ABSTRACT
The attack on Old Corruption had led Cobbett to demand a political remedy—a radical reform of parliament to cut taxation and to ease the burdens on working men. But the attack on capitalism had seemed to suggest industrial remedies, co-operation, as outlined by Robert Owen, trades unionism as organized by John Doherty (see p. 166). The growth of the parliamentary reform movement from the late autumn of 1830 again encouraged political action. Parliament, said Bronterre O’Brien, was controlled by the privileged and the propertied who made laws to perpetuate their privilege and their property (8a). Profits, rents and taxes robbed the poor to benefit the rich. Day-to-day poverty, therefore, was due to the workings of capitalism; but that this exploitation could continue was because working men were denied the vote. Only if working men were enfranchised could they reshape the industrial system and retain the produce of their labour. Without the vote, their co-operative or union activity could be smashed whenever government chose. The Reform Act of 1832, on this account, worsened the position of working men, for it added the new industrial and commercial middle class to their old enemy, the aristocracy (8b). William Carpenter thought such cynicism unjustified (8c): those who were newly enfranchised would be the allies and not the enemies of working men.
