Political torpor of the day

“April 5, 1863. (To Mr. Hargreaves.)—How do you admire the reception given to the ‘Feargus O’Connor of the middle classes’ in Scotland? For the Town Councils and their addresses I can find excuses; they are privileged flunkies, and nothing else could be expected from them. But there is no doubt that the demonstration was largely shared by the working class, which is certainly one of the most singular and inexplicable of public incidents. It brings to my mind the saying of our librarian,—, who, when speaking of the old Premier, called him ‘the most successful imposter since Mahomet!’

“There is a remarkable fact in the political movement, or rather political torpor of our day, that the non-electors, or working men, have no kind of organization or organ of the Press by which they can make their existence known, either to help their friends or prevent their body being used as was done in Glasgow, to strengthen their enemies—for the latter effect has no doubt been produced by the address from the working class presented to the Premier.

“I observe what you say about Bright’s powers of eloquence. That eloquence has been most unsparingly used since the repeal of the Corn Laws—now going on for nearly twenty years—in advocating financial economy and parliamentary reform, and in every possible way for the abasement of privilege and the elevation of the masses. If he could talk till doomsday he would never surpass the strains of eloquence with which he has expounded the right and demolished the wrong cause. Yet see with what absolute lack of success!

“Now if you have ever the chance of bringing your influence to bear on him in this connexion, let it be, I entreat you, to urge him to take any opportunity that the working class may offer him to tell them frankly that nobody can help them until they are determined to help themselves. Let the responsibility be thrown back on them in a way to sting them into an effort, if self-respect fail to excite them. They should be told plainly that old parties have coalesced on the ground that no further parliamentary reform is required—that five millions of adult males in the kingdom are politically ignored, or only remembered to be insulted, and that this state of things will endure so long as the five millions eat, drink, smoke, and sleep contentedly under the proscription, and that no power on earth will ever help them out of their political serfdom until they show that they can discriminate between those who would emancipate them and those who would keep them as they are. Until the non-electoral class can have a bonâ fide organization in every large town, composed of their own class, and self-sustained, it is a pure waste of life and strength for a man of Bright’s genius to attempt to advance their cause in that packed assembly, the House of Commons.”