Part 9

But the masters did not choose to make all these circumstances known. They stood upon being the masters, and that they had a right to order work at their own prices, and they believed that in the present depression of trade, and unemployment of hands, there would be no great difficulty in getting it done.

Now let us turn to the workmen’s view of the question. The masters (of the tottering foundation of whose prosperity they were ignorant) seemed doing well, and, like gentlemen, “lived at home in ease,” while they were starving, gasping on from day to day; and there was a foreign order to be executed, the extent of which, large as it was, was greatly exaggerated; and it was to be done speedily. Why were the masters offering such low wages under these circumstances? Shame upon them! It was taking advantage of their workpeople being almost starved; but they would starve entirely rather than come into such terms. It was bad enough to be poor, while by the labour of their thin hands, the sweat of their brows, the masters were made rich; but they would not be utterly ground down to dust. No! they would fold their hands and sit idle, and smile at the masters, whom even in death they could baffle. With Spartan endurance they determined to let the employers know their power, by refusing to work.

So class distrusted class, and their want of mutual confidence wrought sorrow to both. The masters would not be bullied, and compelled to reveal why they felt it wisest and best to offer only such low wages; they would not be made to tell that they were even sacrificing capital to obtain a decisive victory over the Continental manufacturers. And the workmen sat silent and stern, with folded hands, refusing to work for such pay. There was a strike in Manchester.

Of course, it was succeeded by the usual consequences. Many other Trades Unions, connected with different branches of business, supported with money, countenance, and encouragement of every kind, the stand which the Manchester power-loom weavers were making against their masters. Delegates from Glasgow, from Nottingham, and other towns were sent to Manchester, to keep up the spirit of resistance; a committee was formed, and all the requisite officers elected—chairman, treasurer, honorary secretary; among them was John Barton.

The masters, meanwhile, took their measures. They placarded the walls with advertisements for power-loom weavers. The workmen replied by a placard in still larger letters, stating their grievances. The masters met daily in town, to mourn over the time (so fast slipping away) for the fulfilment of the foreign orders; and to strengthen each other in their resolution not to yield. If they gave up now, they might give up always. It would never do. And amongst the most energetic of the masters, the Carsons, father and son, took their places. It is well known that there is no religionist so zealous as a convert; no masters so stern, and regardless of the interests of their workpeople, as those who have risen from such a station themselves. This would account for the elder Mr. Carson’s determination not to be bullied into yielding; not even to be bullied into giving reasons for acting as the masters did. It was the employer’s will, and that should be enough for the employed. Harry Carson did not trouble himself much about the grounds for his conduct. He liked the excitement of the affair. He liked the attitude of resistance. He was brave, and he liked the idea of personal danger, with which some of the more cautious tried to intimidate the violent among the masters.

Meanwhile the power-loom weavers living in the more remote parts of Lancashire, and the neighbouring counties, heard of the masters’ advertisements for workmen; and in their solitary dwellings grew weary of starvation, and resolved to come to Manchester. Foot-sore, way-worn, half-starved-looking men they were, as they tried to steal into town in the early dawn, before people were astir, or in the dusk of the evening. And now began the real wrong-doing of the Trades Unions. As to their decision to work or not at such a particular rate of wages, that was either wise or unwise; an error of judgment, at the worst. But they had no right to tyrannise over others, and tie them down to their own Procrustean bed. Abhorring what they considered oppression in their masters, why did they oppress others? Because, when men get excited, they know not what they do. Judge, then, with something of the mercy of the Holy One, whom we all love.

In spite of policemen, set to watch over the safety of the poor country weavers—in spite of magistrates and prisons and severe punishments—the poor depressed men tramping in from Burnley, Padiham, and other places, to work at the condemned “Starvation Prices,” were waylaid, and beaten, and left by the roadside almost for dead. The police broke up every lounging knot of men: they separated quietly to reunite half a mile out of town.

Of course the feeling between the masters and workmen did not improve under these circumstances.

Combination is an awful power. It is like the equally mighty agency of steam; capable of almost unlimited good or evil. But to obtain a blessing on its labours, it must work under the direction of a high and intelligent will, not being misled by passion or excitement. The will of the operatives had not been guided to the calmness of wisdom.

So much for generalities.

The Trial for Murder causes Mary Barton to Confess her Love for the Prisoner at the Bar

From _Mary Barton_, 1848

As soon as he could bring his distracted thoughts to bear upon the present scene, he perceived that the trial of James Wilson for the murder of Henry Carson was just commencing. The clerk was gabbling over the indictment, and in a minute or two there was the accustomed question, “How say you, Guilty or not Guilty?”

Although but one answer was expected—was customary in all cases—there was a pause of dead silence, an interval of solemnity even in this hackneyed part of the proceeding; while the prisoner at the bar stood with compressed lips, looking at the judge with his outward eyes, but with far other and different scenes presented to his mental vision; a sort of rapid recapitulation of his life—remembrances of his childhood—his father (so proud of him, his first-born child)—his sweet little playfellow, Mary—his hopes, his love—his despair, yet still, yet ever and ever, his love—the blank, wide world it had been without her love—his mother—his childless mother—but not long to be so—not long to be away from all she loved—nor during that time to be oppressed with doubt as to his innocence, sure and secure of her darling’s heart;—he started from his instant’s pause, and said in a low, firm voice:

“Not guilty, my lord.”

The circumstances of the murder, the discovery of the body, the causes of suspicion against Jem, were as well known to most of the audience as they are to you, so there was some little buzz of conversation going on among the people while the leading counsel for the prosecution made his very effective speech.

“That’s Mr. Carson, the father, sitting behind Serjeant Wilkinson!”

“What a noble-looking old man he is! so stern and inflexible, with such classical features! Does he not remind you of some of the busts of Jupiter?”

“I am more interested by watching the prisoner. Criminals always interest me. I try to trace in the features common to humanity some expression of the crimes by which they have distinguished themselves from their kind. I have seen a good number of murderers in my day, but I have seldom seen one with such marks of Cain on his countenance as the man at the bar.”

“Well, I am no physiognomist, but I don’t think his face strikes me as bad. It certainly is gloomy and depressed, and not unnaturally so, considering his situation.”

“Only look at his low, resolute brow, his downcast eye, his white compressed lips. He never looks up—just watch him.”

“His forehead is not so low if he had that mass of black hair removed, and is very square, which some people say is a good sign. If others are to be influenced by such trifles as you are, it would have been much better if the prison barber had cut his hair a little previous to the trial; and as for downcast eye and compressed lip, it is all part and parcel of his inward agitation just now; nothing to do with character, my good fellow.”

Poor Jem! His raven hair (his mother’s pride, and so often fondly caressed by her fingers), was that, too, to have its influence against him?

The witnesses were called. At first they consisted principally of policemen, who, being much accustomed to giving evidence, knew what were the material points they were called on to prove, and did not lose the time of the court in listening to anything unnecessary.

“Clear as day against the prisoner,” whispered one attorney’s clerk to another.

“Black as night, you mean,” replied his friend; and they both smiled.

“Jane Wilson! who’s she? Some relation, I suppose, from the name.”

“The mother—she that is to prove the gun part of the case.”

“Oh, ay—I remember! Rather hard on her, too, I think.”

They both were silent, as one of the officers of the court ushered Mrs. Wilson into the witness-box. I have often called her the “old woman,” and “an old woman,” because, in truth, her appearance was so much beyond her years, which could not be many above fifty. But partly owing to her accident in early life, which left a stamp of pain upon her face, partly owing to her anxious temper, partly to her sorrows, and partly to her limping gait, she always gave me the idea of age. But now she might have seemed more than seventy; her lines were so set and deep, her features so sharpened, and her walk so feeble. She was trying to check her sobs into composure, and (unconsciously) was striving to behave as she thought would best please her poor boy, whom she knew she had often grieved by her uncontrolled impatience. He had buried his face in his arms, which rested on the front of the dock (an attitude he retained during the greater part of his trial, and which prejudiced many against him).

The counsel began the examination.

“Your name is Jane Wilson, I believe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The mother of the prisoner at the bar?”

“Yes, sir,” with quivering voice, ready to break out into weeping, but earning respect by the strong effort at self-control, prompted as I have said before, by her earnest wish to please her son by her behaviour.

The barrister now proceeded to the important part of the examination, tending to prove that the gun found on the scene of the murder was the prisoner’s. She had committed herself so fully to the policeman that she could not well retract; so without much delay in bringing the question round to the desired point, the gun was produced in court, and the inquiry made:

“That gun belongs to your son, does it not?”

She clenched the sides of the witness-box in her efforts to make her parched tongue utter words. At last she moaned forth:

“Oh! Jem, Jem! what mun I say?”

Every one bent forward to hear the prisoner’s answer; although, in fact, it was of little importance to the issue of the trial. He lifted up his head; and with a face brimming full of pity for his mother, yet resolved into endurance, said:

“Tell the truth, mother!”

And so she did, and with the fidelity of a little child. Every one felt that she did; and the little colloquy between mother and son did them some slight service in the opinion of the audience. But the awful judge sat unmoved; and the jurymen changed not a muscle of their countenances; while the counsel for the prosecution went triumphantly through this part of the case, including the fact of Jem’s absence from home on the night of the murder, and bringing every admission to bear right against the prisoner.

It was over. She was told to go down. But she could no longer compel her mother’s heart to keep silence, and suddenly turning towards the judge (with whom she imagined the verdict to rest), she thus addressed him with her choking voice:

“And now, sir, I’ve telled you the whole truth, as _he_ bid me; but don’t you let what I have said go for to hang him; oh, my lord judge, take my word for it, he’s as innocent as the child as has yet to be born. For sure, I, who am his mother, and have nursed him on my knee, and been gladdened by the sight of him every day since, ought to know him better than yon pack of fellows” (indicating the jury, while she strove against her heart to render her words distinct and clear for her dear son’s sake), “who, I’ll go bail, never saw him before this morning in all their born days. My lord judge, he’s so good I often wondered what harm there was in him; many is the time when I’ve been fretted (for I’m frabbit enough at times), when I’ve scold’t myself, and said, ‘You ungrateful thing, the Lord God has given you Jem, and isn’t that blessing enough for you?’ But He has seen fit to punish me. If Jem is—if Jem is—taken from me, I shall be a childless woman; and very poor, having nought left to love on earth, and I cannot say ‘His will be done.’ I cannot, my lord judge, oh, I cannot!”

While sobbing out these words she was led away by the officers of the court, but tenderly and reverently, with the respect which great sorrow commands.

The stream of evidence went on and on, gathering fresh force from every witness who was examined, and threatening to overwhelm poor Jem. Already they had proved that the gun was his, that he had been heard not many days before the commission of the deed to threaten the deceased; indeed that the police had, at that time, been obliged to interfere, to prevent some probable act of violence. It only remained to bring forward a sufficient motive for the threat and the murder. The clue to this had been furnished by the policeman, who had overheard Jem’s angry language to Mr. Carson; and his report in the first instance had occasioned the subpœna to Mary.

And now she was to be called on to bear witness. The court was by this time almost as full as it could hold; but fresh attempts were being made to squeeze in at all the entrances, for many were anxious to see and hear this part of the trial.

Old Mr. Carson felt an additional beat at his heart at the thought of seeing the fatal Helen, the cause of all—a kind of interest and yet repugnance, for was not she beloved by the dead; nay, perhaps in her way, loving and mourning for the same being that he himself was so bitterly grieving over? And yet he felt as if he abhorred her and her rumoured loveliness, as if she were the curse against him; and he grew jealous of the love with which she had inspired his son, and would fain have deprived her of even her natural right of sorrowing over her lover’s untimely end; for, you see, it was a fixed idea in the minds of all that the handsome, bright, gay, rich young gentleman must have been beloved in preference to the serious, almost stern-looking smith, who had to toil for his daily bread.

Hitherto the effect of the trial had equalled Mr. Carson’s most sanguine hopes, and a severe look of satisfaction came over the face of the avenger—over that countenance whence a smile had departed, never more to return.

All eyes were directed to the door through which the witnesses entered. Even Jem looked up to catch one glimpse, before he hid his face from her look of aversion. The officer had gone to fetch her.

She was in exactly the same attitude as when Job Legh had seen her two hours before through the half-open door. Not a finger had moved. The officer summoned her, but she did not stir. She was so still, he thought she had fallen asleep, and he stepped forward and touched her. She started up in an instant, and followed him with a kind of rushing, rapid motion into the court, into the witness-box.

And amid all that sea of faces, misty and swimming before her eyes, she saw but two clear bright spots, distinct and fixed: the judge, who might have to condemn; and the prisoner, who might have to die.

The mellow sunlight streamed down that high window on her head, and fell on the rich treasure of her golden hair, stuffed away in masses under her little bonnet-cap; and in those warm beams the motes kept dancing up and down. The wind had changed—had changed almost as soon as she had given up her watching; the wind had changed, and she heeded it not.

Many who were looking for mere flesh and blood beauty, mere colouring, were disappointed; for her face was deadly white, and almost set in its expression, while a mournful, bewildered soul looked out of the depths of those soft, deep grey eyes. But others recognised a higher and a stranger kind of beauty; one that would keep its hold on the memory for many after years.

I was not there myself; but one who was, told me that her look, and indeed her whole face, was more like the well-known engraving from Guido’s picture of “Beatrice Cenci” than anything else he could give me an idea of. He added that her countenance haunted him, like the remembrance of some wild sad melody, heard in childhood; that it would perpetually recur with its mute imploring agony.

With all the court reeling before her (always save and except those awful two) she heard a voice speak, and answered the simple inquiry (something about her name) mechanically, as if in a dream. So she went on for two or three more questions with a strange wonder in her brain, at the reality of the terrible circumstances in which she was placed.

Suddenly she was roused, she knew not how or by what. She was conscious that all was real, that hundreds were looking at her, that true-sounding words were being extracted from her; that that figure, so bowed down, with the face concealed with both hands, was really Jem. Her face flushed scarlet, and then paler than before. But in dread of herself with the tremendous secret imprisoned within her, she exerted every power she had to keep in the full understanding of what was going on, of what she was asked, and of what she answered. With all her faculties preternaturally alive and sensitive, she heard the next question from the pert young barrister, who was delighted to have the examination of this witness.

“And pray, may I ask, which was the favoured lover? You say you knew both these young men. Which was the favoured lover? Which did you prefer?”

And who was he, the questioner, that he should dare so lightly to ask of her heart’s secrets? That he should dare to ask her to tell, before that multitude assembled there, what woman usually whispers with blushes and tears, and many hesitations, to one ear alone?

So, for an instant, a look of indignation contracted Mary’s brow, as she steadily met the eyes of the impertinent counsellor. But, in that instant, she saw the hands removed from a face beyond, behind; and a countenance revealed of such intense love and woe—such a deprecating dread of her answer; and suddenly her resolution was taken. The present was everything; the future, that vast shroud, it was maddening to think upon; but _now_ she might own her fault, but _now_ she might even own her love. Now, when the beloved stood thus, abhorred of men, there would be no feminine shame to stand between her and her avowal. So she also turned towards the judge, partly to mark that her answer was not given to the monkeyfied man who questioned her, and likewise that the face might be averted from, and her eyes not gaze upon, the form that contracted with the dread of the words he anticipated.

“He asks me which of them two I liked best. Perhaps I liked Mr. Harry Carson once—I don’t know—I’ve forgotten; but I loved James Wilson, that’s now on trial, above what tongue can tell—above all else on earth put together; and I love him now better than ever, though he has never known a word of it till this minute. For you see, sir, mother died before I was thirteen, before I could know right from wrong about some things; and I was giddy and vain, and ready to listen to any praise of my good looks; and this poor young Mr. Carson fell in with me, and told me he loved me; and I was foolish enough to think he meant me marriage: a mother is a pitiful loss to a girl, sir; and so I used to fancy I could like to be a lady, and rich, and never know want any more. I never found out how dearly I loved another till one day, when James Wilson asked me to marry him, and I was very hard and sharp in my answer—for, indeed, sir, I’d a deal to bear just then—and he took me at my word and left me; and from that day to this, I’ve never spoken a word to him, or set eyes on him; though I’d fain have done so, to try and show him we had both been too hasty; for he’d not been gone out of my sight above a minute, before I knew I loved—far above my life,” said she, dropping her voice as she came to this second confession of the strength of her attachment. “But if the gentleman asks me which I loved the best, I make answer, I was flattered by Mr. Carson, and pleased with his flattery; but James Wilson, I——”

She covered her face with her hands, to hide the burning scarlet blushes, which even dyed her fingers.

John Barton’s Confession of the Murder of young Mr. Carson

From _Mary Barton_, 1848

“And have I heard you aright?” began Mr. Carson, with his deep quivering voice. “Man! have I heard you aright? Was it you, then, that killed my boy? my only son?”—(he said these last few words almost as if appealing for pity, and then he changed his tone to one more vehement and fierce). “Don’t dare to think that I shall be merciful, and spare you, because you have come forward to accuse yourself. I tell you I will not spare you the least pang the law can inflict—you, who did not show pity on my boy, shall have none from me.”

“I did not ask for any,” said John Barton, in a low voice.

“Ask, or not ask, what care I? You shall be hanged—hanged—man!” said he, advancing his face, and repeating the word with slow grinding emphasis, as if to infuse some of the bitterness of his soul into it.

John Barton gasped, but not with fear. It was only that he felt it terrible to have inspired such hatred as was concentrated into every word, every gesture of Mr. Carson’s.

“As for being hanged, sir, I know it’s all right and proper. I dare say it’s bad enough; but I tell you what, sir,” speaking with an outburst, “if you’d hanged me the day after I’d done the deed, I would have gone down on my knees and blessed you. Death! Lord, what is it to Life? To such a life as I’ve been leading this fortnight past. Life at best is no great thing; but such a life as I have dragged through since that night,” he shuddered at the thought. “Why, sir, I’ve been on the point of killing myself this many a time to get away from my own thoughts. I didn’t! and I’ll tell you why. I didn’t know but that I should be more haunted than ever with the recollection of my sin. Oh! God above only can tell the agony with which I’ve repented me of it, and part perhaps because I feared He would think I were impatient of the misery He sent as punishment—far, far worse misery than any hanging, sir.” He ceased from excess of emotion.

Then he began again.

“Sin’ that day (it may be very wicked, sir, but it’s the truth) I’ve kept thinking and thinking if I were but in that world where they say God is, He would, maybe, teach me right from wrong, even if it were with many stripes. I’ve been sore puzzled here. I would go through hell-fire if I could but get free from sin at last, it’s an awful thing. As for hanging, that’s just nought at all.”

His exhaustion compelled him to sit down. Mary rushed to him. It seemed as if till then he had been unaware of her presence.

“Ay, ay, wench!” said he feebly, “is it thee? Where’s Jem Wilson?”

Jem came forward. John Barton spoke again, with many a break and gasping pause: