EBENEZER ELLIOTT
(1781 - 1849)
A Corn Law Speech & Two Letters
(beginning with the letters)
The other document is the reply of the London Working Men's Association, to the Irish Precursor's Society. If the merit of the parties is to be tested by the literary ability, knowledge, and temperate reasoning of their respective advocates, your readers will find no difficulty in judging between Lovett, the cabinetmaker, and the ignorant Irish bully, who would fain to be a Cabinet maker. I hope you will warn the bungling scoundrel (Lovett is an honest man, and no bungler) that his attempt to glue Whiggism and Toryism together, has already spoiled his plane. Warn him, too, I pray you - and bid him warn his half-faced, double-faced masters - to be cautious how they "give to their successors bloody instructions, that will return to plague the givers." Tell him also, that although we, the United Radicals of Great Britain, will "plague" neither of the factions, we have the will, and - without fighting, and in spite of his fighting men - the power to bring both of them to justice.
- I am, Sirs, your's very truly,
EBENEZER
ELLIOTT
Sheffield, 20th December, 1838.
This is a fascinating letter by the Poet of the
Poor. The least surprising thing is that The Iris newspaper was published on
Christmas Day!
The first document Elliott alluded to is one by Colonel Thomas Perronet Thompson. The Colonel was a hugely influential figure in Elliott's life see the chapter "Thos. Perronet Thompson & the Corn Law Rhymer" in Keith Morris's book "People, Poems and Politics of Ebenezer Elliott, Corn Law Rhymer," 2005. The Corn Law Rhymer even wrote one or two verses about Thompson. Both men were leading figures in the Chartist Movement. Not only were they speakers at the great Chartist Meeting in Westminster Sept 1838, they were both invited to the Anti-Corn Law Association Dinner at Manchester on Jan 23rd 1838 and their correspondence shows they had discussed Thompson standing for parliament as MP for Sheffield.
The second document mentioned by Elliott refers to "the ignorant Irish bully" and "the bungling scoundrel." Elliott does not mince his words, here! Obviously he cant stand the man! This refers to Feargus O'Connor, the fiery Chartist agitator, who was famous as a bully. Over 6ft tall & with a heavy build, Feargus was known to use his fists on people who heckled him at meetings. O'Connor advocated the use of physical force by the Chartists & became the undisputed leader of this faction. Elliott was very much opposed to him & hated the idea of violence. In fact, Elliott resigned from the Sheffield Working Men's association in 1839 when they too were prepared to use force to gain their aims. William Lovett (approved of by Elliott in the letter above) was secretary of the London Working Men's Association & was one of the men who drafted the People's Charter. It is interesting, too, that Elliott thought that he and similar minded people had the power to sort out the physical force advocates. Never before have we seen Elliott & supporters referred to as "the United Radicals of Great Britain." A smudge of hyperbole maybe. Clearly public opinion was a great thing even in Elliott's time too; did not the bard say after the Chartist Westminster Meeting of 1838:"that fellow Feargus O'Connor will ruin that cause. The threat of Physical force will never do: we want the power of public opinion. In the long run, it must prevail."Sheffield, 17th March,
1836
In reply to your favour of yesterday, requesting me to attend a general meeting of merchants and manufacturers, at the Cutler's Hall, on Friday next, "in order to devise some efficient means of counteracting the injurious tendency of Trades' Unions, &c.," I beg to say, that you can only effect your object by putting down the abominable apology for such unions, the conspiracy of landed monopolists. First, destroy the Bread-Taxry; and then, if you like, procure a law to make all such conspiracies felony; but surely you would not, if you could, transport a filesmith for conspiring to raise his wages, and reward the Squire or Lord who conspires to raise his rents, with a seat in the House of Commons, or that other House, where magnificent irresponsibles procure magnificent proxies, to defeat railroads, without which palaced paupers cannot continue to be paid.
Whether the file-strike succeed or not, if you do not put down the Bread-Taxry, it will put you down. Not satisfied with their monopoly, the plunderers, it is said, are about to demand a bounty of twenty or thirty shillings a quarter upon exported corn. Why notice such trifling matters as file-strikes, if the land-strike is to perpetrate an additional robbery upon us, of twenty or thirty shillings a quarter, upon fifty million of quarters yearly? I will gladly meet you in the Cutler's Hall, to devise legal means of applying to the source of twenty years of villainy, what I begin to fear, are the only effectual remedies, namely, hemp and time; hemp, because great folks cannot be hanged without a cord; and time, because it is an ingredient in the execution of criminals. Once make it legal, (that is to say, procure an Act of Parliament,) to hang by the neck until they are dead, all the vile exemplars of those who conspire to convert the national loss into individual gain, and you will effectively and for ever cure "agricultural distress" and "the evil tendencies of trades' unions." The masters and men might then amicably make out their account of expenses, and fairly charge the cost of the file strike to the delinquent estate.I am, Sirs, your most obedient servant,
EBENEZER ELLIOTT
Elliott's Anti-Corn Law Speech
December 1839
The occasion of this speech was a piece of opportunism by the Corn Law Rhymer. Sydney Smith of Edinburgh was to give a lecture on the Corn Laws at Sheffield's City Hall. Smith was a lecturer employed by the Anti-Corn Law League who travelled the country promoting repeal. Once the Master Cutler had appeared, Elliott started the meeting by asking to say a few words. Naturally, the bard had an awful lot to say - it was his pet subject after all! He was soon in fine stride as reported below:-
Fellow Townsmen! With your leave, before I
move that the Master Cutler take the chair, I will make a few observations.
Thousands of persons, at once, may hear what, perhaps, a dozen of them would not
take the trouble to read. Great, then, is the lecturing power.
I have written against the Corn Laws for more than thirty years, to no purpose. After seven year's scribble, I tried to establish an Anti-Corn-Law Association, (the first, I believe,) and I found only eleven persons willing to join me. For that Association, I wrote the "Corn Law Rhymes," which might as well have remained unwritten; for the victims cannot read them, and the victimizers dare not.
But here is a gentleman who will talk with you, face to face, on the all-important subject of wages, or no wages, - free trade, or none at all, free bread or an empty pantry. This is no party question. Whigs, Tories, Radicals, Chartists! consider it well, or there will soon be but one party in England - that of the survivors, after millions of unfortunate human beings shall have died of want. In France, before the revolution, only two out of eleven of her population depended on trade for subsistence; and, before the horrors of that revolution could cease, two out of every eleven perished, being either starved off or killed off; but in England, five out of eight depend on trade; and if the landowners destroy our trade, five out of eight must perish, before the remainder can fall back on agriculture able to maintain them. Am I not right, then, in saying that this is no party question? It concerns all men, and, most of all, landed men. If the latter persevere in their present course, they will be ruined irretrievably: you, or some of you, may rise again after the fall; but the landowners, never. And so it should be: he who breaks down the tree, to get at the fruit, ought to find it sour.
But why should you perish, for the supposed benefit of the landowners? What are their pretensions? In the course of centuries, they have not earned sixpence. They possess nothing but what their rapacity has stolen, or what society, in its progress, has bestowed on their idleness. God made the land, and the farmers improved it; but the landowners are the same sort of persons as those who, centuries ago, lived in the woods, grubbing pignuts with their fingers, because they could not invent a spade. He who made the first spade was, perhaps, the first manufacturer; and, but for such men, the Marquis of Chandos, or whatever else be his much-mortgaged name, would now be grubbing pignuts with his fingers; unless he constituted himself a forest law, that he might live by taking the pignuts of his neighbours, just as he takes your profits, Manufacturers! and your wages, workmen! by his Corn Laws.
This, indeed, is the crowning evil of those laws - that, by preventing profits, they destroy capital, or drive it into foreign investments; and I need not again tell you, that wages cannot continue to be paid out of profits, or the capital will come to an end.
But there is another result of those laws, tremendous in its import. They are daily, hourly, momently, widening the breach, between employers and the employed, by rendering it impossible for masters to get fair profits without lowering wages, and for workmen to obtain living wages without the protection of trades' unions. What is to come of this? Already, the authors of the Corn Laws, in their Carlton Club, sham-Radical, newspapers - in the pages of the Northern Star, whether it is a Carlton Club newspaper or not - are preaching a crusade against commercial capital, - as if their mortgages would not foreclose soon enough!
Nor is this all. The streets of some of our towns are already running red with British blood - the blood, be it remembered, of the brethren of the unconquerable men who vanished Napoleon at Waterloo. In what catastrophe of horrors, I ask, is this unnatural state of things to terminate? I know not, but I predict, for the twentieth time that, if we are to experience the worst evils of civil war, - if our country is to be revolutionized and anarchised - the Corn Laws will be found at the root of that revolution and that anarchy.
In conclusion, and for the instruction of such as you as may honestly think that free trade agitation ought to be postponed to the consideration of another great subject, I will state one important fact. In the outset of their first revolution, the French people obtained universal suffrage, but they obtained it too late, when it could be of no more immediate use to them than free trade will be to you, if you wait until you have neither scissors, nor knives, nor chisels, nor saws, nor files, nor anything else, to give in exchange for foreign food. They obtained it after long misrule had overweighted the springs of production; and they then found that it could not prevent the horrors of famine. No, for it could not cause an ear of wheat to grow in less than twelve months; it could not fill the empty shops of Paris with coffee, when the shopkeepers had nothing to buy coffee with; neither could it at once restore the lost credit which might have furnished the shopkeepers with the means, and least of all could it, all at once, reproduce the lost and scattered capital, without which there could be no wages-fund. And so, Saturday came without wages, - revolution followed, -anarchy succeeded revolution, and two out of every eleven of the French people (men, women, children, and infants at the breast) died of famine or by the sword. But a nation of beggars became a nation of freeholders, and the grand seigniors became common beggars - just as ours seem resolved to do; for as yet there is no sign that "high-minded Buckingham grows circumspect."
But you come not to hear me quote Shakespeare; but you
came to hear a man speak in whose presence I am not worthy to speak. Hear him, then, and be instructed; and may the merciful blessing of God go with the instruction, while there is time, if there is time. I move that the Master Cutler take the chair. (Cheers.)
When the Master Cutler took the chair, there was uproar from a group of about twenty agitators (which shocked Elliott). Syd Smith was then introduced & gave a long lecture on repealing the Corn Laws.
Elliott's speech was reported in the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent newspaper for December 7th 1839. The speech is interesting as they always are with the Corn Law Rhymer. He knew what to give his listeners, entertaining them while forcibly ramming home the ideas he so strongly held. Odd, then, that the speech starts with a negative thought - all his outpourings have been wasted since not many will have wanted or been able to read them! Elliott does reveal a significant fact though among this soliloquy. When he set up the Sheffield Mechanics' Anti-Bread-Tax Society there were only eleven other members. On several occasions, the poet boasted that the Sheffield Mechanics' Anti-Bread-Tax Society was the first society in the whole country set up to fight the Corn Laws, but nowhere did he volunteer that the membership was so very limited.
Much of Elliott's speech is focused on the dire difficulties facing the nation through the Corn Laws - loss of profits, loss of wages & the loss of life if revolution follows. He certainly paints a grim picture supported by parallels from the French Revolution.
One remark by Elliott in his speech is worth an explanation. He refers to "sham-Radical" newspapers and then mentions the "Northern Star ... whether it is a Carlton Club newspaper or not." In 1839, Elliott resigned from the Chartists over their decision to advocate using force and their decision to drop repeal of the Corn Laws. The editor of the Northern Star was Feargus O'Connor who Elliott vilified in the first letter quoted at the start of this article. This explains Elliott sneering at the newspaper.
The two letters by Elliott & the speech on the Corn Laws were discovered by the Sheffield researcher, Diane Gascoyne. Many thanks to Diane for rescuing the thoughts Of Ebenezer & helping to make them available to scholars & enthusiasts all over the world.
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