The Daily Crescent

England—The Chartists.

Universal Cockayne is in extacies that the Chartist meeting passed off without plundering tea-spoons or breaking shop-windows. The Minister the day before, quaking with fear for the existence of oligarchical rule, assumes his place on the Treasury benches with an easy, comfortable air of perfect security, and the confident smile of conscious power; the clerks at the bank cease the awkward manipulation of the musket, and return to their quills; the pensioner and place-holder, who had turned pale at the thought of being hereafter compelled to follow some honest occupation for a livelihood, enjoy with new zest the pleasures purchased by the sweat of others; and shop-keepers, stock-jobbers, tuft-hunters, toad-eaters—in fact, flunkeyism in general—recovers from its alarm, and contents itself with boasting what deeds of prowess and valor it would have performed, if "them bloody Chartists" had only attempted to parade through the streets of London, and frighten the women and children.

What was all the fright about? Why was the Queen sent away, the military concentrated, the police quintupled, and flunkeyism armed and alarmed? It was the mere announcement of a meeting, in Kennington Common, of a portion of the disfranchised people of England, to petition for a redress of grievances and a restoration of rights. Is the Government of Great Britain, heretofore the mainstay of tyranny and oppression all over the earth, so weak that it dreads an assemblage of its own happy, enlightened and contented subjects, who but exercise a right secured to them by what is facetiously called the "glorious revolution?" This is certainly a most singular state of things, and indicates any thing but a consciousness of strength or of rectitude in the power that affects to give the law to the earth.

This fright on the part of the Government, holds out the hope of some relief to the people. It shows a real weakness in the ruling powers, which invites, and we hope may lead, to their overthrow. We hope it, because we look upon the social condition of the English people, as the very worst in Europe. The aristocracy and landed gentry, the cotton-lords, the priests, lawyers and place-holders, the absurd and ridiculous conglomerate called the middle class, and the useless slaves and ornaments of wealth, liveried servants, find the present order of things endurable, if not comfortable; but the men of toil and travail—the suffering, ignorant, over-tasked, half-starved and starving millions—the great substratum of humanity upon which the boasted power and glory of Great Britain rests, are worse off in England than the masses in any other portion of the earth, except the sister kingdom of Ireland. These are the people who lately assembled to petition, with all humility, for the restoration of a portion of the rights which they claim as human beings, and who are described by the courtly and aristocratic Herald, as "poor fellows, whose pale faces, and puny and ill-clad frames, were calculated to inspire much less of horror than of sympathy and pity." Well might their faces be pale!—theirs is a life of unremitting and unrequited toil; well might their frames be puny! from generation to generation, and from the cradle to the grave, drudgery and want has been their lot on earth. And how could they be well clad, the produce of whose labor is snatched from their hands to maintain an army of pampered drones, and to furnish forth the silks and satins, the furs and feathers, gold and diamonds of a court gala day? But where was the sympathy and pity this display of misery was calculated to excite? The former was exhibited only in the determination of the privileged classes and their dependants to put them down—and the latter gleamed from the sabres of the dragoons, or glittered on the bayonet-points of the infantry.

But the Chartists held their meeting, and presented their petition. This was all they designed to do. The petition was received by the House of Commons; and it has been discovered by the enlightened and laborious members of that distinguished body, that it did not contain seven millions of names—as Mr. Feargus O'Connor, in one of his vaporing fits, boasted; that among the names are those of the Queen and the Duke of Wellington, which certainly were never appended with the consent of their owners; and that there is also signed to it the names of several women, who, it is insinuated, have neither rights nor griefs. Upon these notable discoveries, many speeches have been made, and much wit and indignation wasted. But not one word has been uttered relative to a redress of the wrongs complained of—nor will there be. Not an attempt has been made to meet the reasoning, nor combat the justice, of the claims of the petition—nor can there be. But it will, nevertheless, be scornfully rejected. The Government has got over its fright, and believes itself to be invincible, because it was not attacked; the Chartists may, therefore, continue to toil and starve, or steal and hang, in welcome.

We confess that we are not disappointed in the result. The people of England are not now prepared for revolution. They have no organization; how can they contend against the different portions of the privileged classes banded and knit together by the ties of interest, and perfectly organized? They have no arms—how are they to put down an overwhelming armed force? But worst of all, they have no leaders, or none worthy of the name. The loud words and pitiful deeds of those who now affect the station of leaders, are not fitted for great emergencies or revolutionary times. And it will be long, perhaps, before the proper men arise to superintend the work of public regeneration. Such men must be too powerful for the Government to crush—too pure for it to purchase. They are not yet—but they will come. The revolution may be delayed, but it cannot be avoided. The present agitation of the popular mind will lead to inquiry into abuses, and to an anxious desire and energetic determination to remove them. Aristocracy may triumph now, and flunkeyism may rejoice in and imagine that it partakes of the triumph—but the day of the people must come at last; and the longer it is delayed, the more terrible will be the reckoning, and the more radical the reform. The account which has been running up from the days of the Norman Conquest, must finally be settled and woe to those who have large balances to pay!

In writing thus, we know that we shall shock flunkeyism at home, almost as much as we should in London, if our paper happened to reach that headquarters of its power. We lay ourselves open to the accusation of radicalism, jacobinism, agrarianism, and all the other hard names with which well-fed and well-clad propriety delights to distinguish those who think that the poor man has rights which it is his duty to assert by all means in his power—by reason or by force. But we regard this but little. Our sympathies are with the people. We look upon the meanest laborer at Tamworth, as the equal, before Heaven, of Sir Robert Peel: and believe that the dirtiest and blackest drudge in the mines of Newcastle, is entitled to the same rights and privileges with the gentleman who exercises the enviable office of husband to the Queen. We believe that men were created for something besides digging coals, spinning cotton, or making pins; and if it be necessary to win that something by a little hard fighting, and by overturning many of the established monstrosities of society, we think that the sooner they begin, the better—and shall ardently pray for the success of the undertaking.

Like the editor of the Herald, we sympathize with and pity the Chartists, but hope that they may not long remain objects of sympathy or pity to any one—but that they will go ahead, and overturn the strongest and worst, the proudest and meanest Government with which humanity is cursed.