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agitation. So say the Tories. If we listen to the Whigs we shall be persuaded to believe that Chartism is the fever produced in the lower orders by the New Poor Law, fomented and converted to their own political purposes, by the arts of the Tories. So speak the politicians; men to whom party is every thing, and the nation nothing; who cannot conceive of the great body of the people caring for any thing else, but who shall dwell in. Downing Street. Unfortunately for both these theories, Chartism has spoken and acted very significantly under the sway of both these parties. It has most refractorily refused to disappear under the approved modes of treatment applied by each. In spite then of these political wise men we have still to ask the question, what is Chartism? Let us hear what Mr. Carlyle says thereon.

"Chartism means the bitter discontent grown fierce and mad, the wrong condition therefore, or the wrong disposition of the working classes of England. It is a new name for a thing which has had many names, which will yet have many. The matter of Chartism is weighty, deep-rooted, farextending, did not begin yesterday, will by no means end to-day, or tomorrow. It is the struggle that divides the upper and lower classes in society over Europe, and more painfully and notably in England."

Again,

"Decay of loyalty in all senses, disobedience, decay of religious faith, has long been noticeable and lamentable in the largest class as in the smaller ones. Revolt, sullen revengeful humour of revolt against the upper classes, decreasing respect for what their superiors teach, is more and more the universal spirit of the lower classes. Such spirit may be named, may be vindicated, but all men must recognize it as extant there-all may know that it is mournful; that unless altered it will be fatal :-of lower classes so related to upper, happy nations are not made."

It is most true, and of the greatest importance thoroughly to be convinced, that Chartism is no novel occurrence, no transitory feeling of a day. It may have borrowed a name from the Charter, but its essence was long in existence before the Charter was heard of. The five points of the Charter are mere superficial symptoms, -the objects which the burning fever for the moment thirsts for, but they are not the real substance of the disease. The true essence of Chartism is the disordered state of the lower and working classes, the unjust situation in which the course of modern civilization has placed them, and the bitter feelings of resentment which this injustice calls forth. It is most foolish and most dangerous to think of Chartism as any thing else than a disease deeply rooted in the foundations of our social state; and most fearfully threatening the peace, and even the existence of the present order of society. Loud and vehement protests of the lower classes against the evils of their condition, have been the precursors of these latter and more serious outbreaks. Occasional eruptions have told to those who would understand, of the fires that were raging below the surface. The earthquake came at last. The commotions that disturbed the peace of the country in past years, the violence of the Luddites in 1817, of the operatives in 1819, the field of Peterloo, and the irritated temper of the people which made it dangerous for the sovereign to walk through his own capital in 1830, were all so many indications that the causes of disaffection were at work. But never before was this spirit so general, the organization so powerful, the sympathy in the tone of feeling so universal, as it was a few months ago. The quelling of each successive disorder seemed but to make the fire within glow with more intensity. The manufacturing population were infinitely better agreed in the objects they were to aim at; assaults on property broke out simultaneously in many parts of the kingdom, and it has become plain that if any favouring circumstances had furnished the opportunity, the men of Sheffield and Merthyr Tydvil, Glasgow and Birmingham, would then have united, and would again unite in a single host against the other orders of society. Hence our danger is immensely greater, and our prospect of eradicating the evil by the exercise of mere force immensely less. And that we are not single in this opinion, but that it is one generally entertained, is proved by the very remarkable and appalling fact, that all the classes above the lowest order were so alarmed by the danger which so manifestly threatened all property, as to combine in a common and determined opposition to the Chartists. Lord Brougham pointed out the perfectly novel circumstance, that in the late trials of the Chartists, the lowest order of shopkeepers could, for the first time in the history of this country, be trusted on charges of sedition and rebellion. Many will draw comfort from this fact. They will rejoice in the accession of force which it promises

to the cause of order: and doubtless this is a well-founded confidence, if resistance to the few next out-breaks be alone thought of. But this fact has other and far more sorrowful meanings. It speaks of the terrible character of the sentiments that animate the most numerous class of our population. It bears witness that they are supported by a union and force so formidable, as to cut off all sympathy between the workmen and those who have been hitherto their natural allies. It is small comfort to know that if the battle is to be fought now, we shall have a larger army to fight with. The fearful truth is, that there is now certainty of war; that the thousands of the working classes are the enemies of the state; that the creeds and common sentiments which bind up all orders into one nation have disappeared; and that the largest, the most ignorant and the most reckless class stand by the side of the rest in an attitude of avowed hostility.

But if this evil be thus great, what causes have produced it? and what are its remedies? The inquiry into the sources of mischief is twofold. They are either physical, or moral and religious. Mr. Carlyle's book enumerates some of the first class only; but he treats them in such way as to leave a very strong impression on his reader, that the latter class contains the most powerful, and the really true agents of the evil. There is perhaps no book which places so vividly before the eye the internal character of the malady. Now, though the public attention should above all be directed to our moral evils, still it is of great moment not to seem to palliate the positive miseries which our poor have to endure. Some we fear are inseparable from human nature, under every condition of its being; others proceed from causes seated in the constitution of our nature, which have been brought into activity by the growth of our civilization, but for which no specific remedy has been found. But there are others which are the infliction of bad laws, and these every good and patriotic man should do his utmost to remove. Mr. Carlyle speaks in the first place of wages :

"What constitutes the well-being of a man? Many things;-of which, the wages he gets, and the bread he buys with them, are but one preliminary item. Grant, however, that the wages were the whole-that, once knowing the wages and the price of bread, we know all-then, what are the wages ? Statistic inquiry in its present misguided condition cannot tell. The average rate of a day's wages is not correctly ascertained for any portion of this country, not only not for half centuries, it is not even ascertained any where for decades or years; far from instituting comparisons with the past, the present itself is unknown to us. And then, given the average of wages, what is the constancy of employment? the fluctuations from season to season, from year to year? Is it constant calculable wages, or fluctuating incalculable, more or less of the nature of gambling? This secondary circumstance of quality in wages is perhaps even more important than the primary one of quantity."

There are several very interesting questions suggested by these remarks. No doubt the testimony as to the rate of wages throughout the country is extremely conflicting; but it seems a fact pretty generally admitted that the Chartists are not composed of the poorest class of labourers in England, and that it is not any great lowness of wages, or difficulty in procuring their livelihood, which has led to their combinations. Three or four years ago the rate of wages in most of the manufacturing districts was so high, that the Poor-Law Commissioners used their utmost efforts to encourage emigration from the agricultural districts, to those where labour was so well remunerated. And yet we know that mischief had long been fermenting, and that the alienation of the operatives from their masters and the rest of society, was decided. But the other point put forward by Mr. Carlyle is a capital one,-the quality of wages. The fluctuations of manufacturing wages have been enormous. This is an evil that has pressed far more severely on modern times than on former ones. The institution of guilds, by making admission to a trade tedious and expensive, kept the supply of labour better proportioned to the demand. The price of goods might vary considerably without throwing people out of employment. No doubt the commerce of England was then a very insignificant thing, when compared with the gigantic magnitude which it has reached in our days. But if it has brought us immense wealth and power, it has not escaped the lot which God has assigned to all human things. It has brought its evils also. A dense mass of human beings, subsisting on a pittance not much above the minimum of subsistence, and carrying on a trade which, from its vastness, and the countless and distant lands which it embraces, is exposed to a thousand interruptions, -is indeed a most serious evil. Hence, the distressing effects which deficiencies of cotton crops, American Bank speculation, Eastern politics, and China wars, produce on so sensitive a population. Those who during last winter saw thousands of weavers, with scarcely bread enough to keep off starvation, and saved only by the timely arrival of orders from America from the sale of their small households and the workhouse, can fully understand that to be the workshop to the world, is not unmixed good to a nation. This is not the language of morbid complaint; but in all matter of real life it is salutary to see the dark side of the picture as well as the bright. Those fluctuations which flow directly from the essential character of our great trade, it would be both ungrateful and foolish to repine against. They require only to be faced with all our moral and intellectual resources. But there are others of our own making; and the poor have a just claim to their estimation. We will not speak here of our banking system, though a sounder knowledge of finance might probably save us from some grievous distress. But reason and right feeling will bear out the assertion, that the corn laws are the parents of great calamities to our working classes. The fluctuations which they produce in the price of food, is above all the disastrous evil which this wretched and narrow-sighted policy inflicts upon us. They deprive, indeed, the nation of a large trade, and so far diminish its national resources. But whether England be a few millions richer or poorer, is after all not the vital question. We heartily wish we could persuade the Anti-Corn-Law men of this fact. We feel the injustice of these laws as keenly as they do; but it is not the mere loss of so much gain that we mainly deplore. A country may be growing in wealth, and yet be very miserable. At least a great increase of widespread misery, and consequent danger, may be going on at the same time with the positive accumulation of riches.

This is a question which has been little considered by political economists. Our nobles and our merchants might be greatly enriched by an open trade in corn; but if our manufacturing population were only increased in number and density thereby, the active ferment of disaffection, and the spread and intensity of Chartism, might also be vastly stimulated.

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