Part 13

"Then he shall have my life before he has thee!" said the father, whose heart leaped at the answer, and infused so much strength into his arm, that with another pull he brought off his lad, entirely, from the soldier's hold. The crowd now burst into a shout of triumph; and when the soldier would have followed, to recapture his victim, the stern-browed man confronted him with a look of silent defiance; and the red-coat, after uttering a volley of oaths, walked off amidst the derision of the multitude.

"Don't you think you were a fool, Tom, to be juggled with that cut-throat?" said the stern-browed man to the lad, while the crowd gathered around him and his father.

"I wasn't so soon juggled," replied the lad; "he's been at me this three months; but I never yielded till this morning, when I felt almost pined to death, and he made me have some breakfast with him,—but he'll not get hold of me again!"

"That's right, my lad!" said one of the crowd; "the bloody rascals have not had two Leicester recruits these two years; and I hope they'll never have another."

"No, no, our eyes are getting opened," said another working-man; "they may be able to kill us off by starvation, at home; but I hope young and old will have too much sense, in future, to give or sell their bodies to be shot at, for tyrants."

"Ay, ay, we should soon set the lordlings fast, if all working-men refused to go for soldiers," said another.

"So we should, Smith," said a sedate-looking elderly man; "that's more sensible than talking of fighting when we've no weapons, nor money to buy 'em, nor strength to use 'em."

"Then we shall wait a long while for the Charter, if we wait till we get it by leaving 'em no soldiers to keep us down," said a young, bold-looking man, with a fiery look; "for they'll always find plenty of Johnny Raws ready to list in the farming districts."

"And we shall wait a longer while still if we try to get it by fighting, under our present circumstances," answered the elderly man, in a firm tone; "that could only make things worse, as all such fool's tricks have ended, before."

"You're right, Randal, you're right!" cried several voices in the crowd; and the advocate of the bugbear "physical force" said not another word on the subject.

"No, no, lads!" continued the "moral force" man, "let us go on, telling 'em our minds, without whispering,—and let us throw off their cursed priestcraft,—and the system will come to an end,—and before long. But fighting tricks would be sure to fail; because they're the strongest,—and they know it."

"Yes, it must end,—and very soon," observed another working-man; "the shopkeepers won't be long before they join us; for they begin to squeak, most woefully."

"The shopkeepers, lad!" said the dark-looking man, who had confronted the soldier; "never let us look for their help: there is not a spark of independence in any of 'em: they have had it in their power, by their votes, to have ended misrule, before now, if they had had the will."

"Poor devils! they're all fast at their bankers', and dare no more vote against their tyrants than they dare attempt to fly," said another.

"There is no dependence on any of the middle class," said the dark-looking man; "they are as bad as the aristocrats. You see this last winter has passed over, entirely, without any subscription for the poor, again,—as severe a winter as it has been."

"Ay, and work scarcer and scarcer, every day," said another.

"They say there are eight hundred out o'work now, in Leicester," said the elderly, sedate man, who had spoken before; "and I heard a manufacturer say there would be twice as many before the summer went over: but he added, that the people deserved to be pinched, since they would not join the Corn Law Repealers."

A burst of indignation, and some curses and imprecations, followed.

"Does he go to chapel?" asked one.

"Yes; and he's a member of the Charles Street meeting," said the elderly man.

"There's your religion, again!"—"There's your saintship!"—"There's your Christianity!"—"There's their Providence and their Goddle Mitey!"—were the varied indignant exclamations among the starved crowd, as soon as the answer was heard.

"I should think they invented the Bastile Mill, while they were at chapel!" said one.

"Is it smashed again?" asked another.

"No; but it soon will be," answered the man who confronted the soldier.

These, and similar observations, were uttered aloud, in the open street, at broad day, by hundreds of starved, oppressed, and insulted framework-knitters, who thus gave vent to their despair. Such conversations were customary sounds in John's ears, and, having recovered his son, he took him by the arm, after this brief delay, and, walking slowly back towards the Roman milestone, the two bent their steps down the narrow street called Barkby Lane.

After threading an alley, they reached a small wretchedly furnished habitation; and the lad burst into tears, as his mother sprung from her laborious employ at the wash-tub, and threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him. Two or three neighbours came in, in another minute, and congratulating the father and mother, on their having found their son, a conversation followed on the hatefulness of becoming "a paid cut-throat for tyrants," the substance of which would have been as unpleasing to "the powers that be" as the conversation in the street, had they heard the two. The entry, into the squalid-looking house, of another neighbour, pale and dejected beyond description, gave a new turn to the homely discourse.

"Your son has come back, I see, John," said the new-comer, in a very faint voice: "I wish my husband would come home."

"Thy husband, Mary!" said John; "why, where's he gone? Bless me, woman, how ill you look!—What's the matter?"

The woman's infant had begun to cry while she spoke; and she had bared her breast, and given it to the child: but—Nature was exhausted! there was no milk;—and, while the infant struggled and screamed, the woman fainted.

She recovered, under the kindly and sympathetic attention of the neighbours; and the scanty resources of the group were laid under contribution for restoring some degree of strength, by means of food, to the woman and her child. One furnished a cup of milk, another a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, another brought a little bread; and when the child was quieted, and the mother was able, she commenced her sad narrative. She had not, she said, tasted food of any kind for a day and two nights: she had pawned or sold every article of clothing, except what she had on, and she was without a bonnet entirely: nor had her husband any other clothes than the rags in which he had gone out, two hours before, with the intent to try the relieving officer, once more, for a loaf, or a trifle of money: to complete their misery, they owed six weeks' rent for the room in which lay the bag of shavings that formed their bed; and, if they could not pay the next week's rent, they must turn out into the street, or go into the Bastile.

Her recital was scarcely concluded, when the sorrowful husband returned. He had been driven away by the relieving officer, and threatened with the gaol, if he came again, unless it was to bring his wife and child with him to enter the Union Bastile!—and the man sat down, and wept.

And then the children of misery mingled their consolations,—if reflections drawn from despair could be so called,—and endeavoured to fortify the heart of the yielding man, by reminding him that they would not have to starve long, for life, with all its miseries, would soon be over.

"I wonder why it ever begun!" exclaimed the man who had been yielding to tears, but now suddenly burst out into bitter language: "I think it's a pity but that God had found something better to do than to make such poor miserable wretches as we are!"

"Lord! what queer thoughts thou hast, Jim!" said the woman who had previously fainted, and she burst into a half-convulsive laugh.

"Indeed, it's altogether a mystery to me," said the man who had so recently found his son; "we seem to be born for nothing but trouble. And then the queerest thing is that we are to go to hell, at last, if we don't do every thing exactly square. My poor father always taught me to reverence religion; and I don't like to say any thing against it, but I'm hard put to it, at times, Jim, I'll assure ye. It sounds strange, that we are to be burnt for ever, after pining and starving here; for how can a man keep his temper, and be thankful, as they say we ought to be, when he would work and can't get it, and, while he starves, sees oppressors ride in their gigs, and build their great warehouses?"

"It's mere humbug, John, to keep us down: that's what it is!" said Jim: "one of these piety-mongers left us a tract last week; and what should it contain but that old tale of Bishop Burnet, about the widow that somebody who peeped through the chinks of the window-shutters saw kneeling by a table with a crust of bread before her, and crying out in rapture, 'All this and Christ!' I tell thee what, John, if old Burnet had been brought down from his gold and fat living, and had tried it himself, I could better have believed him. It's a tale told like many others to make fools and slaves of us: that's what I think. Ay, and I told the long-faced fellow so that fetched the tract. He looked very sourly at me, and said the poor did not use to trouble themselves about politics in his father's time, and every body was more comfortable then than they are now. 'The more fools were they,' said I: 'if the poor had begun to think of their rights sooner, instead of listening to religious cant, we should not have been so badly off now:' and away he went, and never said another word.

"But I don't like to give way to bad thoughts about religion, after all, Jim," said John: "it's very mysterious—the present state of things: but we may find it all explained in the next life."

"Prythee, John," exclaimed the other, interrupting him, impatiently, "don't talk so weakly. That's the way they all wrap it up; and if a guess in the dark and a 'maybe' will do for an argument, why any thing will do. Until somebody can prove to me that there _is_ another life after this, I shall think it my duty to think about this only. Now just look at this, John! If there be another life after this, why the present is worth nothing: every moment here ought to be spent in caring for eternity; and every man who really believes in such a life would not care how he passed this, so that he could but be making a preparation for the next: isn't that true, John?"

"To be sure it is, Jim; and what o' that?"

"Why, then, tell me which of 'em believes in such a life. Do you see any of the canting tribe less eager than others to get better houses, finer chairs and tables, larger shops, and more trade? Is old Sour-Godliness in the north, there, more easily brought to give up a penny in the dozen to save a starving stockinger than the grinders that don't profess religion? I tell thee, John, it's all fudge: they don't believe it themselves, or else they would imitate Christ before they tell us to be like him!"

Reader! the conversation shall not be prolonged, lest the object of this sketch should be mistaken. These conversations are _real_: they are no coinages. Go to Leicester, or any other of the suffering towns of depressed manufacture, where men compete with each other in machinery till human hands are of little use, and rival each other in wicked zeal to reduce man to the merest minimum of subsistence. If the missionary people—and this is not said with a view to question the true greatness and utility of their efforts—if they would be consistent, let them send their heralds into the manufacturing districts, and first convert the "infidels" there, ere they send their expensive messengers to India. But let it be understood that the heralds must be furnished with brains, as well as tongues; for whoever enters Leicester, or any other of the populous starving hives of England, must expect to find the deepest subjects of theology, and government, and political economy, taken up with a subtlety that would often puzzle a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. Whoever supposes the starving "manufacturing masses" know no more, and can use no better language, than the peasantry in the agricultural counties, will find himself egregiously mistaken. 'Tis ten to one but he will learn more of a profound subject in one hour's conversation of starving stockingers than he would do in ten lectures of a university professor. Let the missionary people try these quarters, then; but let their heralds "know their business" ere they go, or they will make as slow progress as Egede and the Moravians among the Greenlanders. One hint may be given. Let them begin with the manufacturers; and, if they succeed in making _real_ converts to Christianity in that quarter, their success will be tolerably certain among the working-men, and tolerably easy in its achievement.

There is no "tale" to finish about John or his lad, or Jem and his wife. They went on starving,—begging,—receiving threats of imprisonment,—tried the "Bastile" for a few weeks,—came out and had a little work,—starved again; and they are still going the same miserable round, like thousands in "merrie England." What are your thoughts, reader?

SETH THOMPSON, THE STOCKINGER; OR, "WHEN THINGS ARE AT THE WORST, THEY BEGIN TO MEND."

Leicestershire stockingers call that a false proverb. "People have said so all our lives," say they; "but, although we have each and all agreed, every day, that things were at the worst, they never begun to mend yet!" This was not their language sixty years ago, but it is their daily language _now_; and the story that follows is but, as it were, of yesterday.

Seth Thompson was the only child of a widow, by the time that he was six years old, and became a "winding boy," in a shop of half-starved framework-knitters at Hinckley,—a kindred lot with hundreds of children of the same age, in Leicestershire. Seth's mother was a tender mother to her child; but he met tenderness in no other quarter. He was weakly, and since that rendered him unable to get on with his winding of the yarn as fast as stronger children, he was abused and beaten by the journeymen, while the master stockinger, for every slight flaw in his work,—though it always resulted from a failure of strength rather than carelessness,—unfeelingly took the opportunity to "dock" his paltry wages.

Since her child could seldom add more than a shilling or fifteen-pence to the three, or, at most, four shillings, she was able to earn herself,—and she had to pay a heavy weekly rent for their humble home,—it will readily be understood that neither widow Thompson nor Seth were acquainted with the meaning of the word "luxury," either in food or habits. A scanty allowance of oatmeal and water formed their breakfast, potatoes and salt their dinner, and a limited portion of bread, with a wretchedly diluted something called "tea" as an accompaniment, constituted their late afternoon, or evening meal; and they knew no variety for years, winter or summer. The widow's child went shoeless in the warm season, and the cast-off substitutes he wore in winter, together with lack of warmth in his poor mother's home, and repulses from the shop fire by the master and men while at work, subjected him, through nearly the whole of every winter, to chilblains and other diseases of the feet. Rags were his familiar acquaintances, and, boy-like, he felt none of the aching shame and sorrow experienced by his mother when she beheld his destitute covering, and reflected that her regrets would not enable her to amend his tattered condition.

Seth's mother died when he reached fifteen, and expressed thankfulness, on her death-bed, that she was about to quit a world of misery, after being permitted to live till her child was in some measure able to struggle for himself. In spite of hard usage and starvation, Seth grew up a strong lad, compared with the puny youngsters that form the majority of the junior population in manufacturing districts. He was quick-witted, too, and had gathered a knowledge of letters and syllables, amidst the references to cheap newspapers and hourly conversation on politics by starving and naturally discontented stockingers. From a winding-boy, Seth was advanced to the frame, and, by the time he had reached seventeen, was not only able to earn as much as any other stockinger in Hinckley, when he could get work, but, with the usually improvident haste of the miserable and degraded, married a poor "seamer," who was two years younger than himself.

Seth Thompson at twenty-one, with a wife who was but nineteen, had become the parent of four children; and since he had never been able to bring home to his family more than seven shillings in one week, when the usual villainous deductions were made by master and manufacturer, in the shape of "frame-rent" and other "charges,"—since he had often had but _half_-work, with the usual deduction of _whole_ charges, and had been utterly without work for six several periods, of from five to nine weeks each, during the four years of his married life,—the following hasty sketch of the picture which this "home of an Englishman" presented one noon, when a stranger knocked at the door, and it was opened by Seth himself, will scarcely be thought overdrawn:—

Except a grey deal table, there was not a single article within the walls which could be called "furniture," by the least propriety of language. This stood at the farther side of the room, and held a few soiled books and papers, Seth's torn and embrowned hat, and the mother's tattered straw bonnet. The mother sat on a three-legged stool, beside an osier cradle, and was suckling her youngest child while she was eating potatoes and salt from an earthen dish upon her knee. Seth's dish of the same food stood on a seat formed of a board nailed roughly across the frame of a broken chair; while, in the centre of the floor, where the broken bricks had disappeared and left the earth bare, the three elder babes sat squatted round a board whereon boiled potatoes in their skins were piled,—a meal they were devouring greedily, squeezing the inside of the root into their mouths with their tiny hands, after the mode said to be practised in an Irish cabin. An empty iron pot stood near the low expiring fire, and three rude logs of wood lay near it,—the children's usual seats when they had partaken their meal. A description of the children's filthy and bedaubed appearance with the potatoe starch, and of the "looped and windowed" rags that formed their covering, could only produce pain to the reader. Seth's clothing was not much superior to that of his offspring; but the clean cap and coloured cotton handkerchief of the mother, with her own really beautiful but delicate face and form, gave some relief to the melancholy picture.

Seth blushed, as he took up his dish of potatoes, and offered the stranger his fragment of a seat. And the stranger blushed, too, but refused the seat with a look of so much benevolence that Seth's heart glowed to behold it; and his wife set down her porringer, and hushed the children that the stranger might deliver his errand with the greater ease.

"Your name is Thompson, I understand," said the stranger; "pray, do you know what was your mother's maiden name?"

"Greenwood,—Martha Greenwood was my poor mother's maiden name, sir," replied Seth, with the tears starting to his eyes.

The stranger seemed to have some difficulty in restraining similar feelings; and gazed, sadly, round upon the room and its squalid appearance, for a few moments, in silence.

Seth looked hard at his visitor, and thought of one whom his mother had often talked of; but did not like to put an abrupt question, though he imagined the stranger's features strongly resembled his parent's.

"Are working people in Leicestershire usually so uncomfortably situated as you appear to be?" asked the stranger, in a tone of deep commiseration which he appeared to be unable to control.

Seth Thompson and his wife looked uneasily at each other, and then fixed their gaze on the floor.

"Why, sir," replied Seth, blushing more deeply than before, "we married very betime, and our family, you see, has grown very fast; we hope things will mend a little with us when some o' the children are old enough to earn a little. We've only been badly off as yet, but you'd find a many not much better off, sir, I assure you, in Hinckley and elsewhere."

The stranger paused again, and the working of his features manifested strong inward feeling.

"I see nothing but potatoes," he resumed; "I hope your meal is unusually poor to-day, and that you and your family generally have a little meat at dinner."

"Meat, sir!" exclaimed Seth; "we have not known what it is to set a bit of meat before our children more than three times since the first was born; we usually had a little for our Sunday dinner when we were first married, but we can't afford it now!"

"Good God!" cried the stranger, with a look that demonstrated his agony of grief and indignation, "is this England,—the happy England, that I have heard the blacks in the West Indies talk of as a Paradise?"

"Are you my mother's brother? Is your name Elijah Greenwood?" asked Seth Thompson, unable longer to restrain the question.

"Yes," replied the visitor, and sat down upon Seth's rude seat, to recover his self-possession.—

That was a happy visit for poor Seth Thompson, and his wife and children. His mother had often talked of her only brother who went for a sailor when a boy, and was reported to be settled in some respectable situation in the West Indies, but concerning whom she never received any certain information. Elijah Greenwood had suddenly become rich, by the death of a childless old planter, whom he had faithfully served, and who had left him his entire estate. England was Elijah's first thought, when this circumstance took place; and, as soon as he could settle his new possession under some careful and trusty superintendence till his return, he had taken ship, and come to his native country and shire. By inquiry at the inn, he had learnt the afflictive fact of his sister's death, but had been guided to the poverty-stricken habitation of her son.

That was the last night that Seth Thompson and his children slept on their hard straw sacks on the floor,—the last day that they wore rags and tatters, and dined upon potatoes and salt. Seth's uncle placed him in a comfortable cottage, bought him suitable furniture, gave him a purse of 50_l._ for ready money, and promised him a half-yearly remittance from Jamaica, for the remainder of his, the uncle's, life, with a certainty of a considerable sum at his death.