He smirked in acknowledgment of their uncouth greetings, and sat down; then glancing round, he inquired whether it would not be agreeable to the gentlemen present to have pipes and liquor handed round, adding, that he would stand treat.
As the man who has had his taste educated to love reading, falls devouringly upon books after a long abstinence, so these poor fellows, whose tastes had been left to educate themselves into a liking for tobacco, beer, and similar gratifications, gleamed up at the proposal of the London delegate. Tobacco and drink deaden the pangs of hunger, and make one forget the miserable home, the desolate future.
They were now ready to listen to him with approbation. He felt it; and rising like a great orator, with his right arm outstretched, his left in the breast of his waistcoat, he began to declaim, with a forced theatrical voice.
After a burst of eloquence, in which he blended the deeds of the elder and the younger Brutus, and magnified the resistless might of the “millions of Manchester,” the Londoner descended to matter-of-fact business, and in his capacity this way he did not belie the good judgment of those who had sent him as a delegate. Masses of people, when left to their own free choice, seem to have discretion in distinguishing men of natural talent: it is a pity they so little regard temper and principles. He rapidly dictated resolutions, and suggested measures. He wrote out a stirring placard for the walls. He proposed sending delegates to entreat the assistance of other Trades’ Unions in other towns. He headed the list of subscribing Unions, by a liberal donation from that with which he was especially connected in London; and what was more, and more uncommon, he paid down the money in real, clinking, blinking, golden sovereigns! The money, alas! was cravingly required; but before alleviating any private necessities on the morrow, small sums were handed to each of the delegates, who were in a day or two to set out on their expeditions to Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham,
The newly-appointed delegates, and one or two others, remained behind to talk over their respective missions, and to give and exchange opinions in more homely and natural language than they dared to use before the London orator.
“He’s a rare chap, yon,” began one, indicating the departed delegate by a jerk of his thumb towards the door. “He’s getten the gift of the gab, anyhow!”
“Ay! ay! he knows what he’s about. See how he poured it into us about that there Brutus. He were pretty hard, too, to kill his own son!”
“I could kill mine if he took part with the masters; to be sure, he’s but a step-son, but that makes no odds,” said another.
But now tongues were hushed, and all eyes were directed towards the member of the deputation who had that morning returned to the hotel to obtain possession of Harry Carson’s clever caricature of the operatives.
The heads clustered together, to gaze at and detect the likenesses.
“That’s John Slater! I’d ha’ known him anywhere, by his big nose. Lord! how like; that’s me, by G-d, it’s the very way I’m obligated to pin my waistcoat up, to hide that I’ve getten no shirt. That IS a shame, and I’ll not stand it.”
“Well!” said John Slater, after having acknowledged his nose and his likeness; “I could laugh at a jest as well as e’er the best on ‘em, though it did tell agen mysel, if I were not clemming” (his eyes filled with tears; he was a poor, pinched, sharp-featured man, with a gentle and melancholy expression of countenance), “and if I could keep from thinking of them at home, as is clemming; but with their cries for food ringing in my ears, and making me afeard of going home, and wonder if I should hear ‘em wailing out, if I lay cold and drowned at th’ bottom o’ th’ canal, there—why, man, I cannot laugh at aught. It seems to make me sad that there is any as can make game on what they’ve never knowed; as can make such laughable pictures on men, whose very hearts within ‘em are so raw and sore as ours were and are, God help us.”
John Barton began to speak; they turned to him with great attention. “It makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see that folk can make a jest of striving men; of chaps who comed to ask for a bit o’ fire for th’ old granny, as shivers i’ th’ cold; for a bit o’ bedding, and some warm clothing to the poor wife who lies in labour on th’ damp flags; and for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi’ hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we ask for more wage? We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes; and so that we get ‘em, we’d not quarrel wi’ what they’re made on. We donnot want their grand houses, we want a roof to cover us from the rain, and the snow, and the storm; ay, and not alone to cover us, but the helpless ones that cling to us in the keen wind, and ask us with their eyes why we brought ‘em into th’ world to suffer?”
He lowered his deep voice almost to a whisper—
“I’ve seen a father who had killed his child rather than let it clem before his eyes; and he were a tender- hearted man.”
He began again in his usual tone. “We come to th’ masters wi’ full hearts, to ask for them things I named afore. We know that they’ve getten money, as we’ve earned for ‘em; we know trade is mending, and they’ve large orders, for which they’ll be well paid; we ask for our share o’ th’ payment; for, say we, if th’ masters get our share of payment it will only go to keep servants and horses—to more dress and pomp. Well and good, if yo choose to be fools we’ll not hinder you, so long as you’re just; but our share we must and will have; we’ll not be cheated. We want it for daily bread, for life itself; and not for our own lives neither (for there’s many a one here, I know by mysel, as would be glad and thankful to lie down and die out o’ this weary world), but for the lives of them little ones, who don’t yet know what life is, and are afeard of death. Well, we come before th’ masters to state what we want, and what we must have, afore we’ll set shoulder to their work; and they say, ‘No.’ One would think that would be enough of hard-heartedness, but it isn’t. They go and make jesting pictures on us! I could laugh at mysel, as well as poor John Slater there; but then I must be easy in my mind to laugh. Now I only know that I would give the last drop of my blood to avenge us on yon chap, who had so little feeling in him as to make game on earnest, suffering men!”
A low angry murmur was heard among the men, but it did not yet take form or words. John continued—
“You’ll wonder, chaps, how I came to miss the time this morning; I’ll just tell you what I was a-doing. Th’ chaplain at the New Bailey sent and gived me an order to see Jonas Higginbotham; him as was taken up last week for throwing vitriol in a knob-stick’s face. Well, I couldn’t help but go; and I didn’t reckon it would ha’ kept me so late. Jonas were like one crazy when I got to him; he said he could na get rest night or day for th’ face of the poor fellow he had damaged; then he thought on his weak, clemmed look, as he tramped, footsore, into town; and Jonas thought, maybe, he had left them at home as would look for news, and hope and get none, but, haply, tidings of his death. Well, Jonas had thought on these things till he could not rest, but walked up and down continually like a wild beast in his cage. At last he bethought him on a way to help a bit, and he got the chaplain to send for me; and he telled me this; and that th’ man were lying in the Infirmary, and he bade me go (to-day’s the day as folk may be admitted into th’ Infirmary) and get his silver watch, as was his mother’s, and sell it as well as I could, and take the
