see their condition as it was. But they were not wise enough; and that they were not, was their social wrong. Of these, great numbers had a larger annual income than very many clergymen, half-pay officers, educators, and fundholders, who are called gentlemen; but they did not know how to regard and manage their own case: they reckoned their income by the week instead of by the year, and spent it within the week; had nothing to reply, when asked, in a time of prosperity, why they who worked so hard had not mansions and parks like people who did nothing; and, in a pinching time, when hungry and idle at once, with hungry children crying in their cold homes, were too ready to believe, as desired, that every other man's fire and food and cheerfulness were so much out of their pockets. By no act of the State could these men have been blessed with higher wages: but, the State would have educated them, they might have found themselves abundantly blessed in their present gains; they might have sat, in their school-days, on the same bench with the curate and the seaman and the schoolmaster and the tradesman whom they were now envying and hating, and might now have been content, like them, with the position which was "neither poverty nor riches." But the State had left them ignorant; and here they were, drilling on a hillside, and plotting to burn, slay, and overthrow. They had an indistinct, but fixed idea, that there was unbounded wealth everywhere for every body, if only there were no tyrants to intercept it; and there can be no wonder in any sympathizing mind and heart, that a man in a desolate home, without occupation, and suffering under that peculiar state of brain caused by insufficiency of food, becomes a torch-bearing Chartist, or any thing else, however clear it may be that the money he had earned might, if wisely managed, have made him a ten-pound householder exercising the suffrage, and a capitalist giving education to his children. It was but lately that the King's speech had intimated the prosperity of commerce and manufactures, while agriculture was grievously depressed.1 But already there was some sense abroad of evil to come. Trade slackened and became irregular, and the most sagacious men of business began to apprehend that a new term of commercial distress was setting in. They were right; only their apprehensions did not compass any thing like the truth. It is well that they did not; for a mere glimpse of the horrors of the seven years to come would have been too much for the courage of any but the boldest of the enterprising classes of British merchants and manufacturers. Though they saw little, they soon began to feel uneasy, with an uneasiness far transcending any reason that they could give for it. As yet, wages were 1 Hansard, xxvi. p. 65. scarcely lowered, though profits were sensibly sinking; but the employed assumed a new air to their employers, in many a town and factory district in England, a sauciness that seemed to say they felt themselves injured, and were not going to put up with it long. This was the temper which was fast growing into the Chartism of 1839. This But that seven years' distress brought out an opposite class of facts of the most cheering nature, as we shall see under their date. We shall see, hereafter, something of the marvellous and sublime patience of the working-classes under a trial which might well be thought too sore for human endurance. patience was in precise proportion, and in the clearest connection, with the knowledge by this time gained by the working-class most concerned, - that there is no such thing as an inexhaustible fund of wealth, and that no tyrants were standing between them and comfort. The patient class knew that they had had their share, as shares are at present naturally apportioned; they could and did live for a long series of months on the savings they had made; and, when at last they were left bare, they knew that the richest capitalists were sinking too. Of this class many hundreds were Chartists; but they did not carry pikes and torches, to avenge discontents of their own. The people's charter was then in existence; and their aim was to carry that. It would give them, as they believed, a Parliament which would understand their case, and cure many evils under which they were suffering. And some had visions of an association of small capitalists, who might defy the fickleness of fortune; and some dreamed of buying a field and being safe and in harbor there, through some wonderful skill and simple arrangements of Chartist leaders. But these were not the revolutionary Chartists who were at work, burrowing in the foundations of society at the date before us. The better class came in later, after the promulgation of the Charter, as, indeed, did many of the worst ; but, in 1835 and 1836, the boring was begun, and the train was laying, which produced, for one result among many, the explosion at Monmouth in 1839. Orangeism. The revolutionary movement referred to as occurring at the other end of society was one which it would be scarcely possible to credit now, but for the body of documentary evidence which leaves no shadow of doubt on any of the principal features of the conspiracy. The whole affair appears so unsuited to our own time, and the condition of our monarchy, so like a plunge back into a former century, - that all the superiority of documentary evidence of which we have the advantage, is needed to make the story credible to quiet people who do not dream of treason-plots and civil war in England in our day. as to A month before Sir R. Peel's resignation in the spring of 1835, the Liberal party throughout the country were surprised by the appearance of a sudden fit of captiousness and pertinacity in some of their representatives, in teasing the ministers about the reception of addresses from Orange societies to the King.1 From the temper of the time in the House, and especially among the opposition, any captiousness must have been great indeed which could have struck everybody as remarkable. Member after member rose to cross-examine the ministers who, themselves, could have hardly understood the proceeding whether the addresses purported to be from Orange societies; whether the King could or ought to receive addresses from associations of declared illegality; whether the replies given had really, as the newspapers said, been avowedly gracious; whether the graciousness had been connected with a recognition of the parties as Orangemen; and finally, and very seriously, whether Mr. Goulburn, as Minister of the Crown, considered an Orange lodge to be legal or illegal, and whether he was prepared to justify the presentation of an address from such a society to the sovereign. The ministers were probably surprised and perplexed, beginning to see that this was a matter of high importance, but hardly understanding why or how; for no one of them rose for a considerable time. After the dead silence in which the question had been listened to, and the rising of the Minister looked for, vociferous cheers from the Opposition filled the House when he did not rise. At length, Mr. Goulburn made his answer.2 The reply to the addresses was intended as an acknowledgment of their receipt, and not as any recognition of the legality of the party-name by which the signers might designate themselves. Cheering no less loud followed the reply. Perhaps no cheers given in that House not even those which signalized the passage of the Reform Bill ever carried such anxiety and pain to the hearts of certain of the Tory Peers, and especially of the highest prince of the blood, the eldest of the King's brothers. He and some others of the Peers could very well understand what all this might mean, while it was a singular mystery to the country at large. The country at large knew little about Orange societies, except that the Orangemen in Ireland were proud of their loyalty, and made conspicuous processions on great Protestant occasions, and were ever and anon coming to blows with the Catholics. Orangeism belonged exclusively to Ireland, in the general mind. People generally would have stared to hear that Orangeism was in England, Scotland, and the colonies; and that it constituted an army of itself, in the midst of the military forces of the empire. 1 Hansard, xxvi. pp. 536–554. 2 Spectator, 1835, p. 219. 561 a little Orangeism was exclusively Irish at first,-in 1795, when it was first heard of. Before that time, the Protestants who patrolled the country, to prevent the seizure of arms by the Catholics in the night, in preparation for their insurrection, bore the name of "Peep-o'-day Boys." The Catholics, who organized themselves against these patrolling bands, called themselves "Defenders," and soon extended the term to include the defence of "the united nations of France and Ireland." As soon as the aim of a union with France was avowed, and a descent of the French upon the coasts of Ireland was expected, the Protestants began to improve and extend their organization, in the hope of preserving the union with England. They would have taken the title of "Defenders," but that their adversaries already bore it. They reverted to the period of the bringing in of a Protestant sovereign over the head of the Catholic James II., and called themselves Orangemen. Such, at least, is the traditionary account in the district where Orangeism sprang up. The Diamond hamlet about five miles from Armagh, where a conflict took place in 1795, which is called the battle of the Diamond - is assigned as the birthplace of Orangeism. A few yeomen and farmers joined for mutual defence and the assertion of British rights, after the battle of the Diamond; and this was the first Orange lodge. The gentry saw what this might grow to, and encouraged the formation of lodges, and the promulgation of rules. As Presbyterians abounded in that part of the country, they formed the main element of the societies; and it is said that the religious observances of the Orange lodges, which afterwards degenerated into a subject of scandal when Dissenters were no longer admitted, were introduced originally by them. Orangemen of Ireland were the deadly foes of the "United Irishmen," and the most effective check upon them; and they have even claimed the credit of having preserved Ireland to England. 2 The Perhaps it was through the connection of some English noblemen with Irish property that Orange institutions were introduced into England. Lodges were at first held in England under Irish warrants; but, in 1808, a lodge was founded in Manchester, and warrants were issued for the holding of lodges under the English authority. On the death of the Grand-master at Manchester, the lodge was removed to London, in 1821; and the meetings were held at the house of Lord Kenyon, who was deputy-grand-master. The Duke of York was to have been Grand-master; but he found that the law-officers of the Crown considered the institution an illegal one. The rules were modified so as to meet the terms of the law. The Act which prohibited political societies in Ireland 1 Hall's Ireland, ii. p. 462. 2 London Review, No. iv. p. 490. from 1825 to 1828, appeared to dissolve Orangeism there for the time: but lodges were held under English warrants; and, in 1828, the whole organization sprang up, as vigorous as ever, on the expiration of the Act. At this time, the entire institution, in Great Britain and Ireland, came under the direction of the Duke of Cumberland, as Grand-master. The critical part of the history, as regards England, lies between the years 1828 and 1836. In 1829, when the Duke of York was gone, and the King had given the royal assent to the Emancipation Act, the Orangemen seem to have lost their senses, as they certainly lost their loyalty. The proofs of this which came out in 1835, when the Orangemen on our side the Irish Channel numbered 140,000, 40,000 of whom were in London, bewildered the nation with amazement. In 1828, on the accession of the Duke of Cumberland to the throne of Orangeism, he sent forth, under a commis Duke of Colonel a Cumberland. sion of the great seal, 'given under my seal, at St. 1 Report of Committee on Orange Societies, September, 1835. |