The Express.
London, England, 1849-11-13 00:00:00

OUR REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM

DUDLEY.
Dudley was enfranchised by, the Reform Bill.
It is the centre of ' a manufacturing district;
it contains a population of nearly five and thirty
thousand : it has 1,3..0 101. householders, of whom
nearly 1,000 were registered electors: corruption
has not been practised in it,• and neverheless it
returns a strong tory representative, and under
existing circumstances, wonld optima° to do so, let
the =bay be extended as it might.
It will at once be isquired—what is the canes of
this? An anomaly is here presented which requires
explanation. These facts, it will be said, appear to
militate against the arguments in daily, use—
that the feeling of the country is liberal—that the
people are well fitted to receive an extended suffrage
—and that the large manufacturing constituencies
are the most enlightened, and es a rule return the
most nodal representatives. It will be observed, too,
that the position of Dudley appears the more alio-
' melees because the town is immediately adjacent to,
and in many respects materially influenced by,
Birmingham and Welverhampton—phoes which may
almost be described as centres of poiitical enlighten-,
ment. It will be asked how these things are to toil
accounted for and reconciled. Is dealong with the
borough system of England ft is et-thinly our deft,
not to papa them over. • 1
The toryiran which is prederaisant at Dudleyire
very peculiar toryism.. It is n low and vulgar serifs
ism ;an ignorant indeed brutal torylem. Asa redei•
toryism is the aristocratic principle of Esghold t it
Itself in the flowing wig and Yoffie style of
the early days of Ge-rge the Third; it boasts of
lag descent and ancient pedigree, and, as mlny 'a•
tory of the present day will tell you, caste to
him as an inheritance with his family plats sad pic-
tures. Bat the toryism of Dudley is nothing-ail&
sort : therell; not story in the town who clot beast*
his gianfitather ; it is difficult to put your fiesta
upon a member of the party who is entitled to the
position and' reputation a gentleman. A coarser,
and mere vulgar crew than the tones of the b:vret
of Dudley, high and low, it would be impossible to
pitch upon in any rarnninnity in Er gland.
The teryism of Dudley is a torylam of Ignorance
—a toryism of habit—a toryism of self-interest—
and a toryiam of coercion. We have been in
places where toryiem was the representative of
loyalty. At Dudley they care as much ghat the
Sovereign as they do about the President of France.
There are other towns where toryism shadows forth
the Church of England, and where tories march in
way to the poll with a view, as they believe, to keep
dissent in check. At Dudley the tories profess no
Church principle, nor indeed any description of
religious principle. Up to 1843, when a dio:essn
effort was made to civilise this locality, there were
few places where the church was so completely use-
lees—where it was so apt a representation of the
dried-up well of the desert in which thousands are
perishing of thirst. Even now, when tke church is
making some effort to enlighten this depraved and
almost heathen population, it is not the tories of
Dudley who support its efforts, nor the tories of
Dudley who promote its neefalnem.
And this fact shadows forth one of the great causes
of the toryism of this town. We have said that the
toryism of Dudley is a toryiem of ignorance. The
ignorance of Dudley teries is not mere personal igno-
minies—though there is an ample amount of that—but
it is an entire and utter ignorance of the population
amongst which they live. That population is a most
important population. It is almost exclusively a
mining population. Within the parish of Dudley
there exist 32,000 souls; but within a circle of
three or four miles around it there are sciroely less
than 100,000 more, and the great proportion of these
are engaged exclusively in the mining operations
of the district. Talk of our large towns—
why the population of the parishes of
Dudley, and of Tipton, Clent, Kingswinford,
Sedgeley and West Bromwich, all in close proximity
to Dudley, equal the population of Birmingham it-
eelfl What is the condition of this population?
Who care for and protect this enormous mass of la-
bouring poor? The Dudley tories—for whom so
any of them labour ? We lament to say not one of

them.
It is a painful fact to record. but we do believe
that there is not one of the employers of the Dudley
district who knows one per cent of the men wt o
toil sad labour to produce his wealth. Take Eng-
land through, and you will not find a tonality where
there is not only eo little sympathy between the
employers and the employed, but such an utter re-
gardleermess on the part of the former of every
stogie interest appertaining to the latter. It
is upon the records of official evidence that they. omit
even the commonest precautions fur the protection of
their lives. Human existence here is treated as a
cheap commodity. Those horrible pit accidents, of
which we hear so frequently—(and yet, in compari-
son with the frequency of their occurrence, so very
rarely)—proper precautions would prevent one hall
of them—precautions entailing trouble and expense
no greater than it is the bounden duty of every maater
to provide.
But the utter ignorance of the Dudley tarifa of the
population amongst which they live is no better ex-
hibited than by "the strikes," which are of habitual
occurrence in this important district. If the history
of the labour of this locality were written, it would be
found that " sirikes " amonst the pitmen were the
rule, and continuous labour the exception. Tte pit-
men of the Dudley district are always, in fact, in an
incipient state of strike, or else in strike itself. It
is evident that there must be something wrong
in a system under which such a state of things as this
exists. We do not hear of these repeated strikes in
the cotton manufacturing districts, in the woollen trade,
or in toe clothing trade, at Manchts'er, or Bolton,
or Huddersfield, or Leeds.: '
Why should the po-
i potation on the Dudley side of the coal
country " strike " so much more frequently then
they do upon the Wolverhampton and Bilston side of
the same district ? There must be a fault here, and
we have little hesitation in attributing it to the want
of sympathy of the emplot ers for the employed.
In order to explain this more thoroughly it is
secesiary to describe shortly how the mines of this
coal district are worked. We will take the district
immediately adjacent to the town of Dudley. The
great owner of the soil is Lord Ward. Lord Want
lets his land on royalties: that is to say, the person
taking a lease of it engages to work the missed@ upon
the property, to pay so much per ton for all the oriel
and iron stone obtained, to get no mew time
a certain maximum quantity, which is nailed iil4,
every year, but to pay as for a certain minimule
quantity, whether he may get the maximum or mite.,
This is the contract as between the owner of the soil
and the iron master. But the iron master does not
work the mines himself: he contracts with a middle-
man, called a butty-collier, who engages to open the
mine for him, and to get a certain quantity of ad or.
iron stone ner week, at a price to be speed. The
batty-collier employs a gang of men for tite papaw
These men are consequently never brought into sew
notion with, nor do they in the slightest degree
the sympathies of, their real employeeen
many cases they do not even know the " b•Wyff
for the batty contents himself with negotiating
with the master, and contracts with the men'
through one of their own class, who is ordinarily
called a " doggie." The master never goes into the
mines : the " batty " very. rarely. But it is in theta
mines that the colliers exist from one week's end to
another : it is here that they live, and breathe, and ,
have their being.
Now, the effect of this system of labour in the keit
district is highly, detrimental to every class engaging
in the trade. The labourer, having nothing in com-
mon with the employer, is continually striking to get
more out of him—and hence the " strikes by
which the trade is continually suffering. On
the other hand the employer is led to
treat the workman u a mere machine ; as
a machine without wants or feelings ; as a machine in
which he is only so far interested as he can work it.
A remarkable proof of this position is to be found in
the fact, that although accidents in the pit-work are
in the fearful proportion of no less than seventy-two
per cent. per annum to the number of labourers, yet
than is not in the town of Dudley, or in the country
round about it, a hospital, or even a dispensary !
"AU cases requiring peculiar skill, must be sent to
Birmingham, twelve miles off!
When people are found so careless of the lives of
the labourers by whom they live, how can it be im-
puted that they can be anxious concerning their
political position ? The late Vicar of Dudley put it
upon. record that his rich fellow-townsmen and
nothing either for the spiritual or moral warm d