of the manufacturers—a charge to which Cobden pleaded guilty. The repeal of the Corn Laws would simply hand over the working class to the manufacturers and money-lords. The ruin of agriculture, which was inevitable if the laws were repealed, would drive thousands of agricultural labourers to the towns, there to compete and reduce wages. High prices meant high wages, they argued; therefore, if the manufacturers cried "cheap bread" they meant "cheap labour." Furthermore, if prices were so reduced, the chief benefit would go to those who lived upon fixed incomes—the "tax-eaters," fund-holders, clergy, and sinecurists. The reduction in prices would be equivalent to an enormous increase in the National Debt, and thus benefit the public creditor at the expense of the labourer who has to pay the taxes. Unless, therefore, as O'Brien argued, there were some readjustment of the currency and of contracts for debt, the result of the repeal of the Corn Laws would be disastrous to the industrious classes.
These were the theoretical grounds of opposition. There were other reasons, too, which appealed to Chartists. Some few, like James Leach and West of Macclesfield, were convinced Protectionists, and tried to answer the Free Traders with arguments in kind. Other Chartists regarded the Anti-Corn Law League as an insidious middle-class attack upon their own agitation, as a movement deliberately devised to turn attention from the Factory and Poor Law questions, on both of which Cobden took an unpopular view. The Free Trade agitation was claimed by the Chartists as originally a working-man's agitation. It certainly figured largely in the agitation connected with the name of Hunt, and "No Corn Laws" was a cry at Peterloo. The middle classes, it was argued, had refused to aid in the agitation then, but were now ready to take it up in opposition to another propaganda, which threatened their own newly acquired political dominion. Unfortunately for Chartist solidarity, however, there was no complete unanimity in the opposition to the Anti-Corn Law League. Not every Chartist was opposed to the League, and not every Chartist was hostile to Free Trade. Some were quite prepared to leave the League alone to press the one question while they agitated for the Charter; others were afraid that the League would swallow up their own movement. Some believed that the Corn Laws were an atrocity which ought to be removed; others were Protectionists, like Feargus O'Connor. Some believed that the League was wasting its time, since Free Trade would never be attained without the Charter, and were therefore anxious to gain middle-class support for a joint programme of Charter and Free Trade. In fact every variety and combination of views existed amongst the Chartists upon this question. If there was a definite line of demarcation amongst them, it was between the agriculturists and the industrialists. Many Chartists, whose views are represented by O'Connor and O'Brien, regarded the industrial system as a whole as something unnatural, and they therefore harked back to a purely agricultural society, which O'Brien visualised as communistic and O'Connor as individualistic. Others accepted the industrial system and tended to be Free Traders. From other evidence, of which more will be said later, it appears likely that the most ardent followers of O'Connor's later "back-to-the-land" cry were the unfortunate industrialists who had been crushed by the competition of steam—the handloom weavers and stockingers. These men had long been crying for Protection—protection of wages and protection for their handicraft. Free Trade and Competition had no attractions for them.
A few samples of Chartist argumentation may here be cited. The Free Traders at Sunderland had called upon the Chartists there to aid in their agitation. Williams and Binns were the Chartist leaders; they were sensible and moderate men who agreed that the Corn Laws were an intolerable evil, but they replied that they could not agree to co-operate merely upon the merits of the question. "What," they ask, "is our present relation to you as a section of the middle class? It is one of violent opposition. You are the holders of power, participation in which you refuse us; for demanding which you persecute us with a malignity paralleled only by the ruffian Tories. We are therefore surprised that you should ask us to co-operate with you." They proceed to describe how the middle class press had denounced them as low adventurers, and their schemes as impracticable; how it had ignored their proceedings except to pour contempt and ridicule upon them. The middle class had urged the prosecutions for treason and sedition, had hounded on the police and imprisoned the people's leaders. The people cannot co-operate with them, for their failings will not permit them to do so. Nor will their principles, for Chartism aims at something higher than the repeal of a tax. It aims at the stoppage of tyranny and slavery at their source.[2] So the attitude of the local magistrates, mill-owners, and gentry in the summer of 1839 was resulting in its natural consequences. The "asking-for-troops" face, which Napier so graphically describes, gave place to the prosecution-for-sedition face. The terror of July and August was avenged with a carnival of arrests, trials, and imprisonments which only embittered the relations of Chartists and the higher classes. The whole odium was thrown on to the middle class, and we cannot be surprised if leaders like Williams and Binns, smarting under imprisonment, vented their feelings in bitter denunciations of the whole body which they vaguely felt to be the cause of their failures and misfortunes.
The arguments of James Leach speak for themselves. In a debate with a Free Trader at Manchester he laid down seven propositions. First, that the workers had been duped by the middle class over the Reform Bill, and might therefore be duped over the Repeal of the Corn Laws. Second, that the evils of which the workers complained were due not to agricultural protection and the consequent depression in trade, but to machinery. Third, that the increase of trade which the League promised as a result of repeal would not be of any benefit to the labourer, for as the cotton trade had increased the wages of the handloom weavers had decreased. The argument here is, more trade more machinery, more machinery less wages. Fourth, that England would not be able to compete with foreign countries through the export of manufactures, partly because the foreign countries would raise protective tariffs and partly because wages were very low in foreign countries, and we should have to reduce wages accordingly. Fifth, that the reduction of wages was the real object of the masters who took part in the agitation. Sixth, that no good could be done until the profit-mongers were deprived of their monopoly of political power. Seventh, that the real solution of the problems of unemployment and surplus population was the land. It may be said that, even allowing for garbled reporting, the Free Trader's arguments were hardly good enough to convince a less prejudiced opponent than Leach.[3]
The Northern Star of course took a prominent part in the controversy. In January 1842 it produced the following argument to prove that the extension of foreign trade, so ardently desired by the Manchester men, was no matter for which the working classes should show enthusiasm. It gives the following statistics of foreign trade:
| Official value of exports. |
Real value. | Taxation. | |
| 1798 | £19,000,000 | £33,000,000 | £16,000,000 |
| 1841 | £103,000,000 | £51,500,000 | £53,000,000 |
Thus the extension of foreign trade meant that we had to give five times as much labour and raw materials to produce one and a half times as much goods in 1841 as in 1798. The labourer had to give five times as much labour for one and a half times as much wages. In addition to this he had to pay over three times as much in taxation. Arithmetically considered, the labourer was paying proportionately ten times as much taxation in 1841 as in 1798.
Suppose now, the argument proceeds, we abolished all our foreign trade, what then? We should lose fifty-one and a half millions a year. But we could easily reduce taxation by forty-eight millions, and our loss would only be three and a half millions. On the other hand, we should gain all the vast stores of food and clothing which are now annually exported; these would be divided out at home instead.[4]
Truly political economy was no mystery to the leader-writer of the Northern Star.
A very terse analysis is given by T. J. Dunning. The National Income as a whole is divided into Wages, Profit, Rent, Taxation, falling respectively to the Labourer, Capitalist, Landlord, and Tax-receiver (fund-holders, clergy, pensioners, civil servants, sinecurists, army, navy, etc.). The prices at which goods are sold must be sufficient to allow each of these his share. In order that corn may yield this price a duty is imposed upon cheaper foreign corn; the repeal of these duties will lower the price of corn, which reduction will have to be borne by some or all of the above classes.
I apprehend it cannot affect the labourer for he is already ruined, nor the farmers, unless the cultivation of corn is to be stopped, for they are said to be on the brink of ruin: it must therefore fall upon the landlord or the tax-receiver or both: but these have the making and repealing of the laws. It is highly probable, therefore, that unless these men are in perfect ignorance of the matter, which by the way is not unlikely, these laws will still be unrepealed.[5]
In this controversy, therefore, the Chartists were hopelessly out-argued by Cobden, Bright, W. J. Fox, and the rest. Both in theory and methods the League was far superior. Nevertheless those who follow Place in condemning as futile and foolish the opposition of the Chartists to the League forget that the opposition was one of passion and sentiment rather than of dialectics. The Chartists feared that the cause for which they had struggled and suffered would be smothered in the dust of a conflict between two factions which they considered to be equally inimical to it. They hoped, through their new organisation, to win to their side the large body of the industrious classes, and they hated the Leaguers for queering their pitch. When the two agitations began, there was no reason to suppose that the one would be any more successful than the other. No one described Chartism as "the wildest and maddest scheme that had ever entered into the imagination of man to conceive," as Melbourne described the repeal of the Corn Laws. The Chartists, therefore, had as much right to expect co-operation from the middle class in the Charter campaign as the middle class from the Chartists in the Free Trade campaign. The opposition was perfectly natural. It was indeed futile and foolish. By the system of upsetting League meetings the Chartists accomplished little, and they only brought themselves into bad odour. When they debated, they often had to beat a ridiculous retreat. But poor, uneducated men, stirred by passion and resentment, are poor debaters in any case, and the disturbance of opposition meetings was as much a symptom of helplessness as of anything else. It was a counsel of despair, and it is unfortunate that the Northern Star writers, who ought to have known better, should have encouraged this vain and absurd practice by declaiming in big headlines about "triumphant victories" over the League, "the Plague" as they were pleased to call it, and by assuming to believe that such "victories" were rendering service to their cause.
- ↑ They debated at Northampton on August 5, 1844. O'Connor's case was so feebly stated as to set rumours circulating among his own followers to the effect that he had been bribed to allow Cobden to enjoy a stage victory. O'Connor's own account in the Northern Star, August 10, has the merit of including a generous testimony to Cobden's ability. "He is decidedly a man of genius, of reflection, of talent, and of tact. … He has a most happy facility of turning the most trivial passing occurrence to the most important purpose. I am not astonished that a wily party should have selected so apt and cunning a leader." Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, p. 255, says that the debate was the greatest victory ever won by the League over the Charter.
- ↑ Northern Star, May 23, 1840.
- ↑ Northern Star, October 3, 1840.
- ↑ Ibid. January 29, 1842.
- ↑ Charter, January 27, 1839.