EBENEZER ELLIOTT
(1781 - 1849)
Some 1830s
Pressure Groups in Sheffield & the Irish Coercion Bill
The following discusses a variety of issues which concerned the people of Sheffield during the stirring years leading to the Reform Act of 1832. The article also reveals the mechanics of how the pressure groups were formed. The Sheffield Patriotic Fund is looked at first, followed by a piece on the campaign for Thomas Asline Ward to be elected as MP. Ebenezer Elliott is, as is to be expected, involved in both areas. The main part of the article gives a report on Elliott's rant on the Irish Coercion Bill with his observations, too, on taxation. The poet uses lots of colourful & forceful language in his speech which must surely have greatly entertained his listeners. The speech was made at a Sheffield Political Union rally in Paradise Square in March 1833. After this performance, there is a brief note on the formation of the Sheffield Anti-Corn Law Society. The article concludes with another pressure group: the Sheffield Working Men's Association.
All the items gathered together here were discovered by Diane Gascoyne in her hobby of studying the old newspapers of Sheffield. The editor of the Ebenezer Foundry of Research is grateful to Diane for her research & freely acknowledges that much progress in understanding the life & interests of the Poet of the Poor is through Diane's hard work in extracting articles, letters, comments & poems from the small print of the early newspapers of Sheffield.
Elliott was very much involved in the political life of Sheffield & was often putting his name to requisitions & petitions calling for public action. Informal groups of like-minded men would come together & discuss the burning topics of the day. When feelings were strong and everyone agreed that something needed to happen, a letter signed by prominent townsmen would be sent to the Master Cutler urging him to take action. The Master Cutler was a very important figure in Sheffield, being the head of the Company of Cutlers, an ancient trade guild which protected the interests & controlled the standards of the many Sheffield iron & steel firms engaged in manufacturing cutlery.
An example of this type of political manouvre was a petition signed by 200 eminent men, including Elliott, to the Master Cutler. A report in the Shefffield Mercury May 5th 1832 reads: "Sir, We, the undersigned, request that you will convene an early Meeting of the Inhabitants of the Town and Neighbourhood of Sheffield, to consider the propriety of addressing his Majesty with a Re-assurance of our Loyalty and Attachment, and praying him to create (if necessary) a sufficient number of Peers to ensure the Passing of the Reform Bill in all its Efficiency: and also to petition the House of Lords to pass the Bill without any unnecessary Delay, and without making any Alteration to the ten pond Qualification Clause, or in any other important Part." The newspaper report concluded with the following announcement: "In compliance with the above request, I do hereby convene A PUBLIC MEETING of the aforesaid Inhabitants, at the Town Hall, in Sheffield, ON MONDAY NEXT, at twelve o'clock at noon, precisely. JOHN BLAKE, Master Cutler."
Elliott's Speech on the Irish Coercion Bill
This speech was reported in the Sheffield Independent on March 16th 1833. Under the heading Public Meeting. - The Irish Bill and Taxation, there is a long report on the speech made at a meeting by the Poet of the Poor; this meeting being part of the political process which has been mentioned earlier in this article. The report is as follows:-On Monday last, a Meeting pursuant to a notice published by a number of householders and others took place in Paradise-square, to consider the propriety of petitioning the Parliament to abandon the proposed Bill for the coercion of Ireland, and to relieve the people from the pressure of assessed taxes. Soon after one o'clock, a number of persons having collected together in Paradise-square, Mr. Alcock was called to the chair, and the business of the meeting commenced.
Mr.Ebenezer Elliott, author of "Corn Law Rhymes," after proposing the first resolution, addressed the meeting to the following effect. He said - Well, fellow townsmen, what has the Reform Bill done for you? It has produced a measure, not only worse than the worst of Castlereagh's measures, but worse than all the worst of the Tories! If Ministers are honest, why did they not embody in their Bill the remedial clauses? If Parliament are honest, why do they not embody those clauses in the Bill, and send it back amended to the Lords? Let us hope they will yet do so.
But before I proceed, allow me to ask what has become of the fine gentlemen who used to address you? Where is Bailey, your philosopher? And where is Luke, your gospel? And where is your ninety-nine-faced Master Cutler? They are all gone, like the reputation of the infatuated, suicidal Whigs. Oh! that we could call up from the grave Thomas Rawson! He would not have deserted us in our hour of need; and he would have done justice to the occasion which has called us together.
I thank the authors of the Bill, at least, for the opportunity they have afforded me of proclaiming some truths, from John o'Groats to Cornwall. Your landed friends - foreseeing the struggle which is at hand between land and trade, and that the people cannot, if they would, submit much longer to wholesale robbery - have determined to prepare for battle. Therefore they have hurried through the Lords their brutal and bloody Bill - a Bill not intended to pacify Ireland, but to coerce you, establish military despotism in England, and maintain their bread-tax at the point of the sword; that bread-tax which is destined to destroy our oppressors, reduce even their mortgages to beggary, and rid us of the landed nuisance for ever.
Now, the largest machine maker in England has established a powerloom manufactory in France, and his French manufactory is already larger than his English one. When these Tory-Whigs shall have succeeded, by their Corn Laws and other similar rascalities, in annihilating the trade of England, have they provided any means for feeding the millions who will be thrown out of employment? Why the starving people will eat them raw and alive, and pick their bones for less than half a breakfast. Who were they that overthrew the despotism of Charles the Tenth in France? They were the unemployed workmen of Paris, thrown out of work by the French restrictive system, just as the corn laws will throw you out of employment. Full nearly it concerns these Tory Whigs, not to turn into the streets the multitudinous workmen of England, without employment, and without wages. And what is the condition of these Tory-Whigs themselves - these palaced paupers, who do not go to the workhouse for their pay, these bread-taxing thieves, who are not hanged by their neck until they are dead as worthier thieves are? What is their condition? I will tell you, and then you will not need to wonder at your own. I can prove from official documents, that during three months of the past year, namely, April, May, and June, their duties on corn of all sorts averaged more than 20s. a quarter, which is equivalent to a tax of more than fifty millions sterling per annum on British Industry, and consequently equal to a premium of the same amount paid to our rivals out of your profits and wages, for the annihilation of our own all-sustaining trade; and which tax and premium it is the ultimate object of the brutal Bill to maintain. If there were anything like public spirit in Parliament, you would see the heads of the authors of the measure roll from the scaffold. Yet the perpetrators of these insane villainies are not satisfied, they ask for more power to do mischief. And why? because the landed interest, as an estate, is insolvent. It must be so, if it requires a tax of fifty millions a year to support it. Then, you ought to expect from the landlords all the desperate expedients to which bankrupts must have recourse. The Bill, the brutal Bill, is one of those expedients, and the first of a series. How would you like to see such folks in your bedchamber at midnight authorized to ravish your wives and daughters before your eyes, and stamp you into their dungeons, or bury you alive in their prison ships? This, and worse awaits you if you be not true to yourselves. Have you yet to learn what Tory Whigs are? Has not a Member of Parliament, not the sheep-stealer, but doubtless representing his own bread-tax in that honourable house declared in his place, that they who lately slaughtered your townsmen saved Sheffield? God save Sheffield from such saviours! And may all who participate in their sentiments be the very first to suffer under the brutal and bloody Bill! and may they meet with all the commiseration they have expressed for others! Will you support such men and such measures? YES, say the fag-end of the great vulgar. But will you? Are you not land-robbed, land-starved, and land-butchered with impunity. And must your wives and daughters be ravaged, too, and your streets run red, not with the blood of tens, but of tens of thousands? By your slaughtered townsmen - whose mute approach God hears from the silent grave - I implore you to avert from this country, and from Ireland, the hideous Bill, and its consequences - first a military despotism to support a monopoly - and then a revolution, whose horrors, casting those of the first French Revolution utterly into shade, will have no example in the history of human calamity. [We give a full report of this speech because it appears to have been already published by authority, which is admitted by the speaker himself. - Editor of the Sheffield Independent) Mr. Charles Alcock, Mr. Abraham and Mr. William Bradshaw, and some other persons afterwards addressed the meeting, and in no very measured terms spoke of the recent acts of the government. It was afterwards agreed that a petition, which was read to the meeting, should be adopted, and signed by the chairman, calling on the House of Commons to reject the Irish Bill, and that a petition, also read, should be adopted and remain in the town a certain time for signatures, praying for relief from taxation. It was also proposed and carried that Mr. Buckingham be requested to present the petitions, and that Mr. Wm. Cobbett, the Member for Oldham, should be requested to give his support to the last named petition. The Sheffield Anti-Corn Law SocietyIreland wants bread, and they send her bayonets. England wants free-trade, and they are preparing bullets for us. Rather than resign a monopoly they will overthrow an empire. This is the true meaning of the brutal and bloody Bill. If they cannot pass it, they say, they will resign! They have resigned already. The moment they proposed the Bill they resigned the support of the people, and they never had any other. If the Bill pass, the Tories will be in office again in three months - the remedial measures will, of course, be defeated - mockery will be added to wrong - the Parliament will become the basest that ever sate - and the end of all will be, a revolution unparalleled in horror. That proud, ice-hearted Tory, whose emblem, the caged eagle, flaps his wings over Wharncliffe, may curl his fierce lip, and turn up his hooked nose in disdain; but well will it be for him, and well for me, and well for most of you, if the brutal and bloody Bill do not soon let loose too many caged eagles. If it pass, the oldest person here may live to see the day, when not one Whig or Tory will be found in England. For under what appalling circumstances do these besotted and suicidal Tory-Whigs declare war against the liberties of mankind, and prepare to shake a fading empire to its foundations? Look at your trade, groaning beneath unsupportable burdens. - Look even at the cotton trade, the most flourishing of all, with its new power loom machinery - and its factory children, working 18 hours for threepence with bread at 2s. 8d. per stone. Could this be, if the parents were not starving? It follows, then, that the power loom has not improved wages; then it follows that it has not improved profits; for wages come out of profits, and cannot long continue to be paid out of capital. If, then, our cotton trade itself is on the tremble whether or not it shall leave the country, what will be our condition when foreigners possess the power loom?
The Poet of the Poor was adamant that the Corn Law had to go, and so it is not surprising to see him prominent in raising awareness of the iniquities of the Bread Tax. He had set up the Sheffield Mechanics' Anti-Bread Tax Society in 1830. Later he helped establish the Sheffield Anti-Corn Law Society, as indicated by the following extract from the Sheffield Independent for January 11th 1834.
On Wednesday last, the members of this society, which we have before announced as being in the course of formation, held their first meeting. Mr. Wm. Ibbotson was appointed treasurer, and a committee and secretaries were chosen. The following are among the fundamental rules of the society:-Among the gentlemen who have already testified their approval of the object of the society, by becoming members, are Messrs. S. Bailey, John Sorby, Wm. Vickers, N. Greaves, G.P. Naylor, H.S. Walker, C. Congreve, and others. Operations have been commenced by procuring a number of copies of the magazine of the London Anti-Corn Law Society, No. 1 for distribution. This is an excellent publication, and we heartily recommend it to the attention of our readers. The names of such as are deirous of joining the socir=ty, or of aiding it by donations, will be received by the treasurer, by Mr. Elliott, or at the office of this paper. Sheffield Working Men's Association The Sheffield Iris was a Sheffield newspaper which was owned until 1825 by James Montgomery, the wealthy poet & hymn writer; in the issue for May 7th 1839 appears a scathing letter from Elliott terminating his membership of the above society. The Chartists were increasingly turning their thoughts to violence and by dropping the fight against the Corn Laws, he claimed they were giving support to those who championned the hated Corn Laws. Naturally, any contact with the foe was inconceivable for the Poet of the Poor (it should be noted here that the poet was a leader of The Chartist Movement in its earliest days but resigned in 1839). Elliott's letter begins thus:- To The Secretaries of the Sheffield Working Men's Association SIRS, - Cannot your enemies starve you fast enough? If they can, why do they seek to get you butchered like sheep? The Convention, by defending monopoly, and advising physical force, are fighting the battle of the aristocracy, under the people's colours; a battle ultimately for self-destruction, and which those magnificent wretches seem well able to fight for themselves without your assistance. I learn from the newspapers of Saturday last, that your representatives in the Convention, (with the concurrence of your own man) are about to send deputations into the country, to advocate the starvation laws! Of those laws you will very soon have quite enough - and so, thank God, will their authors. If you like such laws, what use do you intend to make of the franchise, when obtained? I have no wish to force my opinions upon you. No. Be Corn-lawed to your heart's content, for we shall not have long to wait, but, in the meantime, it must not be supposed that I am one of a body of men who are willing to be represented by persons capable of supporting such barbarous legislation. If, then, my name is on your list of members, please erase it, and oblige, your fellow townsman,"We the undersigned, being of opinion that a society ought to be formed forthwith in Sheffield, having for its principal object the extension of knowledge on the subject of the present Corn Laws, with a view to their ultimate repeal, by the easiest and safest means, have resolved as follows:- That we now constitute ourselves a society, to be called the Sheffield Anti-Corn Law Society:- That every member of the society, on subscribing his name, shall pay to the treasurer one pound, or more if he thinks proper:- That donations shall be accepted from persons not willing to become members of the society."
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