"Thomas Spence." By Olive D. Rudkin. London George Allen & Unwin, Limited.
"The term 'lower class' is gone out of use," writes Harriet Martineau in her "History of England During the Thirty Years' Peace." "The term is thought not complimentary to the democracy, and so we say 'the working class.' " Whatever name the class may go by, it gave a great deal of trouble to the British authorities over a century ago. Ordinarily it scarcely formed an element in the calculations of statesmen. The hewers of wood and drawers of water had no more share in the government of the country than had the helots of ancient Greece. It was only when they were maddened by famine as they were during and long after the Napoleonic wars that any notice was taken of them, and then it was to the end that adequate military forces were made available to crush anything like an incipient rising or even an attempt by a public demonstration to voice their hideous wrongs.
The Manchester massacre.
From the Manchester massacre of 1819 Miss Martineau dates the democratic movement. A public meeting had been convened for the discussion of Major Cartwright's plan of Parliamentary Reform. The meeting was prohibited, and the people were warned that their attendance would be at their peril. Nevertheless, they attended in large numbers, with flags and music, and as the police were powerless to disperse them, the Hussars and Yeomanry were summoned, and the trumpet sounding "Forward," the cavalry, with drawn sabres, dashed into the multitude:—
With all the weight of man and horses the cavalry could not penetrate that compact mass of human beings; and their sabres were plied to hew a way through naked held-up hands and defenceless heads; heads and then chopped limbs and gaping skulls were seen; and groans and cries were mingled with the din of that horrid confusion. In ten minutes from the commencement of the havoc the field was a deserted space. Mounds of human beings remained where they had fallen, crushed and smothered. Some were groaning. Others with staring eyes, were gasping for breath; and others would never breathe more. Scores were injured but only some half-dozen fatally. All England was stirred by the atrocity, and, to their credit, members of the nobility, including the Duke of Hamilton and Earl Fitzwilliam, sided with the people against the Government. Unhappily for themselves and for the cause which suffered from their championship, it occurred to a number of fanatical extremists, led by a man named Thistlewood, to attempt to avenge the Manchester massacre by the massacre of Ministers. This was the Cato-street conspiracy. Ministers were secretly warned in time by an agent provocateur named Edwards, who had taken a leading part in the plot. There were numerous arrests and five men, including Thistlewood were hanged.
The plotters were so few, and the plot was such a fiasco, that it would scarcely deserve a place in history but for the illustration it affords of the desperate character of the times. Side by side with riots and the destruction of property went efforts to promote political and economic reform by peaceful agitation, conducted for the most part through Radical Clubs and other organisations. One of these clubs, called the Spencean Philanthropists, was named after Thomas Spence, the hero of the present volume. He was a schoolmaster from Yorkshire, who conceived a plan for the resumption of the land of the country by the State, and the division of its rental value among the people. Miss Martineau describes Spence as an honest enthusiast, who fearlessly submitted his plan to the consideration of all lovers of their species, and had the misfortune to be prosecuted for its promulgation in 1800:—
In 1816 "Spence's Plan" was revived, and the society of Spencean Philanthropists was instituted who held sectional meetings discussed "subjects calculated to enlighten the human, understanding." This School of philosophy openly meddled with sundry grave questions, besides that of community in land, but their projects had all more or less reference to the breaking up of the unequal distribution of the soil. Amongst these otherwise harmless fanatics some dangerous men had established themselves, including Thistlewood, who subsequently suffered death for five years of maniacal plotting.
The present memoir is an expansion of a thesis prepared by Miss Olive Rudkin for the M.A. degree in the London University, and is certified by Professor J. W. Allen to be the most adequate account of "the modern Socrates," his ideas and his spiritual relations, that has yet appeared. "If a life of desperate poverty utterly devoted to the service of humanity be a saintly life," says Professor Allen, "then Thomas Spence was a saint. His passionate desire for justice, his passionate sympathy with the oppressed and disinherited, his engaging faith that he had found the sure and only remedy for all ills, distinguished and isolated him from an indifferent and contemptuous world." Born in 1750 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, then little more than a country town with a population of 30,000, Spence was one of a total of nineteen children whom his father had by two wives. The father was a small dealer in hardware goods, and in the way of education Thomas had to he content with what he could give himself. His lesson book was the Bible, his chief source of instruction the Old Testament, and Moses and Samson were his favorite heroes. His boyish reading was curious. It included More's "Utopia," Barlow's "Advice to the Privileged Orders," Godwin's "Political Justice," Dyer's "Complaint of the Poor," Volney's "Ruins," and various book of travel. He seems to have derived from Locke's essay on "Government" the germ of his philosophic radicalism. He says:— Locke's essay on "Government" and many other eminent works, as well as the Bible, have contributed to strengthen any confidence in this my millennial form of government; and therefore such books ought in justice to stand or fall with mine. "Whether we consider natural reason," says Locke, "which tells us that men once born have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence, or revelation, which gives an account of those grants of the world God made to Adam and to Noah and his sons, it is clear that God, as King David says, Psa. cxv. 16, has given the earth to the children of men, given it to man in common." Upon this rock of nature have I built my commonwealth, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Harrington's "Oceana" exercised a great influence over the youthful sociologist, as shown by the latter's keenness for the ballot and his belief that voters should have a property qualification and that members of Parliament should be paid. Harrington believed that society could only be secure and well organised if a proper balance of forces were maintained. This balance could be achieved if political powers were well distributed in the State, and this distribution would be accomplished if property were not unequally divided amongst the different sections of the community. The better distribution of wealth could be secured if the land held by an individual were limited to what would yield £2,000 a year, and primogeniture abolished. In Harrington's time the general trend of thought, we are told, was political, in Spence's physiocratic doctrines were rife, and men's thoughts naturally turned to the land question in its economic aspect to find explanations or solutions of the social problems of their time: —
Spence's reading and religion both played their part in shaping his thought and helping him to form his Plan of Restoration. A quarrel between the Corporation of Newcastle and the free men, or ratepayers, over the town moor in 1771 seems to have made a great impression on him. The Corporation attempted to let 89 acres of this moor to builders without consulting the freemen. The latter claimed that the land and rents from it were at their disposal, and in a lawsuit they won. The townspeople were jubilant over this victory, and illuminated their houses in its honor. The excitement was evidently keen, for even the anniversary of the victory was celebrated. Today the Newcastle races are run on the town's moor. "I took a lesson from this affair I shall never forget," says Spence. "The overbearing power of great men by their revenues, and Samson by his hair are strikingly similar and show such men to be dangerous companions in society till scalped of their hair or revenues, for it is plain that if the lords of the Philistines had scalped Samson instead of merely shaving him, they might have saved their lives and their temple." To Spence at twenty-five, life must have teemed with promise. He had the companionship of young, talented men, and could claim acquaintance with older men of note and position. Robert Owen's life is parallel at some stages with that of Spence. As a young man in Manchester he became a member of a literary and philosophical society, and made friends who were of the greatest service to him. Like Owen, Spence lived in a time of great intellectual activity. The prerogative of rulers and the rights of man were fashionable topics. It is not surprising that Spence should have dreamt of ending poverty by a brand new constitution, for such ideas were in the air.
The times gave birth to debating societies, and in 1775 a philosophical society was founded by some Newcastle gentlemen. The members included clergymen, legislators, and members of the engineering and other professions, so that in joining it, Spence had a chance of making friends with men of wealth and culture, whose support would have been valuable to a political thinker. On every member it was obligatory to read a paper, and Spence found in this role a chance of expounding his plan for the redemption of society:—
Spence begins by assuming that a country ought not to part with its land, for in doing so it deprives posterity of its means of subsistence, and thus assumes the right to deprive it of life. The land was originally claimed by a few individuals, who acted as if it were a possession they had manufactured for themselves. As no one called them to account, they came to look on themselves as lords, and the lives of all creatures, man and beast, as dependent on them, as, in fact, they were, for in granting the means of life they granted life itself. Spence's remedy, known as his Plan, to which he adhered to the end of his days, under every possible discouragement, was to summon the inhabitants of every parish to meet on a fixed day to take possession of their long-lost rights and form themselves into a corporation. Each corporation would be "sovereign lord of its own territories," though alienation would not be allowed. The parish land would be rented in small lots to tenants who would bid for farms at a public auction. The rents would be paid into the parish treasuries, and be used partly to defray the expenses of the central government, partly to maintain the poor of the parish, and the salaries of officials and partly to cover the cost of local public works. As for the government of the country, it would be settled by voting, which would take place by ballot at full meetings of the parishes. The parishes would enforce the laws of the country, and the Government would only interfere when a parish was manifestly acting to the prejudice of society. Each member of Parliament would represent a group of neighboring parishes. Candidates would be returned by ballot, all electors voting on the same day. A year's residence would qualify a man as a parishioner. He would remain a member of that parish until he had resided a full year in another parish, when he would automatically become a member of the new parish, and the old membership would lapse.
Thereafter, on his death, in 1814, Spence, who more or less anticipated J. S. Mill, T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer, Russel Wallace, and Henry George, devoted his energies to making his Plan known by every means in his power. He was found by the chief forester in one of the Duke of Portland's woods one day, and the following dialogue ensued:—
Asked what I was doing there, I answered, "Gathering nuts." "Dare you say so?" "Yes, why not? Would you question a squirrel about such a business, and am I to be treated as inferior to a squirrel? But who are you to take it upon yourself to interrupt me ?" "I'll let you know," said he, "when I lay you fast for trespass." "Indeed," said I "how can I trespass where no man ever planted or cultivated? These nuts are the gift of nature, ordained for the sustenance of man and beast, and therefore they are common." "I tell you this wood is not common. It belongs to the Duke of Portland." "My service to the Duke," said I, "Nature knows no more of him than of me; therefore, as the rule in Nature's storehouse is first come, first served, the Duke must look sharp if he wants any nuts. Where is an Englishman's privilege if he may not pluck a nut? Was it for this that people served in the militia?"
Convicted of Sedition.
And so by tongue and pen he kept a whole county in a state of ferment. He kept a school, but "a kind-hearted crank would probably not make a good school master," and his writings may have contributed to deplete his school of pupils. He went to London and encountered rebuffs and disappointments innumerable, though he found the atmosphere on the whole favorable for the propagation of his Radical opinions. The French Revolution had lately occurred to give a zest to discussions on the rights of man and the sovereignty of the people. The most advanced opinions were professed by Fox, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Tom Paine, and Dr. Price. Burke took the reactionary side and it was from his allusion to the "swinish multitude," that a penny weekly issued by Spence derived its unpleasant name of "Pigs' Meat." His writing was as trenchant as Cobbett's, and the Government, who kept a close eye on political clubs and publications, did not overlook the products of his virile pen. One pamphlet, "The Restorer of Society to its Natural State," was made the ground of a criminal prosecution, on the ground that appearing at a time when the country was at war with France it contained words calculated to weaken and destroy the due resistance of the people to the King's enemies. The offending words were, "What must I say to the French if they jeeringly ask me what I am fighting for? Must I tell them for my country, in which I dare not pick a nut? Would they not laugh at me? And could I bear that? No; I would throw my musket down, saying, let such as the Duke of Portland, who claims the country, fight for it; for I am a stranger, and a sojourner, and have neither part nor lot amongst them." Spence, who in his speech from the dock, likened himself to Moses and the Prophets, the apostles and martyrs who bled for Christianity, and to Hampden, Sir Thomas More, and the great champions of British freedom, was convicted of sedition and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment and to pay a fine. The extraordinary thing is the attention this virile pamphleteer received from political notabilities and prominent journals. Southey for years watched his career with sympathy and interest:—
Southey described Spenceanism as a force generated by truth and strengthened by the sincerity of its promulgators. "Divested of nonsensical language Spence's scheme," wrote Southey "is that the soil belongs to the State, and that individuals should rent their land from their respective parishes, every kind of private property being permitted except land." Southey notes the compassion the "wretched fanatic excited, for the man was honest, he was not one to make mischief a trade because he found it a painful one. He was poor and despised, but not despicable, for he was sincere, stoical, persevering, and single-minded." Southey added that St. Francis of Assisi and Loyola were successful in times less favorable to their projects, and with less alluring doctrines. Lord Sidmouth was alarmed at the outbreak of Spencean inscriptions. The Luddite riots and the general unrest of the country led the old reformer to think that a fresh opportunity to make his plan known had arrived. His society increased in numbers and was reorganised, and he started a new periodical, "The Giant-killer or Anti-landlord," but three numbers only were issued when he was seized with a bowel complaint and died. At his funeral a pair of scales draped in white ribbon to symbolise his innocence, and with an equal quantity of earth in each balance to express the justice of his views, preceded his corpse. The leading journals were extraordinarily complimentary to his "inflexible integrity," and his disinterested desire to serve mankind.
The Advertiser 19 March 1927. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article40773184
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