Richard Oastler on the Origins of Chartism

Abstract

… It is because ‘the multitude of the people’ is believed to be too great, that measures hostile to nature are attempted to be enforced; it is because the Bible is thus declared to be a Lie — that religion is set at naught. It is that war against nature, which bewilders our mistaken governors, and forces them to acts, of which no other Government was ever guilty. They are all at sea, having thrown overboard the compass — which is Christianity; — they do not attempt to legislate for the people — their only aim is to diminish them! Hence they have persuaded you, the landlords, that if you do not send your ‘surplus’ population to be worked-up in their Factories, or to be poisoned in the Union Workhouses, they will eat up your estates! whilst at the same time they persuade the Factory population, if they are not allowed to feed on foreign corn, they will be pined to death! They have in great measure succeeded by the New Poor Law in separating the poor from any connection with the soil; they have, by deluding the people, nearly succeeded in forcing them to prefer the prosperity of foreign agriculture to our own!