Part 44 (1/2)
The reader shall hear. My story may be instructive, as a type of the feelings of thousands beside me.
It was the night after I had returned from D * * * *; sitting in Crossthwaite's little room, I had heard with mingled anxiety and delight the plans of my friends. They were about to present a monster pet.i.tion in favour of the Charter; to accompany it _en ma.s.se_ to the door of the House of Commons; and if it was refused admittance--why, then, ulterior measures were the only hope. ”And they will refuse it,” said Crossthwaite; ”they're going, I hear, to revive some old law or other, that forbids processions within such and such a distance of the House of Commons. Let them forbid!
To carry arms, to go in public procession, to present pet.i.tions openly, instead of having them made a humbug of by being laid on the table unopened by some careless member--they're our rights, and we'll have them. There's no use mincing the matter: it's just like the old fable of the farmer and his wheat--if we want it reaped, we must reap it ourselves. Public opinion, and the pressure from without, are the only things which have carried any measure in England for the last twenty years. Neither Whigs nor Tories deny it: the governed govern their governors--that's the 'ordre du jour' just now--and we'll have our turn at it! We'll give those House of Commons oligarchs--those tools of the squires and shopkeepers--we'll give them a taste of pleasure from without, as shall make the bar of the house crack again. And then to be under arms, day and night, till the Charter's granted.”
”And if it is refused?”
”Fight! that's the word, and no other. There's no other hope. No Charter,--No social reforms! We must give them ourselves, for no one else will. Look there, and judge for yourself!”
He pulled a letter out from among his papers, and threw it across to me.
”What's this?”
”That came while you were in gaol. There don't want many words about it.
We sent up a memorial to government about the army and police clothing. We told 'em how it was the lowest, most tyrannous, most ill-paid of all the branches of slop-making; how men took to it only when they were starved out of everything else. We entreated them to have mercy on us--entreated them to interfere between the merciless contractors and the poor wretches on whose flesh and blood contractors, sweaters, and colonels, were all fattening: and there's the answer we got. Look at it; read it! Again and again I've been minded to placard it on the walls, that all the world might see the might and the mercies of the government. Read it! 'Sorry to say that it is utterly out of the power of her Majesty's * * * *s to interfere--as the question of wages rests entirely between the contractor and the workmen.'”
”He lies!” I said. ”If it did, the workmen might put a pistol to the contractor's head, and say--'You shall not tempt the poor, needy, greedy, starving workers to their own destruction, and the destruction of their cla.s.s; you shall not offer these murderous, poisonous prices. If we saw you offering our neighbour a gla.s.s of laudanum, we would stop you at all risks--and we will stop you now.' No! no! John, the question don't lie between workman and contractor, but between workman and contractor-plus-grape-and-bayonets!”
”Look again. There's worse comes after that. 'If government did interfere, it would not benefit the workman, as his rate of wages depends entirely on the amount of compet.i.tion between the workmen themselves.' Yes, my dear children, you must eat each other; we are far too fond parents to interfere with so delightful an amus.e.m.e.nt! Curse them--sleek, hard-hearted, impotent do-nothings! They confess themselves powerless against compet.i.tion--powerless against the very devil that is destroying us, faster and faster every year! They can't help us on a single point. They can't check population; and if they could, they can't get rid of the population which exists. They daren't give us a comprehensive emigration scheme. They daren't lift a finger to prevent gluts in the labour market. They daren't interfere between slave and slave, between slave and tyrant. They are cowards, and like cowards they shall fall!”
”Ay--like cowards they shall fall!” I answered; and from that moment I was a rebel and a conspirator.
”And will the country join us?”
”The cities will; never mind the country. They are too weak to resist their own tyrants--and they are too weak to resist us. The country's always drivelling in the background. A country-party's sure to be a party of imbecile bigots. n.o.body minds them.”
I laughed. ”It always was so, John. When Christianity first spread, it was in the cities--till a pagan, a villager, got to mean a heathen for ever and ever.”
”And so it was in the French revolution; when Popery had died out of all the rest of France, the priests and the aristocrats still found their dupes in the remote provinces.”
”The sign of a dying system that, to be sure. Woe to Toryism and the Church of England, and everything else, when it gets to boasting that its stronghold is still the hearts of the agricultural poor. It is the cities, John, the cities, where the light dawns first--where man meets man, and spirit quickens spirit, and intercourse breeds knowledge, and knowledge sympathy, and sympathy enthusiasm, combination, power irresistible; while the agriculturists remain ignorant, selfish, weak, because they are isolated from each other. Let the country go. The towns shall win the Charter for England! And then for social reform, sanitary reform, aedile reform, cheap food, interchange of free labour, liberty, equality, and brotherhood for ever!”
Such was our Babel-tower, whose top should reach to heaven. To understand the allurement of that dream, you must have lain, like us, for years in darkness and the pit. You must have struggled for bread, for lodging, for cleanliness, for water, for education--all that makes life worth living for--and found them becoming, year by year, more hopelessly impossible, if not to yourself, yet still to the millions less gifted than yourself; you must have sat in darkness and the shadow of death, till you are ready to welcome any ray of light, even though it should be the glare of a volcano.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
A PATRIOT'S REWARD.
I never shall forget one evening's walk, as Crossthwaite and I strode back together from the Convention. We had walked on some way arm in arm in silence, under the crus.h.i.+ng and embittering sense of having something to conceal--something, which if those who pa.s.sed us so carelessly in the street had known--! It makes a villain and a savage of a man, that consciousness of a dark, hateful secret. And it was a hateful one!--a dark and desperate necessity, which we tried to call by n.o.ble names, that faltered on our lips as we p.r.o.nounced them; for the spirit of G.o.d was not in us; and instead of bright hope, and the clear fixed lodestar of duty, weltered in our imaginations a wild possible future of tumult, and flame, and blood.
”It must be done!--it shall be done!--it will be done!” burst out John, at last, in that positive, excited tone, which indicated a half disbelief of his own words. ”I've been reading Macerone on street-warfare; and I see the way as clear as day.”
I felt nothing but the dogged determination of despair. ”It must be tried, if the worst comes to the worst--but I have no hope. I read Somerville's answer to that Colonel Macerone. Ten years ago he showed it was impossible.
We cannot stand against artillery; we have no arms.”
”I'll tell you where to buy plenty. There's a man, Power, or Bower, he's sold hundreds in the last few days; and he understands the matter. He tells us we're certain, safe. There are hundreds of young men in the government offices ready to join, if we do but succeed at first. It all depends on that. The first hour settles the fate of a revolution.”
”If we succeed, yes--the cowardly world will always side with the conquering party; and we shall have every pickpocket and ruffian in our wake, plundering in the name of liberty and order.”
”Then we'll shoot them like dogs, as the French did! 'Mort aux voleurs'