THE MEN WHO ARE EATEN.
With many instructions from our friends, and warnings from Mackaye, I
started next day on my journey. When I last caught sight of the old man,
he was gazing fixedly after me, and using his pocket-handkerchief in a
somewhat suspicious way. I had remarked how depressed he seemed, and my own
spirits shared the depression. A presentiment of evil hung over me, which
not even the excitement of the journey--to me a rare enjoyment--could
dispel. I had no heart, somehow, to look at the country scenes around,
which in general excited in me so much interest, and I tried to lose myself
in summing up my stock of information on the question which I expected to
hear discussed by the labourers. I found myself not altogether ignorant.
The horrible disclosures of S.G.O., and the barbarous abominations of
the Andover Workhouse, then fresh in the public mind, had had their due
effect on mine; and, like most thinking artizans, I had acquainted myself
tolerably from books and newspapers with the general condition of the
country labourers.
I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, whose broad brown and
grey fields were only broken by an occasional line of dark, doleful firs,
at a knot of thatched hovels, all sinking and leaning every way but the
right, the windows patched with paper, the doorways stopped with filth,
which surrounded a beer-shop. That was my destination--unpromising enough
for any one but an agitator. If discontent and misery are preparatives for
liberty--and they are--so strange and unlike ours are the ways of God--I
was likely enough to find them there.
I was welcomed by my intended host, a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker,
who greeted me as his cousin from London--a relationship which it seemed
prudent to accept.
He took me into his little cabin, and there, with the assistance of a
shrewd, good-natured wife, shared with me the best he had; and after supper
commenced, mysteriously and in trembling, as if the very walls might have
ears, a rambling, bitter diatribe on the wrongs and sufferings of the
labourers; which went on till late in the night, and which I shall spare my
readers: for if they have either brains or hearts, they ought to know more
than I can tell them, from the public prints, and, indeed, from their own
eyes--although, as a wise man says, there is nothing more difficult than to
make people see first the facts which lie under their own nose.
Upon one point, however, which was new to me, he was very fierce--the
customs of landlords letting the cottages with their farms, for the mere
sake of saving themselves trouble; thus giving up all power of protecting
the poor man, and delivering him over, bound hand and foot, even in the
matter of his commonest home comforts, to farmers, too penurious, too
ignorant, and often too poor, to keep the cottages in a state fit for the
habitation of human beings. Thus the poor man's hovel, as well as his
labour, became, he told me, a source of profit to the farmer, out of which
he wrung the last drop of gain. The necessary repairs were always put
off as long as possible--the labourers were robbed of their gardens--the
slightest rebellion lost them not only work, but shelter from the elements;
the slavery under which they groaned penetrated even to the fireside and to
the bedroom.
"And who was the landlord of this parish?"
"Oh! he believed he was a very good sort of man, and uncommon kind to the
people where he lived, but that was fifty miles away in another country;
and he liked that estate better than this, and never came down here, except
for the shooting."
Full of many thoughts, and tired out with my journey, I went up to bed, in
the same loft with the cobbler and his wife, and fell asleep, and dreamt of
Lillian.
* * * * *
About eight o'clock the next morning I started forth with my guide, the
shoemaker, over as desolate a country as men can well conceive. Not a house
was to be seen for miles, except the knot of hovels which we had left,
and here and there a great dreary lump of farm-buildings, with its yard
of yellow stacks. Beneath our feet the earth was iron, and the sky iron
above our heads. Dark curdled clouds, "which had built up everywhere an
under-roof of doleful grey," swept on before the bitter northern wind,
which whistled through the low leafless hedges and rotting wattles, and
crisped the dark sodden leaves of the scattered hollies, almost the only
trees in sight.
We trudged on, over wide stubbles, with innumerable weeds; over wide
fallows, in which the deserted ploughs stood frozen fast; then over clover
and grass, burnt black with frost; then over a field of turnips, where we
passed a large fold of hurdles, within which some hundred sheep stood, with
their heads turned from the cutting blast. All was dreary, idle, silent;
no sound or sign of human beings. One wondered where the people lived, who
cultivated so vast a tract of civilized, over-peopled, nineteenth-century
England. As we came up to the fold, two little boys hailed us from the
inside--two little wretches with blue noses and white cheeks, scarecrows of
rags and patches, their feet peeping through bursten shoes twice too big
for them, who seemed to have shared between them a ragged pair of worsted
gloves, and cowered among the sheep, under the shelter of a hurdle, crying
and inarticulate with cold.
"What's the matter, boys?"
"Turmits is froze, and us can't turn the handle of the cutter. Do ye gie us
a turn, please?"
We scrambled over the hurdles, and gave the miserable little creatures the
benefit of ten minutes' labour. They seemed too small for such exertion:
their little hands were purple with chilblains, and they were so sorefooted
they could scarcely limp. I was surprised to find them at least three years
older than their size and looks denoted, and still more surprised, too, to
find that their salary for all this bitter exposure to the elements--such
as I believe I could not have endured two days running--was the vast sum
of one shilling a week each, Sundays included. "They didn't never go to
school, nor to church nether, except just now and then, sometimes--they had
to mind the shop."
I went on, sickened with the contrast between the highly-bred, over-fed,
fat, thick-woolled animals, with their troughs of turnips and malt-dust,
and their racks of rich clover-hay, and their little pent-house of
rock-salt, having nothing to do but to eat and sleep, and eat again, and
the little half-starved shivering animals who were their slaves. Man
the master of the brutes? Bah! As society is now, the brutes are the
masters--the horse, the sheep, the bullock, is the master, and the labourer
is their slave. "Oh! but the brutes are eaten!" Well; the horses at least
are not eaten--they live, like landlords, till they die. And those who are
eaten, are certainly not eaten by their human servants. The sheep they fat,
another kills, to parody Shelley; and, after all, is not the labourer, as
well as the sheep, eaten by you, my dear Society?--devoured body and soul,
not the less really because you are longer about the meal, there being an
old prejudice against cannibalism, and also against murder--except after
the Riot Act has been read.
"What!" shriek the insulted respectabilities, "have we not paid him his
wages weekly, and has he not lived upon them?" Yes; and have you not given
your sheep and horses their daily wages, and have they not lived on them?
You wanted to work them; and they could not work, you know, unless they
were alive. But here lies your iniquity: you gave the labourer nothing but
his daily food--not even his lodgings; the pigs were not stinted of their
wash to pay for their sty-room, the man was; and his wages, thanks to your
competitive system, were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously
(for was it not according to political economy, and the laws thereof?)
to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the hope or the
possibility of saving a farthing. You know how to invest your capital
profitably, dear Society, and to save money over and above your income of
daily comforts; but what has he saved?--what is he profited by all those
years of labour? He has kept body and soul together--perhaps he could
have done that without you or your help. But his wages are used up every
Saturday night. When he stops working, you have in your pocket the whole
real profits of his nearly fifty years' labour, and he has nothing. And
then you say that you have not eaten him! You know, in your heart of
hearts, that you have. Else, why in Heaven's name do you pay him poor's
rates? If, as you say, he has been duly repaid in wages, what is the
meaning of that half-a-crown a week?--you owe him nothing. Oh! but the man
would starve--common humanity forbids? What now, Society? Give him alms, if
you will, on the score of humanity; but do not tax people for his support,
whether they choose or not--that were a mere tyranny and robbery. If the
landlord's feelings will not allow him to see the labourer starve, let
him give, in God's name; but let him not cripple and drain, by compulsory
poor-rates, the farmer who has paid him his "just remuneration" of wages,
and the parson who probably, out of his scanty income, gives away twice as
much in alms as the landlord does out of his superfluous one. No, no; as
long as you retain compulsory poor-laws, you confess that it is not merely
humane, but just, to pay the labourer more than his wages. You confess
yourself in debt to him, over and above an uncertain sum, which it suits
you not to define, because such an investigation would expose ugly gaps and
patches in that same snug competitive and property world of yours; and,
therefore, being the stronger party, you compel your debtor to give up the
claim which you confess, for an annuity of half-a-crown a week--that being
the just-above-starving-point of the economic thermometer. And yet you say
you have not eaten the labourer! You see, we workmen too have our thoughts
about political economy, differing slightly from yours, truly--just as the
man who is being hanged may take a somewhat different view of the process
from the man who is hanging him. Which view is likely to be the more
practical one?
With some such thoughts I walked across the open down, toward a circular
camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town. Inside it, some
thousand or so of labouring people were swarming restlessly round a single
large block of stone, some relic of Druid times, on which a tall man stood,
his dark figure thrown out in bold relief against the dreary sky. As we
pushed through the crowd, I was struck with the wan, haggard look of all
faces; their lacklustre eyes and drooping lips, stooping shoulders, heavy,
dragging steps, gave them a crushed, dogged air, which was infinitely
painful, and bespoke a grade of misery more habitual and degrading than
that of the excitable and passionate artisan.
There were many women among them, talking shrilly, and looking even more
pinched and wan than the men.
I remarked, also, that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, pitchforks,
and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons--an ugly sign, which
I ought to have heeded betimes.
They glared with sullen curiosity at me and my Londoner's clothes, as, with
no small feeling of self-importance, I pushed my way to the foot of the
stone. The man who stood on it seemed to have been speaking some time. His
words, like all I heard that day, were utterly devoid of anything like
eloquence or imagination--a dull string of somewhat incoherent complaints,
which derived their force only from the intense earnestness, which attested
their truthfulness. As far as I can recollect, I will give the substance of
what I heard. But, indeed, I heard nothing but what has been bandied about
from newspaper to newspaper for years--confessed by all parties, deplored
by all parties, but never an attempt made to remedy it.
--"The farmers makes slaves on us. I can't hear no difference between a
Christian and a nigger, except they flogs the niggers and starves the
Christians; and I don't know which I'd choose. I served Farmer * * * *
seven year, off and on, and arter harvest he tells me he's no more work
for me, nor my boy nether, acause he's getting too big for him, so he gets
a little 'un instead, and we does nothing; and my boy lies about, getting
into bad ways, like hundreds more; and then we goes to board, and they bids
us go and look for work; and we goes up next part to London. I couldn't
get none; they'd enough to do, they said, to employ their own; and we
begs our way home, and goes into the Union; and they turns us out again
in two or three days, and promises us work again, and gives us two days'
gravel-picking, and then says they has no more for us; and we was sore
pinched, and laid a-bed all day; then next board-day we goes to 'em and
they gives us one day more--and that threw us off another week, and then
next board-day we goes into the Union again for three days, and gets sent
out again: and so I've been starving one-half of the time, and they putting
us off and on o' purpose like that; and I'll bear it no longer, and that's
what I says."
He came down, and a tall, powerful, well-fed man, evidently in his Sunday
smock-frock and clean yellow leggings, got up and began:
"I hav'n't no complaint to make about myself. I've a good master, and
the parson's a right kind 'un, and that's more than all can say, and the
squire's a real gentleman; and my master, he don't need to lower his wages.
I gets my ten shillings a week all the year round, and harvesting, and a
pig, and a 'lotment--and that's just why I come here. If I can get it, why
can't you?"
"Cause our masters baint like yourn."
"No, by George, there baint no money round here like that, I can tell you."
"And why ain't they?" continued the speaker. "There's the shame on it.
There's my master can grow five quarters where yourn only grows three; and
so he can live and pay like a man; and so he say he don't care for free
trade. You know, as well as I, that there's not half o' the land round here
grows what it ought. They ain't no money to make it grow more, and besides,
they won't employ no hands to keep it clean. I come across more weeds in
one field here, than I've seen for nine year on our farm. Why arn't some of
you a-getting they weeds up? It 'ud pay 'em to farm better--and they knows
that, but they're too lazy; if they can just get a living off the land,
they don't care; and they'd sooner save money out of your wages, than save
it by growing more corn--it's easier for 'em, it is. There's the work to
be done, and they won't let you do it. There's you crying out for work,
and work crying out for you--and neither of you can get to the other. I
say that's a shame, I do. I say a poor man's a slave. He daren't leave his
parish--nobody won't employ him, as can employ his own folk. And if he
stays in his parish, it's just a chance whether he gets a good master or
a bad 'un. He can't choose, and that's a shame, it is. Why should he go
starving because his master don't care to do the best by the land? If they
can't till the land, I say let them get out of it, and let them work it as
can. And I think as we ought all to sign a petition to government, to tell
'em all about it; though I don't see as how they could help us, unless
they'd make a law to force the squires to put in nobody to a farm as hasn't
money to work it fairly."
"I says," said the next speaker, a poor fellow whose sentences were
continually broken by a hacking cough, "just what he said. If they can't
till the land, let them do it as can. But they won't; they won't let us
have a scrap on it, though we'd pay 'em more for it nor ever they'd make
for themselves. But they says it 'ud make us too independent, if we had an
acre or so o' land; and so it 'ud for they. And so I says as he did--they
want to make slaves on us altogether, just to get the flesh and bones off
us at their own price. Look you at this here down.--If I had an acre on it,
to make a garden on, I'd live well with my wages, off and on. Why, if this
here was in garden, it 'ud be worth twenty, forty times o' that it be now.
And last spring I lays out o' work from Christmas till barley-sowing, and
I goes to the farmer and axes for a bit o' land to dig and plant a few
potatoes--and he says, 'You be d--d! If you're minding your garden after
hours, you'll not be fit to do a proper day's work for me in hours--and I
shall want you by-and-by, when the weather breaks'--for it was frost most
bitter, it was. 'And if you gets potatoes you'll be getting a pig--and then
you'll want straw, and meal to fat 'un--and then I'll not trust you in
my barn, I can tell ye;' and so there it was. And if I'd had only one
half-acre of this here very down as we stands on, as isn't worth five
shillings a year--and I'd a given ten shillings for it--my belly wouldn't a
been empty now. Oh, they be dogs in the manger, and the Lord'll reward 'em
therefor! First they says they can't afford to work the land 'emselves, and
then they wain't let us work it ether. Then they says prices is so low they
can't keep us on, and so they lowers our wages; and then when prices goes
up ever so much, our wages don't go up with 'em. So, high prices or low
prices, it's all the same. With the one we can't buy bread, and with the
other we can't get work. I don't mind free trade--not I: to be sure, if
the loaf's cheap, we shall be ruined; but if the loafs dear, we shall be
starved, and for that, we is starved now. Nobody don't care for us; for my
part, I don't much care for myself. A man must die some time or other. Only
I thinks if we could some time or other just see the Queen once, and tell
her all about it, she'd take our part, and not see us put upon like that, I
do."
"Gentlemen!" cried my guide, the shoemaker, in a somewhat conceited and
dictatorial tone, as he skipped up by the speaker's side, and gently
shouldered him down--"it ain't like the ancient times, as I've read off,
when any poor man as had a petition could come promiscuously to the King's
royal presence, and put it direct into his own hand, and be treated like a
gentleman. Don't you know as how they locks up the Queen now-a-days, and
never lets a poor soul come a-near her, lest she should hear the truth
of all their iniquities? Why they never lets her stir without a lot o'
dragoons with drawn swords riding all around her; and if you dared to go
up to her to ax mercy, whoot! they'd chop your head off before you could
say, 'Please your Majesty.' And then the hypocrites say as it's to keep her
from being frightened--and that's true--for it's frightened she'd be, with
a vengeance, if she knowed all that they grand folks make poor labourers
suffer, to keep themselves in power and great glory. I tell ye, 'tarn't
per-practicable at all, to ax the Queen for anything; she's afeard of
her life on 'em. You just take my advice, and sign a round-robin to the
squires--you tell 'em as you're willing to till the land for 'em, if
they'll let you. There's draining and digging enough to be done as 'ud keep
ye all in work, arn't there?"
"Ay, ay; there's lots o' work to be done, if so be we could get at it.
Everybody knows that."
"Well, you tell 'em that. Tell 'em here's hundreds, and hundreds of ye
starving, and willing to work; and then tell 'em, if they won't find ye
work, they shall find ye meat. There's lots o' victuals in their larders
now; haven't you as good a right to it as their jackanapes o' footmen? The
squires is at the bottom of it all. What do you stupid fellows go grumbling
at the farmers for? Don't they squires tax the land twenty or thirty
shillings an acre; and what do they do for that? The best of 'em, if he
gets five thousand a year out o' the land, don't give back five hundred in
charity, or schools, or poor-rates--and what's that to speak of? And the
main of 'em--curse 'em!--they drains the money out o' the land, and takes
it up to London, or into foreign parts, to spend on fine clothes and fine
dinners; or throws it away at elections, to make folks beastly drunk, and
sell their souls for money--and we gets no good on it. I'll tell you what
it's come to, my men--that we can't afford no more landlords. We can't
afford 'em, and that's the truth of it!"
The crowd growled a dubious assent.
"Oh, yes, you can grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them
first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an
old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt
politics to London when I was a prentice; and I ain't forgotten the plans
of it. Look you here. The farmers, they say they can't live unless they can
make four rents, one for labour, and one for stock, and one for rent, and
one for themselves; ain't that about right? Very well; just now they can't
make four rents--in course they can't. Now, who's to suffer for that?--the
farmer as works, or the labourer as works, or the landlord as does nothing?
But he takes care on himself. He won't give up his rent--not he. Perhaps
he might give back ten per cent, and what's that?--two shillings an acre,
maybe. What's that, if corn falls two pound a load, and more? Then the
farmer gets a stinting; and he can't stint hisself, he's bad enough off
already; he's forty shillings out o' pocket on every load of wheat--that's
eight shillings, maybe, on every acre of his land on a four-course
shift--and where's the eight shillings to come from, for the landlord's
only given him back two on it? He can't stint hisself, he daren't stint
his stock, and so he stints the labourers; and so it's you as pays the
landlord's rent--you, my boys, out o' your flesh and bones, you do--and you
can't afford it any longer, by the look of you--so just tell 'em so!"
This advice seemed to me as sadly unpractical as the rest. In short, there
seemed to be no hope, no purpose among them--and they felt it; and I could
hear, from the running comment of murmurs, that they were getting every
moment more fierce and desperate at the contemplation of their own
helplessness--a mood which the next speech was not likely to soften.
A pale, thin woman scrambled up on the stone, and stood there, her scanty
and patched garments fluttering in the bitter breeze, as, with face
sharpened with want, and eyes fierce with misery, she began, in a
querulous, 'scornful falsetto:
"I am an honest woman. I brought up seven children decently; and never axed
the parish for a farden, till my husband died. Then they tells me I can
support myself and mine--and so I does. Early and late I hoed turmits, and
early and late I rep, and left the children at home to mind each other; and
one on 'em fell into the fire, and is gone to heaven, blessed angel! and
two more it pleased the Lord to take in the fever; and the next, I hope,
will soon be out o' this miserable sinful world. But look you here: three
weeks agone, I goes to the board. I had no work. They say they could not
relieve me for the first week, because I had money yet to take.--The
hypocrites! they knowing as I couldn't but owe it all, and a lot more
beside. Next week they sends the officer to inquire. That was ten days
gone, and we starving. Then, on board-day, they gives me two loaves. Then,
next week, they takes it off again. And when I goes over (five miles) to
the board to ax why--they'd find me work--and they never did; so we goes
on starving for another week--for no one wouldn't trust us; how could they
when we was in debt already a whole lot?--you're all in debt!"
"That we are."
"There's some here as never made ten shillings a week in their lives, as
owes twenty pounds at the shop!"
"Ay, and more--and how's a man ever to pay that?"
"So this week, when I comes, they offers me the house. Would I go into
the house? They'd be glad to have me, acause I'm strong and hearty and a
good nurse. But would I, that am an honest woman, go to live with they
offscourings--they"--(she used a strong word)--"would I be parted from my
children? Would I let them hear the talk, and keep the company as they will
there, and learn all sorts o' sins that they never heard on, blessed be
God! I'll starve first, and see them starve too--though, Lord knows, it's
hard.--Oh! it's hard," she said, bursting into tears, "to leave them as I
did this morning, crying after their breakfasts, and I none to give 'em.
I've got no bread--where should I? I've got no fire--how can I give one
shilling and sixpence a hundred for coals? And if I did, who'd fetch 'em
home? And if I dared break a hedge for a knitch o' wood, they'd put me in
prison, they would, with the worst. What be I to do? What be you going to
do? That's what I came here for. What be ye going to do for us women--us
that starve and stint, and wear our hands off for you men and your
children, and get hard words, and hard blows from you? Oh! if I was a man,
I know what I'd do, I do! But I don't think you be men three parts o' you,
or you'd not see the widow and the orphan starve as you do, and sit quiet
and grumble, as long as you can keep your own bodies and souls together.
Eh! ye cowards!"
What more she would have said in her excitement, which had risen to an
absolute scream, I cannot tell; but some prudent friend pulled her down off
the stone, to be succeeded by a speaker more painful, if possible; an aged
blind man, the worn-out melancholy of whose slow, feeble voice made my
heart sink, and hushed the murmuring crowd into silent awe.
Slowly he turned his grey, sightless head from side to side, as if feeling
for the faces below him--and then began:
"I heard you was all to be here--and I suppose you are; and I said I would
come--though I suppose they'll take off my pay, if they hear of it. But I
knows the reason of it, and the bad times and all. The Lord revealed it to
me as clear as day, four years agone come Easter-tide. It's all along of
our sins, and our wickedness--because we forgot Him--it is. I mind the old
war times, what times they was, when there was smuggled brandy up and down
in every public, and work more than hands could do. And then, how we all
forgot the Lord, and went after our own lusts and pleasures--squires and
parsons, and farmers and labouring folk, all alike. They oughted to
ha' knowed better--and we oughted too. Many's the Sunday I spent in
skittle-playing and cock-fighting, and the pound I spent in beer, as might
ha' been keeping me now. We was an evil and perverse generation--and so one
o' my sons went for a sodger, and was shot at Waterloo, and the other fell
into evil ways, and got sent across seas--and I be left alone for my
sins. But the Lord was very gracious to me and showed me how it was all a
judgment on my sins, he did. He has turned his face from us, and that's why
we're troubled. And so I don't see no use in this meeting. It won't do no
good; nothing won't do us no good, unless we all repent of our wicked ways,
our drinking, and our dirt, and our love-children, and our picking and
stealing, and gets the Lord to turn our hearts, and to come back again, and
have mercy on us, and take us away speedily out of this wretched world,
where there's nothing but misery and sorrow, into His everlasting glory,
Amen! Folks say as the day of judgment's a coming soon--and I partly think
so myself. I wish it was all over, and we in heaven above; and that's all I
have to say."
It seemed a not unnatural revulsion, when a tall, fierce man, with a
forbidding squint, sprung jauntily on the stone, and setting his arms
a-kimbo, broke out:
"Here be I, Blinkey, and I has as good a right to speak as ere a one.
You're all blamed fools, you are. So's that old blind buffer there. You
sticks like pigs in a gate, hollering and squeeking, and never helping
yourselves. Why can't you do like me? I never does no work--darned if I'll
work to please the farmers. The rich folks robs me, and I robs them,
and that's fair and equal. You only turn poachers--you only go stealing
turmits, and fire-ud, and all as you can find--and then you'll not need to
work. Arn't it yourn? The game's no one's, is it now?--you know that. And
if you takes turmits or corn, they're yourn--you helped to grow 'em. And
if you're put to prison, I tell ye, it's a darned deal warmer, and better
victuals too, than ever a one of you gets at home, let alone the Union.
Now I knows the dodge. Whenever my wife's ready for her trouble, I gets
cotched; then I lives like a prince in gaol, and she goes to the workus;
and when it's all over, start fair again. Oh, you blockheads'--to stand
here shivering with empty bellies.--You just go down to the farm and burn
they stacks over the old rascal's head; and then they that let you starve
now, will be forced to keep you then. If you can't get your share of the
poor-rates, try the county-rates, my bucks--you can get fat on them at the
Queen's expense--and that's more than you'll do in ever a Union as I hear
on. Who'll come down and pull the farm about the folks' ears? Warn't he as
turned five on yer off last week? and ain't he more corn there than 'ud
feed you all round this day, and won't sell it, just because he's
waiting till folks are starved enough, and prices rise? Curse the old
villain!--who'll help to disappoint him 'o that? Come along!"
A confused murmur arose, and a movement in the crowd. I felt that now or
never was the time to speak. If once the spirit of mad aimless riot broke
loose, I had not only no chance of a hearing, but every likelihood of
being implicated in deeds which I abhorred; and I sprung on the stone and
entreated a few minutes' attention, telling them that I was a deputation
from one of the London Chartist committees. This seemed to turn the stream
of their thoughts, and they gaped in stupid wonder at me as I began hardly
less excited than themselves.
I assured them of the sympathy of the London working men, made a comment
on their own speeches--which the reader ought to be able to make for
himself--and told them that I had come to entreat their assistance towards
obtaining such a parliamentary representation as would secure them their
rights. I explained the idea of the Charter, and begged for their help in
carrying it out.
To all which they answered surlily, that they did not know anything about
politics--that what they wanted was bread.
I went on, more vehement than ever, to show them how all their misery
sprung (as I then fancied) from being unrepresented--how the laws were made
by the rich for the poor, and not by all for all--how the taxes bit deep
into the necessaries of the labourer, and only nibbled at the luxuries of
the rich--how the criminal code exclusively attacked the crimes to which
the poor were prone, while it dared not interfere with the subtler
iniquities of the high-born and wealthy--how poor-rates, as I have just
said, were a confession on the part of society that the labourer was not
fully remunerated. I tried to make them see that their interest, as much as
common justice, demanded that they should have a voice in the councils of
the nation, such as would truly proclaim their wants, their rights, their
wrongs; and I have seen no reason since then to unsay my words.
To all which they answered, that their stomachs were empty, and they wanted
bread. "And bread we will have!"
"Go, then," I cried, losing my self-possession between disappointment and
the maddening desire of influence--and, indeed, who could hear their story,
or even look upon their faces, and not feel some indignation stir in him.
unless self-interest had drugged his heart and conscience--"go," I cried,
"and get bread! After all, you have a right to it. No man is bound to
starve. There are rights above all laws, and the right to live is one. Laws
were made for man, not man for laws. If you had made the laws yourselves,
they might bind you even in this extremity; but they were made in spite of
you--against you. They rob you, crash you; even now they deny you bread.
God has made the earth free to all, like the air and sunshine, and you are
shut out from off it. The earth is yours, for you till it. Without you it
would be a desert. Go and demand your share of that corn, the fruit of your
own industry. What matter, if your tyrants imprison, murder you?--they can
but kill your bodies at once, instead of killing them piecemeal, as they do
now; and your blood will cry against them from the ground:--Ay, Woe!"--I
went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for,
however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a God's truth in
them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene
self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it--"Woe unto those that grind the
faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to
field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the
poor man! The wages of their reapers, which they have held back by fraud,
cry out against them; and their cry has entered into the ears of the God of
heaven--"
But I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for "Bread!
Bread!" My hearers had taken me at my word. I had raised the spirit; could
I command him, now he was abroad?
"Go to Jennings's farm!"
"No! he ain't no corn, he sold un' all last week."
"There's plenty at the Hall farm! Rouse out the old steward!"
And, amid yells and execrations, the whole mass poured down the hill,
sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their threats.
I tried again and again to stop and harangue them. I shouted myself hoarse
about the duty of honesty; warned them against pillage and violence;
entreated them to take nothing but the corn which they actually needed;
but my voice was drowned in the uproar. Still I felt myself in a measure
responsible for their conduct; I had helped to excite them, and dare not,
in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the
worst; following, as a flag of distress, a mouldy crust, brandished on the
point of a pitchfork.
Bursting through the rotting and half-fallen palings, we entered a wide,
rushy, neglected park, and along an old gravel road, now green with grass,
we opened on a sheet of frozen water, and, on the opposite bank, the huge
square corpse of a hall, the close-shuttered windows of which gave it a
dead and ghastly look, except where here and there a single one showed, as
through a black empty eye-socket, the dark unfurnished rooms within. On the
right, beneath us, lay, amid tall elms, a large mass of farm-buildings,
into the yard of which the whole mob rushed tumultuously--just in time to
see an old man on horseback dart out and gallop hatless up the park, amid
the yells of the mob.
"The old rascal's gone! and he'll call up the yeomanry. We must be quick,
boys!" shouted one, and the first signs of plunder showed themselves in an
indiscriminate chase after various screaming geese and turkeys; while a
few of the more steady went up to the house-door, and knocking, demanded
sternly the granary keys.
A fat virago planted herself in the doorway, and commenced railing at them,
with the cowardly courage which the fancied immunity of their sex gives
to coarse women; but she was hastily shoved aside, and took shelter in an
upper room, where she stood screaming and cursing at the window.
The invaders returned, cramming their mouths with bread, and chopping
asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the
contents scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches. It
was a sad sight. Here was a poor shivering woman, hiding scraps of food
under her cloak, and hurrying out of the yard to the children she had
left at home. There was a tall man, leaning against the palings, gnawing
ravenously at the same loaf as a little boy, who had scrambled up behind
him. Then a huge blackguard came whistling up to me, with a can of ale.
"Drink, my beauty! you're dry with hollering by now!"
"The ale is neither yours nor mine; I won't touch it."
"Darn your buttons! You said the wheat was ourn, acause we growed it--and
thereby so's the beer--for we growed the barley too."
And so thought the rest; for the yard was getting full of drunkards, a
woman or two among them, reeling knee-deep in the loose straw among the
pigs.
"Thresh out they ricks!" roared another.
"Get out the threshing-machine!"
"You harness the horses!"
"No! there bain't no time. Yeomanry'll be here. You mun leave the ricks."
"Darned if we do. Old Woods shan't get naught by they."
"Fire 'em, then, and go on to Slater's farm!"
"As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb," hiccuped Blinkey, as he rushed
through the yard with a lighted brand. I tried to stop him, but fell on my
face in the deep straw, and got round the barns to the rick-yard just in
time to here a crackle--there was no mistaking it; the windward stack was
in a blaze of fire.
I stood awe-struck--I cannot tell how long--watching how the live
flame-snakes crept and hissed, and leapt and roared, and rushed in long
horizontal jets from stack to stack before the howling wind, and fastened
their fiery talons on the barn-eaves, and swept over the peaked roofs, and
hurled themselves in fiery flakes into the yard beyond--the food of man,
the labour of years, devoured in aimless ruin!--Was it my doing? Was it
not?
At last I recollected myself, and ran round again into the straw-yard,
where the fire was now falling fast. The only thing which saved the house
was the weltering mass of bullocks, pigs, and human beings drunk and sober,
which, trampled out unwittingly the flames as fast as they caught.
The fire had seized the roofs of the cart-stables, when a great lubberly
boy blubbered out:--
"Git my horses out! git my horses out o' the fire! I be so fond o' mun!"
"Well, they ain't done no harm, poor beasts!" And a dozen men ran in to
save them; but the poor wretches, screaming with terror, refused to stir. I
never knew what became of them-but their shrieks still haunt my dreams....
The yard now became a pandemonium. The more ruffianly part of the mob--and
alas! there were but too many of them--hurled the furniture out of the
windows, or ran off with anything that they could carry. In vain I
expostulated, threatened; I was answered by laughter, curses, frantic
dances, and brandished plunder. Then I first found out how large a portion
of rascality shelters itself under the wing of every crowd; and at the
moment, I almost excused the rich for overlooking the real sufferers, in
indignation at the rascals. But even the really starving majority, whose
faces proclaimed the grim fact of their misery, seemed gone mad for the
moment. The old crust of sullen, dogged patience had broken up, and their
whole souls had exploded into reckless fury and brutal revenge--and yet
there was no hint of violence against the red fat woman, who, surrounded
with her blubbering children, stood screaming and cursing at the
first-floor window, getting redder and fatter at every scream. The worst
personality she heard was a roar of laughter, in which, such is poor
humanity, I could not but join, as her little starved drab of a
maid-of-all-work ran out of the door, with a bundle of stolen finery under
her arm, and high above the roaring of the flames, and the shouts of the
rioters, rose her mistress's yell.
"O Betsy! Betsy! you little awdacious unremorseful hussy!--a running away
with my best bonnet and shawl!"
The laughter soon, however, subsided, when a man rushed breathless into the
yard, shouting, "The yeomanry!"
At that sound; to my astonishment, a general panic ensued. The miserable
wretches never stopped to enquire how many, or how far off, they were--but
scrambled to every outlet of the yard, trampling each other down in their
hurry. I leaped up on the wall, and saw, galloping down the park, a mighty
armament of some fifteen men, with a tall officer at their head, mounted on
a splendid horse.
"There they be! there they be! all the varmers, and young Squire Clayton
wi' mun, on his grey hunter! O Lord! O Lord! and all their swords drawn!"
I thought of the old story in Herodotus--how the Scythian masters returned
from war to the rebel slaves who had taken possession of their lands and
wives, and brought them down on their knees with terror, at the mere sight
of the old dreaded dog-whips.
I did not care to run. I was utterly disgusted, disappointed with
myself--the people. I longed, for the moment, to die and leave it all; and
left almost alone, sat down on a stone, buried my head between my hands,
and tried vainly to shut out from my ears the roaring of the fire.
At that moment "Blinkey" staggered out past me and against me, a
writing-desk in his hands, shouting, in his drunken glory, "I've vound ut
at last! I've got the old fellow's money! Hush! What a vule I be, hollering
like that!"--And he was going to sneak off, with a face of drunken cunning,
when I sprung up and seized him by the throat.
"Rascal! robber! lay that down! Have you not done mischief enough already?"
"I wain't have no sharing. What? Do you want un yourself, eh? Then we'll
see who's the stronger!"
And in an instant he shook me from him, and dealt me a blow with the corner
of the desk, that laid me on the ground....
I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses, and the gleam and jingle
of their arms, as they galloped into the yard. I caught a glimpse of the
tall young officer, as his great grey horse swept through the air, over
the high yard-pales--a feat to me utterly astonishing. Half a dozen long
strides--the wretched ruffian, staggering across the field with his booty,
was caught up.--The clear blade gleamed in the air--and then a fearful
yell--and after that I recollect nothing.
* * * * *
Slowly I recovered my consciousness. I was lying on a truckle-bed--stone
walls and a grated window! A man stood over me with a large bunch of
keys in his hand. He had been wrapping my head with wet towels. I knew,
instinctively, where I was.
"Well, young man," said he, in a not unkindly tone--"and a nice job you've
made of it! Do you know where you are?".
"Yes," answered I, quietly; "in D * * * * gaol."
"Exactly so!"