Ebenezer Elliott’s Speech at the Chartist Meeting

 New Palace Yard, Westminster, London, Sept 17^th 1838

                    It has been known for a long time that Elliott attended this famous political meeting as the delegate for Sheffield. What has now been discovered is that he was on the platform in Westminster & gave a long speech. Clearly, this puts the Corn Law Rhymer in a central position in the early Chartist movement. The fact that Elliott was even asked to appear at the London meeting indicated his national status in 1838, which was a long time after he had won fame with his “Corn Law Rhymes” of 1831. Some research is now called for on how the Rhymer became involved with the Chartist movement. In 1836, the poet had helped set up an anti-corn law society in London – perhaps he had made significant contacts at this time. Although his role as a Chartist was short lived (he left the movement in 1839), Elliott’s importance in the early days of the movement should now be re-assessed. As one of the leading lights of the early Chartists, it is worth examining Elliott’s Westminster speech which is reported below.               

                    The speech gives insights into Elliott’s character & interests. He is uncompromising & assertive, his concern for business is clearly evident and his belief in the need for franchise is insistent. Yet he argues against the use of violence. His mention of the Walkers of Rotherham is of local interest, but he clearly has an international view of trade & politics with his references to Holland, France, Canada & America. This major speech would have taken hours of the poet’s time to prepare & it is a fascinating record of the power of Ebenezer’s oratory.

                  A few weeks after the meeting, Elliott made an interesting comment on O’Connor who was the main speaker at the meeting: “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.” The threat of violence which the Chartists adopted was the reason Elliott finished with the movement in 1839. Elliott was a principled man & he stuck to his principles!

                    The Times leader of September 18^th 1838 mentioned that the meeting’s organisers had expected an attendance of 10,000 but only half actually came. The meeting was peaceful & ended quietly, the Times commented, but the newspaper took exception to Elliott’s speech: “We are sorry that no symptoms of mitigation were observable in the tone of that individual, who, of all the speakers, might best have afforded to rely upon his own legitimate strength, apart from violent declamation – we mean Mr Elliott, the eloquent author of the Corn Law Rhymes. A poet is entitled to use burning words, but they should burn with fire; not with vitriolic acid.”

                    The newspaper would be sympathetic to the views of the establishment & much less so to the Chartist movement. This editorial position would influence the paper’s reporting of the Corn Law Rhymer’s speech.

 Elliott’s speech as reported in the Times

                    Mr E. Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer, then presented himself, and was warmly received. He asked how he, a poor half-brained poet, should venture to speak in the talented presence he at that moment stood in. He saw around him great men – Thompson, who had done more for the freedom of trade, that was for freedom itself, than any other man; Leader, a tried and true friend to the people; Muntz, another; Lovett and Douglas, two of their own talented servants, with many more equally talented, whose names he was not acquainted with. Their brave O’Connor, too, whose eloquence reminded him of Homer’s “Ulysses” –

                              “For when the deep and mellow bass breaks forth from his breast,

                              The breath of all is hushed, all listen, all are still.”

(Hear, hear)

                    Their enemies had told them that meetings like those meant nothing. He would, however, tell them, that when the people cheerfully paid out of poverty for meetings of that description, they meant a great deal, for they meant the people were in earnest; and when nations were in earnest they got their rights and privileges. (Hear, hear). They had been told, too, by their friends that they must not then agitate for the franchise. Why not! Because, for want of it, they have been robbed of almost everything else. A strange argument. But that they might agitate for and obtain it he wished to convince them by two things – that they could obtain it if they would; and that if they did not speedily obtain it, taxation would drive their trade to other countries, and they would find themselves in the streets without wages, without food, without the possibility of either, unless they devoured first their oppressors, and then perhaps each other. (Hear, hear).

                    What had happened in other countries from similar causes might happen here. Holland was once a great manufacturing country. What became of the manufactures of Holland? Taxation drove them to England. There was in Holland a town called Delf, where the name of an Englishman was hateful to that day; but where the people, instead of hating them, ought to have prevented the taxation which enabled them to take from them their pottery trade.

                    When the Walkers of Rotherham, some 80 years ago, established their little iron-foundry they found that they could make for 25s each side ovens, such as the Hollanders could not afford for less than 45s each. (Hear, hear). Need they wonder, then, that Holland lost her iron trade, and that the Walkers, of Rotherham, made a fortune?

                    France, though never a great manufacturing country, possessed before the revolution considerable manufactures; and it was remarkable that she possessed Trade Unions also, which postponed the fall of wages, but could not prevent the destruction of her trade. Down it went, as the trade of England was at that moment sinking beneath the weight of taxation; and when two bad harvests came in succession (as might happen here), the French people having no manufactured goods to give in exchange for foreign corn, the revolution followed of course. (Hear, hear). And what happened then? The principle of Trades’ Unions – that was, the principle of union itself – applied by Danton to all France in the shape of 44,000 committees, one in every parish – and of the first of which the present Louis Philippe, King of France, was doorkeeper (Hear, hear) – prevented the partition of the French territory among the invading despots, created 14 armies in one year, made them all victorious – and transformed a nation, consisting of perhaps 50,000 lords and lordlings, and about 24,000,000 slaves and beggars, into a nation of freeholders. (Hear, hear).

                    Now, if the principle of union so applied, at such a time, could produce such wonders, did they not think that if it had been applied at an earlier period, so as to obtain education and the elective franchise for the people of France, it might have prevented the revolution itself?  Why, most undoubtedly it might. That being so, then he would ask why the people of this country did not so apply the principle! If they had possessed the franchise 23 years ago, would they now be paying 3s per stone for bread, and 8d per pound for beef! No, rather than have endured the misrule of the last 23 years, they would have demanded, and through the franchise have obtained, a separate legislature for manufactures and trade. (Cheers).

                    If their fathers, 50 years ago, had possessed the franchise, would £1,740,000,000 have been spent in wars on French liberty? No, they would have had all that money now, and it would have made them all freeholders. Yes, and they would have had £3,000,000,000 more, which had since been destroyed by the food monopoly – the interest of which enormous sums – more than five times that of the national debt – would have been given every one of them two months leisure a year, to see their beautiful country, and other countries, to fill their veins with sunbeams, their hearts with noble feelings, their minds with noble thoughts – it would have made them in soul as well as body images of God! (Cheering). Oh! But they were told, their fathers were worse off than they. They ought to have been worse off, or what had become of the earnings of the steam-engine? But facts told a different tale; they showed that their oppressors had improved in the science of misrule. During the first 92 years of the 17^th century, the poor-rates increased only from £1,000,000 to £2,000,000, and during the very next 15 years – years of glorious war – they increased from £2,000,000 to £8,000,000. Now, if their fathers had possessed the franchise, did they not think that the unequalled machinery of the country as well as their own industry would have produced very different results? (Hear, hear). The declared value of their exports in 1801 was £40,000,000, and in 1837 only £38,000,000, and yet in 1837 there was more than twice the quantity of goods manufactured than there was in 1801. (Hear, hear). What then had become of the difference? The aristocracy had devoured or destroyed it by their monopoly of law-making, compelling the working classes to give daily more and more labour and skill for less and less food. (Hear, hear). The aristocracy had declared by Act of Parliament, that they could not live as palaced-idlers unless they fed on the industrious; that declaration must be either true or false. If it were true, why was it that the aristocracy were not sent to the workhouse? Or if it were false, why were they not sent to the treadmill? (Hear, hear and laughter). Or he would say, why did not the people obtain the franchise, and see that social justice was done to all? The aristocracy used the property of the working classes like highwaymen were formerly in the habit of using their pistols. Not satisfied with obtaining war prices in times of peace, by their corn laws, and their paper-rents in gold, by Peel’s Bill – were they not every day perpetrating fresh treasons! Had they not lately deprived them of their privilege of out-door relief, in the face of their own Parliamentary declaration placed, thank God, on eternal record, and proving that they were themselves the most destructive horde of beggars that ever infested any community? (Hear, hear).

                    The aristocracy ought first to have taken their hands out of the people’s pockets; they should have ceased to rob them of half their earnings; they should have shown that they could live on their own; they should have set the people the example of self-dependence. (Cheers).

                    One of the darkest, saddest, bloodiest pages in history was that which recorded the first acts of the first few months of the reign of Queen Victoria. During those few months the oppressors had perpetrated in Canada atrocities which would have disgraced the reign of King Castlereagh, and which Wellington Imperator, when the time should come, would not be able to parallel. (Hear, hear).  And why were those doings done? Because the Canadian Commons refused the supplies. Now, if the Canadian Commons had no right to refuse the supplies, the British Commons had none; and this their reformed Commons had in fact affirmed, while Wellington in the Lords was affirming the same, and laying the people, bound hand and foot, at the mercy of that meek British Prince who was always an Ernest foreigner in his heart. What hope, then, had they but in themselves? Oh, but they were not fit to exercise the franchise! Were they less fit than those who exercised it already? Could they make a worse use of it than they had made?

                    The speaker then proceeded – If you had it now, could you do worse than send to Parliament men who offer a premium of £100,000,000 a year for the destruction of your trade? Do you expect to get your rights by supporting men whose interests are opposed to yours? All history shows that men who can afford to be idle never legislate usefully for the industrious. I doubt whether there are 100 men in London worth £20,000 each, who do not in their hearts hate and fear every workman who is supposed to have a mind of his own.

                    Even in America this is true. The Senate of the United States, representing the monied aristocracy of that country, would at this moment, if they could, make a swindling banker dictator of America. Yet America has only one Senate – you have two, neither of them representing you; yet making your laws, because they are all men of one sort, that is to say all idle and rich. Well, you are all men of one sort, and all of a good sort, for you are all industrious, and there are 3,000,000 of you. Why, then, do you consent to have two Houses of Lords, and no House of Commons? Why don’t you obtain the franchise? Don’t say you cannot. If the principle of union could transform France, when invaded on all sides, from a nation of beggars into a nation of freeholders, surely it could give you the franchise? How had their oppressors contrived to oppress the labouring classes of the people? – Why, by union and perseverance, and thus, like pigs in a potato field, they had also kept their noses at the grubbing point. Surely, then, the working classes would be justified in doing that in a good cause which their enemies had done in a bad cause; for though the masses were not pigs, still, until they got the franchise, they would not be men. (Applause).

                    The speaker then concluded a speech which was received with great apathy, in these words: - Obtain the franchise, and thereby prevent the destruction of your trade. Avert a catastrophe which, if it happen, will cast the horrors of the first French Revolution utterly into shade. Do not let your aristocracy prepare for your young and innocent Queen a fate like that of Marie Antoinette of France. Resolve that you will no longer be the white slaves of men who have declared themselves bankrupt – men whose pretensions to govern, a glance of scrutiny will annihilate – men who, by their horrible legislation, striking at the foundation of property itself, have justly forfeited, I will not say all social rights – but this I am justified in saying; that if I be again placed in a jury-box to try a criminal cause, while those enormous criminals perpetrate their crimes unrestrained, I shall not be able to find verdicts against their victims; for to do so would murder them. (Hear, hear). Put an end, then, to this unholy state of things. Let there be no more legislation for classes, and let us have no more talk about physical force – for you can use it victoriously whenever you need, but men who mean to use it, don’t always warn the enemy to be beforehand with them. You will not need it. You have only to combat the demon of mischief in the spirit of unity; believing that in the purity of your motives you are representatives of God, your success is certain if you make haste. But if you wait till the golden bowl of your commerce is broken, till the silver cord is loosed, the weight of a grasshopper will be a burden to your tradeless weakness.

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