sentiments received unstinted praise from no less a person than Francis Place himself, who otherwise was quite out of sympathy with the social democratic tendency of the Association.[1]
The Rotten House of Commons was a scathing attack upon the unrepresentative character of that House and a stirring denunciation of the Reform Bill of 1832. It was strongly reminiscent of similar pamphlets published by the aristocratic radicals of the Wilkes epoch. The gist of the pamphlet is that the House of Commons is now the scene of a struggle between landed and moneyed interest, both equally dangerous to the interests and well-being of the useful classes. The bias of the argument is distinctly against the industrial and commercial faction.
Will it, think you, fellow-countrymen, promote our happiness, will it give us more comforts, more leisure, less toil, and less of the wretchedness to which we are subjected, if the power and empire of the wealthy be established on the wreck of title and privilege? … If the past struggles and contentions we have had with the monied and commercial classes to keep up our wages—our paltry means of subsistence—if the infamous Acts they have passed since they obtained a portion of political power form any criterion of their disposition to do us justice, little have we to expect from any accession to that power, any more than from the former tyrants we have had to contend against.
Some of these men had put on the cloak of reform, but intended not to lose their exclusive privileges; others were for gradual reform "lest we should make any advance towards depriving them of their exclusive prerogative of leading us from year to year through the political quagmire where we are daily beset by plunderers, befooled by knaves, and misled by hypocritical impostors"—a master-hand here truly.
Then follows a recital of the various interests represented in Parliament—Fundholders, Landholders, Money-makers, nobles of all ranks, Army, Law, Church, Manufacturers, and Employers—showing how incompatible such representation is with the true interests of the useful classes. The remedy is obvious—universal suffrage, ballot, annual parliaments, equal representation, abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament, but above all a free press. Out of 6,023,752 males of full age only 839,519 had the vote. One-fifth of the latter elect a majority of members of the House of Commons,
- ↑ Additional MSS. 27,819, pp. 221-4.
