Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/82

 Woman—Well confessed, villains! Now out of your own mouths will I condemn you, you wicked Molochs. And so you have the impudence to own yourselves the cursed brood of ruffians who by slaughter and oppression usurped the lordship and dominion of the earth to the exclusion and starvation of weeping infants and their poor mothers? Or at the best the purchasers of those ill-got domains? O worse than Molochs, now let the blood of millions of innocent babes who have perished by your vile usurpations be upon your murderous heads. &hellip; Yes, villains! you have treasured up the tears and groans of dumb, helpless, perishing, dying infants. O you bloody landed interest! you band of robbers! Why do you call yourselves ladies and gentlemen? Why do you assume soft names, you beasts of prey? Too well do your emblazoned arms and escutcheons witness the ferocity of your bloody and barbarous origin! But soon shall those audacious Gothic emblems of rapine cease to offend the eyes of an enlightened people, and no more make an odious distinction between the spoilers and the spoiled. But, ladies and gentlemen, is it necessary, in order that we eat bread and mutton, that the rents should be received by you? Might not the farmers as well pay their rents to us, who are the natural and rightful proprietors? &hellip;

Hear me, ye oppressors, ye who live sumptuously every day, ye for whom the sun seems to shine and the seasons change, ye for whom alone all human and brute creatures toil, sighing, but in vain, for the crumbs which fall from your overcharged tables. &hellip; Your horrid tyranny, your infanticide is at an end!

And did you really think, my good gentlefolk, that you were the pillars that upheld the universe? Did you think that we should never have the wit to do without you? &hellip;

Then comes Spence's panacea:

We women (as our men are not to be depended on) will appoint in every parish a committee of our own sex (which we presume our gallant lockjawed spouses will at least for their own interests not oppose) to receive the rents of the houses and lands already tenanted, and also let to the best bidders, on seven years' leases, such farms and tenements as may from time to time become vacant.

Out of the funds so obtained the expenses of the parish and the taxes will be paid, an allowance be given for each child born and each person buried, and the surplus divided equally amongst the inhabitants of the parish. The famous Newcastle Lecture of 1775, Spence's first utterance upon the question of the land, contains substantially similar proposals, but also suggests certain political reforms—the abolition of the standing army and the formation of a militia, universal manhood suffrage and vote by ballot. Spence left many disciples who were not without influence during the succeeding decades.