THE PLATFORM.*
IN The Platform, Mr. Jephson has carried out a strikingly original idea with great ingenuity and success. In view of the enormous amount of political importance attached at the
present to "the Platform"—that is, to voluntary public meetings—Mr. Jephson conceived the idea of interrogating history as to the origin of the institution and the process of development which it has undergone. The result of his in- terrogations and investigations is the two stout volumes which constitute the present work. In them is concentrated a truly enormous mass of material bearing upon political public meetings during the last hundred and fifty years. Critics inclined to be captious may perhaps declare that Mr. Jephson's work is to a great extent undigested, and that he has done little more than hurl his commonplace- books at his readers' heads. In our view, such a criticism, though it would have apparently something to support it, would be in reality most unfair. Before grumbling at a book for being of that formation which in geology is termed "limestone conglomerate," we must ask,—Would it have been possible to have made anything else of the material ? In Mr. Jephson's case, we believe that the answer is "No." Granted that the book was to be useful to the politician and the historian, Mr. Jephson had no choice but to make it gritty with facts. The quotations which follow each other in unending procession through his pages may weary the fastidious reader, but they make the work a treasure- house out of which future writers will be able to draw rich stares of fact. We do not say that the results accom- plished by Mr. Jephson might not be improved upon, but that does not prevent us from thinking that no small credit is due to him for having broken entirely new ground, and for having made a very valuable and in- teresting contribution to the literature of our political institutions. No one can put his hand on the first regular political meeting held in England and say, "Here is the beginning of an institution which has affected the history of the whole political world." All that it is possible to do is to show a slow and minute process of evolution. Though Mr.
Jephson does not penetrate into those dim and far-off regions, we believe that something very like public meetings were held by our ancestors in the "deep forest glades" of their original home. Tacitus, if we remember right, refers to the love of public dinners as instinctive in the Teuton. In later times, the Shire- moot of Anglo-Saxon and media3val history was to all intents and purposes a public meeting. That the Shire-moot was the origin of "the Platform," we have ourselves no sort of doubt. Mr. Jephson shows conclusively that till comparatively recent times it was considered that all public meetings ought to be convened by the Sheriff of the comity in which they took place,
and further, ought only to be attended by the freeholders of the shire. But if a meeting of the freeholders of the shire summoned by the Sheriff is not a Shire-moot, what is it? Un- questionably the Platform is in origin an Anglo-Saxon insti- tution. To give our readers an idea of what a public meeting
in the eighteenth century was like, we cannot do better than quote Dr. Johnson's humorous account of a meeting of the freeholders to petition Parliament for some reform or other :—
" The progress of a petition is well known. An ejected place. man goes down to his county or his borough, tells his friends of his inability to serve them, and his constituents of the corruption of the government. His friends readily understand that he who can get nothing, will have nothing to give. They agree to pro- claim a meeting ; meat and drink are plentifully provided ; a crowd is easily brought together, and those who think that they know the reason of their meeting undertake to tell those who know it not. Ale and clamour unite their powers ; the crowd, condensed and heated, begins to ferment with the leaven of sedition. All see a thousand evils, though they cannot show • The Platform : its Rise and Progress. By Henry Jephson. In 2 vols. London: iinomillan and Co. 1892.
them, and grow impatient for a remedy, though they know not what. A speech is then made by the Cicero of the day ; he says much, and suppresses more, and credit is equally given to what he tells and what he conceals. The petition is read and universally approved. Those who are sober enough to write, add their names, and the rest would sign it if they could. The peti- tion is then handed from town to town, and from house to house, and wherever it comes the inhabitants flock together that they may see that which must be sent to the King. Names are easily collected. One man signs because he hates the papists ; another because he has vowed destruction to the turnpikes ; one because it will vex the parson; another because he owes his landlord nothing; one because he is rich ; another because he is poor; one to show that he is not afraid; and another to show that he can write."
The change by which a gathering of freeholders to petition became a meeting of freemen to support a particular cause or statesman, was very greatly helped on by the Wesleyan revival. Wesley and Whitefield, by accustoming men to collect in crowds
to listen to public speeches, enormously stimulated the desire of the public to be brought face to face with the leaders of the nation. Chatham lived just too early to become a platform orator ; but Charles Fox regularly adopted the habit of consulting the people in public meeting assembled. It was his habit to address his constituents, and the in- habitants of London generally, in Westminster Hall. We wish Mr. Jephson had told us how Fox managed to obtain the use of Westminster HalL The Hall is, of course, part of the Palace of Westminster, and therefore Crown pro- perty. Why, then, did not the King, who actually struck Fox's name out of the Privy Council for one of his speeches in the Hall, deprive him of its use ? We presume that the public had usurped a right of congregating in the Hall at such times as they felt disposed, and that to have closed the Hall would have raised a tumult such as even George III, and his Tory advisers would have feared. When Queen Charlotte asked Walpole how much it would cost to shut up St. James's Park, he answered: "A mere trifle, Madam; not more than three crowns." Possibly the House of Hanover took the reply to heart, and it became a tradition with the family that the one thing which it was not safe to do was to keep the public from coming where they had been accustomed to come. The Minister who carried on Fox's platform traditions was, oddly enough, Mr. Canning. He, indeed, treated platform speaking as part of a politician's normal business, and was never more in his element than when addressing the electors of Liverpool.
The struggle for free speech which occurred at the beginning of the century, and the evil days on which the Platform then fell, are well told in Mr. Jephson's volumes. We cannot, however, find space to follow him here, nor in his account of the Reform agitation. Still, we must not close our notice without a reference to the very curious account which he quotes of a county meeting held at Maidstone in 1822. The meeting is described by a Baron A. de Stael Holstein, who gives us what is, in fact, a verbal photograph of the scene that took place on such occasions. It contains matter that should not be missed by those interested in the social side of modern history.
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