William Cobbett & Charles Dickens - HCJ Lecture

• Cobbett: Born in March 1763 and died in June 1835. He was known for being a pamphleteer, farmer and journalist.
• His main belief was that in order to end the poverty of farm labourers, there needed to be a reform in the government and an abolition of ‘rotten boroughs’ – Boroughs which could gain undue and unrepresentative influence within Parliament.
• Cobbett was an anti-radical who became a radical. The thing that changed him was the plight of farm workers in the early 19^th Century. He thought that rapid industrialisation was going to destroy traditional ways of life.
• Cobbett spent about 20 years abroad, in America and France, in the army but when he returned from war, he was shocked at the state of the countryside.
• "When farmers became gentlemen, labourers became slaves."
• Cobbett has no time for the government that taxed farmers, or the army who he says, are free loaders, or the church and it’s tithes.
• He was nearly 60 when he began writing Rural Rides.
• He then went on to write the Political Register which was read by the working class.
• A tax on newspapers led Cobbett to publish the Political Register as a pamphlet, which had a circulation of 40,000.
• He was put in Newgate prison for sedition and fled to America to avoid another jail term. Cobbett was charged with libel three times after returning.

　

• Dickens:
• Charles Dickens was born 7^th February 1812 and died 9^th June 1870. He was an English novelist.
• He was interested in particular times in Reform. Oliver Twist is a good example of this, as it was concerned with the Benthamite Utilitarian Poor Law, which he saw as an oppression regime for people.
• In Bleak House the particular abuse that he’s bothered by is the Court of Chancery – and the law cases that went on for generations and cost a fortune. But it becomes a metaphor for all that’s wrong with Victorian Society.
• Dickens was disappointed with the law.
• As a writer he is calling on his reader to act. "Dear Reader! It rests with you and me whether similar things shall be or not."

• A tale of two revolutions – and two perspectives – Urban (Dickens) and Rural (Cobbett)
• England did well from the French Revolution – it was very expensive during Napoleonic War – income tax was created in 1799 to pay for the war effort.
• British Naval power was absolute (certainly after 1805) and the blockades of the French ports destroyed French trade and created a boom for British exports – to such an extent that British manufacturers were actually clothing the French Army.
• With the other European armies occupied, the British started building it’s empire – India, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka – trading monopoly with South America
• The Transatlantic Trade – enormously profitable for Britain – 16^th Century one million slaves transported from Africa to America – 17^th Century three million – 18^th Century seven million. Abolition of Slavery Act 1833.
• Textiles made up 60% of exports. Coal output doubled between 1750 and 1800.
• Manchester went from 17,000 to 18,000 people from 1760 to 1830. The city was seen as revolutionary, it was something that had never before been seen. Marx and Engels.
• Cotton was key to the Industrial Revolution – the raw material came from the slave plantations in the American South – but it was the modern Lancashire which produced the finished article – mainly for export.
• Inventions (Gas light) allowed process to be done in enormous factories by mostly women and children.
• The end of the war meant end of the boom – this caused widespread unemployment and a steep fall in wages. In response to this the government brought in the Corn Laws which put in a tariff on imported grains.
• Conditions in towns and cities were dire – most people lived in slums and Cholera was common.
• The penalty of brutal repression on any sort of dissent and strict penal penalties (exportation – tolpuddle martyrs) was effective in short term
• Peterloo (steamed from Waterloo) Massacre – 1819 Manchester – cavalry charged a crowd of 60,000 demanding parliamentary reform – 11 people died.
• The protesters demanded that growing industrial towns of Britain should have the right to elect MPs. Less than 2% of the population had the vote at the time, and resentment was sharpened by the ‘rotten boroughs’ such as the village Old Sarum which had 11 voters and two MPs. Manchester and Leeds had none. Reform Act 1832.
• Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 meant that bread became cheaper but wages could be lowered because workers could survive on less.
• Farming:
• Enclosures had ended the idea of landholding peasantry – and there was nothing to stop the transfer of the workforce from non-industrial to industrial.
• Population had been rising only slowly or not even rising – from about five million people at the end of the 17^th Century until the middle of the 18^th Century.
• (Seminar notes – Cobbett wants to see people working for a living on the countryside – but there is no countryside left)
• After 1770 is started to rise dramatically – doubling every fifty years after that – although Cobbett disputed that with evidence of the populations in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
• Swing Riots – Rural labourers opposed to the use of new advanced technology such as threshing machine

• The Poor:
  The poor were looked after by the Speenhamland System which was devised as a means to alleviate the distress caused by high grain prices.
• Means Tested was a top up for wages, which was dependent on the number of children a family had and the price of bread.
• The immediate impact of paying this poor rate, fell on the land owners of the parish concerned.
• New Poor Law Act 1834. The Act that stated that no able-bodied person was to receive money or other help from the Poor Law Authorities except in a workhouse.
• Bentham argued that people did what was pleasant and would not do what was unpleasant, therefore if people were not to claim relief, the relief had to be unpleasant. This was the core of the argument for ‘stigmatising’ relief, making it in the happy phrase of the time, ‘an abject of wholesome horror’.
• The Act effectively criminalised the Poor

• Ireland (Act of Union 1801)
  Joined UK in this year
• During the years of famine, Ireland was a new exporter of food, armed troops escorted the crops to the ports to be exported to England. The export of livestock actually increased during the famine years.