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The 1842 Chartist Petition

Hansard, Vol. 62 (1842) columns 1373-1381

Chartism was a mass movement that demanded the reform of parliament. The second Chartist Petition was presented to Parliament by Thomas Slingsby Duncombe MP on 2 May 1842. It had been signed by 3,315,752 persons from all over the United Kingdom and was the National Charter Association's petition - the work of Feargus O'Connor. Most of the signatures came from Yorkshire and Lancashire. What follows is an abstract of the full text of the Petition.

Grievances

1. Constitutional: the Petition said that

• Parliament was not elected by the people, and acted for the benefit of the few.
• 900,000 people elected a government for 26,000,000.
• The existing state of representation gave the preponderance of interest to the landed and monied sections.
• Constituencies were unequal.
• Elections were accompanied by bribery, corruption and riot.
• Class legislation created monopolies over suffrage, land, the press, religion etc. at the expense of the poor.
• £9 million per annum was taken from the people to maintain the Anglican Church. This compulsion was wrong.
• There should be freedom from legislation on religion.
• The signatories denounced the cost of the maintenance of the Established Church.
• Universal manhood suffrage was a right.
• Ancient laws declared there should be annual elections.
• MPs should be the servants of the electors and should stand for re-election at short and stated intervals, i.e. annual general elections.
• The property qualifications abolition for MPs should be abolished
• Parliamentary seats cost a great deal.
• MPs. should be paid
• The Irish Act of Union should be repealed
• The Charter must become the law of the land.

1. Economic: here a bitter, socialistic element comes to the fore.

• Taxation was too high to be borne.
• There was great disparity between the wages of the workers and the incomes of others.
• The petition compared of the income per day of Queen Victoria and labourers.
• Government was expensive.
• There might be violence if the distress and the decline in wages continue.
• Conditions, wages and hours in factories were appalling
• Agricultural labourers were paid starvation wages

C. Legislative: the Petition

• attacked the Poor Law Amendment Act which caused people to starve to death.
• demanded the repeal of the Poor Law Amendment Act
• objected to restrictions on the freedom of association.
• complained of the unconstitutional police force which was distributed all over the country at great cost.
• objected to the use of the army in sensitive areas, as being unconstitutional.
• threatened revolution and violence if the grievances are not redressed.
• denounced the system of law which was partial.

The Petition set out grievances and the remedies the petitioners wanted, but leaves the questions:

a) What did the Chartists want?

b) What was Chartism?

Both points are very much unanswered: the Petition's scope goes far beyond the Six Points. By 1842, Chartism as a single movement had fragmented.

The parliamentary debate on the petition took place on 5 May, 1842. The Charter itself was not the point of the debate: this centred on the question as to whether to hear the Chartists at the Bar of the House or not. The Six Points were never debated, but the debate does reveal the government's attitude to Chartism.