Artisans, Plebeians, and Radical Reform in the British Isles, New South

National Library Bibliothèque nationale I*l ofCanada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Wellington Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada vour hk Votre reterence Our 6k, Narre reterence The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allow-ing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sel1 reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of ths thesis in rnicroform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or eiectronic formats. la forme de microfiche/filrn, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts ftom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................... i Acknowledgments ........................................................................... iii introduction Chapter One The British Isles, 1790-1820 .............................................................. 9 Chapter Two New South Wales, l79O-l8lO ............................................................... Chapter Three Upper Canada, 1817-1 838 ............................................................... 117 Conciusion Bibliography The principle aim of this of thesis is to examine connections between popular radical movements in the British Isles, and in New South Wales and in Upper Canada, between the1 790s and 1830s. This period, the first decade of which imrnediately followed the American Revolution and which witnessed the French Revolution, marked the point when members of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish lower orders began to conœive of themselves as citizens deserving of political rights, and yet un-represented by the established electoral structures. The elite, meanwhile, had no intentions of relinquishing their political hegemony. and thus the stniggle for parliamentaiy reform was under way - a contest that would extend beyond the Great Reform Bill of 1832, into the Chartist disruptions of the late 1840s. From the 1790s onwards, from one British Mes nation to the next, efforts at popular parliamentary reform - whether moral or physical force - shared numerous points in cornmon, as well as actual connections between labourhg men's radical organizations. The values of the British Mes parliamentary refonn movement also infused the activities of exile and 6migre working men to New South Wales and Upper Canada, tuming these distant regions into theatres in which the old struggle was fought anew. At the same time, the peculiarities of these outposts shaped the contest between popular radicals and consarvatives in new ways, and the original British Mes ideology was adapted to meet these new challenges. This thesis evaluates the ways in which the British Mes popular movements of the 1790s b 1820s were linked not only from nation to nation at home, but to stniggles for reform in New South Wales in roughly the sarne period, and in Upper Canada in the 1820s and 1830s. Acknowledgments I am very grateful to Dr. Michael Vance for his advice, assistance, and encouragement during the writing of this thesis, as well as for his yean of instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Thanks also to Dr. Richard Twomey for his suggestions on handling the American historiography, and for his thoughtful critique of an early chapter. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their support and encouragement during my time at Saint Mary's. Introduction The involvement of English. Scottish, Welsh, and Irish piebeians and artisans in radical political reforrn during the late eighteenth and eariy nineteenth centuries, a penod of revolution overseas and of reactionary politics and domestic repression at home, has been noted by a wide variety of historians. Even conservative scholars such as J.C.D. Clark and lan Christie, who would downplay the effects of political radicalism in revolutionary-era Britain and stress instead the stable, essentially consenrative nature of British society, admit the existence of a disaffected plebeian consciousness dating from the 1790s, and admit too that the leaders of such sedition as did exist came usuaily from the ranks of the literate artisans.' Inasmuch as they can be reconstnicted, the precise roles of plebeians and artisans in British Ides political radicaiism have been examined by a number of generally sympathetic historians. Alrnost without exception, however, these studies have been approached from a national perspective - concentrating on English radicals, or on Irish radicals, or on Scottish radicals, rather than on the British lsles protest movement as a whole. One of the eariiest and most influential discussions to take this approach is E.P. Thompson's 1963 study The Making of the English Working Class. In his introduction, Thompson makes a point of limling his discussion to "the English exparience",arguing ' Claik: 'Leaden of sedition in the 1790s came usually fmm the ranks of inteiligent artisans'. J.C.D. Clark, Enghh Society 16861832, (Cam bridge, 1WS), p. 345; Christie: '[Rladical refom in the 17m... was that, for cultural reasons, this restriction is necessary, since the English radical expenence was separate from, and 'significantly different" from, that of the other British Ides nationa~ities.~Thornpsan's book gave a trernendous boost to the study of workingmen's radicalism between1780-1830, but also fixed firmly the way in which the subject was to be appmached. Subsequent scholarship has tended to follow the boundaries of nationality that Thompson prescribed. As a result, while there has been a good deal of attention given to the course of plebeian and artisan radicalism in this or that British lsles nation, international connections that existed between these various movements have not received similar consideration. The decades between 1790 and 1840, moreover, were a time of considerable British and Irish ernigration, and the focus on geographic nationality fails also to trace the transmission of radical workingmen from the British Mes to such distant British Empire outposts as, for example, New South Wales and Upper Canada. Because these connections are not often made, it is easy for historians such as Clark and Christie to underestimate the penistence of the British Mes plebeian radical movement, and the manner in which it persisted - and often flourished - in new locations. Adding to this difficulty is the fact that, for reasons of their own, historians of New South Wales and early Canada also tend to downplay this radical ernigration from the British lsles. Much of the histonography surrounding early Australia tends towards preoccupation with the convict population, specifically with the question of whether they were or were not 'morally debased', and radicalism is treated as part of this moral issue - i.e., whether it constituted 'rightJor 'wrong' behaviora3For its part, Canadian historiography tends either to deny the existence of substantive radicalism altogether, or to stress the stimulateci by.. .the skilled cra#tsmen', lan R. Christie, Stmss and StaW lir Late @Meenth-Century Bdain, (Oxford, 1W),p. 49. * €.P. Thornpson. me Makng of the E-h Workng C&m, (New York, 1883). p. 13. alleged conservatisrn of Bt-itish Mes Bmigres while at the same time attributing politicai discontent solely to the influence of Amencan republicanism. In general, it has been left to the American historians to discuss transatlantic radicalisrn in a North American setting, although their focus falls invariably on the Anglo-American transmi~sion.~As a result, the issue of the origins of colonial Canadian political radicalism has largely been overlooked. It will be the purpose of this thesis to suggest that the connections among British lsles plebeian and artisan radicals were more substantial than has in general been shown by regionally based studies, and also that there was, via many of the plebeian and artisan émigres to New South Wales and to Upper Canada, a continuation in these outposts of the British Mes popular parliamentary refomist spirit. which has not been highlighted in either Australian or Canadian historiography. But before going further, it is necessary to clanfy, first, what is meant by the ternis 'plebeian' and 'artisan'. and secondly, what is signified by the notion of 'plebeian and artisan political radicalism'. 'Artisan' is an ambiguous ten, but a definlion serviceable for this thesis might be that artisans are usually men, primarily from the lower ranks of society, labouring for wages in pre-industrial, specialized trades, and doing unniechanized, skilled work in workshops5: 'piebeians', meamnhile, we can describe as the unskilled working segment of the lower orders, the sweepers, fam and factory labouren, and so forth. It must be recognked that there was no distinctive artisan or plebeian mentality, and thus no single, distinctive notion of artisan and plebeian political radicalism. Certain bioad stmkes have kendrawn. though, which help us toward a workable definition for this S#.it. 164. "ft. 234. This ir rot to imply that the line between skilled and unskilleâ

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