Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/356

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THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

of the landed aristocracy and the priest, almost as hotly as they resisted the patronage of the plutocrat and the capitalist. In finding no place for the independence of the worker the Young England scheme of salvation parted company from all Chartism.

There was the same conflict in the Chartist social outlook as in their ideals of reconstruction. To some Chartists the war of classes was the necessary condition of social progress, and their characteristic attitude was the refusal of all co-operation between working men and those who did not gain their bread by manual labour. To others of a more practical temperament experience showed that it was wise to unite the proletariat with the enlightened middle classes in common bonds of interest and affection. Yet even the straitest zealots for class war could not dispense with the guidance of men of higher social position, "aristocratic" deserters from their own class, and middle-class men, like the preachers, barristers, apothecaries, shopkeepers, and journalists who were so numerous that they left but few positions of leadership open to real working men. And it is typical of the deep-rooted habit of dependence and deference in early Victorian society that the men who resented the patronage of Young England lords and cotton kings should have been almost entirely unconscious of the blatant condescension involved in O'Connor's supercilious attitude to his followers. But it would be bewildering to develop still further the varieties of social type included within the Chartist ranks.

The religious outlook of Chartists was as varied as their social ideals. To the timid folk who trembled at Chartism without even trying to understand it, Chartism meant irreligion even more than it meant revolution. And it is clear that to most Chartists organised middle-class religion was anathema. "More pigs and fewer parsons" was a famous cry of Chartism on its most material side. Chartist leaders, like Hetherington and Cleave, handed on to Lovett and Holyoake the uncompromising free-thought of revolutionary France, until, under the latter's auspices, it crystallised into the working-class "secularism" of the later nineteenth century. Yet a strain of exalted mysticism gave force and fervour to many Chartists. We have seen how many Chartist leaders were ministers of religion. Even among the doubters there were elements of spiritual emotion, sometimes extinguished by environment, but at other times kindled into flame by favourable conditions. Thomas Cooper, a Methodist preacher in his youth, the mis-