FORCED LABOUR—A GENERAL POST-OFFICE RIOT—A POSTAL POET—THE
WANING OF THE MOVEMENT—THE PUBLICATION OF A MEMORIAL—WHOLESALE
DISMISSALS.
At this time, and for long previous, there was no definite eight-hour day
officially recognised for the working staff at the General Post-Office.
That was a privilege as yet definitely enjoyed by few besides the
clerical establishment. If there was any official rule regulating and
limiting the working hours of the rank and file, that rule and those
regulations were vitiated by the practice of the supervising officials.
The men were subjected to nothing less than forced labour; the hours
which should have been given up to sleep and leisure were extorted
from them; and forced contributions of their well-earned liberty were
remorselessly levied upon them. They were liable to be summoned back for
duty at any time during their intervals of rest. There was no assured
time for rest or proper sleep. They were compelled to dispose of incoming
foreign mails without remuneration of any kind. As the department had
decided such mail matter must be disposed of without cost, at first the
men had to rotate for this purpose, and it generally fell to their turn
about once a month. In former days this practice may not have constituted
a great hardship; but when, owing to the increased and improved means
of transit across seas, foreign mails arrived several times a week, it
became a very real grievance. American mails then arrived only about once
a month, instead of daily as at present; but there were other mails to
be taken account of, and their arrival and treatment were often delayed
for disposal by this cheap method. If the practice had stopped at the
monthly summons, or an extra attendance for every man every week or
so, the strong discontent arising from it might have been averted. But
the principle of extorting from men already too poorly paid and harshly
treated, this disgraceful poll-tax in time was still further extended
after a while.
The occasion which principally provided the officials with an excuse for
imposing on the force still further was the introduction of the halfpenny
post; and when this came to be recognised by the public as a boon, the
men became the victims and the sufferers. The reduced rate for newspapers
and circulars was soon taken advantage of by company promoters very
largely. The notorious promoter, Baron Grant, who did everything on a
colossal scale, sent in prospectuses, referring to the Emma Gold Mine, at
the rate of half a million at a time, completely swamping the Newspaper
Branch, where such correspondence was disposed of. The authorities’ only
method of meeting the emergencies which so frequently arose was to get
the extra work of the public (which already meant so much more profit
to swell the revenue) done by forcing the overburdened and underpaid
men to do it for nothing in the time which should otherwise have been
theirs. The method of forced labour, so analogous to that form of slavery
which aroused the righteous indignation of the civilised world when
practised a few years later by the Boers on the unfortunate Kaffirs, was
not only thought proper but persisted in by the officials of an English
Government department. Whatever excuses, if any, that might be made for
the rapacious East-End sweaters, could not be made for the profit-minting
monopoly of St. Martin’s-le-Grand and those who guided its machinery.
The men protested again and again, but without avail. Refusal to comply
with this form of tyranny or worse, imposed in the name of duty and
discipline, would have meant rank insubordination, punishable with
dismissal without character. Probably their protests never got beyond the
branch superintendent, to whom they complained; but the authorities ought
not to have been wholly blind to the men’s treatment. If there was no
Treasury grant of money to cover the cost of extra duty of this nature,
as was pointed out, then the parsimony and meanness of the authorities
was only to be excused by their utter laziness in not endeavouring to
get such a demand met honestly and fairly.
The grievance speedily attained to the dimensions and importance of a
grave scandal. Yet the authorities seemed determined that, kick and
struggle against the pricks as the men might, they should submit to it.
And the men, grown weary of complaining against the injustice, and losing
all faith in the fairness of those over them, were equally resolved that
it should not continue much longer without one last vigorous protest
from them. The climax of indignation was reached one morning in March
1873, when the whole of the force were ordered as usual to stay behind
their time. There were mails above and below in the Newspaper and Letter
Branches, and tons of circulars waiting in reserve. The men rushed to
their kitchens, and securing their articles of clothing, made for the
principal exit leading to liberty and the Post-Office yard. This they
found closed and bolted against them and guarded by a posse of overseers,
the official doorkeeper, and numerous amateur policemen—constables
disguised as sorters. They were sternly ordered back to their duties;
but by this time, even if they would, they could not turn for those now
pressing behind and thronging the lobby. The officials appeared on the
scene and exhorted them not to disobey orders; but the murmurs that arose
convinced them that at last the mutiny had come. The men demanded the
door to be opened and the removal of the constables. They took it as an
added insult that such Siberian methods should be put into force against
them, for whatever their humble position in the public service, yet still
they bore the name of free-born Englishmen. The officials, convinced they
were acting within their right, refused and repeatedly ordered them to
fall back. For half-an-hour or more the men, nearly a thousand strong
by this time, endured it; the heat was oppressive in the closely-packed
crowd, and the stubborn obstinacy of the men guarding the door was
making the crowd excited. There were cries of execration, and from the
rear came a hurricane of balls of twine with sticks of sealing-wax. The
officials retreated to safer quarters, leaving the men guarding the
door to carry out their duty or die. The lobby, which was a narrow neck
of space leading from the Letter Branch to the coveted doorway, was
becoming like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and many men were on the point
of fainting. The doorkeepers were pale but determined, and stood with
their backs to the coveted door. The situation was as serious to them as
to the mutineers themselves. With the men the injustice of the official
instruction to stay at their duties without pay might be sufficient to
palliate their disobedience to it, especially when there were nearly a
thousand of them to answer for it. But with those at the door it was
slightly different; they had to do their duty, and they looked like men
who were determined to sell their lives dearly if it came to it, though
it is probable that if they could have trusted each other the bolt would
have been quietly drawn. To those in the thick of the swaying, sweltering
crowd of angry and excited men the heat was getting unbearable. Some one,
or several at once, suggested rushing the doors; but to deliberately
break down the barrier seemed to spell mutiny of the worst kind, and
numbers of the front ranks held back at the prospect of afterwards being
named as ringleaders. The responsible officials retired to a distance and
watched with the grim satisfaction of schoolmasters who were “keeping in”
a refractory class of school-children. The realisation that they were
being kept prisoners at the behest of one or two of their superiors was
intensifying the impatience and the excitement of the sweltering crowd
behind, and impatience soon grew to desperation. The air was repeatedly
filled with groans and hisses, and the storm of groans was presently
turned by some one facetiously striking up a bar of “Britons never, never
shall be slaves!” That was enough, for the men behind especially. They
remembered they were Britons. A square of infantry with fixed bayonets
could not have stopped them now. They were solidly packed several
hundreds strong in one long stream, fed every moment by reinforcements as
they gained courage to leave the sorting-tables. Fortunately some one by
an adroit manœuvre had turned a line of heavy mail-trucks and trolleys,
placed there either carelessly or purposely, or the result might have
been disastrous to those in front. Menaces and shouts were directed
towards the men who barred their way; but neither threats nor appeals
would move them, and it seemed they would be flattened against the door
they were so zealously guarding, for those in front could no longer hold
against the mighty pressure of the hundreds behind. The crowd heaved and
rocked like a huge billow. There were shouts and groans and some were
real, a tremendous scuffle, a sound like the cracking of ribs, a crash
of woodwork, a shattering of glass accompanied with a louder yell; the
doors burst from their fastenings, and the hot perspiring stream of angry
men vomited itself into the open air and the daylight. Then the wild
mob’s several hundred feet scattered down the steps into the Post-Office
yard, and the men who had broken their red-tape bonds to assert the
liberty of the person again burst into such a roar of triumph that a
jaded horse on the cab-rank outside in Aldersgate Street took fright
and bolted. The untoward commotion stopped the stream of traffic in St.
Martin’s-le-Grand, and crowds assembled outside the Post-Office railings
while the police hurried to the scene from every by-turning. The general
traffic was disordered for half-an-hour, till the last remnant of the
imprisoned men issued from the gates.
As the result of the scrimmage several men got scratches and bruises,
and there were one or two bloody noses. It ought to have been as much a
matter for congratulation for the authorities as for the men that nothing
more disastrous occurred. But the officials chose not to see it in that
light, and several who had been grabbed in the rush by the doorkeepers
were haled up like escaped convicts before the presiding superintendent
and others of the smaller authorities to answer for the conduct of the
whole. Six men were there and then suspended from duty without pay for an
indefinite period, and with the prospect of dismissal before them.
It was only to be expected that the public would take an exaggerated
view of the incident; and the idea gained credence that a veritable riot
had taken place inside the Post-Office. Some, indeed, thought it meant a
postal strike. The evening paper came out with an account of the “Riot
at the General Post-Office,” which, it need hardly be said, was scarcely
accurate.
The humour of the situation was skilfully hit off a day or two later by a
parody on “The Light Brigade,” by one Tom Glamorgan, already recognised
as a postal poet. It was said the verses were scribbled hurriedly on
his shirt-cuff during moments snatched from the duty the same evening;
and being printed next day were sold for a penny a copy amongst the
sorters and postmen and others, the small sum realised being sent to
some charity. The actual verses perhaps would interest but few, but the
printed paragraph introducing the lines epitomised the whole incident
The print formed one of a short series of “Postal Fly-sheets,” and the
paragraph in question read as follows:—
“INSUBORDINATION AT THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.
“On Monday morning, 31st March 1873, a large quantity of
‘Circulars,’ the postage of which amounted to some hundreds
of pounds, were required to be sorted and despatched to their
various destinations. The men, assistants, and boys worked well
till 9 A.M. (having been on duty since 4.30 A.M.), at which
time the juniors struck work and congregated around the lobby
door to depart; several of the older officers were stationed
there to prevent their exit, the ‘Acting Superintendent’
on duty declaring they should not go till all the work was
done. The assistants and boys replied to this by tremendous
shouting, hooting, hissing, groaning, and pushing, declaring
they would do no more that morning unless paid extra for it. At
length some of the ringleaders, assisted by the crowd around,
continued to push against the officers guarding the doors,
striking at one of the ‘overseers’—_breaking hose from all
order, discipline, and control_.…”
The six sorters, innocent or guilty of the charge against them, were
still suspended, but the resentment of the authorities did not stop
here. One of the official doorkeepers was pounced on to account for his
not successfully resisting the several hundred determined men who so
forcibly objected to be made prisoners of. The doorkeeper was rather a
small man, and built more on the lines of a jockey than of a gladiator.
But it was useless to urge such a fact on the official mind bent on
inflicting condign punishment. So the poor little man was pronounced
guilty of failing to perform a feat which would have baffled Hercules.
He was in consequence reduced to an inferior position entailing greater
responsibility; and failing to become competent in a duty which was
entirely new to him, he was incontinently bundled out of the service on a
starvation pension of six shillings a week. He did not long survive his
defeat, but died a little while afterwards of a sheer broken heart.
That the so-called riot at the General Post-Office was only one of the
straws which showed the way of the wind may be taken for granted. Whether
it could have occurred in a better-regulated service is perhaps doubtful.
The scheme which with its small benefits had given so much satisfaction
to the letter-carriers as to induce them, if not to remain satisfied,
to abandon agitation for the present, had caused corresponding
dissatisfaction to the letter-sorters. The only benefit derived from the
Manners scheme, if it could be called such, was the increase of sixpence
a year in the increment. The keenest disappointment prevailed, and a
movement was already afoot to find expression for that disappointment in
a memorial to the author, Lord John Manners. Yet, though the feelings of
the men were scarcely concealed, it had been officially represented to
the Postmaster-General and the Controller that the demands of the sorting
force were now fully satisfied, and that the men themselves acknowledged
it. This official misrepresentation was followed by an anonymous note
being pinned on the notice-board in the retiring-room. It was to the
effect: “Who thus misrepresents the spirit of the Inland Branch? As mild
a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.” The note was
detached and taken to the superintendent; and one of the men, Glamorgan,
who had already distinguished himself in the line of a satirical
verse-maker, was suspended for some days on suspicion of being its author.
At the end of November 1874 the dissatisfied sorters drew up a respectful
and moderate memorial to the Postmaster-General, pointing out that
“whilst grateful for the recent improvements made in … pay and prospects
of promotion, they were yet unable to accept so small a revision as a
satisfactory settlement of their claims to increased remuneration,” and
giving some very valid reasons for a reconsideration of their case. The
petition was signed by 140 men as representative of the entire sorting
force, and presented through their immediate superior. To the startling
surprise of every one, a copy of this memorial appeared in the _Times_
and other morning papers the next day, and from that moment the most
discerning could see that it was doomed to failure from the fact of being
published in the press before the Postmaster-General had had time to
consider it. For in those days especially such a thing was regarded as
a most unforgivable breach of official etiquette, to say the least. Its
publication at this juncture was therefore generally thought to be the
last blow to all their hopes of further revision. But few dreamed what
was to follow.
The text of that memorial is here reproduced, the better to mark the
perverted sense of justice of the Postmaster-General who could read
treason and conspiracy in an innocent appeal so temperately worded, and
exact so cruel a penalty for so small an offence as that of prayerfully
submitting that they still had grievances to remedy.
“PETITION TO THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL from the Sorters of the
Inland Branch, G.P.O., presented through their Superintendent
on November 25th, 1874.
“_To the Right Honourable_ LORD JOHN MANNERS, M.P., _Her
Majesty’s Postmaster-General_.
“MY LORD,—We, the undersigned sorters attached to the Inland
Branch, beg most respectfully to inform you that, whilst
grateful for the recent improvements made in our pay and
prospects of promotion, we are yet unable to accept it
as a satisfactory settlement of our claims to increased
remuneration; we, therefore, beg to call your Lordship’s
attention to the following facts: Prior to 1867 the scale of
pay for our class was as follows: Minimum of second-class,
23s., by an annual increment of 1s. to a maximum of 38s.;
minimum of first-class, 40s., by an annual increment of 1s.
to a maximum of 50s. After the revision made in June 1867, it
stood thus: Minimum, 24s., by an annual increment of 1s. for
six years, and then by 1s. 6d. to a maximum of 45s. In 1872 the
minimum was increased to 26s., and in July of the present year
the scale was again altered to the following: Minimum 26s.,
with an annual increment of 1s. 6d. for six years, and then by
2s. to a maximum of 45s. Thus it will be seen that whilst the
minimum and annual increment have been increased in amount, the
maximum has been reduced 5s. per week. The only benefit derived
from the last revision was an addition of 6d. to the annual
increment. In former memorials we have asked that the increased
increment of 2s. per week may begin at the minimum of the scale
instead of after six years, as at present; and also, that the
maximum may be restored to the sum of 50s. per week, at which
it originally stood, in accordance with the recommendation of
the Commission of 1854, of which the present Chancellor of the
Exchequer was a member. The scale would then have stood thus:
Minimum, 26s., by an annual increment of 2s. to a maximum of
50s. We respectfully submit to your lordship that, having
regard to our length of service (most of us have served over
nine years), the increased value of labour, and the enhanced
cost of commodities generally, the above would not be more than
a reasonable remuneration for the important duties we perform.
We therefore pray your Lordship to give this Memorial your
favourable consideration, and earnestly hope you will see fit
to grant our Prayer. We are, my Lord, your obedient servants.”
[Here follow Names.]
The resentment of the department showed itself almost immediately
after the illicit publication of the memorial in the public press. The
signatories were sent for by the Controller, and catechised as to what
they knew about its appearance in print before it had actually reached
the hand of the Postmaster-General. They were told it was a gross
breach of official confidence, only a little less heinous than offering
personal insult to the public head of the department. They would be held
responsible for sending it to the press for publication, and nothing now
remained but to go home and pray for forgiveness and await developments.
In vain the men protested their innocence, and pointed out that copies of
the proposed memorial freely circulated among the men for their approval
before it was submitted through the official channel; indeed any one but
themselves might have forwarded a copy to the _Times_. But it was to no
purpose they sought to defend themselves on these grounds, and they were
practically found guilty on the spot. That was one indictment only in
regard to this unfortunate memorial. The second was that they had dared
as the humblest servants of her Majesty’s Postmaster-General to convey to
him, by means of this aforesaid illicitly-published memorial, that they
could not accept as fully satisfying all their claims, the scheme which
he had so beneficently prepared for them. What right had they to say they
could not accept the scheme, or anything else which a Postmaster-General
had so condescended to provide them with?
The poor menials withdrew from the light of the official cadi’s presence,
abashed and crestfallen. They predicted that something was about to
happen to them, guilty wretches that they were; but they did not know
what.
While the case was pending, a paragraph appeared in one of the papers to
the effect that the indignation of the men in the General Post-Office
had now reached such a point that they had decided to petition for the
removal of certain supervising officials who had rendered themselves
brutally obnoxious to the men throughout. The ringleaders were again,
as a natural consequence, suspected of this fresh paragraphic insult to
the department; but the men themselves were as indignant as might be
the authorities themselves. They all solemnly protested to each other
that this foolish blunder was not theirs. The appearance of such a thing
at this moment could certainly effect no good purpose, and it seemed
difficult to believe that any one of them, knowing that suspicion would
most certainly fall on them, and discredit them still further, could have
been guilty of such foolishness. Still, repudiate it as they might, they
knew the shot would rebound on themselves. There were several among them
who did not hesitate to think, that both the memorial and the offensive
paragraph had been sent to the press by some one of the creatures of the
department with a malignant ulterior motive.
If the Postmaster-General had been shot at with a popgun he was going to
return it with a bomb; and the bomb, being ready, was primed for the 11th
of December. On the morning of that date it was thrown.
It took the form of a Postmaster-General’s minute, and was sent the
rounds of the Circulation Department by means of the general-order book.
It started innocently enough, but the sting, like that of the scorpion,
was in its tail. It was to the effect that the Postmaster-General had
received the memorial from the sorters, but not until it had been
improperly published in the newspapers. It proceeded to criticise the
terms of the memorial, and to remind them that in the previous July the
wages of the memorialists were readjusted by the Treasury, “after very
full and careful consideration.” A comparison between the sorters of 1854
and 1874 was then drawn to show that they were no worse off, and that the
reduction in the maximum was more than compensated for by the creation
of a new overseer’s class. So far, so good, or bad, as they chose to
think it; but now comes the cruellest part of it. The Postmaster-General
could not stay his hand here. In view of the recent settlement he felt it
incumbent on him not only to oppose and check the spirit which the terms
of the memorial and the course it had taken exhibited, but “to evince
in some unmistakable manner” that he would “not yield to clamour what
reasoned justice to the public would withhold.”
Accordingly he desired that the memorialists be informed that if their
present conditions of service were not suitable to them they were at
liberty to seek for other employment. And further, he would understand it
to be their intention to do so unless within three days they asked, in
writing, for permission to remain. This permission, however, he should
not give to those who, having signed the memorial, bore an “indifferent
character,” and were “not recommended by their superior officers for
retention in the service.” He understood that among those who signed the
wicked memorial there were a number of younger men who had “no claims on
the department, either on the score of service or otherwise”; and for
daring to become dissatisfied already, their names were to be brought
specially before him, in order that he might consider whether any, and if
so, which of them, should be retained in the service as an act of grace.
His lordship furthermore implied that the precious privilege accorded to
the more poorly paid of being allowed to add to their miserable incomes
by overtime, should relieve them of any cause for complaint in regard to
insufficient wages. His reference to their “liberty to seek for other
employment” was the bitterest mockery to men who had given so many years
to the public service, and for the first time gave expression to that
heartless theory of the department that the best cure for grievances
was the dismissal of those who dared to complain of them; for that
practically was its meaning.
Such was the message of Lord John Manners to the men who had been guilty
of asking for a redress of their grievances and a small increase of
pay. Such was the manner in which he requited the confidence reposed in
him by his humble subordinates, and such was the manner in which he set
about redeeming the fair promises of the party which had so sustained the
agitation while they were in opposition. The Postmaster-General’s minute
was almost as vile an instrument as that with which the late Government
had contemplated crushing combination and smothering the claims of the
aggrieved by prosecution, only that their heart failed them at the last
moment. It was virtually a demand for the heads of the ringleaders. It
provided a warranty for wholesale dismissal, and placed a weapon in the
hands of minor officials which, apart from their inclination, they were
fully authorised and expected to use against a certain number.
They were told that they were to consider they had relinquished the
service, but applications to be retained would be considered, though
there would be no guarantee. As was only natural in the circumstances,
the men, thinking of their wives and families, and knowing that refusal
to accept the humiliation meant instant dismissal, complied, and wrote
their applications as directed. An overseer was sent round to collect
them into a bunch, and then it was the poor men found themselves, as if
drawn into an ambush, basely betrayed. Their last lingering confidence in
the honour of the aristocrat who made blue blood only the criterion of
nobility was rudely shattered. The whole thirty men who as representing
their fellows had been induced to sign the memorial were suspended from
duty, with the prospect of dismissal, the forced humiliation of their
applications notwithstanding.
A fortnight before Christmas one hundred and forty men of the sorting
force were called up before the Controller for admonishment. These
included the thirty suspended men, who were taken last. They were all
admonished in much the same terms in the name of the Postmaster-General,
and to the majority it was intimated that the granting of their
applications would depend on their future conduct. But five of the men,
those regarded as more or less prominent in the recent agitation, were to
be dismissed; and the five condemned men were accordingly marched out of
the office, with a bitter winter and the world before them.
Lord John Manners triumphed, and the smaller officials had their
revenge. There was no doubt about that; the men went back to their
duties thoroughly cowed. It must have been a glorious hour for the
Postmaster-General, and doubtless he felt that he had routed the enemies
of society for ever. And so that the victory of the Postmaster-General
should be fully complete, a subscription to provide the dismissed sorters
with a Christmas dinner was stopped by order of the authorities. Cowed
as the men were, an attempt was made to send round a subscription-sheet,
but the movers were warned of the consequences, and they were officially
terrorised into doing nothing for the victims of Lord John Manners’s
discipline.
Several Parliamentary friends of the postal cause immediately set to
work to induce the Postmaster-General to reverse his harsh decision.
Particularly assiduous was Mr. A. J. Mundella, but he was doomed to
get nothing but humiliation for his pains. Mr. Mundella used the whole
weight of his personal influence with the Postmaster-General and the
permanent authorities, only to find himself bandied about from one to
the other till his sensitive nature became wounded and disgusted. The
studied discourtesy shown him by the permanent officials especially he
made a matter for some complaint inside the House, as he felt that more
consideration than had been accorded him was due to his position and
dignity as a public man.
These arbitrary dismissals destroyed the last vestige of confidence
in the Tory party for some years to come among the letter-sorters. If
the men had been dealt with merely for signing and sending forward a
memorial, there was no justification for such harsh punishment. There
would have been no justification for any kind of punishment, beyond the
refusal to accede to their request. But it was rendered too patent to
every one that it was seized on simply as a pretext for taking a revenge
for the part they had played in the recent agitation. There was no
discipline that demanded such a cowardly reprisal. It was worthy only of
the narrow-minded aristocrat whose principal claim to distinction was his
cherished little drop of blue blood, and whose contempt of the masses, of
all who worked for their living, and all that was plebeian, was rendered
shamefacedly notorious by his published lines. For Lord John Manners
was the author of that silly and impudent pretence at an epigram—which
shook the world with laughter, and covered the writer with derision and
scorn—even from critics of his own party. His disgraceful lines, which
ran—
“Let Arts and Commerce, Laws and Learning, die,
But leave us still our old Nobility!”—
of which he was so distinguished an ornament—were as much a perpetration
on decency and the canons of poetry, as his very first act as an
administrator was arbitrary. Where he had failed as a poet his party had
generously given him a chance to succeed as an autocrat. And his one idea
of autocracy presumably was to persecute the weak, as the only way to
convince them he was powerful.
Lord John Manners was a poet, and a poetic revenge was to be wreaked
on him by one of his victims. The generous impulse which had prompted
the defeated men to subscribe for a Christmas dinner for those who had
suffered for them, had been promptly strangled by the officials acting
under the direction of the Postmaster-General. So it was attempted
to raise a small sum for the distressed men by the sale outside the
Post-Office gates of a leaflet bearing the following impression:—
THE LOCKED-OUT SORTERS OF THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE
_To Lord John Manners, Her Majesty’s Postmaster-General_
What ails my lord to seek his doom,
Why hurl into the winter gloom
His slaves of Want and Pain?
Art thou not of noble blood—
And noble only to be good?—
Then why insult thy name?
Didst thou not write with poet’s flame
To save our ancient nobles’ name,
Their rank and chivalry;
Then why disgrace that ancient shrine
The only fount to _thee_ divine,
Why _damn_ their memory?
Democracy will laugh with scorn
And know a noble fool is born
To curse his pedigree.
’Tis this oppression and this shame,
Deeds done beneath a _noble_ name
Will kill thy line for thee?
Art thou of human love possest,
With heart beneath thy silken vest,
To claim thyself a man?
Art thou a husband, father, say,
With _home_ that none can take away,
To bless thy earthly span?
Bright jewels deck thy lady’s head,
Thy children never wanted bread,
Born into luxury.
Thy princely mansion so secure,
Thy hands nor _head_ could ne’er procure
This gift of _destiny_.
…
The want and suffering that your hand
Has brought a helpless, martyr’d band,
Will cry against your _deed_;
The orphan’s tears will _burn_ your soul,
And curse you to the final goal,
_Where mercy you will plead!_
THOMAS HENRY GLAMORGAN (one of the men).
LONDON, _January 1875_.
Glamorgan’s verse was as the last vehement cry of despairing freedom
in the Post-Office. The forces of discontent had been humbled and
demoralised, if not wholly scattered; and liberty, cowering in a corner,
was to remain dumb for many a day to come.