Labour Movements

The crisis of 1842 came on. Agitation was once more as vigorous as in 1839 . But this time the rich manufacturing bourgeoisie, which was suffering severely under this particular crisis, took part in it. The Anti-Corn Law League, as it was now called, assumed a decidedly revolutionary tone. Its journals and agitators used undisguisedly revolutionary language, one very good reason for which was the fact that the Conservative party had been in power since 1841 . As the Chartists had previously done, these bourgeois leaders called upon the people to rebel; and the workingmen who had most to suffer from the crisis were not inactive, as the year’s national petition for the charter with its three and a half million signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical parties had been somewhat estranged, they allied themselves once more. At a meeting of Liberals and Chartists held in Manchester, February 15th, 1842 , a petition urging the repeal of the Corn Laws and the adoption of the Charter was drawn up. The next day it was adopted by both parties. The spring and summer passed amidst violent agitation and increasing distress. The bourgeoisie was determined to carry the repeal of the Corn Laws with the help of the crisis, the want which it entailed, and the general excitement. At this time, the Conservatives being in power, the Liberal bourgeoisie half abandoned their law-abiding habits; they wished to bring about a revolution with the help of the workers. The workingmen were to take the chestnuts from the fire to save the bourgeoisie from burning their own fingers. The old idea of a “holy month,” a general strike, broached in 1839 by the Chartists, was revived. This time, however, it was not the workingmen who wished to quit work, but the manufacturers who wished to close their mills and send