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Chartism Test Questions: 1
... They were to tell all those who had hitherto withstood them, and trifled with
them and affected to despise and scorn them - they
were there to tell their foes throughout the land that they were mighty, because they knew their rights, and had the power as well as the will to obtain
them. (Cheers.) The principle of the Resolution, therefore, which he had risen
to speak to, was a principle which every man was obliged to acknowledge in
argument, though he affected to disregard it, the
principle which acknowledged the right of every man that breathed God's free
air and trod God's free earth, to have his home and his hearth, and his wife
and his children, as securely guaranteed to him as of any other man whom the
Aristocracy had created. (Cheers.) This question of Universal Suffrage was a
knife and fork question after all; this question was a bread and cheese question, notwithstanding
all that had been said against it; and if any man ask him what he meant by Universal
Suffrage,
he would answer, that every working man in the land had a right to have a good
coat to his back, a comfortable abode in which to shelter himself and his
family, a good dinner upon his table, and no more work than was necessary for
keeping him in health and as much wages for that work as would keep him in
plenty, and afford him the enjoyment of all the blessings of life which a
reasonable man could desire. (Tremendous cheers).
Taken from the Northern Star, 29 September. 1838: from a speech made
by Joseph Rayner Stephens at Kersall Moor,
Manchester, on 24 September 1838.
Questions
-
According to the source, what did Stephens mean by ‘Universal
Suffrage'?
-
Who were the ‘foes' of those at the meeting?
-
How had these foes
‘withstood them, and trifled
with them' in the
preceding six years?
-
What evidence does the source supply to suggest that the meeting was
made up largely of
working men?
-
Why did Stephens
think that having the
right to vote was a ‘knife and fork question'?
-
The meeting at Kersall Moor was to
elect delegates to the Chartists' National Convention which met in London on
February 1839. What
was the significance of its
title, and why
did it meet?
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Last modified
6 January, 2011
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