1852. Real Impressibility of the existing Parliament. 243 in procuring new tools, would suffice to accomplish the object with the tools we have. For what are the measures which the organic reformers have in view, and for the accomplishment of which they deem a vast popularisation of the Legislature indispensable? Are they not a frugal expenditure of the public money, equitable taxation, cheap and prompt justice, unfettered freedom of industry, the abolition of unjust and barbarous laws, the protection of the rural population against the abusive temptations of the game laws, and gratuitous, or at least easily accessible education? If they have any other aims more sinister and less fair than these, they do not avow them, and we therefore need not insinuate or discuss them. Now it is abundantly clear that measures embodying all these great objects may be obtained from the House of Commons, as now constituted, in half the time that it would take to extort from it complete suffrage,' which, when extorted, would after all be only the first step towards these legislative measures. For let us remember that no measure of retrenchment, education, financial or administrative reform, will so divide Reformers, and so unite Conservatives, as complete suffrage,' or the Charter. No measure of practical good will combine so small a body in its favour, or will concentrate against it so numerous, so powerful, so resolute an opposition. Hundreds of thousands of the middle and upper classes, who would join the Chartists in a firm demand for economical expenditure and a revised taxation, would join the Tories in opposing the Charter or any franchisemeasure which resembled it. The self-government of our colonies; the strict revision of our public expenditure; the reduction of our army and navy estimates to the lowest point consistent with national safety; the equalisation of imposts; the extension of the legacy and probate duties to landed property; national education; and a juster law between landlord and tenant;—all these would be conceded in a single Session, if the whole of the unenfranchised classes were to join that large majority of the middle classes, who are now favourable to these changes, in demanding them. No legislature and no government could resist, or would dream of resisting, claims so reasonable and so backed. But against the Charter or any cognate scheme, the Government, the Legislature, the upper classes, and a very large proportion of the middle classes, would fight with the determined resolution of men who felt (rightly or not) that they had sense and justice on their side; and that they were struggling, not for their own privileges, but for the honour and welfare of their country. And in this vain, useless, and exasperating contest would be wasted all those years which, properly employed, would have given the Chartists their ends but not their means; would have sufficed to remove every removable grievance, and to confer every boon within the reach of legislation. Let us lay well to heart the history of the Anti-Corn-Law Agitation, for it conveys a wise and wholesome moral. No popular movement was ever so pregnant with encouragement and instruction. It commenced with a few thoughtful, searching, practical, educated men, whose views expanded and matured as they went along. It trusted to the spread of information, the weight of argument, and the confirming lessons of experience alone. It gradually drew all sects and classes-the Chartists last of all-into its ranks. It confined itself, with severe and unswerving self-control, to one object alone; and that object was a practical economical reform, bearing directly and powerfully on the most intimate interests of the people. It refused to be mixed up with the Chartist demands. It stood aloof from all political parties. It commenced among the Radicals, recruited itself from among the Whigs, and ended by converting the chief of the Conservatives. It disdained and disclaimed the temporary strength which it might have gained by alliance with factions less single in their aims, less scrupulous in their means, less stainless in their character, than itself. And thus it went on, conquering and to conquer, by the very purity, directness, and simplicty of its course. It asked for no change in the representation, no remodelling of the constituencies, no extension of the suffrage, as essential pre-requisites to its success. But by the simple might of truth and justice, sobriety and union, it wrung Free Trade, by the votes of an immense majority, from a Protectionist House of Commons, elected for the express purpose of refusing the reform, and putting down the agitation. After this, who will say, who can think, that any other reform equally beneficial and as clearly just, sought by means as pure, by a course as direct, with a purpose as honest and as single, may not be obtained far easier and far sooner? Against what administrative improvement or social blessing will there ever be arrayed a phalanx as formidable from rank, wealth, numbers, old associations, and hereditary strength, as that which gave way before the quiet might of the Free Traders? If, then, complete suffrage' was not a necessary preliminary for the great victory of 1846, why should it be so for any future one? If not indispensable then, why is it indispensable now? If the repeal of the Corn-Laws could be gained without it, à fortiori, can equitable taxation, rigid economy, colonial reform, cheap justice, liberated industry, and general education, be gained without it. 'But (we shall be told) the continued ⚫ existence of the evils we deplore and the abuses we admit, is a 1852. Charter Agitation an Obstacle to practical Reforms. 245 standing refutation of our argument,-a refutation which stares us in the face, which meets us on the threshold. Why (it is asked) do partial and unjust laws remain on the Statute-book, if, as you say, the popular voice has power sufficient, even with Parliament as at present constituted, to procure their removal? Why, if the rights and interests of the working classes can 'secure a fair and favourable hearing from a House of Commons 'not elected by them, do institutions and customs still maintain their ground which are inimical to their interests and a clear 'violation of those rights?' Our reply is ready :-Where such cases exist, where the evil is recognised, the cure obvious, and its application within the reach of Parliamentary enactment, for its delay the agitation for the Charter is to blame more than any other cause. This agitation has diverted the attention of the mass of the people from the accessible to the inaccessible, -from practical reforms which were sure to be granted, to organic changes which were sure to be refused, from measures of which the benefit was certain, to schemes of which the effect was at best dubious and problematic. Is it true that Parliament has declined to listen to or grant any great claim of justice or beneficence which the unenfranchised classes have clearly and steadily agreed in demanding? Can the Chartists point to any one such claim-for an end, not a mere instrument-which they have as a body firmly and systematically put forward? Have they ever joined their voice to that of the tried and laborious reformers who have toiled for years for the amendment of our law, for sanitary regulations, for the purification of our criminal jurisprudence, for the extension and improvement of education? Have they not, on the contrary, habitually stood aloof from the advocates of practical reforms, thwarted them, weakened them? Have they not perversely persisted in demanding what they knew could not be granted, and in not demanding what they knew could not be refused? It is neither fair nor loyal to complain that Parliament is deaf to the popular voice, because it declines to entertain topics on which the popular mind is not made up, and on which the popular voice has never loudly and distinctly spoken. Still less is it fair to divert public feeling into the channel of suffrage reform, and then to exclaim that Parliament will not listen to the public demand for financial, judicial, or educational reform, Our conviction is rooted and deliberate, that the only reason why we have not already obtained all the fiscal, legal, and administrative changes recognised as just and beneficial, is, that they have never yet been demanded by the clear, unmistakeable, intelligent voice of the people; and the fault lies with those who, having the guidance and organisation of public sentiment out of doors among the classes in question, have chosen to direct it into another channel the most ineffective in which popular desires can flow. The plain truth is as the honest and intelligent Chartists would be the first to discover as soon as they had obtained that command over the Legislature which they desire—that the main evils of their lot lie far beyond the reach of any legislative chamber; that the causes of these and the cure of them are to be sought for, not in the region of politics, but in that of social and individual morals; and that parliamentary enactments, though mighty to aggravate, would be impotent to remedy. After they had abolished two or three oppressive and inequitable laws-relics of class legislation or of clumsy administrative arrangements (which, however, they never think of now, and which they would require to have pointed out to them by laborious philanthropists already in Parliament), they would begin to perceive that the thing wanted was not (as they had supposed) a more popular, but a more profound and sagacious legislature, a wiser, not a more democratic parliament. They would discover that the real difficulty was, not to overcome selfish obstacles to the application of acknowledged remedies, but to ascertain what applications would really be remedial; -that the difference between parties regards what ought to be done for the mitigation or eradication of social sufferings, not whether what ought to be done shall be done; - that the delay in rectifying what is wrong arises, not because the selfish and the powerful refuse to adopt a cure agreed upon as safe and effectual by the wise and good, but because the wise and good have not been able to discover and agree upon a cure. task, when the Charter had given them the supremacy they imagine to be the one only thing needed, they would find, to their surprise and dismay, was exploratory, not enacting, ―to study and investigate, not to abolish or decree. They would not be slow to learn that the remedial power of Parliament was incomparably more limited than they had believed, and the direction and mode in which that power should be exerted incomparably more difficult to decide. They would have obtained authority to enforce their own wishes and decisions; but they would, if honest and patriotic, find themselves much less clear and positive than at present, what those wishes were and what those decisions ought to be. 6 Their On the great majority of plans for social amelioration, the intelligent and thoughtful of the Chartists and complete suffra'gists' differ among themselves nearly as much as members of 1852. Charter Agitation an Obstacle to practical Reforms. 247 the present Parliament. Some would be the advocates of unlimited freedom of industry; others, as the Socialists, under the phrase organisation of labour,' would fetter and direct it by a multitude of minute, vexatious, and oppressive regulations: some would be thorough-going free-traders; others would insist on protection to native produce: some are earnest in favour of a more liberal poor-law,' which should make the paupers really comfortable; others, aware of its double operation, and dreading such liberality as at once cruel to the struggling rate-payer, and fatal to the independent energies of the labourer, scout the idea of any such mischievous augmentation of the burdens on. the industrious: some want an agrarian law and the creation of a mass of peasant proprietors;' others, warned by the example of France, look with doubt and mistrust on a scheme which bears so fair and attractive an outside. On one point they would probably all agree one reform they have long been taught by their leaders to regard as the most important and unquestionable of all,-viz., a reduction in the amount, and an alteration in the incidence, of taxation. For years, the enormous weight and unequal pressure of taxation has been dinned into their ears as their prime grievance-the chief source of all their misery. To this, therefore, their attention would be most immediately and unanimously directed; from this they would expect the most certain and the most prompt relief. They would proceed at once to reduce the national expenditure; to substitute direct for indirect taxation; and to 'equalise burdens,' as it is called, i. e. compel the rich to pay that 'fair share' which it is assumed and asserted they now evade. -- Now our limits will not allow us to enter into any details to show how soon inquiry would cause our supposed legislators to pause, to hesitate, to start, as they gradually perceived how unfounded were many of their previous ideas, how noxious and suicidal would be many of their proposed improvements, even on this apparently clear and beaten path. Had we space, it would be easy to prove how rapidly a suspicion would dawn upon them how surely in time this suspicion would grow into a certainty-that the amount of expenditure on which a saving could be effected consistently with national good faith, was far smaller than they had imagined-was in fact only 22,000,000l. instead of 50,000,000l. ;—that many items of this expenditure required, for the good of the people themselves, to be augmented instead of being curtailed-those, namely, for education, for sanitary reforms, for the treatment of criminals, for the administration of justice; that a mischievous parsimony, not a dangerous profusion, is the real rock a-head'; that the effect of |