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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 1132: DISAFFECTION AMONG THE WORKING CLASSES.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

DISAFFECTION AMONG THE WORKING CLASSES.

During the autumn of this year a turbulent spirit displayed itself among the working classes in the manufacturing districts. Meetings were held in various quarters, and demagogues addressed the assembled multitudes in the most inflammatory language. The two-fold cause of this disaffection was the poor-laws and the price of bread; and as a remedy for these evils the people were taught to ask for universal suffrage. A favourite practice with the parties to these transactions was to assemble by torch-light in the open air—a practice which gave a mystery to the meetings well calculated to strike the imagination of the vulgar, and which gave those whose employment did not admit of their being present in the daytime, an opportunity of attending them. The speeches delivered at these meetings have been well characterized as “furious nonsense;” but at the same time they were calculated to work mischief in the community. Happily, however, the Whigs were in office, and for their own interest’s sake they restrained these ebullitions. Had there been a Conservative government, possibly the danger might have been greater.