THE LANCASHIRE RIOTS. T HE fears we expressed last week have
been realized only too soon. The ink was scarcely dry which predicted the use of soldiers in Lancashire, when intelligence arrived of the riots at Staleybridge, the attack on the public stores, the assaults on the police, and the employment of the Hussars to restore a semblance of order. Stripped of inevitable exaggera- tions, the facts appear to be these. The ill-feeling existing almost everywhere between the operatives and the Relief Committees has been exasperated in Staleybridge by the immense proportion of the inhabitants who are out of work, by the presence of a number of Irish, and by the "indiscreet" language of a member of the Committee. In obedience, it would seem, to actual necessity, the Committee recently agreed to reduce their dole by fourpence a day, and anxious that the remainder should all reach the women and children, tried to give it away in tickets. A section of the operatives, highly exasperated, broke open the schools paraded the town, and finally attacked the stores of the Relief Committee. Quan- tities of clothes and food were distributed, unpopular members of the Committee had their windows broken' publicans and bakers were plundered, and all the usual incidents of a food riot occurred. When the police attempted to restore order, the rioters, as usual, stoned them ; and when the Hussars were turned out, the rioters, as usual, fled. Had foot soldiers been employed, there would have been, in all human probability, a massacre ; but a mob in England, except at Bristol, is hugely afraid of cavalry, and there was no need to fire. So far, the occurrences were of the ordinary kind, and have been witnessed a hundred times in our great manu- facturing towns. The rioters, however, excited by scenes so different from the weary monotony of suffering in which their days are now passed, ceased altogether to plead their own grievances, and marched to the neighbouring towns to induee or compel quieter or more reasonable people to rise and plead theirs. They were met and dispersed in every instance ; but a shudder of fear and excitement has passed through the Northern towns—everywhere the magistrates are on the alert, and everywhere there is a disposition to summon the troops to the rescue. Writers from most of the threatened towns plead the exceeding good conduct of their own townsmen ; but there is uneasiness, nevertheless,—a lurking belief that in almost all places there is discontent which might, on small provocation, culminate in scenes like those enacted at Staley- bridge.
No impartial politician will, we think, in view of these facts, hesitate as to his judgment of the course to be pursued. Order must, in the first instance, be maintained, even if it is necessary to resort to the soldiery in order to maintain it. No State which ever existed could endure, if the people, under any distress, however severe, were permitted to plunder, within limits however restrained. The police, moreover, unless armed, are never fair matches for a crowd, and when armed, they create more irritation and shed more blood than twice their number of soldiers. The resort to the soldiers— to prompt and visible repression by force—is, therefore, not only justifiable, but expedient. We cannot have an English city given up to plunder, even for a half hour, in order that the civil power may try experiments on its own unassisted strength. But, at the same time, while order is sternly maintained, the Committees must be taught that public opinion holds them strictly responsible for any provocations to riot. They are expected to display judgment, as well as benevolence, and the Committee at Staleybridge were un- doubtedly wanting in the former. We have no doubt their intentions were excellent. They had probably been wearied with the appeals of families left half-starving, while their head disposed of the money granted for the relief of all. But they must have known perfectly well that this evil is one which exists at all times, and which it was no more their duty to remedy than it is the duty of an employer to apportion his labourer's wages between him and the wife and the babes. Why disturb the household order which exists when men are obtaining wages instead of alms ? Above all, why disturb it by a recurrence to a scheme which is associated in the minds of the people with the "truck system," which in the necessity of things produces jobbery and corruption, and which forces what remains of trade out of its natural channels ? The great majority of the people would have treated their families fairly; and look for a moment at the effect of the new rule on them. They are allowed say As. a house. They want, besides bread, bacon, and pota- toes, numberless little " penn'orths," ranging from the half- quartern of gin, necessary to the old mother, down to the rubbish with which too many soothe their babes. By dint of pinching themselves, theyscrew out the required "luxuries"— as people with credit call them—when suddenly the Com- mittee tell them they are all untrustworthy children, and shall have no money at all. They are to have tickets only- i.e., the right to the worst bread and bacon and tea which the shopkeeper can bribe a sub-overseer to pass. Who wonders that households boil over with wrath, that men talk excitedly of human rights, or that the women whom it is intended to benefit hurl loaded stockings at the heads of their bene- factors? But the Committee, it is said, are not paying wages, they are distributing charity, and have a right to distribute it as they please. Certainly, only then they must not grumble at the consequences of having their own way. If it is necessary to give in order to prevent hunger rousing men into insur- rection, it is also necessary to avoid those incidents of giving which irritate men as much as hunger. It would be per- fectly just were a giver to select for his gifts only men who would first submit to be kicked; but he would be an insolent fool nevertheless. Prudence and kindliness are required of the Committees, as well as the laborious zeal they have so steadily evinced, and men who are unwilli f_s, or unable to show these qualities should resign an office to which they feel themselves so unequal. The absence of those qualities is not the slightest excuse for the operatives, whose acts were simply violent thefts, neither more nor less; but they justify the public in the opinion evidently entertained by the Mansion- house Committee, that the fault is not all on the rioters' side.
Of course the occurrence has greatly increased the ardour of all who advise emigration, and the Times writes with a hard scorn for the operatives which must greatly increase the bitterness on both sides. The question is to be taken up in Parliament after Easter, and there will, we doubt not, be an eager desire to avoid a repetition of such scenes by export- ing their authors. We cannot think, however, that a riot, however dangerous, or however unprincipled, is a suffi- cient reason for modifying national policy. The policy of con- cealment is always futile, and there can be no doubt that the cotton hands of Lancashire, as a body, share many of the feel- ings of the people of Staleybridge. But there is no proof that they sympathize with the Irish mode of redressing their griev- ances, are prepared to clothe themselves better by destroying clothes, or to feed themselves better by scrambling in the gutter for stolen bread. The movement is of a kind which demands the patient and kindly attention of the classes above the workmen ; but it is not of a kind which renders order im- possible, or which threatens the stability of political institu- tions. To meet it by removing the population is as wise as it would be to remove all the labourers of Tipperary in order to improve the agriculture of the county. We may be driven into that step ; but it should be the last, not the one adopted in a moment of panic or suspicion. Mr. Potter was guilty of a slip of the pen when he talked of the nation not " allowing " the operatives to depart ; but to allow them and to tempt them to go are two very different matters. To export them wholesale would be simply to sentence twenty cities to decay, to turn Lancashire back once more into an agricultural county, with land lower rented and more heavily burdened than land in Suffolk, and to destroy a trade which, though but one of the springs of the national wealth, still is an important spring. "England would flourish if cotton ceased to exist ;" and so a man may be healthy with only one leg. He will, however, be wise if, even when assured of that fact, he makes a tolerably strong effort for the preservation of two. Each trade which dis- appears reduces the insurance on the remainder, diminishes the ease with which bad times are met, and leaves the pro- sperity of the country further dependent upon accidents to single branches of commerce. Suppose, for example, that wool could supply the whole place of cotton, England would be just as rich, as the Times says.; but then scab among the sheep would be just four times as important. Every wise man of business prefers tiding over a bad year or two, even at a loss, to throwing a good business away ; and that is all the owners of Lancashire are asked to do. Delay may be throwing good money after bad ; but the fact is not yet established, nor can it be, till sufficient time has been permitted to elapse. It is but eighteen months since the cotton famine began to be severely felt, and one year more of endurance can hardly press ruinously upon a business so enormously profitable as the ownership of land in the midst of a cotton district. There is a hurry to close the question, to decide against the trade, to disbelieve in the possibility of revival, which looks as if political influences were at work, as if a powerful class desired finally, by the dispersion of the people of Lancashire, to break the backbone of the Liberal party.
But, we are told, the demoralization is an increasing evil. At the end of the "one year more" the operatives will have acquired a confirmed habit of idleness, and probably a con- firmed habit of rioting. The latter, if it occurs, will be the fault of the local authorities. One stern example will very soon reduce men who are not suffering actual hunger to civilized order, and against actual hunger the plan presup- poses that the county is willing to guard. The former evil is unavoidable; but it is, we conceive, exaggerated. A holiday makes all men unwilling for the moment to put on Eames& again ; but the unwillingness disappears in the pre- sence of strong temptation. Workhouse fare is not so plea- sant that it will be preferred to good wages, or even to wages which, though low, must be far in excess of any allowance obtainable from the poor-rates. The heaviest danger would be a long period of full work on low wages, keeping up a chronic condition of discontent ; but that is not one to be met by exporting the cleverest hands, and those who can earn the most. We repeat, it is a question of time. The county may strive too long against an irreversible sentence ; but to give up now, before the sentence has been appealed, while there is still a possibility that the old resources may be regained, would be the act of weak men, who prefer a little present ease to a permanent prosperity and influence on the world.
Previous page
