Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography — John Locke — John Shaqi
Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiography
John Locke · en
"_April_ 11th, 1848.--The events of a week have been crowded into a few
hours. I was up till four this morning--writing posting placards, under
Maurice's auspices, one of which is to be got out to-morrow morning, the
rest when we can get money. Could you not beg a few sovereigns somewhere
to help these poor wretches to the truest alms?--to words, texts from the
Psalms, anything which may keep even one man from cutting his brother's
throat to-morrow or Friday? _Pray, pray, help us._ Maurice has given me
a highest proof of confidence. He has taken me to counsel, and we are to
have meetings for prayer and study, when I come up to London, and we are to
bring out a new set of real "Tracts for the Times," addressed to the higher
orders. Maurice is _à la hauteur des circonstances_--determined to make a
decisive move. He says, if the Oxford Tracts did wonders, why should not
we? Pray for us. A glorious future is opening, and both Maurice and Ludlow
seem to have driven away all my doubts and sorrow, and I see the blue sky
again, and my Father's face!"
The arrangements for the publication of "Politics for the People" were soon
made; and in one of the earliest numbers, for May, 1848, appeared the paper
which furnishes what ground there is for the statement, already quoted,
that "he declared, in burning language, that the People's Charter did not
go far enough" It was No. 1 of "Parson Lot's Letters to the Chartists." Let
us read it with its context.
"I am not one of those who laugh at your petition of the 10th of April: I
have no patience with those who do. Suppose there were but 250,000 honest
names on that sheet--suppose the Charter itself were all stuff--yet you
have still a right to fair play, a patient hearing, an honourable and
courteous answer, whichever way it may be. But _my only quarrel with the
Charter is that it does not go far enough in reform_. I want to see you
_free_, but I do not see that what you ask for will give you what you want.
I think you have fallen into just the same mistake as the rich, of whom you
complain--the very mistake which has been our curse and our nightmare. I
mean the mistake of fancying that _legislative_ reform is _social_ reform,
or that men's hearts can be changed by Act of Parliament. If any one will
tell me of a country where a Charter made the rogues honest, or the idle
industrious, I will alter my opinion of the Charter, but not till then. It
disappointed me bitterly when I read it. It seemed a harmless cry enough,
but a poor, bald constitution-mongering cry as ever I heard. The French cry
of 'organization of labour' is worth a thousand of it, but yet that does
not go to the bottom of the matter by many a mile." And then, after telling
how he went to buy a number of the Chartist newspaper, and found it in a
shop which sold "flash songsters," "the Swell's Guide," and "dirty milksop
French novels," and that these publications, and a work called "The Devil's