On The History of Political Agitation

London, May 7. In times of major political agitation in England the City of London has never been able to put itself in the vanguard. Up to now the fact that it joined a campaign merely indicated that the purpose of the agitation had been achieved and become a fait accompli. So it was with the Reform Movement, in which Birmingham took the initiative. So it was with the Anti-Corn Law Movement, which was led from Manchester. The Bank Restriction Act of 1797[138] was an exception. The meetings of the bankers and merchants of the City of London made it easier for Pitt at that time to prohibit the Bank of England from continuing cash-payments—after the directors of the Bank had informed him a few weeks earlier that the Bank was tottering on the brink of bankruptcy and could only be saved by a coup d'état, by a fixed rate of exchange for bank-notes. Circumstances at the time required just as much resignation on the part of the Bank of England to letting itself be prohibited from making cash-payments, as on the part of the city merchants, whose credit stood or fell with the Bank, to supporting Pitt's prohibition and recommending it to the country man[*]. The salvation of the Bank of England was the salvation of the City. Hence their "patriotic" meetings and their "agitational" initiative. The initiative taken by the City at present with the meetings held last Saturday[b] in the London Tavern and the Guildhall, and the founding of an "Association for Administrative Reform"[139], has the merit of novelty, the merit, rare in England, of having no precedent. Moreover, there was no eating or drinking at these meetings, which is also a new feature in the annals of the City, whose "turtle-soup patriotism" has been immortalised by Cobbett. Finally another novelty was the fact that the meetings of the City merchants in the London Tavern and the Guildhall were held in business hours, in broad daylight. The current stagnation in business may have something to do with this phenomenon, as indeed it may altogether form a leaven in the fermentation of the City mind, and a considerable leaven too. For all that, the importance of this City movement cannot be denied, however hard the West End may try to laugh it off. The bourgeois reform papers—The Daily News, The Morning Advertiser, and The Morning Chronicle (the last having belonged to this category for some time now)—seek to demonstrate to their adversaries the "great future" of the City Association. They overlook the more obvious aspects. They have failed to realise that very vital, very decisive points have already been decided by the mere fact of these meetings: 1. The breach between the ruling class outside Parliament and the governing class within it; 2. a dislocation of those elements of the bourgeoisie that have hitherto set the tone in politics; 3. the disenchantment with Palmerston.

As we know, Layard has announced that he intends to table his reform proposals in the House of Commons tonight. As we know, about a week ago he was shouted down, hissed and booed in the House of Commons. The princes of the English merchant world in the City replied at their meetings with frantic cheers for Layard. He was the hero of the day at the London Tavern and the Guildhall. The cheers of the City are a provocative retort to the groans[c] of the Commons. If the House of Commons proves tonight to have been intimidated, its authority is lost, it abdicates. If it repeats its groans, the cheers of its opponents will resound all the more loudly. And from the tale of the Abderiten[d] we know to what happenings the rivalry between cheers and groans may lead[140]. The City meetings were a blatant challenge to the House of Commons, similar to Westminster's election of Sir Francis Burdett in the first decade of this century.[141]

Until now, of course, the Manchester School with its Brights and Cobdens has stood at the head of the movement of the English bourgeoisie. The manufacturers of Manchester have now been ousted by the merchants of the City. Their orthodox opposition to the war convinced the bourgeoisie, which in England can never remain static for a moment, that they have at least temporarily lost their vocation to lead it. At present the Manchester gentry can only maintain their "hegemony" by outbidding the City gentle-men. This rivalry between the two most important factions of the bourgeoisie actually demonstrated by the City meetings, from which the Brights and Cobdens were excluded and from which they excluded themselves, augurs well for the popular movement. In evidence of this we can already cite the fact that the secretary of the City committee[e] has addressed a letter to the Chartists in London requesting them to appoint a member to its standing committee. Ernest Jones has been delegated by the Chartists to this committee. The merchants do not, of course, stand in such direct opposition to the workers as do the manufacturers, the millocracy[f], and thus they are able, at least initially, to take joint action, which the Chartists and the Manchester men could not do.

Palmerston—this is the last major fact emerging from the City meetings—has, for the first time, been booed and hissed by the most important constituency in the country. The magic of his name has been dispelled forever. What brought him into discredit in the City was not his Russian policy, which is older than the Thirty Years' War[142]. It was the careless disdain, the pretentious cynicism, and above all the "bad jokes" with which he affected to cure the most terrible crisis England has ever known. This outraged the bourgeois conscience, however well it may go down in the corrupt House of "Commons".[g]

Administrative reform with a Parliament such as now constituted: everyone recognises the illogical nature of these pious wishes at first glance. But our century has seen reforming popes[143]. We have seen reform banquets headed by Odilon Barrot[144]. No wonder, then, that the avalanche that will sweep away Olde England appears at the outset as a snowball in the hand of the reforming City merchants.

Notes

[46] The People's Charter, which contained the demands of the Chartists, was published in the form of a Parliamentary Bill on May 8, 1838. It contained six points: universal suffrage (for men of 21 and over), annual parliaments, vote by ballot, equal electoral districts, abolition of the property qualification of MPs and payment of MPs. Petitions urging the adoption of the People's Charter were turned down by Parliament in 1839, 1842 and 1848.