AN ENGLISH " CONSTITUTIONAL " AGITATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 2, 9 May 1890, Page 5

AN ENGLISH " CONSTITUTIONAL " AGITATION.

(From the Irish World.)

In view of the Forgeries Commission report, which dwells so much on " violence and imimidation " in connection with the Irish Land League, we print elsewhere a number of interesting facts showing how Englishmen, when they had serious reform work in hand, were not very nice as to their methods or very scrupulous in regard to '• law and order." In giving those facts we by no means intend an endorsement of the facts set forth. Upon the " outrages " committed by those British agitators, many of them noble lords and members of Parliament, we pronounce no opinion or judgment whatever.

The facts speak for themselves. They prove that the Briton is a person who will not permit even the law of his own country to itand between him and what he conceives to be his right. In 1831 and 1832 he thought it was his right to have a reform of the franchisa laws, and in the agitation to get it he adopted methods rougher than were ever dreamt of in Ireland in the pursuit of far more vital reforms. Before 1832 in England it was only comparatively rich people who could vote for members of Parliament. The great bulk of the nation whs excluded from tbe franchise. Large and important manufacturing towns like Manchester had no representation in Parliament, while small " pocket boroughs " with but a few dozen voters had their member, who was, of course, invariably the lord of the manor or his son. It was to reform this system that tbe great agitation of '31 and '32 was organised and earned on. Among the '• constitutional methods " the agitators adopted wera burning towns, destroying lives, and refusing to pay the " King's taxes." Here is an enumeration from an English pen of some of ihs things they did:—

" Tbey burned up a quarter of Bristol, 94 lives being lost and £500,000 worth of property being destroyed in that riot ; they burned Nottingham Castle and various mansions in its neighbourhood ; they wrecked a thousand houses in Edinburgh ; they burned a vast number of hay and corn ricks through the country ; they caused great riots over twenty cities and towns ; they wrecked the house and assaulted the person of his Grace the Duke of Wellington ; they beat H.R.H. the Duke of Cumberland in the public street ; when Lord Londonderry, after voting in the House of Lords, was leaving that building they pelted him with stones, knocked him senseless to the earth, with cues of ' Murder him ; cut his throat.' "

Further evidence is furnished by Miss Martineau, in her " History of England," of preparations throughout the country to " march on London " with armieß of reformers to bring physical pressure to be»r on Parliament. She says :—: —

" The political unions made known the number they could master; the Chairman of Birmingham Dnion declared they could send forth two armies, each fully worth that which hnd won at Waterloo, On the coast of Sussex ten thousand men declared themselves ready at any moment, Nortbumberland was prepared in like manner. Yorkshire was awake. The nation was ready if London wanted."

The agitators had also in contemplation " a movement to refuse to pay the King's taxes if the said Bill (the Reform Bill; was rejected."

Such were among thedoings of agitators in England half a century ago. And the London Times not only bad no word of condemnation for the outrages or perpetrators of tnem, but it encouraged the movement as a right and proper one. The reform demanded was for the benefit of England, not Ireland, That made all the difference with the Times,