The Sydney Morning Herald Thursday 18 January 1849 p. 3.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28646351
THE CHARTIST TRIALS.
(From the Times, September 29.)
THE trials at the Old Bailey present a singular
contrast to the 10,000 prisoners, the 12,000 files
of correspondence, and the 1,000,000 interrogatories of the judicial proceedings upon the
Paris insurgents. Considering that London is
now squaring accounts with a whole year's
treason, the show is very poor. A dozen or
two shoemakers, tailors, and joiners are discovered to constitute the nucleus and mainstay
of that Chartism which last spring was to upset
and remodel this empire. The most respectable
criminal is a foolish young portrait-painter ;
and the most spirited a mulatto, bred and born
in the service of Her Majesty's dockyards.
No strolling players, after strutting for an
hour as kings, queens, and great warriors, ever
fell lower when the curtain dropped, and when
they returned to their-own proper selves.
Last
April, besides soldiers and cannon, 150,000
men of peace stood up to defend the metropolis
from a mysterious foe. There have since been
conspiracies, threats, demonstrations, and
almost collisions ; but within six months
the whole power and terror of revolution has shrunk into a few ill-conditioned fellows quietly tried in the routine of
a criminal court, with several false Chartists
testifying against them in the witness-box, and
another Chartist, real or pretended, conducting
a very lame defence.There has seldom been a conspiracy without
a spy in it, and so it is here. The most secret
proceedings of the Chartists have from day to
day been reported to the police by at least four
volunteer informers, each of whom fancied
himself alone in his treachery.
The story of
one will stand for all four. Mr. Thomas
Powell, struck by the utter failure of the demonstration on Kennington-common, conceived
the somewhat singular ambition of mastering
all the secrets of this noisy but impotent
faction so he immediately joined the Chartist
Society, whom he soon found out to be a
"very rum lot." His promotion was rapid.
He was elected one of the Quinqueviri, vested
with the management of the Cripplegate Association. Shortly after he was one of the
secret committee at the Black Jack, in Portugal-street. He was then appointed to the
Seven-dials, with some equally competent authorities, to plan the defence of that central
position against the Queen's troops. He
afterwards sat in committee on Saffronhill, and
in a sort of sanctum sanctorum (an "Ulterior
Committee") in Bride-lane; at the Lord
Denman beershop in Suffolk-street, at the
Orange Tree beershop, and at the Crispin beer
shop, Milton-street, where a plan was laid
down for the capture of the Artillery Ground,
in the teeth of the very respectable company
charged with its defence.
Mr. Powell appears
to have seen a good deal of the world ; and to
be a man of ready wit and versatile powers.
Though enjoying a certain degree of notoriety,
he found no difficulty in attending these meetings and taking part in the discussions in a
feigned name. In the first instance he was
proposed by a stranger whom he had never
seen, and has not since seen. He
was once or twice asked for his credentials ; sometimes suspected ; once actually
challenged as a spy. He contrived, however,
to turn the tables on his accuser, who was
forthwith expelled. The presence of such a
person in the head-quarters of a conspiracy
appears rather unaccountable, but it is a
fact of invariable occurrence. There were
four such in this instance. If any
twenty persons are conspiring in this metropolis, they may have a comfortable assurance
that there is at least one spy in their number, and that every sentiment, opinion, and intention they utter is forthwith reported to those
whom it chiefly concerns.
Had the resources of these gentlemen been
in the smallest proportion to their wishes, it
would by this time have fared ill with the metropolis. But their means were singularly inadequate to their end. Maps of London were
produced at their meetings, and plans of localities with pencil marks for barricades.
Mr.
Powell himself exhibited a certain magic circle, with dots all round to represent men, but
whether insurgents, or soldiers, or people in
general, he cannot now remember. As to intentions there was no mistake. The chairman
at the Seven-dials opened proceedings with the
casual remark, "Mind, gentlemen, our object
is, if possible, to destroy the power of the Queen,
and establish a republic." Another gentleman
then and there expressed himself as follows: -
"We must first assassinate the police, pull
down the station-houses, and build barricades."
At one meeting a resolution was passed
that a "visionary" president be elected, without either place, office, or name ; and for the
maintenance and dignity of this important
functionary every member was to subscribe a
farthing a week. The rest of the arrangements,
however, were not so visionary. On several
occasions every member of the committee was
required to make a return of the "fighting
men" in his district. Bullets were as plenty
among them as blackberries ; and committee-
men showed one another their pockets full of
ball-cartridges. Ginger-beer bottles, blacking
bottles, and ink bottles, which are usually so
hard to get rid of, were filled with gunpowder
and old nails, and laid up in store for policemen's legs. To the ladies were committed
these extempore grenades. A corps of "Luminaries" took charge of the fire-balls. The
eleven gentlemen at the Orange Tree were
armed with pistols and pikes, and with bludgeons loaded with lead. But, to judge from
the copious stores discovered by the police,
they must have passed all their leisure in
trying various combinations of gunpowder,
tow, brown paper, pitch, turpentine, broken
glass, old iron, and printing types.
Mr.
Powell everywhere tendered his services,
which were freely and gratefully
accepted. Being a carpenter and a handy man,
he became a leading engineer in the service.
In particular he exhibited some portable contrivances to lame cavalry horses. He usually
elicited that others had been beforehand. In
fact, the general invention was at work. Every
man was casting his bullets, sharpening his
" tooth-pick, " bottling powder and nails,
sopping tow in turpentine, or covering the map
of London with pencil barricades.
As to Mr. Thomas Powell's part in these discoveries, that is his own look out. Government had no alternative but to accept his useful and spontaneous services. It is a matter of
every day occurrence that a murderer or a
housebreaker turns informer, defeats the plans
of the gang, and thus rescues life or property
from destruction. Many a murderer has been
hung on the evidence of a much worse villein
than himself. Who would refuse to hear the
man who offered to tell how and by whom his
life was menaced ? Treachery is the natural
and providential antidote for treason. The
evidence of all four informers is harmonious,
and also strongly corroborated. It is not even
denied. We have therefore no alternative but
to take it. It would indeed be madness to decline it.
So we see there was mischief enough. The
virus, or vitriol as it should now be called, was
not wanting. Nor was the activity. The object was an entire subversion of the present
form of Government. Mr. Kenealey, indeed,
now pretends that Dowling and the Irish Confederates intended nothing more than a good
street row by way of diversion, to frighten Government and draw troops from Ireland. That
does not mend the matter. War is war, whether for diversion or for a direct object ; and it
would be a poor consolation to the metropolis
to be told it had been burned and pillaged
merely for a feint. Mr. Cuffey's charity, at
any rate, began nearer home. But why did
all this end in smoke ? Why did the rebellion
confine itself to the score or two rascals in
whom it first began ? We can only say the
fact is so, has ever been so, and will ever be so.
The English are not conspirators, with the exception of perhaps one Thistlewood in a century. The nation abhors it. Cuffey, the very
chief of the conspiracy, is half a "nigger."
Some of the others are Irishmen. We doubt
if there are half-a-dozen Englishmen in the
whole lot. On great provocations the English
will rise, openly and en masse—but they will
not and cannot conspire. The least appearance
of conspiracy draws down upon itself the national suspicion and resentment. We apprehend nothing from conspiracy in this country.
It is one of those reptiles that can never be naturalised amongst us.
(From the Times, October 2.)
The Chartist trials are over at last, and the
conclusion is of a more decided character than
we are apt to expect from a protracted inquiry.
Lacey, Fay, and Guffey [Sic.] have been found
guilty, and, together with Dowling, the young
Irish portrait painter previously convicted,
have been sentenced lo transportation for life.
This is a severe sentence, but a most just one.
The guilt of these men is about as great as
could be imagined, and if they have provoked
a degree of ridicule, and so far a trivial way
of regarding their crime, that is owing to the
ridiculous insufficiency of their means to their
end. Whatever may be thought of the witnesses,
no sane person can doubt after reading their
evidence that these four men did really attempt
to raise an insurrection against Her Majesty's
servants, authority, people, and person ; and
that the three latter, at least, attempted to
take possession of a part of this metropolis, and
defend it by conflagration and slaughter against
any force that could be brought against them.
After a trial properly conducted this moral
certainty has been attained. There could,
therefore, be no doubt as to the verdict or as to
the sentence. Transportation for life is thought
a slight punishment for ordinary cases of
arson or attempted murder. The whole metropolis was aimed at in this instance. If the
crime vastly surpassed the ability of the criminals, it is not the less heinous on that account, or less to be punished.
There is already some controversy, and
there is likely to be more, about the character
of the chief evidence for the prosecution. It is
the evidence of approvers and spies. The private motives and sentiments of spies is a point
which must be left to themselves and to public
opinion. Whether Powell, Davis, and the
others felt a perverted curiosity and a hankering after a guilty mystery, whether they did
really feel a sort of patriotic impulse to sacrifice
themselves to the state by a very dirty piece of
public service, or whether they looked simply
and solely to the 20s. a week till the conviction, and after that to a good outfit to the
borders of civilization, it is impossible and most
unnecessary to decide. The use of spies, however, in such atrocious conspiracies as these, is
a disagreeable necessity, There is no help for
it.
We need not imagine an instance to prove
this, for instances abound. In the spring of
1829 a club of small farmers met from night to
night at a public-house in Doneraile, in the
county of Cork, to concert the redress of their
grievances and the enforcement of an agrarian
code by assassination. They solemnly tried
the gentry of the neighbourhood one after
another. Such as were found guilty were
sentenced to death, and arrangements
were forthwith made for the execution of the sentence. But every
night they sat there was a spy
in their number, who met the necessities of his
horrid position by playing the murderer as
fiercely as the rest, but who reported everything to the police. In the morning half the
gentry of the neighbourhood read at their
breakfast tables the arrangements for their
assassination at the earliest opportunity.
They took care to disappoint the murderers,
accepted beds after dinner parties instead of
coming home, varied their routes, and went
out well attended. Would they not have been
absolutely insane to close their ears against
the information on which their own existence
hung ? Would they not have been equally
insane to let the affair run for ever on that
perilous footing, always dodging a conspiracy
and fencing with murder ? They had no
possible choice but to use the private information, and eventually the public evidence of the
spy.
The conspiracy in the present instance
was only more extensive, more destructive,
and more murderous. But if the spy is generally a viler character than the men he betrays,
whose fault is that ? The Chartists reckoned
ou the assistance of 50,000 thieves and rogues.
They were assisted by one scoundrel more than
they bargained for.
The most agreeable aspect of these trials is
that suggested by the French parallel. Instead
of four miserable, wrong-headed fellows, with
perhaps a few more to follow, the French Government has to dispose of some eight or ten
thousand convicts. What it is to do with them
nobody knows. To crowd them into hulks
within sight of a sympathizing population, to
let them loose on Algeria, or send them to sure
death by fever on the western coast of Africa,
are alternatives presenting only different forms
of inconvenience and hardship.
But to pursue the contrast. With us, a mere room-full
of miscreants stood on one side, and 200,000
men on the other. The trials of the past week
record the triumph of the latter over the former. Both England and France, it may be
said, are expelling their revolutionists. But
in France the subjects of this transportation
en masso are the very men who did the work in
February. Republican France is forced to
stigmatize and banish her own so-called deliverers. Who are the men who revolutionized
France, who provoked the fatal discharge at
the Hotel des Affaires Etrangères, who paraded
Paris with cries for vengeance, who
massacred the Municipal Guards, who attacked and devastated the Tuileries,
who invaded the Chamber, and denounced
the Regency as " too late," who elected
the Provisional Government, who
surrounded the Hôtel de Ville and extorted its decrees ? Who are they but the
very men whom France is now obliged to
banish from her soil, with the disagreeable
certainty that many more such are at large
waiting their opportunity to revolt ? The Republic and its authors are parted. The institution remains at home; the men are on their
way to Algeria, to Senegal, or wherever the
sun strikes from above and pestilential vapours
from below. With us, it is the nation that
ejects one or two unnatural exceptions to the
universal sentiment.
France exhibits the result of a civil war. A moiety of the Parisian
people, after a desperate conflict, has overcome the other. Ten thousand prisoners of
war attest the painful and perplexing victory.
What will most strike foreigners is the utter
absurdity of the Chartist military calculations.
Any dozen French children playing at soldiers
in the gardens of the Tuileries or of the
Luxembourg, under the surveillance of their
bonnes or their elder sisters, would do the thing
better than the desperadoes of the Orange
Tree public-house or the would-be insurgent!
of the Seven Dials. The east end of London
was to be divided against the west by means
of a gun, bought at a sale, and ruffled for at a
shilling a ticket ; by some pistols picked up
hero and there at 3s. a-piece ; by a few
hundred cartridges tied up in pocket handkerchiefs ; by some pike-heads and various preparations of gunpowder that might possible
have set fire to a house if they should happen
to go off near a bed curtain. How a barricade
was to be made and how defended, was another
question. These amateurs did not even consider what purpose was to be answered by
firing a dwelling, and whether a conflagration
might not do them more harm than good. In
the faubourgs the houses were occupied by the
insurgents, and stormed with cannon by the
army.
Throughout all the tactics and preparations of the Chartists theirs was the frivolity
of children and the malice of men. Danger to
the public peace of course there was, seeing
that for many months this year the whole
European society has been in such a state that
a spark might fire or explode it. But the
epidemic has passed, and with it the peril.
" Physical" Chartism is now nothing more
than the blackened remains of a squib on the
morning after a Fifth of November, trodden
under foot and sopped by the rain. It has had
an opportunity such as it could never have
expected ; it has done its best to profit by that
opportunity, and has utterly failed.