Manchester Insurrection
Blusterowski, Colacorde, and other Editorial prophets of the
Continental Democratic Movement, have in their leading-articles
shewn themselves disposed to vilipend the late Manchester
Insurrection, as evincing in the rioters an extreme backwardness
to battle; nay as betokening, in the English People itself,
perhaps a want of the proper animal-courage indispensable in
these ages. A million hungry operative men started up, in utmost
paroxysm of desperate protest against their lot; and, ask
Colacorde and company, How many shots were fired? Very few in
comparison! Certain hundreds of drilled soldiers sufficed to
suppress this million-headed hydra's and tread it down, without
the smallest appeasement or hope of such, into its subterranean
settlements again, there to reconsider itself. Compared
with our revolts in Lyons, in Warsaw and elsewhere, to say
nothing of incomparable Paris City past or present, what a
lamblike Insurrection!--
The present Editor is not here, with his readers, to vindicate
the character of Insurrections; nor does it matter to us whether
Blusterowski and the rest may think the English a courageous
people or not courageous. In passing, however, let us mention
that, to our view, this was not an unsuccessful Insurrection;
that as Insurrections go, we have not heard lately of any that
succeeded so well.
A million of hungry operative men, as Blusterowski says, rose
all up, came all out into the streets, and--stood there. What
other could they do? Their wrongs and griefs were bitter,
insupportable, their rage against the same was just: but who are
they that cause these wrongs, who that will honestly make effort
to redress them? Our enemies are we know not who or what; our
friends are we know not where! How shall we attack any one,
shoot or be shot by any one? O, if the accursed invisible
Nightmare, that is crushing out the life of us and ours, would
take a shape; approach us like the Hyrcanian tiger, the Behemoth
of Chaos, the Archfiend himself; in any shape that we could see,
and fasten on!--A man can have himself shot with cheerfulness;
but it needs first that he see clearly for what. Shew him the
divine face of justice, then the diabolic monster which is
eclipsing that: he will fly at the throat of such monster, never
so monstrous, and need no bidding to do it. Woolwich grapeshot
will sweep clear all streets, blast into invisibility so many
thousand men: but if your Woolwich grapeshot be but eclipsing
Divine justice, and the God's-radiance itself gleam recognisable
athwart such grapeshot,--then, yes then is the time come for
fighting and attacking. All artillery-parks have become weak,
and are about to dissipate: in the God's-thunder, their poor
thunder slackens, ceases; finding that it is, in all senses of
the term, a _brute_ one!--
That the Manchester Insurrection stood still, on the streets,
with an indisposition to fire and bloodshed, was wisdom for it
even as an Insurrection. Insurrection, never so necessary, is a
most sad necessity; and governors who wait for that to instruct
them, are surely getting into the fatallest courses,--proving
themselves Sons of Nox and Chaos, of blind Cowardice, not of
seeing Valour! How can there be any remedy in insurrection? It
is a mere announcement of the disease,--visible now even to Sons
of Night. Insurrection usually 'gains' little; usually wastes
how much! One of its worst kinds of waste, to say nothing of the
rest, is that of irritating and exasperating men against each
other, by violence done; which is always sure to be injustice
done, for violence does even justice unjustly.
Who shall compute the waste and loss, the obstruction of every
sort, that was produced in the Manchester region by Peterloo
alone! Some thirteen unarmed men and women cut down,--the number
of the slain and maimed is very countable: but the treasury of
rage, burning hidden or visible in all hearts ever since, more or
less perverting the effort and aim of all hearts ever since, is
of unknown extent. "How ye came among us, in your cruel armed
blindness, ye unspeakable County Yeomanry, sabres flourishing,
hoofs prancing, and slashed us down at your brute pleasure;
deaf, blind to all _our_ claims and woes and wrongs; of quick
sight and sense to your own claims only! There lie poor sallow
workworn weavers, and complain no more now; women themselves are
slashed and sabred, howling terror fills the air; and ye ride
prosperous, very victorious,--ye unspeakable: give us sabres
too, and then come-on a little!" Such are Peterloos. In
all hearts that witnessed Peterloo, stands written, as in
fire-characters, or smoke-characters prompt to become fire again,
a legible balance-account of grim vengeance; very unjustly
balanced, much exaggerated, as is the way with such accounts;
but payable readily at sight, in full with compound interest!
Such things should be avoided as the very pestilence. For men's
hearts ought not to be set against one another; but set _with_
one another, and all against the Evil Thing only. Men's souls
ought to be left to see clearly; not jaundiced, blinded, twisted
all awry, by revenge, mutual abhorrence, and the like. An
Insurrection that can announce the disease, and then retire with
no such balance-account opened anywhere, has attained the highest
success possible for it.
And this was what these poor Manchester operatives, with all the
darkness that was in them and round them, did manage to perform.
They put their huge inarticulate question, "What do you mean to
do with us?" in a manner audible to every reflective soul in this
kingdom; exciting deep pity in all good men, deep anxiety in all
men whatever; and no conflagration or outburst of madness came
to cloud that feeling anywhere, but everywhere it operates
unclouded. All England heard the question: it is the first
practical form of our Sphinx-riddle. England will answer it;
or, on the whole, England will perish;--one does not yet expect
the latter result!
For the rest, that the Manchester Insurrection could yet discern
no radiance of Heaven on any side of its horizon; but feared
that all lights, of the O'Connor or other sorts, hitherto
kindled, were but deceptive fish-oil transparencies, or bog
will-o'-wisp lights, and no dayspring from on high: for this
also we will honour the poor Manchester Insurrection, and augur
well of it. A deep unspoken sense lies in these strong men,--
inconsiderable, almost stupid, as all they can articulate of it
is. Amid all violent stupidity of speech, a right noble instinct
of what is doable and what is not doable never forsakes them:
the strong inarticulate men and workers, whom _Fact_ patronises;
of whom, in all difficulty and work whatsoever, there is good
augury! This work too is to be done: Governors and Governing
Classes that _can_ articulate and utter, in any measure, what the
law of Fact and Justice is, may calculate that here is a Governed
Class who will listen.
And truly this first practical form of the Sphinx-question,
inarticulately and so audibly put there, is one of the most
impressive ever asked in the world. "Behold us here, so many
thousands, millions, and increasing at the rate of fifty every
hour. We are right willing and able to work; and on the Planet
Earth is plenty of work and wages for a million times as many.
We ask, If you mean to lead us towards work; to try to lead us,
--by ways new, never yet heard of till this new unheard-of Time?
Or if you declare that you cannot lead us? And expect that we
are to remain quietly unled, and in a composed manner perish of
starvation? What is it you expect of us? What is it you mean to
do with us?" This question, I say, has been put in the hearing
of all Britain; and will be again put, and ever again, till some
answer be given it.
Unhappy Workers, unhappier Idlers, unhappy men and women of this
actual England! We are yet very far from an answer, and there
will be no existence for us without finding one. "A fair
day's-wages for a fair day's-work:" it is as just a demand as
Governed men ever made of Governing. It is the everlasting
right of man. Indisputable as Gospels, as arithmetical
multiplication-tables: it must and will have itself fulfilled;
--and yet, in these times of ours, with what enormous difficulty,
next-door to impossibility! For the times are really strange;
of a complexity intricate with all the new width of the
ever-widening world; times here of half-frantic velocity of
impetus, there of the deadest-looking stillness and paralysis;
times definable as shewing two qualities, Dilettantism and
Mammonism;--most intricate obstructed times! Nay, if there
were not a Heaven's radiance of justice, prophetic, clearly
of Heaven, discernible behind all these confused worldwide
entanglements, of Landlord interests, Manufacturing interests,
Tory-Whig interests, and who knows what other interests,
expediencies, vested interests, established possessions,
inveterate Dilettantisms, Midas-eared Mammonisms,--it would
seem to everyone a flat impossibility, which all wise men
might as well at once abandon. If you do not know eternal
justice from momentary Expediency, and understand in your
heart of hearts how justice, radiant, beneficent, as the
all-victorious Light-element, is also in essence, if need be,
an all-victorious _Fire_-element, and melts all manner of vested
interests, and the hardest iron cannon, as if they were soft wax,
and does ever in the long-run rule and reign, and allows nothing
else to rule and reign,--you also would talk of impossibility!
But it is only difficult, it is not impossible. Possible? It
is, with whatever difficulty, very clearly inevitable.
Fair day's-wages for fair-day's-work! exclaims a sarcastic man;
alas, in what corner of this Planet, since Adam first awoke on
it, was that ever realised? The day's-wages of John Milton's
day's-work, named _Paradise Lost_ and _Milton's Works,_ were Ten
Pounds paid by instalments, and a rather close escape from death
on the gallows. Consider that: it is no rhetorical flourish;
it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact,--emblematic, quietly
documentary of a whole world of such, ever since human history
began. Oliver Cromwell quitted his farming; undertook a
Hercules' Labour and lifelong wrestle with that Lernean
Hydracoil, wide as England, hissing heaven-high through its
thousand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted quackheads; and he
did wrestle with it, the truest and terriblest wrestle I have
heard of; and he wrestled it, and mowed and cut it down a good
many stages, so that its hissing is ever since pitiful in
comparison, and one can walk abroad in comparative peace from
it;--and his wages, as I understand, were burial under the
gallows-tree near Tyburn Turnpike, with his head on the gable of
Westminster Hall, and two centuries now of mixed cursing and
ridicule from all manner of men. His dust lies under the
Edgeware Road, near Tyburn Turnpike, at this hour; and his
memory is--Nay, what matters what his memory is? His memory, at
bottom, is or yet shall be as that of a god: a terror and horror
to all quacks and cowards and insincere persons; an everlasting
encouragement, new memento, battleword, and pledge of victory to
all the brave. It is the natural course and history of the
Godlike, in every place, in every time. What god ever carried it
with the Tenpound Franchisers; in Open Vestry, or with any
Sanhedrim of considerable standing? When was a god found
agreeable to everybody? The regular way is to hang, kill,
crucify your gods, and execrate and trample them under your
stupid hoofs for a century or two; till you discover that they
are gods,--and then take to braying over them, still in a very
long-eared manner!--So speaks the sarcastic man; in his wild
way, very mournful truths.
Day's-wages for day's-work? continues he: The Progress of Human
Society consists even in this same. The better and better
apportioning of wages to work. Give me this, you have given me
all. Pay to every man accurately what he has worked for, what he
has earned and done and deserved,--to this man broad lands and
honours, to that man high gibbets and treadmills: what more have
I to ask? Heaven's Kingdom, which we daily pray for, _has_ come;
God's will is done on Earth even as it is in Heaven! This _is_
the radiance of celestial justice; in the light or in the fire
of which all impediments, vested interests, and iron cannon, are
more and more melting like wax, and disappearing from
the pathways of men. A thing ever struggling forward;
irrepressible, advancing inevitable; perfecting itself, all
days, more and more,--never to be _perfect_ till that general
Doomsday, the ultimate Consummation, and Last of earthly Days.
True, as to 'perfection' and so forth, answer we; true enough!
And yet withal we have to remark, that imperfect Human Society
holds itself together, and finds place under the Sun, in virtue
simply of some _approximation_ to perfection being actually made
and put in practice. We remark farther, that there are
supportable approximations, and then likewise insupportable.
With some, almost with any, supportable approximation men are
apt, perhaps too apt, to rest indolently patient, and say, It
will do. Thus these poor Manchester manual workers mean only, by
day's-wages for day's-work, certain coins of money adequate to
keep them living;--in return for their work, such modicum of
food, clothes and fuel as will enable them to continue their work
itself! They as yet clamour for no more; the rest, still
inarticulate, cannot yet shape itself into a demand at all, and
only lies in them as a dumb wish; perhaps only, still more
inarticulate, as a dumb, altogether unconscious want. _This_ is
the supportable approximation they would rest patient with, That
by their work they might be kept alive to work more!--_This_ once
grown unattainable, I think, your approximation may consider
itself to have reached the insupportable stage; and may prepare,
with whatever difficulty, reluctance and astonishment, for one of
two things, for changing or perishing! With the millions no
longer able to live, how can the units keep living? It is too
clear the Nation itself is on the way to suicidal death.
Shall we say then, The world has retrograded in its talent of
apportioning wages to work, in late days? The world had always a
talent of that sort, better or worse. Time was when the mere
_hand_worker needed not announce his claim to the world by
Manchester Insurrections!--The world, with its Wealth of Nations,
Supply-and-demand and such like, has of late days been terribly
inattentive to that question of work and wages. We will not say,
the poor world has retrograded even here: we will say rather,
the world has been rushing on with such fiery animation to get
work and ever more work done, it has had no time to think of
dividing the wages; and has merely left them to be scrambled for
by the Law of the Stronger, law of Supply-and-demand, law of
Laissez-faire, and other idle Laws and Un-laws,--saying, in its
dire haste to get the work done, That is well enough!
And now the world will have to pause a little, and take up that
other side of the problem, and in right earnest strive for some
solution of that. For it has become pressing. What is the use
of your spun shirts? They hang there by the million unsaleable;
and here, by the million, are diligent bare backs that can get no
hold of them. Shirts are useful for covering human backs;
useless otherwise, an unbearable mockery otherwise. You have
fallen terribly behind with that side of the problem! Manchester
Insurrections, French Revolutions, and thousandfold phenomena
great and small, announce loudly that you must bring it forward a
little again. Never till now, in the history of an Earth which
to this hour nowhere refuses to grow corn if you will plough it,
to yield shirts if you will spin and weave in it, did the mere
manual two-handed worker (however it might fare with other
workers) cry in vain for such "wages" as _he_ means by "fair
wages," namely food and warmth! The Godlike could not and cannot
be paid; but the Earthly always could. Gurth, a mere swineherd,
born thrall of Cedric the Saxon, tended pigs in the wood, and did
get some parings of the pork. Why, the four-footed worker has
already got all that this two-handed one is clamouring for! How
often must I remind you? There is not a horse in England, able
and willing to work, but _has_ due food and lodging; and goes
about sleek-coated, satisfied in heart. And you say, It is
impossible. Brothers, I answer, if for you it be impossible,
what is to become of you? It is impossible for us to believe it
to be impossible. The human brain, looking at these sleek
English horses, refuses to believe in such impossibility for
English men. Do you depart quickly; clear the ways soon, lest
worse befall. We for our share do purpose, with full view of the
enormous difficulty, with total disbelief in the impossibility,
to endeavour while life is in us, and to die endeavouring, we and
our sons, till we attain it or have all died and ended.
Such a Platitude of a World, in which all working horses could be
well fed, and innumerable working men should die starved, were it
not best to end it; to have done with it, and restore it once
for all to the _Jotuns,_ Mud-giants, Frost-giants and Chaotic
Brute-gods of the Beginning? For the old Anarchic Brute-gods it
may be well enough, but it is a Platitude which Men should be
above countenancing by their presence in it. We pray you, let
the word _impossible_ disappear from your vocabulary in this
matter. It is of awful omen; to all of us, and to yourselves
first of all.