The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-08-23 00:00:00

O'CONNOR AND THE RECENT RIOTS.

The Northern Star (Feargus O'Connor's paper) of Satur-
day last containT a long statement of perverted facts (to suit
his purposes) of the: proceedings in Manchester on the 16th
of August, 1819, illustrated by a woodcut, depicting the
military cutting down men, women, and children, with their
sabres. He also prints a list of the names of the Manchester
Yeomanry of that day, as if for the purpose of pointing them
out as objects of vengeance for the present mobs. Amongst
the names given are several of the most respectable mill-
owners, who have resisted the turn-outs on this occasion by
continuing to employ their men despite the intimidation
which has been excercised towards them. The bloodthirsty
" Chartist Lamb," who is allowed to prowl at large whilst
his victims by hundreds continue to be consigned to dungeons,
introduces the names of the Manchester Yeomanry with the
following seditious and cold-blooded remarks :
" And this was the way the middle-class men of Man-
chester and Catholics, the ' Yeomanry,' served a peaceable
and unarmed people, seeking to petition for a reform in the
system of representation ! These were the terms of ` union'
betvieen the middle and labouring class at that period. This
was the way one class, bloated, blustering, big, and inflated
with gin and pride—brandy and arrogance,—this was the way
they attempted to prove that the ' interests of the two classes
are identical !' and, that the middle classes are the ` natural
leaders and protectors of the labouring population of the
community !' 0, 'how arrogant, how puffed up with pride,
they were then ! How they sneered and scoffed, and turned
up the hose of affected contempt! How they gloated and
glorified over the blood they had shed—the suffering they had
caused—the life they had sacrificed! What heroes they then
were ! Where are they now? How many of them are yeo.
men now ? How many of them have been able to keep out
of the Gazette, or out of the insolvent list? How many of
of them have been able to keep out of the workhouse ? And
how many have cut their throats, or hanged themselves !
Where is the thing amongst them that would now glory in
the bloody deeds he then committed ? Where is the thing
amongst them that would not give his ears to have his name
erased from the damning record—the list of the ' heroes' of
Peterloo ? It is in vain, however, that he so wishes. The
characters in which the names are written are those of blood!
Thep cannot be washed out, but by the waters of justice ; and
those have not yet been applied—or Thisticwood, Ings,
Brunt, and Tidd would not have been the last men executed
and beheaded in England for high treason ! I No • the names
are not to be obliterated from the bloody list ! nere it is !
Let the actors of the fiendish deeds of 1819 feast their eyes
upon it ! ! !"
With respect to the Anti-Corn-Law-League's connexion
with the present outbreak, it appears as though O'Connor
had broken faith with Mr. Sturge and that party, for after
the reception of his pay from the former for the assistance
rendered by himself and gang at the Nottingham election, he
charges Mr. Sturge and tae leaguer's with whom Mr. Sturge
is associated, with being at the bottom of the late attempted
insurrection. In a letter he published on Saturday he
- -

Bear in mind that Acland informed me of the conspiracy
at Halifax ; that Taunton and the devils of the Corn-Law
Conference recommended `rising' and ' rioting ;' and that
the Sun and all the organs of the revolutionists trumpeted
forth the unnatural advice with unbecoming joy. * * *
The League have put the wrong leg foremost; they have
taken a false step ; they have bribed some, and have tam-
pered with others of our leaders; but enough of virtuous
power still remains to render desertion harmless, and treason
fruitless. We have long courted the trades of Manchester;
and at length they have adopted our principles ! May
Heaven bless them ! And when our object is achieved,
which will give peace to all, then will their names stand pro-
minently forward as the saviours of their country.
" Let no blood be shed. Let no life be destroyed. Let
no property be consumed. Let us, in God's name, set an
example to the world of what moral power is capable of
effecting.

" Ever your faithful friend,
" FEARGUS O'CONNOR."
This Acland, to whom O'Connor refers, is the fellow
whose exhibition of the French giant and Master Nookes,
the calculating boy, obtained for him so much notoriety
some years ago ; and whose connexion with a cheap bread
company of Bristol caused the awkward questions to be but
to him by Mr. Townley Parker at the last North Lancashire
election, when the Anti-Corn-law League had the assurance
to put him up as a candidate against Lord Stanley. On this
occasion it will be recollected his backers and bottle-holders,
during the nomination, were Mr. Alderman John Brooks
and Mr. R. Cobden, M.P. for Stockport.
In other parts of O'Connor's paper (the Star), published
this day, in allusion to an anti-corn-law conference, he
says

" While this ' conference' was sitting, Mr. O'Connor
happened to meet with Acland, the hired tool and lacquey of
the anti-corn-law league, the man who is paid £lO per week
for his services. They met at Halifax.. They had a discus-
sion upon the question of the corn-law repeal.
" After the discussion, Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Acland
had some talk. In the Star of the succeeding week, that is
to say, in the Star of July 16, 1842, Mr. O'Connor published
the following fact, in a letter addressed by him to the Chartist
body :

" One thing which Acland told me, as he said, in confi-
dence, must not be kept back. No, no; lam not just the
man to keep the secrets of the League. Now, let every man
pay particular attention to the following disclosure, coming
from the principal spouter of the ' Plague.'
" Acland said to me,—Well, Mr. O'Connor, we shall
either have a repeal of the Corn Laws or the Charter, in
three weeks.
" Mr. O'Connor.—lndeed 1 how? _ _

" ' Mr: I tell you, in confidence, that the
object bf the League's present meeting in London is to take
into consideration the propriety of stopping all the mills
upon a given day ! !! and they will do it !! ! '
" This was published near a month before the strike.
Now, Acland has never contradicted it. He dare not do it !
" Let our readers also mark another fact. All the reduc-
tions in wages that have been attempted within the last two
months in the manufactories have been attempted by Corn-
Law Repealing masters ! Point out a Tory or Conservative
master who has attempted any such reduction. We believe
it would be impossible. At all events, we have not heard
of any such. This fact speaks volumes ! "

It is reported that the Rothschilds have offered to com-
pound for the income-tax for three years at £24,000, which
admits an annual income of about £270,000.
A DOUBTFUL ENCOMIUM.—The other evening, a lady
having exerted her vocal powers for the amusement of the
company at a soiree, received the following ambiguous com-
pliment :—" Your singing makes you appear a delicious
screecher (delicious creature.)

Etbrrpool tanbarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 23, 1312.

We beg to draw attention to a letter addressed by
Lord Francis Egerton, to the editor of the Manchester
Courier, and which will be found in another column.
It is pre-eminently honourable to his lordship's heart
and mind, whilst to those dependent upon him, it is a
testimony to their right feeling and strong good sense,
as valuable -as it is handsome.

The condition of the working classes of Great Bri-
tain must .urely -now receive the prompt and anxious
attention of the legislature. We see on every side of
us their wretchedness—a wretchedness which has been
growing in intensity for years past ; we see how utterly
powerless they are in the struggle into which the sel-
fishness and avarice of employers are constantly plung-
ing them ; that a grinding money-ocracy is tearing
their sinews asunder, draining their blood drop by
drop, and reducing them daily nearer and nearer to
the level of the beasts, or to the state of the insentient
machine by whose sides they toil ; and we cannot—for
it is no longer safe—defer a searching and full enquiry
into the extent of the evil and the nature of the remedy
which it demands.

What is, we ask, the system which is now going on
around us—our manufacturing system ? What is its
tendency ? is there any save the veriest dreamers who
dare to say that it is one by which the sum of human
happiness is increased, or which' can end in anything
but a convulsion of the society in which it exists ? We
have penned up our population in mines and mills;
we have withdrawn hundreds of thousands of men and
women from the light of day and the fresh breezes, to
immure them in the fetid and filthy atmosphere of our
manufacturing towns; and we are grinding them into
gold for the millocrat and the capitalist. We are mak-
ing experiments in Hamceopathy to discover the pre-
cise amount of food upon which human beings can
subsist and perform our tasks, as we would to learn
the quantity of oil which would keep our machinery in
working order, or the coal which would produce steam
enough to drive it. We are striving to ascertain the
amount of torture, in the form of unhealthy occupa-
tion, which our toiling slaves can endure without being
goaded into outrage, and to the destruction of their
taskmasters.

And fearful indeed is the progress which we have
made towards this point at which endurance termin-
ates ! The history of our national industry for 't he
past twenty years—what is it but a history of encroach-
ments upon the comforts, the independence, the moral
and physical well-being of the working man ? We
have driven down the price of his labour until it no
longer provides food to support him or clothing to
cover him. We have made him the mere appendage
of machinery, and we are daily exhausting our inge-
nuity to lessen the dependence of that machinery upon
his guidance. In two-thirds of the operations of the
manufacturing labourer, the hands of a child, a girl or
a youth, are performing now the work for which a
skilled adult was not long ago required. The spinning
frame and the power loom—our. chief producers of
manufactured staples—are managed chiefly by such.
Our silk mills are filled with such. Throughout our
manufacturing districts the order of nature is inverted.
The male adult is a useless burthen upon his wife or
his youthful offspring. "THE CHILD is indeed TILE
FATHER OF THE MAN !"

Nor do the most sanguine of the eulogists of the
manufacturing system look forward to the occurrence
of a check to this downward progress of the labourer.
We hear never—we contemplate never—the placing of
the labourer in a condition of comfort, by means of a
higher money rate of wages, or by the restoration of
the adult to his legitimate place in society. We hear
only, as the remedy for this distorted state of things,
of reduction in the cost of the necessaries of life—of
the oil and fuel by which the human machinery which
we employ is fed and propelled. We legislate, in fact,
in reality and solely for a reduction in the first cost of
labour. The amended Corn-law, the new Tariff—
valuable measures though they be—profess no greater
object than this. We bring down the cup to the level
of the lip which thirsts for it ; but we leave out of our
contemplation the means by which the object of our
sympathy may be held up in his present position to
drink of it. We never dream, even, that, low as we
may reduce the cost of subsistence, the manufacturing
labourer will not ultimately and surely progress in his
downward course until it becomes once more above his
Peach.

We are told, indeed, by our "liberal" philosophers,
that measures of free trade will produce such a change
as is to be wished for ; that an increased foreign com-
merce and stimulated production of manufactured
goods will sweep from before our eyes all the distress
which surrounds us, and the danger which menaces
society, But does past experience bear us out in en-
tertaining such hopes ? No. Upon the showing of a
"Liberal" millowner—Mr. John Fielden—proved, too,
by parliamentary returns, we learn that we stimulated
our production of manufactured cotton goods in the
interim between March, 1836, and February, 1839, (in
Lancashire alone,) from 23,700 horses' power at the
former date, to 36,393 horses' power at the latter,—in
all, 533- per cent. Did the amount of human labour
employed in comfort increase in the like ratio ? It did
not! The number of the population employed by these
mills increased only, as demonstrated by the same
returns, 21 per cent. ! We had thus an increase of
manufacturing production, such as is contemplated by
the. Liberal philosophy of the day ; and yet the labour-
ers' progress to wretchedness was not arrested one
step. The destitution of the manufacturing population
was greater at the end of 1839 than at the commence-
ment of 1836 !

And how, if we now consent to adopt the specific
pointed out to us by the Anti-corn-law League and its
organs, and it is temporarily successful ? If production
is stimulated, the labourer employed, comforts brought
within his reach—if, in fact, what the manufacturer
calls "prosperity," is the temporary result—how are we
to ensure its continuance ? How are we to ensure its
continued enjoyment by the working population ?
Production and employment, we know, do not pro-
gress in an equel ratio ; and when we have rendered
more vast our powers ,of supplying the world with
manufactured goods—when we have destroyed our
native agriculture and congregated the peasantry,
which it now employs, in our manufacturing towns—
we shall still find that we have only plunged deeper
into difficulty and danger—that we have only extended
more widely the mine beneath us, whose explosion
may at any hour—at the pleasure of any reckless rnillo-
crat who chooses to tell starving men to "go and play"
—involve in one mighty ruin our mills, our loom-
shops, our mansions, and the very frame work of society
itself.

In fine, the extension of the system which we see
working around us, by such means as are proposed by
the Liberal millocrat, would only be a step, and a giant
one, towards a civil convulsion. The power of CAPITAL
to enslave society must be curbed, not increased. Our
legislation must be directed to the protection of the
working man and of society itself, which is threatened by
his frenzy; and not merely to swell the hoards of
" Liberal " millocracy. The labourer must be raised
from the earth to which we have bound him,—enabled

to walk erect in the light of heaven, which is hie as
well as ours,—and released alike from the grinding
power of capital and the maddening appeals of the
incendiary demagogue.
By what measures such a consummation is to be
attained we shall not at present attempt to point out.
One step, however, wo will mention ; and we cannot
do so better than by adopting the able language of a
gentleman for whose warning appeals in the hour of
danger the people of England have had, more than
once, occasion to be grateful. The writer is Mr. John
Gladstone, of Carlton-gardens and of Fasque.

"These gentlemen, our manufacturers, have reaped the
profits of their systems, and it is to be hoped they will for a
time submit patiently to the disappointment or loss caused
by the reverses which have followed ,them as the fruits of
their success. I contend they have no right to call on the
country to make further sacrifices for their separate advantage
or protection. It is the principle of our poor laws, that the
property of each district of the country shall provide for
the wants of those among them requiring assistance. This
principle may press heavily in the present instance, yet, •
notwithstanding, it must be applied and acted upon, as
being just and reasonable in itself."

Need we say how entirely we agree with the humane
sentiment here expressed ? The 'millocracy of the
northern counties have drawn around themselves a
population which is now and may hereafter be a fa-
mishing one; and if they choose in wantonness to
close their mills against that population, they must be
taught, by a just and even Liberal POOR LAW, that
they shall not be permitted to hand them over to utter
destitution.