A City of Refuge

ON the 20th of June, 1646, Oxford surrendered to Fairfax, and Presbyterian visitors were put in possession of her university. Nine years later, Cromwell resolved to protect the political faith he deemed orthodox from the ruinous competitions of free thought, and, convinced that intellectual liberty throve sturdily in soil prepared by Wyclif, Colet, and Erasmus, issued a military proclamation requiring all recusants found within five miles of the city to be treated as spies.

In 1665, when it had become obvious to all men that the Protectorate had ceased to protect, Parliament, frightened from Westminster by the plague, sat at Oxford, and Charles II. proceeded to justify the familiar lines written by Rochester upon the door of his bedchamber : —

Imitating the great Protector, the utter collapse of whose expensive structure, ten years after its completion, should have taught even the blind that, whatever methods of governing the English nation might prove effective, Cromwell’s methods were futile, Charles set about copying those acts of his predecessor which his own presence at Oxford advertised conspicuously as failures.

In the face of vehement opposition and carefully recorded protest from a few of the wiser sort, he procured, in 1665, the passage of the Five Mile Act. By this all persons suspected of lukewarm affection for the new order of tyranny were required to subscribe to the following oath: “ I do swear that it is not lawful upon any pretense whatever to take up arms against the king ; and I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms against his person, or against those that are commissioned by him in pursuance of such commission ; and that I will not at any time endure any alteration of government either in church or state.”

All who failed to take this oath before six months had elapsed were forbidden, under stringent penalties, to approach except as travelers within five miles, not of Oxford alone, but of any city in the realm. Somewhat of growth here visible in the seed the Protector had planted ! " My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions,” said Solomon’s sagacious son, forgetting that the scorpions might prove like the snakes on Medusa’s head, from which other people could run away, but she could not.

A majority of the manliest men in England were intellectually hospitable to the ideas from which Independency had grown. The elect of the land, therefore, — those who prized their birthright above a mess of pottage, and craved the bread of life more than a portion of the king’s meat, — resigned their livings, forsook their homes, and settled in the north and midland villages, Leeds, Manchester, and others which, because incorporated towns, were exempt from the terms of the Five Mile Act. These villages which welcomed the ejected ministers with their adherents into the shelter of their own insignificance were for that reason called “ cities of refuge.”

One of the least among them stood on the little river Rea, near Coventry. It had done nothing to attract the notice of the great, but something to win the admiration of the wise ; for its first, and for a century its only, public building had been a church. It had sturdily contended against a Niagara of ecclesiasticism for the right to choose its own chaplains, and had gained the right; so that in Wyclif’s day the Lollards, who sought refuge in its hospitality, were singularly exempt from persecution. Here too John Rogers had received the training which made him stand when others blenched, the first martyr at Smithfield.

The true name of this obscure little town has been much debated, and never determined. It has been spelt in a hundred and forty different ways, because no one knows its origin or meaning. But — a fact which is unquestioned and which seems to have been prophetic — the final syllable of the name is the Saxon equivalent for “ home,” that sweetest among English words, which binds in one bundle of myrrh, with a band woven at Nazareth, wife, mother, child, sister, all that Englishmen hold dearest. For this village on the Rea, which was not till this year, in the English sense, a city, — because, like the New Jerusalem, there is no temple therein, nor its modern equivalent, a cathedral, — is called Birmingham.

The wisdom of Charles was justified by its results, precisely as the wisdom of Cromwell had been. In 1685, the government which the king had established with so much sagacious foresight went the way of marsh fogs before the sun and Macbeth’s witches when a true man approached; that is, made itself into thin air and vanished.” During the years immediately preceding that achievement, while the London rabble crowded daily to applaud blackguard actors for performing the play of Pope Juan and similar obscene travesties written to ridicule what Charles held dearest, the party which was busily throwing down all that the king had set up was named, by that popular intuition which rarely errs, the Birminghamers. So conspicuous and so influential in guiding the nation had the little village by the Rea become in fifteen years.

“ We will not have these scoundrels in the ship ! ” cried the captain. “ They impede the navigation of the vessel. Put them in the yawl, and let them starve as they are dragged behind! ” So into the yawl they were put. But in twenty years the great steamer, puffing and paddling with all its huge might to keep its course, appears moving in the opposite direction, stern foremost too, dragged in the wake of the yawl.

The late Elihu Burritt has catalogued the causes to which he attributes the industrial preëminence of Birmingham. He finds them in her exceptional, as it is claimed her unparalleled, material resources. But these advantages existed from the beginning. In them Birmingham has no advantage over Coventry, is surpassed by Wolverhampton, and is equaled by a dozen midland towns whose names have not escaped imprisonment in gazetteers. Three facts require explanation : —

(1.) The greatness of Birmingham dates from the Five Mile Act, or, to speak more accurately, from the legislation of which that act was the consummation. Before that legislation she had neither wealth, influence, nor reputation. Twenty years after it she stood in the front rank of English communities, and has steadily advanced, until to-day she can claim without presumption a relation to London such as Boston sustains toward New York.

(2.) During the whole period of her growth she has been distinguished among English communities by this significant fact: her brains, her wealth, and her social influence have belonged, with inconsiderable exceptions, not to Churchmen, but Dissenters.

(3.) To a degree unparalleled in other English towns, her policy, both municipal and national, has been shaped by the influence of non-conforming ministers.

These facts all point in the same direction.

“ What was the cause of your downfall, Sir Cardinal ? ”

“ Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king! ”

“ With what do you mix your colors, Sir Joshua ? ”

“ With brains, sir ! ”

“ What have been the causes of your prosperity, Peru ? ”

“ Gold and guano, and all things pleasant to the eyes and good for food.”

“ What were the causes of your prosperity, New England ? ”

“ Character and brains.”

Character and brains, mistaken for offal and flung away by Charles II., have created the greatness of Birmingham.

I ask permission to exhibit a few of the many wares she has produced. For some of them, it may be, a market might be opened in our own country without crowding our existing industries.

In 1868 Mr. Burritt wrote that it was doubtful if a single battle had taken place in the civilized or uncivilized world, since firearms superseded tomahawks, in which guns made at Birmingham had not been used. The sportsman still looks thither before buying his weapon, though there are now other directions in which he may glance with advantage, but fishermen must still go to Heath & Co., or be satisfied with an inferior reel.

The pen, we are told, is mightier than the sword, though the truth of the statement would seem to be conditioned upon the relative skill of the hands that wield them. But Josiah Mason’s pens, still manufactured by Gillott Perry & Co., still made at the old factory, but stamped in German, English, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, with the names of the vendors who are supposed to manufacture them, have written most of the literature, state documents, private and public correspondence, and filled most of the ledgers of this century. Sheffield tried to stop the business, and petitioned Parliament to forbid it, because steel pens created no demand for Sheffield knives to sharpen their points. But Sheffield papal bulls were burnt to ashes by the comet.

Elkington taught us electrotyping. Henry Clay in his papier-maché works started us on the road to paper buckets and car-wheels. Birmingham recovered the lost art of staining glass as they had stained it once in Florence. She first learned how to make the crystal fountain which astonished the world in Prince Albert’s first exposition, and the chandeliers which adorn the palace of Berlin.

You have read the charming paper, which I believe is anonymous, upon the still unanswered question, “ Where do the pins go ? ” If the question had been, “Whence did they come?” we should not have needed Macaulay’s schoolboy to answer “Birmingham.”

Even in the early part of the sixteenth century the town was noted as the abode of smiths and cutlers. In the manufacture of cutlery it has been supplanted by Sheffield, though in various other sorts of metal-work it still holds its supremacy. Nails, wire, brass-work, the first Atlantic cable, ropes, tin plate, ploughs, machinery of all kinds, locks, — Birmingham has taught us how to make all these; in some of them to rival, and in the last to excel her.

It is true that not all her products can be commended. There was at least one snake in Paradise, though there are none in Ireland ; one traitor among the Apostles, though none among the geese whose cackling saved the Capitol. When his converted sailors got drunk and began to despair in consequence, Father Taylor used to bid them take heart, because they might be sure the devil would never tug so hard to drag a bag of chaff to his own place. When the coiners of false money at Birmingham had become so skillful that bad money throughout the kingdom was called “Brummagem coin.” Matthew Bolton blushed for his city. But he did not think that he had done his whole duty by blushing for her. He started a mint, stamped for the government with impress so fine that it could not be duplicated. Soon Bolton’s coin became the accepted standard, and he was minting coinage for Great Britain, China, Turkey, Italy, and the countries of South America. It was he also who taught the world to do its work by steam, and before such a thing had been elsewhere attempted illuminated his factory by coal gas to celebrate the peace of 1802.

In naming these fruits of the city’s exuberant vitality, I feel as the reporters do at banquets where they are compelled to pique twenty orators by their silence, while they appall five by reporting— one must be truthful, though it mars the illustration—what they did not say.

But more important wares than these has Birmingham produced. She has saved the world’s thinkers and scholars from blindness. Her Baskerville first taught mankind to print hooks which could he read without peril to the eyesight. Benjamin Franklin, I think, deserves the credit of inducing the great printer to make his chief work the famous edition of the Bible; for Baskerville himself hated the Bible, and was so averse to its teachings that he stipulated in his will against receiving Christian burial.

From Birmingham Rowland Hill gave the world cheap postage by proving the wisdom of taxing weight instead of distance.

Birmingham was nearly the first to follow Raikes in establishing Sunday-schools, and John Angell James is a name that must stand third, or certainly fourth, among those whose influence destroyed slavery through England’s dominions.

It is not needful to describe the beauty of the palaces of Birmingham nor the comfort of her artisan dwellings. For it is not the shell, but the spirit, which makes home, and what most deserves notice is the culture and temper of her people.

Hers is the most democratic community I have ever seen. The average of her culture is higher and the thoroughness with which it permeates her society more entire than it has been my fortune elsewhere to witness. Her charitable institutions are unsurpassed. Her free library is admirably arranged and is extensively used. Workingmen frequent it in great numbers. Her Shakespearean library was the most complete in the world, and although it has been destroyed by fire a second is rapidly accumulating.

For a trifle so small that it can be spared from the wages of the day-laborer, any man, woman, or child may receive nightly the best instruction that can be had in art, music, science, history, or literature. A few facts may illustrate the results of such opportunities.

Political speakers expect their most exacting, but their most appreciative, audiences at Birmingham. Bright prepared more carefully his utterances to the artisans of Birmingham than those to his associates in Parliament. When Gladstone means to arrest the ear of the English nation he goes to Birmingham.

In art the public taste has become so true and so exacting that not only was the finest collection of paintings ever brought together in the world exhibited in Birmingham, but her permanent gallery of art, though small when compared with many others, is the only public gallery in Europe which contains no single canvas an artist can afford to pass unstudied, and several of the statues in her public squares may safely challenge comparison with Landseer’s work in Trafalgar Square.

In music Birmingham must yield precedence to London only because the superior size and wealth of the metropolis subsidize the world for her entertainment. But the triennial musical festivals of Birmingham are nowhere surpassed, and in few centres of musical culture are they fairly rivaled.

I attended a performance of the forest scenes from As You Like It, given in the open air upon the private grounds of Mr. Chamberlain, brother to the parliamentary leader. One rarely sees upon any stage an average of finer acting than was witnessed there. Yet the performers were amateurs.

The strength and grace of Birmingham have been produced by fostering the spirit which made the Non-Conformists, in the day of King Charles, count their livings a small thing when weighed against their principles. That spirit has taught her citizens to fix their gaze on things more precious than meat and drink, and houses and lands. It has created her love of liberty, her municipal patriotism, her public spirit, her true democracy.

Bolton was perhaps her most representative citizen. It was he who originated her Lunar Club. It met each month at the full of the moon, whence its name. Its members were the ablest men of the region.

“ Every man,” said Robertson, " should have a vocation and an avocation.” So thought these notable high priests of industry. By their vocations they re-created the world’s industrial activities. By their avocations they made that possible by re-creating themselves.

Watt, Bolton, Murdoch, were the first mechanicians of their age. They were not satisfied with that. They frequented the Lunar Club to learn what Priestley could teach them of chemistry. Darwin of Lichfield turned from his lancets and his botany to hear Murdoch’s wild ideas about illuminating streets by coal gas. Here Lovell Edgeworth crossed dialectic swords with Priestley; and, as these men of science believed there were other things than science worth their knowing, here John Collins may have told how

The first men of the time, Franklin, the Herschels, and their peers, made pilgrimages to attend a single session of this Lunar Club, and share its plain living and high thinking. It is probable that little Charles Darwin gained from its members much of his reverence for hard and honest intellectual work. This central club was copied in humbler forms, or rather in the same form by humbler constituencies. The artisans formed debating societies, of which the Robin Hood was the first. Others followed. Women were admitted to membership, — a startling innovation that. All subjects men chose to introduce were freely discussed. One single condition was rigorously enforced, — that no man should lose his temper.

In tracing the rise and development of intellectual liberty at Birmingham, it would be misleading to forget that there were rocks in the current. More than once the Birminghamers tried to imitate, in their way, those acts of Cromwell and King Charles to the futility of which their city was a monument. Two examples of that fatuity may serve to mark the reefs which always lie near such channels as they had to navigate. These may be named respectively the battle of the feet and the battle of the heads.

At his restoration Charles II. brought from the Continent, upon his august person, metal buttons and metal shoebuckles. These were the only articles he brought which endured a year beyond his death. They became the fashion. Presently some wretch in Birmingham began to manufacture them, to manufacture them better than any one else could do, and so to coin money at the expense of the worthy people who made cloth buttons. An act of Parliament passed under William and Mary to relieve these latter proved ineffectual. Metal buttons and metal buckles prevailed until another dastard invented shoe-strings. The day of buckle-boots grew cloudy. In vain the prince regent, the first gentleman in Europe, doubtless with Beau Brummel for chief aid, cast all his influence in favor of buckles, gave a gorgeous birthday ball, and appeared at it with the princesses, his sisters, all of them profusely adorned with metal buttons. His labor was vain. Shoestrings won. Birmingham was furious. At the great triennial Handel festival of 1796 the pickpockets of London devised a plan to profit by the rage of its citizens. They came from London wearing gorgeous buckles, all of Birmingham manufacture. In the crowd around the concert-hall they set about hustling all who wore shoe-strings as despisers of the good old customs of England. The local prejudice was so great that neither police nor people would interfere, and after leaping a rich harvest in the confusion the strangers returned in safety to London. It was not until the next day that the good burghers discovered that their pockets were empty, while the thieves alone had profited by their prejudice.

Again, when Burke, provoked, perhaps, by Priestley’s masterly reply to his strictures upon the French Revolution, called Birmingham, Priestley’s home, “ the world’s toy-shop,” an elegant suggestion that the place was a nursery of childish theories unworthy the notice of statesmen, Birmingham justified the scornful epithet by a childish outbreak of spite. Angry with France on account of the war and the taxes it had entailed, angry with Priestley because he was not so angry as they were, they raised the cry of heretic against him. A dinner was given upon the anniversary of the capture of the Bastile. The mob assumed that Priestley was at the dinner, though he was not. They rushed to his house, whence the great thinker barely escaped with his life; burned his library, which was the finest private one in England; destroyed his chemical laboratory, which was the finest in Europe; read soon afterward in their newspaper his letter of remonstrance addressed to them, which was the noblest plea for liberty of thought since Milton’s plea for the press ; and at last awakened to the fact that they had driven forth their most illustrious citizen, given him to the United States, and disgraced themselves in the eyes of the civilized world. It was their last imitation of Cromwell and Charles.

From that hour they set themselves to their greatest work, and did not rest until they had perfected an engine the most powerful, the only engine wholly irresistible which has been known among men. Its name is Organized Public Opinion. They began its construction lighted by the flames of Priestley’s home.

The latter part of the eighteenth century found both France and England suffering, similar afflictions from similar causes. France had been helplessly oppressed by the tyranny of a king, England by the tyranny of an aristocracy. Louis XIV. counted himself the state. The English House of Lords counted itself “ the state.” The House of Commons was simply an Æolian attachment, softening somewhat the stern music to which the peers made the people march. Eighty-four individuals sent by their own authority one hundred and fiftyfour members to Parliament, and the careful Molesworh indorses the statement that a decided majority of the House was returned by one hundred and fifty-four peers and wealthy commoners. The industrial classes were not represented. Legislation was effected almost solely in the fancied interest of the favored few. Aristocrats repeated with sneers what the French princess had said in ignorant sincerity: “ If the people cannot get bread, why do they not eat cake ? ” Petitions for relief were laughed down in Parliament again and again, and yet again. Few among the people knew precisely what ailed them. They only knew that they were hungry and helpless, and taxed beyond endurance, while the nobles were pampered and powerful.

Two or three futile endeavors were made to discover and cure the ills from which the vast majority were suffering. In each of these attempts Birmingham assumed the leadership.

Napoleon’s Berlin and Milan decrees had closed against English products and manufactures all the ports of Europe. The British government retorted with orders in council which double-locked those ports and closed others in America against herself. The merchants of Liverpool petitioned against these orders. Lord Brougham advocated the petition powerfully, but without result until Birmingham took the matter up and procured the abrogation of the disastrous orders.

In 1812 the East India Company began to move for the renewal of its charter. By that charter no Englishman was permitted to double Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, or to navigate any part of the Pacific or Indian Ocean, without permission of the company. Birmingham procured those modifications in the terms of the charter which led to its repeal twenty years later. England therefore owes the supremacy of her commercial marine largely to this city of refuge which never saw a ship.

The distress which followed Waterloo and the prostration of business caused by the close of the Napoleonic wars were an inevitable part of the process by which a nation changes from a camp and an arsenal back again to a home. But the suffering entailed was appalling. Industry was paralyzed. There was rioting, incendiarism, processioning with banners inscribed “ Bread or Blood,” Luddite outbreaks, Isle of Ely murders, famine, and panic throughout all England. The simple story was this : every one had been making guns or firing them. When guns were no longer needed, and men who could do nothing else were forbidden to fire them, all must suffer until the gun-makers and the soldiers could find something else to do, and learn to do it.

The class which suffered most was not the farmers, though of course they suffered with the rest. But the farmers were the feeders of the pockets in the House of Lords. Therefore the farmers were relieved. The corn law of 1815 was enacted. It was a reproduction of the odious act of 1670. By its terms no wheat could be imported until the price had reached eighty shillings the quarter. A majority of the people were threatened with famine that one tenth might be fed. The distress was not greatly less than that which preceded the destruction of the Bastile.

I would have you observe that it was not at Manchester, but at Birmingham, that the agitation which ultimately led to the repeal of the corn law began. Two years before the Peterloo affair Birmingham set the example which Manchester only imitated.

The Hampden Clubs formed in Birmingham by Mr. Cartwright were copied throughout the kingdom. They made Birmingham what she has since remained, the centre of what may be correctly named English conservative radicalism ; that is, of efforts which sought to attain fundamental reforms by conservative methods.

In 1815 England was in the condition of France at the death of Louis XIV. A revolution had become inevitable. The world had seen but one revolution wrought without help of swords, and that, being eighteen hundred years old, had been, like most old things, forgotten. France, in her supreme crisis, raised the drapeau rouge, danced the carmagnole, and with Napoleon for partner ca ira’d herself into the Place de Greve, Waterloo, and blackest perdition, where for three quarters of a century she has been lying, given over to a strong delusion that she should believe a lie and mistake fantastic tricks of political charlatans for statesmanship. Her Birmingham was Marseilles and her battle-cry its hymn.

But England had this little town in the black country by the Rea trained and ready to become her saviour from such disasters as always come of mistaking tame eagles for cherubim and a Strasburg coop for the New Jerusalem.

For the first time in their history, with William the Conqueror, Runnymede, York and Lancaster, Cromwell, Charles II., 1688, Rye House, and Gunpowder Plots, and Gordon Riots for their only national precedents, Englishmen entered a path wholly new, or rather one so old that it had been buried out of sight beneath the débris of eighteen centuries.

The artisans of Birmingham resolved that they would not be blinded by fury : they would search until they were sure what they needed ; they would test if public opinion were not stronger than guns. “ Certain things are right,” they said. “ If England can be made to understand what they are, England will do them. But before we can show England her duty we must find out what that duty is.”

In accordance with this rare but not unreasonable opinion, a few artisans, who had been members of the committee appointed to present to Mr. Attwood a testimonial for his successful work in checking the East India Company’s monopoly, formed themselves into a society for the discussion of needed reforms. They called it the Hampden Club. Mr. Cartwright was its organizing spirit. The single condition of membership was that each candidate should answer affirmatively these three questions : (1.) Do you highly venerate the Constitution of England as vested in the three estates of King, Lords, and Commons ? (2.) Do you acknowledge the necessity of parliamentary reform ? (3.) Are you fully convinced of the obligation to prosecute this great object by legal and constitutional means alone ?

From this seed Hampden Clubs multiplied faster than Christian Endeavor Societies have done among us. In a short time they were found in all important centres.

The workingmen had begun to suspect what Romilly and Brougham and Earl Grey had long seen clearly. At first the workingmen saw it dimly, but through the mist of their debates the stars at last came forth.

Pitt had publicly declared in 1783 that no honest man could administer the affairs of the British nation without a radical reform in the House of Commons. When Tom Sheridan exclaimed, " Parliament is so corrupt that every man in it is either hired or for hire. If I enter the House, I will be honest enough to write upon my forehead, ' To Let,’ ” his father replied, “ But don’t forget to write beneath ‘ Unfurnished,’Tom.” That was Brinsley Sheridan’s estimate of the political virtue of his associates.

So soon as the workingmen began to realize these facts with which their rulers had been long familiar, the clubs of Birmingham in which the lesson had been learned were proscribed by government. A blouse became the badge for policemen to follow. No landlord would let a hall for a workingmen’s meeting. The artisans petitioned for permission to meet in the open air. It was refused. They met without consent of bailiff on New Hall Hill. They chose a representative, Sir Charles Wolesley, and instructed him to present his credentials to the House. The men appointed to inform him of his election were arrested and imprisoned. Sir Charles escaped imprisonment only because an accident had prevented his attendance at the meeting which appointed him. In 1817 the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended by government, and with such aid the Hampden Clubs were suppressed.

For a year the reformers were paralyzed. Then followed the Peterloo massacre at Manchester. By it the coals at Birmingham were again fanned into flame. Efforts were made to revive the peaceful agitation. But the leaders in the attempt were cast into prison, whence all, some after six, some after eighteen months’ detention, were released without trial.

So the first move toward parliamentary reform ended in eclipse. Through all this trying experience the reformers had not once resorted to violence, nor even to serious threats of violence.

The misery of the people continued. On the 8th of May, 1829, a meetingconvened in Birmingham to consider the general distress. From it Thomas Attwood retired to his library at Harborn with certain definite plans. Upon his knees he besought God that if they were not such as would promote the liberty and happiness of the people they might be thwarted. His purpose was to form a political union of the middle and industrial classes throughout the realm. Mr. Bardsworth opened his repository for the proposed assembly. Fifteen thousand persons — the largest number that had ever been collected under one roof in England —were present. In assuming the presidency Mr. Attwood said: " I feel it my duty to declare to you that I know my country to be on the verge of dreadful calamities. It may be thought because I come forward now that I shall be ready, come weal, come woe, to lead you through thick and thin, through the dark and dreary seasons we are approaching. As far as law will justify me I will go with you, but if the elements of law and order are disorganized I will go with you no further.”

A council was appointed to consider the needs and the rights of Englishmen, and instructed to report at a future meeting. This was the origin of the famed political union.

The example of Birmingham was again followed throughout the kingdom. Branch clubs were formed in London, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, all taking direction and leadership from Birmingham. Under this pressure the Reform Bill was brought in. Twice it was defeated by the peers, though the king, the commons, and the people were enthusiastic for its passage. Birmingham was tempted to accept representation for herself alone. In a monster meeting she refused by voting twenty to one. In 1832 the third attempt was made to carry the bill. To strengthen its friends a monster meeting was held on New Hall Hill in Birmingham, the political unions of Warwick. Worcester, and Stafford attending. Molesworth indorses the statement that 200,000 men were present. Over every one fourth acre of the immense space they covered, and from the house-tops thronged with spectators, banners floated, bearing mottoes new to the history of revolution, — mottoes like these : “ Law and Order,” “ No Violence,” “ We are Loyal Citizens,” " No Bloodshed.”

Such a meeting had never been seen before. Knight declares there was “a solemnity in the enthusiasm of the vast body which may recall the enthusiasm of the old Puritans.” Mr. Salt called upon every man present to repeat after him with uncovered head these words: “ With unbroken faith, through every peril and privation, we here devote ourselves and our children to our country’s cause.” As the voice of many waters, every tongue joined in the solemn oath. When the meeting closed, all united again in an oath of loyalty to the government.

Then came the startling announcement that the bill passed by the House, favored by the king, had been again defeated by the peers. The wrath of the people seemed to make a French Revolution inevitable. Instantly the political union at Birmingham issued and sent everywhere, thick as plumed dandelion seeds, that memorable proclamation which closed with these words: —

“ Friends, countrymen, brothers, listen to us. The sword must not be drawn in England. The terrible knell of the tocsin must not sound. We will have no barricades. Without blood, without anarchy, without violation of law, we will accomplish the most glorious reformation in the history of the world. God bless the king. By order of the council.

THOMAS ATTWOOD,Chairman.

BENJAMIN HADLEY, Secretary.” This proclamation checked the popular fury, and allowed the influence of the public opinion developed by the artisans of Birmingham to do its superb work.

To meet that force, impalpable as the air we breathe, but as omnipresent, Wellington had been twice called to the ministry, because his was counted the strongest will in England. In the Iron Duke the supreme of authority was matched against the supreme of influence. The iron gave way, its strength corroded into weakness by the power of the atmosphere of Birmingham. Here he found a power stronger than the French Revolution ; stronger than Napoleon, who had conquered that; stronger than himself, who had conquered Napoleon. Its name was Organized Public Opinion. It had been brought into existence by the artisans of Birmingham. There had been before their day abundance of conspiracies, rebellions, bloodshed enough and to spare. But no great body of men had ever assembled on English soil in full conviction that the one and only way of getting the right thing done was peacefully but distinctly to make all men know what it was, and that it was right. The principle had been announced by a certain Leader of men eighteen centuries before, and with due success it had been obeyed by twelve of his disciples. But for the first time, after an interval of seventeen hundred years, it was repeated at Birmingham, and the liberty, the intellectual force, the spiritual power, and the commercial supremacy of the English nation remain to testify with what results.

William Burnet Wright.