besides church chartists and positivist chartists, there were tory chartists, of whom i add an account, and a list of those among them who were paid in the days of their hired activity. but the business of this chapter is with the old postillion, the founder of the real chartists, who taught them and who knew them all.
of course i mean francis place, who was always ready to mount and drive the coach of the leaders of the people. though he took that modest and useful position, it was he who determined the route, made the map of the country, and fixed the destination of the journey. joseph parkes himself, known as "the people's attorney-general," first addressed place as the "old postillion."* james watson, a working-class politician (whom place could always trust), wrote of him at his death as the "english franklin,"** a very good title, having regard to the strength of the common-sense characteristics of place.
*wallas's "life of place," p. 346. longmans, green & co., 1898.
**reasoner, no. 409, vol. xvi., march 28 1854.
one advantage (there were not many) of my imprisonment which i have never ceased to value, was that it led to my acquaintance with place. from him i learned many things of great use to me in after life. one thing he said to me was: "a man who is always running after his character seldom has a character worth the chase." some far-seeing qualification was generally present in what he said. for a man who is "always" vindicating himself becomes tiresome and ineffectual. yet now and then, sooner or later, and often better later then sooner, a personal explanation may be useful. printed actionable imputations were made against cobbett of which no notice was taken—so far as i knew—which created in many minds an ineffaceable personal prejudice against him.
once imputations were published concerning me which justified contradiction. it came to pass that they were certified as true by a person of mark. then i proposed to show that the allegations were untrue. whereupon i was assured it would be to my disadvantage with many with whom i stood well, which meant that should i prove i was not a rascal i should lose many of my best friends, which shows the curious perplexities of personal explanation. nevertheless, i made it.* mr. place told me that in the course of his career as defender of the people, "he had been charged with every crime known to the newgate calendar save wilful murder." a needless reservation, for that would have been believed. he let them pass, merely keeping a record of the accusations to see if their variety included any originality. there was one charge brought against him which to this day prejudices many against him. the one thought to be most overwhelming was that he was a "tailor" at charing cross. after that, argument against the principles he maintained was deemed superfluous; as though following a trade of utility disqualified a man's opinions on public affairs; while one who did nothing, and whose life and ideas were useless to mankind, might be listened to with deference.
*"warpath of opinion."
in 1849 chambers's journal published an article on the "reaction of philanthropy," against which i made vehement objection in an article in the spirit of the age, of which chambers's journal took, for them, the unusual course of replying. the spirit of the age coming under place's notice, he sent me the following letter, which i cite exactly as it was expressed, in his quaint, vigorous and candid way:—
"brompton square,
"march 3, 1849.
"master holyoake,—i have read your paper of observations on a paper written by chambers, and dislike it very much. you assume an evil disposition in chambers, and have laid yourself open to the same imputation. this dispute now consists of three of us, you and i and chambers—all three of us, in vulgar parlance, being philanthropists. i have not read chambers, but expect to find, from what you have said and quoted, that he, like yourself, has been led by his feelings, and not by his understanding, and has therefore written a mischievous paper. i will read this paper and decide for myself. knowledge is not wisdom. the most conspicuous proof of this is the conduct of lord brougham. he knows many things, more, indeed, than most men, but is altogether incapable of combining all that relates to any one case, i.e., understanding it thoroughly, and he therefore never exhausts any subject, as a man of a more enlarged understanding would do. this, too, is your case. i think i may say that not any one of your reasonings is as perfect as it ought to be, and if i were in a condition to do so, i would make this quite plain to you by carrying out your defective notions—reasonings, if you like the term better.
"it will, i am sure, be admitted, at least as far as your thinking can go, that neither yourself, nor chambers, nor myself, would intentionally write a word for the purpose of misleading, much less injuring the working people; yet your paper must, as far as it may be known to them, not only have that tendency, but a much worse one; that of depraving them, by teaching them, in their public capacity, to seek revenge, to an extent which, could it pervade the whole mass, must lead to slaughter among the human race—the beasts of prey called mankind; for such they have ever been since they have had existence, and such as they must remain for an indefinite time, if not for ever. their ever being anything else is with me a forlorn hope, while yet, as i can do no better, i continue in my course of life to act as if i really had a strong hope of immense improvement for the good of all.—yours, really and truly,
"francis place."
there was value in mr. place's friendship. he was able to measure the minds of those with whom he came in contact, and for those for whom he cared he would do the service of showing to them the limits within which they were working. it was thus he took trouble to be useful to those who could never requite him, by putting strong, wise thoughts before them.
elsewhere* i have related how place on one occasion—when all london was excited, and the duke of wellington indignant and repellant—went on a deputation to him, and was dismissed with the ominous words:
*"sixty years," vol. i. chap. 40.
"you seem to have heads on your shoulders; take care you keep them there." the courage of seeking this interview, at which place was the chief speaker, is well shown in the experience of george petrie, who was known to place. petrie was an intelligent soldier, who served under wellington in the peninsular war, and was wounded in several engagements. it often happened that the commissary was in arrears to the troops with their rations, but when the supply arrived the arrears were faithfully served out to the soldiers. on one of these occasions, when some days' rations were due, corporal petrie was absent on duty when the rations were served out, and on his return he found himself without his arrears. to a half-starved soldier this was a serious disappointment, and petrie applied to the quartermaster, to the adjutant, and to the captain of his company, but without effect, until he arrived at the commanding officer of his regiment being as unsuccessful as he had been with the other officers, and becoming hungrier by delay, he requested permission to make his complaint to the commander-in-chief (lord wellington), which was granted. upon being introduced he found his lordship seated at a table perusing some documents. "well," said the commander, without raising his eyes from the papers before him, "what does this man want?" "he is come to appeal to your lordship about his rations," replied the officer in attendance; whereupon the commander-in-chief, without asking or permitting a single word of explanation from the injured soldier, without discovering (as he ought in common justice to have done) whether the soldier had a real grievance for the redress of which he had sought the protection of the head of the army, wellington hurriedly exclaimed, "take the fellow away and give him a d——d good flogging!" petrie, naturally indignant and a determined man, lay in wait two nights to shoot wellington, who escaped by taking one night a different route, and on another being closely accompanied by his staff. the facts were published in 1836. petrie's appeal shows that the duke was not a pleasant person for mr. place to call upon. no biography or book about wellington has anything to say of his sympathy with men who died in making his fame. he took the same care of his men, and no more, that he did of his muskets, which it must be owned is more than many employers do, who take more care of their machinery than of the workers. wellington kept his men dry, but he had no more feeling for them than he had for their carbines. petrie's story will be instructive to men who shout for war without knowing what the soldier's fate is. they were told by tennyson "not to ask the reason why." their business is to die without inquiring whether they are murderers or patriots, or what treatment will befall them in the ranks. if they do they may expect some form of the petrie treatment.
to place, the experience of social reformers was as valuable as that of politicians. social life gives its character to public life, and the politician is most to be valued whose measures tend to exalt the daily life of the people. near the end of his days place addressed the following (his last) letter to robert owen, with whom he had been acquainted since 1813:—
"21, brompton square,
"march 26, 1847.
"dear owen,—it is some years since you and i had a conversation, and it is time we had one. will you call upon me, or shall i call upon you? i go out but little, having an asthmatic complaint, which at times treats me sadly, and from which i am never wholly free. worst of all, i have an affection of the brain, which will not permit me either to read or write, and when these two complaints co-operate i am something worse than good for nothing. you are, i conclude, in a much better state than i am, although you are not much younger, yet the doctors tell me that after having lived through seventy years without illness, i have nothing to complain of in the usual circumstances of old age now that i approximate to eighty.—
"yours truly,
"francis place."
from a condition of absolute penuriousness, he raised himself to the position of master tailor, from which, at the age of forty-five, he was able to retire upon an income of ￡1,1000. shrewd, hard-headed, painstaking, vigilant and prudent as he was, he found, when more than sixty, that ￡650 of his income was irrevocably lost he had put a large part of his capital into house property, and left the investment of it to an incompetent or dishonest solicitor.* the fate befel him which afterwards befel cobden, thomas bayley potter, and some others.
why did place let his prudence sleep? why, in his walks with jeremy bentham,** did he not turn his steps to the sites of his investments, and judge for himself their value? his absorbed interest in public affairs is the only explanation. yet he had often warned others that such engrossment, however honourable, should be limited, and not suffered to endanger necessary personal security.
on the death of place in 1854, at the age of eighty-two, the spectator and the reasoner expressed a hope that a life of place would be written as one of supreme utility to the great class which he had served so conspicuously.
happily this was done, forty-four years after, in 1898,*** by mr. graham wallas. when he mentioned to me his intention of writing a biography of place, i told him where, in the manuscript department of the british museum, he would find virgin material in place's own compact and clear hand. by research there and elsewhere, mr. wallas has produced a valuable and remarkable book, of which there is no similar one so instructive to a working-class politician.
* see wallas's "life of place," p. 329.
** see "sixty years," vol. i. p. 215.
*** "life of francis place," by graham wallas, m.a.
longmans, green & co.
the most notable of all the insurgent publicists place inspired and counselled, richard carlile, an impassable defender of a free press, whom pitiless power in the darkest days of its supremacy could not subdue, thus wrote of place: "though by circumstances (meaning those of nine years' imprisonment) separated from the immediate acquaintance of mr. place for several years past, i can, by experience of eighteen and the well-founded report of forty years, pronounce him a prodigy of useful, resolute, consistent political exertion and indefatigable labour, which evidently continues unabated to this day.... francis place, by his assistant labours and advice given to the members of the house of commons, has produced more effect in that house than any man who was ever a member."*
* see article on the "real nobility of the human character,"
by a. p. (i.e., richard carlile) in the monthly magazine,
may 1835. p. 454.
this testimony from one who bore the heat and burden of the day with place, agrees with all recorded of him. carlile wrote in 1835, and the public work place was engaged in then he continued until his death in 1854, at which time he was chairman of the committee for repealing taxes on knowledge. the old postillion was on the saddle to the last.
