EBENEZER ELLIOTT
(1781 - 1849)

     The Sheffield Independent for Oct 13th 1832 made an announcement that 160 citizens had approached Thomas Dunn, Master Cutler, to arrange a  public meeting about establishing a Mechanics'Institute for Sheffield:-

     Sir,  We, the undersigned, being deeply impressed with the necessity of providing the Mechanics and others of this town and neighbourhood with the means of acquiring solid  and useful instruction in the various branches of art and science, more particularly in such as are connected with the Staple Manufacturers of the town, respectfully request that you will convene a public meeting for the purpose of establishing an Institute, which shall have for its object the conveying of information on all Scientific and Literary subjects.

    In compliance with the above Requisition, I hereby call a Public Meeting of the Gentry, Merchants, and other inhabitants of the town to be held at the Town Hall, on Wednesday next, October 17^th, 1832, at Half-past Six o’Clock in the Evening.

  Thomas Dunn, Master Cutler.

  Sheffield, October 11^th 1832.

At the public meeting, the Master Cutler took the chair.  11 resolutions were approved. They included :-

                *  the approval for setting up an Institute

                *  the need of a Building Fund to finance a building and the need to invite donations

                *  the appointment of a President, a Treasurer and Secretaries

                *  a committee to be appointed to draw up rules and regulations

                *  the committee was to be comprised of 35 people. These included Robert Leader, Isaac Ironside and Thomas Asline Ward. Elliott was not a committee member at this stage - he was too busy with his "Corn Law Rhymes."

                *  the committee were empowered to provide suitable premises for the Institute

At the AGM of the Mechanics' Institute in 1835, the Corn Law Rhymer proposed the establishment of a News Room (ie a newspaper room). The following article gives a report of his address to the meeting ending with his proposal. He was so long-winded that Thomas Asline Ward (the chair in the absence of James Montgomery) should surely have intervened!  It is a fact that Elliott was not a good committee man.  As always though, he was robust, wide-ranging & uncompromising in what he had to say.  Also present were Charles Morton (Sec), Rev Blackburne, Mr J. Ironside, Mr Turton, Mr Padley, Rev H.G. Rhodes, Mr Mitchell, Mr Gainsford, Mr Marshall, John Parker (MP) & Dr G.C. Holland.

The AGM commenced with a discussion of attendances, expenditure, income, admission fees & payment of lecturers. There was some questions about the success of the institute, until John Parker told the committee it was doing an important job, and the diffusion of knowledge was of great benefit.  The MP's remarks cheered up the committee.  Elliott then took over!

    Mr. President, I believe it is true that all the Mechanics' Institutions which commenced by establishing news-rooms and libraries, have succeeded; while some of those which did not establish news-rooms and libraries are failing, struggling with difficulties, and not unlikely to give up the ghost. 

    But I have other reasons, young men, for wishing you to establish a news-room.  Newspaper reading would lead you to a knowledge of the principles on which depends the prosperity of commercial states.  Unless that knowledge be speedily and widely diffused, a catastrophe of anarchy and ruin awaits this country; without that knowledge, you cannot defend from spoliation the most sacred of all property - I mean that property which every man has in the labour of his own hands.  Why are the legislating or landed class permitted to put into their pockets, or otherwise destroy, ninepence out of every shilling of your wages?  To come at once to the wrong, through the proof of it - beef being at least sixpence a pound at Sheffield, and three-halfpence at Hamburgh, why are you not permitted to bring beef from Hamburgh in exchange for your goods, and sell it here at three-halfpence a pound, with a profit on your goods; and, at the same time, raising wages by increasing the demand for labour?  You are not permitted to do this great good, because the legislating or landed class not only keep you in ignorance by taxes on knowledge, and other means; but are themselves some of the most ignorant of men, knowing absolutely nothing, but how to get at the fruit, by cutting down the tree. 

    Now, it is because I don't want to see the tree cut down, that I implore you to establish a news-room.  Your enemies, the legislating or landed class,  basing on folly their edifice of fraud, dare not examine the foundation; but that is no reason why you should not examine it - no reason why you should suffer them to remain under the gilded and tottering roof, till it fall and crush both them and you; for you are under it as well as they.  If instruction reach them, it must come from below.  They imagine that they have interests opposed to yours; and when a man lives on others, it is natural for him to conclude that he has a right to eat his neighbours.  But you must teach your betters that there are better trades than waste and robbery.  If they will not learn, turn them out of the school - send them back to their grandmothers, to learn the A B C of common sense and common honesty. 

    Look at their doings - look even at the Whigs doings of this legislating class - at the late doings of your own reformed Parliament - no, not your Parliament; non-electors! you have no Parliament - I wish you had.  But look, I say, at the doings of this precious and most costly legislating class.  They have re-enacted the cause of the crisis of 1825 - they have again made bank notes legal tender - again ordered that one establishment shall find gold for the whole empire, and find it in greatest quantity, when contrary to the interest of that establishment to find any at all.  The consequences are inevitable, if the cause continue: bankers, having again the option of paying in gold on bank notes, will rely upon the Bank of England for gold, instead of relying upon themselves - and we shall have another crisis. 

    Oh, but they have released the slaves, they tell you.  Yes, they have wrung twenty millions sterling from the sweat of white slaves here, given the money to the owners of black slaves, and left the slaves in bondage! - when they might have saved the money, and much more, and set the slaves really free, by merely equalizing the duties on East India and West India sugar! 

    What reasons have you to expect better measures in future?  None, unless you learn to teach.  In the very next session, probably, they will propose to valve population down to the starvation-point, by an emigration tax.  When they got their corn-laws, they slipped the collar round your necks; their next intention is to lock the collar.  But will you consent to become breeders of white slaves for exportation, merely that your enemies may tremble a little while longer, in that fatal position which, thank God, they have chosen for themselves?  Surely you will not! - surely you will at length try to acquire that political knowledge, which can alone  emancipate you from the vilest thralldom that ever degraded a long-suffering people; from the hands of robbers, the meanest of the mean, the basest of the base, who take or destroy ninepence out of every shilling of your wages - madmen, who derange your commerce by acts of Parliament, producing gluts of orders, which produce strikes, and trades' unions, and inevitably alternate with ruinous reactions - suicides, who offer a premium, (as I am prepared now to demonstrate in figures,) of two hundred millions stealing per annum for the destruction of your trade!  They are strong only in your ignorance.  Mortgaged for more than they are worth, and otherwise unable to live, (unless they charge you sixpence for three halfpence,) they cannot oppose your enlightened reason; no, not even if they call up to their assistance, as they are doing, the spectres of their past misrule, the glories of their Wellington, the victories which ended in a bread-tax, and a premium for the beggary of the poor animal's own offspring. 

    It is not long since you were threatened with chains, newly forged by Robert Peel, who, had he been a man of any intellectual stature, would have taken his place long ago, at the head of the public opinion of that people, from whose ranks he rose - instead of crawling, like a reptile, a century behind the age, eating periodically, without a blush, not his own words, but his own measures; and by his ostentatious scorn of you, verifying one of the proverbs of an infinitely greater statesman - I mean the immortal Sancho Panza - "that the higher a monkey climbs, the more he shows his backside."  You may laugh, but it is no joke; for if your good friends, the Tories, cannot boast any other champions of note than Wellington, the bread-tax winner, and dunghill-sprung Peel, the scorner of dunghills, how deplorable must your ignorance be, should it really be in the power of such blindworms to keep you in bondage! 

    Acquire political knowledge, then, and your enemies are gone for ever; acquire political knowledge, and never again will you be deluded by the Owens, the Oastlers, the Bulls, the Sadlers, who, to say the best of them, must have been, if they are not, dupes of your enemies.

    I might have condensed into one sentence all that I have said; for I only wish you to set an example to all mechanics, by establishing a news-room, for the diffusion of knowledge and the salvation of the State, while there is time, if there is time.  I will not insult you with trifling or clap-trap arguments, after setting before you the philosophical argument, which is sufficient for your conviction, if I have not failed to make myseld understood; but conclude with requesting you to affirm or deny, that your committee shall be empowered to attach a news-room to this institution, when they see a fitting opportunity.

Ebenezer's motion was seconded by Mr Padley & was then carried.

For more on the Sheffield Mechanics' Institute, please see the book by Keith Morris "People, Poems and Politics of Ebenezer Elliott, Corn Law Rhymer," the chapter called "Elliott & the Sheffield Mechanics."

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