156

3 _. JYOBDEN.,

[os

1839. Chartists, of whom we shall say something in anoth®
Zr. 35. chapter, began a long course of violent hostility by trying
at the very outset of the agitation to break up a meeting of
Leeds, insisting that the movement was a cheat put on 9°
work-people of the country by cunning and rapacio®
employers. Even in places where so much strong politics
intelligence existed as at Birmingham, members of the to¥*
council of the borough were found to talk about “ the
interested movements of the Whig corn law intriguers)
and to urge that the discussion of the corn laws was merely
a Whig device to embarrass the patriotic champions of
parliamentary reform. Of all this the Leaguers heard
much more, and from more troublesome people, in the yes
to come,
Meanwhile the information which their lecturers brought
back to head-quarters at Manchester, as to the state of so
of the rural districts, inspired the leaders of the agitation with
new zeal, and a stronger conviction of the importance of theif
cause. In Devonshire they found that the wages of the
labourers were from seven to nine shillings a week ; that they
seldom saw meat or tasted milk; and that their chief food
was a compost of ground barley and potatoes. It was little
wonder that in a county where such was the condition of
labour, the lecturer was privately asked by poor men at the
roadside if he could tell them where the fighting was to b?
Nor need we doubt that he was speaking the simple truth
when he reported that, though ignorant of Chartism as *
political question, the great mass of the population of Devo?
were just as ready for pikes and pistols, as the most excitt.ble
people of the factory towns. In Somersetshire the budge!
of a labourer, his wife, and five children under ten yes
of age, was as follows. Half a bushel of wheat cost fo?
shillings ; for grinding, baking, and barm, sixpence; firiv§
$ Bunce's History of the Cornoration of Birmingham, i. 166-7.