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CHAPTER XX.

The Causes of Discontent.

Have we not track'd the felon home, and found
His birthplace and his dam? The country mourns-
Mourns because every plague that can infest
Society, and that saps and worms the base

Of th' edifice that policy has raised,

Swarms in all quarters, meets the eye, the ear,
And suffocates the breath at every turn.
Profusion breeds them.

COWPER.

DREADFUL indeed was the scene on which the morning sun rose in the hitherto peaceful town of Laxington. The venerable town-hall was a heap of blackened ruins; the houses near it plundered, or, as it is emphatically called, gutted, and the goods and furniture strewed about in wild confusion. The street was unoccupied, save by a few soldiers and policemen, who were searching for and removing the sufferers in the last night's horrid work. Several dead and wounded men had been found lying in the streets; others were brought in from the country; others were dragged up from the cellars and ruined houses, some drunken, some dead, some mangled, burnt, and disfigured. These were laid out on biers in the church, to be claimed by their respective friends. And bitter were the lamentations of wives and parents over the dead bodies of their husbands and sons,

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whom, when they might, they had not dissuaded from their wicked and frantic undertaking.

For several days Laxington was like a deserted town-the shops shut, the streets empty. During this time the magistrates were sitting, to examine witnesses and commit prisoners for trial. Then came the special commission, the judge entering in state, and the sheriff with his javelin-men; and then followed the solemn trial of the offenders before their country's tribunal, not unmixed with many unworthy accompaniments, as the chicanery of lawyers and equivocation of witnesses, together with much political acrimony. Then came the conviction, and last of all the EXECUTION. For lenient measures in other places having failed to allay the spirit of insubordination, it was resolved by the government that the outraged law must take its course. Alas! if punishment had been awarded where most due, it I would have fallen on the heads of those who had encouraged, for their own selfish purposes, the principles which begat the crime, rather than on the poor dupes who committed it.

We must not pass on from these melancholy events without a few reflections on the condition of a nation in the heart of which such scenes as those described have become of not unfrequent occurrence. A modern writer1 has justly described these deeds of darkness and outbreaks of violence

See Thomas Carlyle on Chartism.

as the symptoms of a wide-spread disease, which has infected the body politic; signs of a "black, mutinous discontent," which corrodes the hearts of the people. The lower classes, as he truly says, deem themselves" unjustly dealt by ;" and until this feeling be removed, no peace or safety can be expected. The grand question is, how to effect this most desirable object. Some state-doctors would say, yield to the demands of the people, and then they will be satisfied—which is very questionable; others would rather advise that they should be coerced with a strong arm, and forced to submit. The more reasonable, safe, and charitable plan appears to be, to search carefully into their condition; to ascertain, first, whether their discontent has or has not any just ground; secondly, whether their grievances are remediable or not; and having done this, to take at once such measures as may be best calculated to heal those grievances which are remediable, and enable them to endure what are beyond human control.

Some confusion has arisen with regard to this most deeply important subject, from not considering that there are two distinct classes of discontented persons, whose cases are widely different from each other. First, there are those who are really liable to suffer privation from inadequate or irregular means of subsistence; secondly, those who have ample wages to procure for them the necessaries, comforts, and even luxuries of life, and yet are discontented. With one

class it is what has been termed a knife-and-fork question; with the other, a moral or political affair. Statesmen and economists do not appear to have kept this distinction sufficiently in view, but to have mixed up, in their arguments and measures, the one class with the other.

The main cause of the discontent of the former class is the irregularity of their wages, which are at all times low, in consequence of the fluctuation of commerce. To remove or greatly mitigate this evil is clearly hopeless. Those politicians who think, by any means, to ensure a constant prosperity of commerce, waste their time in a fruitless labour. Alternate prosperity and depression is an essential feature of a wide-extended commerce, supplied by an unlimited machinery, and dependent on foreign markets. It may be looked on as a dispensation of Providence analogous to those fluctuations of natural supplies which we find in many other countries. The northern tribes, for instance, who roam through the frozen regions, are subject to alternate abundance and scarcity of food; and they lay up, accordingly, what stores they are able in the time of abundance, to meet their inevitable necessities. The Indians who live under the tropics are during certain months deluged with rain, and then parched with drought; and in order to alleviate the latter evil, they make large tanks or reservoirs to catch the water, and keep it for the time of drought. In the temperate regions of the earth this natural vicissitude of abundance and scarcity is much

less inconveniently felt; at least by those nations whose population is principally employed in agriculture or home-trade. But we in England have, by our extensive commerce, created an unnatural fluctuation. Our machinery is able to produce commodities more than sufficient for the supply of all foreign nations who are willing to trade with us; and when the markets are glutted, as they will be, by our overabundant powers of supply, then, of necessity, the demand ceases, and there is a want of employment for our labourers. It is the price we pay for our wealth and power; it is a condition to which we have brought ourselves, or to which circumstances have brought us,—and there is no help for it. To effect a regularity of demand amongst foreign nations, who are independent of us, is a thing impracticable. The Indian might as well endeavour to regulate the supply of rain from heaven, or the Esquimaux to force the seals and the elks to cease their annual migrations, as the English economist to ensure a regularity of foreign trade. Therefore, since it is impossible to prevent fluctuation, we must provide against it. We must make our tanks to catch the surplus rain. Savings-banks, provident clubs, benefit-societies, are so many tanks. Poor-laws are a species of tank, but their waters are of the bitterest. A fat pig is a sort of tank, which gathers up the earnings of the frugal labourer or mechanic, and saves them from being absorbed in the beer-shop or gin-shop, so as

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