TY - JOUR
AU - Martin, Janette
AB - Abstract Through a case study of the long, extra-parliamentary political career of James Acland this article demonstrates how the spoken word remained the primary form of political communication despite the challenges posed by a burgeoning print culture. Acland was politically active from the eighteen-twenties to the late eighteen-sixties in campaigns spanning the battle of the unstamped press to free trade, temperance, poor relief and electoral reform: in the run up to the Great Reform Act his scurrilous journalism and incendiary speeches whipped up mobs in Bristol and later Hull and during the turbulent eighteen-forties he travelled the length and breadth of the country as an itinerant political lecturer. His peripatetic oratory bridged local and national culture, fomenting discussions and uniting dispersed audiences in national struggles for reform. His public life underlines the enduring importance of the spoken address and the pivotal role of the orator in political mobilization and persuasion during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. This article contributes to current debates on democratization and offers a challenge to James Vernon's claim that the public political sphere began to close during this period. The author contends that the vibrancy of grass-roots political culture (as exemplified by lectures and indoor chaired meetings) represented a democratic gain rather than loss. In November 1838 James Acland lectured to a small paying audience at the Huddersfield Philosophical Hall on the merits of the New Poor Law. It was an act of provocation. Acland, a seasoned agitator in his late thirties, was speaking, uninvited, in the heartland of the anti-Poor Law movement, a place where even the guardians and magistrates had reservations over the introduction of the workhouse.1 The town had been placarded by both Acland and the Anti-Poor Law Association and the population was greatly excited. On the eve of the lecture men, women and children, some bearing lighted torches, gathered on the steps outside the hall to hear speeches by Lawrence Pitkeithley and other local radicals who berated Acland as a spy in the pay of the Whigs.2 As the evening progressed the crowd (estimated to number between 8,000 and 10,000) grew restive and began to pelt the windows with stones.3 Others battered the panels of the door, forcing the doorman to abandon his post and seek the help of the constable. Undaunted, and at great personal risk, Acland continued speaking for well over an hour until the chair, having narrowly escaped serious injury, drew the discussion to a halt.4 Most of the audience that night escaped out of the back door of the hall. Acland and several Whig supporters were forced to hide in the coal cellar until the mob had dispersed.5 This article explores the man behind the Huddersfield Philosophical riot, using his life as a window into the predominantly oral culture of popular politics during the period between the first and second Reform Acts. Acland was a man who generated strong emotion: his supporters championed him as a brave proponent of free speech and a ‘friend of the people’, while his enemies dismissed him as an unscrupulous paid mercenary. Although he is largely forgotten today, both groups would have recognized him as an active participant in the key political battles of the mid nineteenth century. He was a skilful polemicist who carved out a living from the excitement generated by the great political controversies of the period, sometimes as a freelance agitator and sometimes as a paid agent. While Acland derived income from both journalism and lecturing it was through his platform oratory that he acquired national prominence. He was not unusual. During this period other orators made a living from the platform. Robert Lowery, Thomas Cooper and Henry Vincent were also able to earn money speaking on a range of moral, religious and political causes beyond the political excitement of the Chartist period.6 Acland, however, is notable for the sheer longevity of his political engagement and the active part he played in shaping the new electoral politics of the eighteen-sixties through his work as a political agent and later adviser to the Reform League. Besides challenging current historiography, which dismisses Acland as nothing more than a ‘mercenary pure and simple’, this article situates oratory and the agency of the itinerant lecturer at the centre of extra-parliamentary political mobilization.7 Historiographical shifts associated with the ‘new political history’ have directed attention away from economic explanations of political identity towards the role of language in creating reality, and in so doing have ‘re-conceptualized the relationship between political movements and their popular supporters’.8 As Gareth Stedman Jones argues, hunger alone does not automatically lead to protest. Before people can become mobilized they require a political language to provide a ‘diagnosis of the sources of their problem’ and a viable strategy to counter that problem.9 Whether it was through printed tirades or via charismatic platform oratory, extra-parliamentary agitators were able to mobilize political opinion primarily through a skilled use of language. Acland's political oratory was effective because he eloquently expressed the hazy discontents of ordinary men and women and, by shaping their grievances into plausible arguments and furnishing a vocabulary of opposition, he was able to persuade audiences that actions such as repealing the Corn Laws, electoral reform or temperance would materially improve their lives. Analysing the career trajectory of Acland adds to this academic debate by demonstrating the centrality of oratory in political mobilization. In addition to weakening the grip of class as a driver of popular politics, the ‘linguistic turn’ spawned a wider interest in the visual and aural nature of nineteenth-century politics and the importance of not just the message but how that message was delivered. Some of the more interesting work on political meetings considers non-verbal communication and the use of banners, iconography and music.10 Political ephemera (handbills, placards, squibs and cartoons) have also received greater consideration as a consequence of the new emphasis on language and culture.11 Despite these insights, research into political oratory has largely focused upon the gentlemanly demagogue of radical politics or the high statesman of the later nineteenth century.12 Since the days of John Cartwright, Henry Hunt and William Cobbett the radical platform was dominated by unpaid gentlemanly leaders: a pattern perpetuated into the eighteen-forties and fifties by men such as Richard Oastler, Feargus O'Connor and Ernest Jones. Yet by the late eighteen-thirties ‘gentlemanly orators’ increasingly found themselves sharing the platform with paid speakers as the number of professional lecturers expanded. The historiography surrounding the ‘gentlemanly leader’ has placed undue emphasis upon the monster outdoor rally. Such outdoor gatherings, while undoubtedly eye-catching, were sporadic and untypical and while the appearance of a high-profile radical leader in a locality generated short-term excitement it was at the more frequent indoor meetings and lectures (often addressed by itinerant paid agents) that grass-roots political mobilization was sustained. Indeed, as the Chartist historian David Jones argues, ‘the public meeting was the Chartist experience’. Pickering and Tyrrell's work on the Anti-Corn Law League (A.C.L.L.) has similarly shown the centrality of meeting and theatrical oratory to the free trade movement.13 Joseph Meisel's study of high politics and public speech in the age of Gladstone gives an excellent account of the role of oratory and concludes that ‘oral culture did not merely survive in the nineteenth century; it flourished’.14 Yet Meisel's focus upon Gladstone and other leading parliamentarians neglects the role played by provincial paid agitators a generation earlier in opening up the extra-parliamentary political platform to Westminster politicians. Even towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the leading political parties developed an increasingly professional party apparatus, the role of the itinerant political agitator has been largely overlooked by historians. Kathryn Rix's analysis of the diary of Michael Sykes, a late Victorian and Edwardian Conservative political lecturer, provides a useful reminder of how paid activists crucially bridged grass-roots political culture and the party elites. Her research demonstrates the enduring role of the travelling speaker in breathing life into political campaigns in rural areas.15 Walter Ong's research into orality has stimulated academic interest in oratory across a range of disciplines.16 Martin Hewitt, for example, has explored the cultural role of the Victorian platform and investigated the ways in which the spoken address was an important communication tool for a wide range of institutions and individuals from popular preachers to emigration agents.17 Hewitt, however, overlooks the role played by itinerant political agents in making the lecture a form of entertainment and inculcating a lecture-going habit. Historical geographers have also examined the role played by itinerant lecturers in the dissemination of political propaganda using G.I.S. technology to investigate the geography of lecturing.18 Yet, beyond demonstrating the capacity of lecturers to endure long arduous journeys, they tell us little about the cultural context of public speaking. A more promising approach to analysing the impact of itinerant speech-making is offered by Brian Harrison and Patricia Hollis's seminal study of the Chartist and temperance lecturer Robert Lowery, which uses a case study of an individual orator to illuminate aspects of nineteenth-century British politics.19 Oral culture, by its very nature, is transient and ephemeral and only survives when it has been mediated by print. Historians working upon nineteenth-century oratory are therefore entirely dependent upon written sources, in particular newspapers. There are many problems with using ‘reported’ oratory as a historical source. While the eighteen-forties saw a rapid expansion of newspaper columns devoted to speeches, accurate reporting remained problematic despite technological advances in newspaper production and the rise of shorthand. Shorthand reporters faced many difficulties, from bad acoustics and cramped accommodation to speakers who mumbled, spoke rapidly or, worst of all, did both. Reporters who were exhausted or bored were unlikely to produce high-quality reported speech. Typically newspapers carried only summaries of meetings, debates and speeches. Even for so called ‘verbatim’ reports, the mechanics of taking down a speech in shorthand and then writing it up for publication meant that, while the sense of the speech remained, the words were not necessarily identical. Political lecturers like Acland often supplied text directly to local newspapers, thereby entirely dispensing with the services of a shorthand reporter. Setting print type was a laborious job which was generally completed several days in advance of publication. Thus a speech made near to publication day might be restricted to only a column or so.20 Well-heeled orators, or those with access to organizational support, might also independently publish their heavily revised speeches as tracts, thereby blending an oral mode of address with a literary style – in effect making ‘the published speech’ a new genre.21 The inter-relationship between orality and literacy in the mid nineteenth century is worth stressing. As Raymond Williams points out, print culture remained a ‘minority culture’ and we should resist the tendency to overemphasize the importance of the reading public in the Victorian period.22 Rather than print overtaking oral culture, initially the printed and spoken word enjoyed a symbiotic relationship in which one form stimulated the other. Listening to a charismatic speaker often had a more immediate impact than a printed tract, though both were important in the dissemination of political ideas. Acland was well aware that for every speech there were at least two potential audiences: those present at the initial delivery and those who consumed the speech as reported in newspaper columns. His experience as a reporter and a journalist stood him in good stead when trying to get his speeches reported in the provincial press. A letter sent from Plymouth to the A.C.L.L.'s headquarters in 1839 informed his employers that he had secured ‘a good leader and report’ in the local newspaper.23 There was an established radical tradition of using both the page and the platform. The radical journalist, and later M.P., William Cobbett combined written exposure of political corruption with lecturing and, during the excitement surrounding the first Reform Bill, gave public lectures on reform in London and on a northern lecture tour.24 Henry Vincent and Feargus O'Connor, both proprietors of thriving Chartist newspapers, also felt it necessary to supplement journalism with lecture tours.25 Acland too combined the platform with the page during his long political career. His career trajectory can be usefully divided into three distinctive periods, which offer insights into nineteenth-century political culture in provincial England. First, his career as a rabble-rouser in Bristol and later in Hull will be considered in the context of the theatrical and boisterous nature of plebeian politics in the eighteen-twenties and eighteen-thirties. Second, Acland's work as paid professional speaker in the late eighteen-thirties and eighteen-forties will be considered. During this period leading pressure groups adopted the strategies pioneered by the anti-slavery movement and sent out bands of paid speakers to address public meetings, lectures and debates. His experiences in the eighteen-forties illustrated how the regulated indoor meeting, rather than signifying a closure of the public sphere, represented a democratic gain for the disenfranchised – a point on which this author's analysis differs from that of James Vernon.26 Finally, after the winding up of the A.C.L.L., Acland pioneered the growth of a new profession, that of the political agent. All three phases underline the role of charismatic oratory in political mobilization and the vibrancy of provincial political culture. Acland was born in London in 1799. As the son of a well-to-do government contractor he enjoyed extensive schooling which included lessons in Latin, French and elocution.27 After his father lost his fortune in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, Acland had to make his own way in the world, working as an itinerant actor, teacher, shipping clerk, parliamentary and police court reporter, and journalist. By the late eighteen-twenties he had become involved with the campaign against newspaper taxes, and the iniquities of the libel laws.28 In the years around the Great Reform Act he ran scurrilous unstamped newspapers first in Bristol and later Hull which attacked and exposed corrupt magistrates and corporate dishonesty. After spending time inside five different prisons for political libel, by the late eighteen-thirties Acland was based in the north-west earning a living from journalism and by freelance lecturing on temperance and the New Poor Law. In 1839 he was engaged by the A.C.L.L. as an itinerant lecturer, a role which he performed with great enthusiasm over the next seven years. After the demise of the A.C.L.L. Acland became a successful political agent. He is perhaps best remembered for publishing the Imperial Poll Book (1865), a statistical guide to elections which was subsequently extended and marketed as McCalmont's Parliamentary Poll Book.29 His career culminated in his appointment as the ‘election and registration adviser’ to the Reform League in July 1867. Acland's obituary in the Annual Register spoke of a public life that ‘actively engaged with all the reform agitations of the last half century’.30 Yet despite this accolade he has never been the subject of detailed study or even acquired his own entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.31 In 1827, Acland moved to Bristol where his unstamped newspaper, the Bristolian, launched stinging attacks on Bristol corporation, exposing corrupt local charities, incompetent magistrates and other wrongdoings. Acland's prose was couched in the language of ‘Old Corruption’. He despised Bristol corporation for its unfair monopoly of city affairs, woeful mismanagement of civic life and despotic rule. His satirical journalism owed much to the influence of William Cobbett and, like Cobbett, Acland would be repeatedly prosecuted for political libel.32 The Bristolian and his later paper, the Hull Portfolio, were irreverent and witty – well suited to the practice, common at the time, for newspapers to be bought collectively and read out loud.33 Acland latched upon causes sure to have wide appeal, from adulterated bread and unfair taxes, to nepotism and embezzlement of local charitable funds. His great popularity with the tradesmen, stall-holders and working men of both Bristol and Hull was based on his irreverent exposures of petty officialdom and attacks on easily recognizable local authority figures. He was also popular for his willingness to defend the poor and friendless and to speak out against injustice wherever he saw it. During his time in prison he exposed the case of James Blake, a fifteen-year-old boy who was ill-treated in Bristol gaol and subsequently died from neglect. While editor of the Bristolian he befriended Thomas Redding, a common sailor harshly treated by the police courts for bringing home a flagon of whisky without paying duty. Both cases were brought to the attention of the readers of the paper. Indeed Redding became something of a celebrity and £15 was raised by the people of Bristol to restore him to his ship.34 Acland's time on the stage had made him a witty and confident public speaker, who revelled in the limelight. In the days before mass literacy, oral communication predominated and political culture was shaped by visual and aural displays such as processions, banners, marching bands, and the use of effigies, emblems and symbols.35 Acland, with his penchant for theatrical display and abundant ego, was in tune with an old-fashioned plebeian politics that delighted in mischievous pranks. His love of spectacle is evident in an elaborate stunt that took place in December 1829 to highlight the pure, unadulterated bread produced by the Bristolian Bread Association. Acland, who just happened to be the president and founder of the association, led ten musicians, a large number of supporters and an oversized loaf of bread (described as almost eight feet in length) to the top of Brandon Hill. At the summit he made a long speech before performing a mock christening ceremony upon the loaf. The procession then braved the treacherous, snowy descent and paraded the principal streets of Bristol, stopping outside the homes and businesses of Acland's political opponents to distribute snowballs and musical insults. At the home of Roger Moore, for example, the procession paused while the musician struck up the tune ‘Go to the devil and shake yourself’. Finally the bedraggled loaf, in a gesture which emphasized Acland's enduring sympathy for prisoners, was donated to debtors held in Bristol gaol. The progress of the monster loaf (with its decorations of ‘Holly, Laurel and Blue and White ribbons’) was subsequently reported at great length in the Bristolian.36 In recent years historians have become interested in melodrama as a vehicle for political radicalism. Rohan McWilliam's The Tichborne Claimant demonstrates the extent to which melodrama permeated radicalism in the late eighteen-sixties through to the eighteen-eighties.37 Acland, as actor turned political orator, exemplifies how theatrical styles of speaking, both on the political platform and in the courtroom, were also a feature of radicalism in the eighteen-thirties and forties. Trials, in particular, were highly theatrical affairs. Since the days of Thomas Erskine (who defended Horne Tooke and the other radicals tried for treason in 1794) melodramatic pleading was in vogue.38 It seems likely that Acland's many trial speeches followed in this dramatic tradition. At York spring assizes in March 1832 Acland was tried in an action brought by Hull corporation for damaging their profits. The background to the case was that, shortly after his arrival in Hull, Acland began operating cheap passenger trips across the Humber on a ferry called ‘Public Opinion’ and a packet boat dubbed the ‘Reformer’. He refused to pay the associated taxes on the grounds that Hull corporation had violated a charter issued by Edward II which fixed the cost of a return trip across the Humber at a halfpenny per passenger.39 Acland, who for a time worked alongside the great tragic actor Edmund Kean, was just the man to exploit the dramatic potential of such a trial. All the key elements of a melodrama were in place, from the evil villain – a.k.a. Hull corporation – to the ill-used people, and the righter of wrongs, the brave and valiant James Acland.40 His trial performance as ‘friend of the people’ was so convincing that the judge and jury, despite finding him guilty, awarded only one farthing in damages.41 His local supporters were jubilant and a well-attended public meeting in Hull was held shortly afterwards to raise money for his trial costs.42 Acland's triumph on this occasion was in contrast to his earlier failures during libel prosecutions. In May 1828 Bristol corporation initiated what proved to be a lengthy action against Acland for libelling the mayor and magistrates of Bristol in the Bristolian. At the close of the first trial Acland poured scorn on the late lord chief justice Lord Ellenborough's dictum that the ‘greater the truth the greater the libel’.43 Yet until the 1843 Libel Act the truth alone was no defence as Acland repeatedly found to his cost.44 His demands for a retrial on the grounds of unfairness meant that the case rumbled on into the following year. In February 1829 Acland appeared before Judge Tenterden still maintaining, in a speech lasting between two and three hours, that ‘the matters contained in the libels were true’. Judge Tenterden (a notorious opponent of the Reform Bill and a great friend to the unpaid magistracy) would have none of it and for his attacks on Bristol corporation Acland was sentenced to two months at Gloucester gaol.45 Acland's trial speeches were part of a long radical tradition of using the courtroom as a platform for asserting civil liberties and should be viewed as a deliberate contribution to the literary canon of the political trial. He would, no doubt, have been delighted to find that his judge was the same Lord Tenterden who had presided over William Hone's first trial for blasphemy in 1817 and Richard Carlile's blasphemy trial two years later (for publishing Thomas Paine's Rights of Man).46 Acland's treatment at the hands of the Bristol corporation left him with a vehement dislike of corrupt local oligarchies and it is no coincidence that when he moved to Hull he mounted a similar campaign, with predictable results. In November 1832, at the conclusion of another lengthy trial for libelling members of the Hull corporation and magistrates, Acland was sentenced to eighteen months at Bury St. Edmunds gaol.47 The action was tried in the king's bench and it is evident that Hull corporation were not only out to punish Acland for attacking their eminent members but were also anxious that Acland's harangues on the tyrannies of ‘Old Corruption’ were silenced, particularly as Hull remained in a heightened state of political excitement after the passage of the 1832 Great Reform Act. During September 1832 Hull corporation sent reports and witness statements to the home office, which described how his meetings attracted mobs numbering up to 1,000 people. It was also alleged that Acland's speeches made alarming references to the Bristol riots.48 Indeed by October the corporation had grown so fearful of his influence that they issued a handbill warning the inhabitants of Hull not to attend a public meeting called by Acland or to gather in the streets after dark, and to ‘be in readiness to assist the Civil Power’.49 In this context the libel laws offered Hull corporation a convenient way of removing a local trouble-maker. Acland's appearance in Hull had certainly fomented discord. Shortly after his arrival there in August 1831 he set up an unstamped newspaper, the Hull Portfolio, and began haranguing the masses on ‘Corporation Reform, Vote by Ballot, and Triennial Parliaments’.50 According to one account, his speeches attracted thousands of listeners.51 Not content with merely exposing wrongs, he personally set about correcting them. In Hull this led to a programme of civil disobedience against unfair tolls and levies on ferries, bridges and market stalls which, not surprisingly, attracted a great deal of popular support (and led to Acland's appearance at the York assizes described above). In addition to running an illegal ferry, he campaigned against the taxes levied on market stalls, which ended in a near riot in November 1831. An engraving of this tumultuous event was distributed with editions of the Hull Portfolio (undoubtedly as a mechanism for boosting circulation). The print, which was dedicated to the ‘Reformers of Hull’, conveys a sense of Acland's impact as a demagogue and the unruly nature of political protests in pre-reform England (see Figure 1). The market place is brimming with spectators; some of Acland's supporters are shown clambering on the statue of King William III and others leaning from windows overlooking the spectacle. It seems likely that the figure to the immediate right of the statue's pedestal, who appears to be addressing the crowds, represents Acland.52 The emblem of three crowns (the crest of Hull corporation) is depicted inverted on a placard at the centre of the engraving as a carnivalesque symbol of misrule.53 Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide ‘Sketch of the first attempt to abolish the market tolls of Kingston upon Hull’, Hull Portfolio, 1 Nov. 1831. Reproduced by kind permission of the East Riding Archives and Local Studies Service. During the political turbulence surrounding the passage of the first Reform Act revolution was perceived to be a tangible threat by Britain's ruling classes.54 Those angling for political reform quickly realized that the mobilization of people in demonstrations, processions and rallies was the best method for extracting concessions. Such shows of strength were mobilized via political unions, established in towns and cities across the country from the eighteen-thirties openly to agitate for political reform.55 Acland's rabble-rousing campaigns in Hull were part of this bigger fight and should be seen as a deliberate attempt to politicize the inhabitants of the town. Indeed, Acland's campaign to open up the 1832 churchwarden election to all of Hull's inhabitants served as a practical introduction to the political process. After a legal tussle with the churchwardens, Acland ensured that every inhabitant ‘however poor he may be’ had an equal vote.56 On Easter Monday, the day of the Holy Trinity churchwarden poll, those excluded by the narrow electoral franchise from participating in parliamentary elections took delight in voting for the rebel candidate in this heated local contest, as evident in the results: ‘Acland, 1548; King, 371; Woolley, 91’. Once his victory had been announced Acland, and hundreds of his supporters, paraded the city accompanied by bands and banners.57 Earlier that year Hull corporation had been similarly treated to a display of strength when Acland's trial at the king's court (under an action brought by the corporation) was adjourned. Upon learning of their hero's return, Acland's supporters went out of town to greet him with a procession and a ‘Band of Music with Flags and Banners’.58 To mark the occasion the Hull Portfolio issued another celebratory engraving dedicated to the 20,000 who formed his escort (see Figure 2). The print depicts an open carriage from which Acland is shown addressing the crowds. The procession ended at the River Humber in remembrance of Acland's cheap ferries, a memory that was also referenced by the banners, at least three of which depicted boats. The engraving depicts a total of eight large banners three of which read: ‘Acland the Poor Man's Friend’, ‘Good Intention’ and ‘King William IV’ respectively.59 Yet only on the first banner (Acland the Poor Man's Friend) are words alone used. In the other two the words are overshadowed by symbols and iconography, while the remaining five contain no writing, which demonstrates how visual and oral cues were of greater significance in pre-reform political culture.60 Figure 2. Open in new tabDownload slide ‘Sketch of my return home’, Hull Portfolio, 9 Feb. 1832. Reproduced by kind permission of the Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. It does seem likely that Acland harboured political ambitions. His success as a popular demagogue encouraged him to contest two elections in the early eighteen-thirties. He stood first in Bristol in 1830 where he polled only twenty-five votes. Two years later, in December 1832, he stood in Hull (conducting his campaign this time from a prison cell) and polled 433 votes.61 Both Bristol and Hull had a higher than average proportion of enfranchised tradesmen and shopkeepers and it is possible that he selected these cities for this very reason.62 During both campaigns he presented himself as a radical opposed to corrupt magistrates, corporate misrule and high taxation (Bristol and Hull were notoriously governed by chartered corporations which offered rich pickings for reformers seeking to expose injustice). The Hull Portfolio, in the run up to the 1832 election, employed the language of ‘Old Corruption’ to attack the profligate expenditure of the government. Acland reminded his readers that: ‘A radical Reform can never be obtained by the instrumentality of men whose INTEREST it is to perpetuate THE THING which they call government, and to keep their hands in the pockets of the People’.63 Even for candidates with little opportunity of winning a parliamentary seat the hustings generated much excitement and provided an opportunity to address both electors and non-electors. The show of hands, in which all could take part, indicated the popular choice, if not the eventual winner and political mileage could be obtained from securing this visual show of support. For this reason the hustings were valued as an opportunity to make political speeches and should not always be seen as genuine election attempts.64 Later, while working for the A.C.L.L., Acland opposed the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, at the Tamworth election (1841) and also stood against Lord Stanley at a Lancashire by-election that same year. Both ‘sham nominations’ were, of course, futile but they did provide Acland with access to the hustings platform. The Times might accuse him of ‘baiting and insulting the constituencies of every vacated seat in the kingdom’ but in terms of keeping the Corn Laws in the public eye it was a coup for the A.C.L.L.65 After serving eighteen months' imprisonment in Bury St. Edmunds, Acland found that his popular support in Hull had waned and he left England for a spell on the continent (quite possibly to escape allegations of embezzling money from the coffers of Hull Holy Trinity church).66 In France he became a joint proprietor of an English language newspaper called the Paris Sun which, true to form, became embroiled in a costly libel suit.67 He next appears as the editor of the North Cheshire Reformer in autumn 1837, supplementing his income with lecturing.68 During this period Acland met a wide range of orators in public debate, including Edward Grubb and Joseph Livesey (both prominent temperance advocates), and the Tory radical, the Revd. J. R. Stephens.69 Such encounters strengthened Acland's reputation as an orator. His controversial lecture tour in support of the New Poor Law brought him to the attention of Liberals in Yorkshire and the north-west. After the Huddersfield riot the Leeds Mercury praised his ‘firmness’ and ‘self-possession’, and his courage when faced by ‘a mob of vagabonds’.70 Perhaps such favourable reports, coupled with a recommendation from Joseph Parkes that Acland was ‘an experienced and useful man’, helped the A.C.L.L. to overlook his previous convictions for libel and to employ him as one of their paid lecturers in 1839. The league's inability to find suitable lecturers must also have counted in his favour.71 The A.C.L.L. based its agitating strategy on tactics pioneered by the anti-slavery movement and Daniel O'Connell's Catholic Association. It published pamphlets, established a network of local branches, organized petitions and employed itinerant speakers to address public meetings. Oratory and the theatre of the large rally or dinner were integral to the campaign.72 In addition to the rousing speeches delivered by John Bright, Richard Cobden and Colonel T. P. Thompson, at its peak, the A.C.L.L. employed fifteen paid lecturers. These men were sent on missionary tours across the country to proselytize through the medium of lectures, market-place speeches and set-piece debates.73 George Saintsbury, writing some forty years after the drama of the A.C.L.L. campaign, claimed that this period witnessed a transformation of political culture. According to Saintsbury, the campaign strategy of the league was significant as it marked a break with the political slogans favoured by past political culture and instead attempted to engage intelligently with the public (electors and non-electors alike). Saintsbury compared the A.C.L.L.'s paid lecturers with commercial travellers whose role was to force the article on the public: The Anti-Corn-law League was the first body to attempt, and for years to continue, the education of the people in a certain way of political thinking. Before its day popular cries – ‘No Popery,’ ‘The Church is in danger,’ ‘No wooden shoes,’ and so forth – had been tried with more or less success … inflammatory oratory, tempting programmes of plunder of power, the stimulus of fanaticism, the temptations of riot and licence, had been tried. But no one had ever tried the art of the commercial canvasser and the charm of the political society together, reinforced with all the power of money, eloquence written and spoken, and all the electioneering arts.74 Saintsbury's evident regard for Manchester's free trade movement renders his comments partial. Yet his words are interesting as they suggest that rational argument and eloquence were increasingly a component of political mobilization. The political landscape was irrevocably changed by the 1832 Reform Act which, by placing more power in the hands of the middle classes, encouraged reformers to appeal to the enlarged pool of voters rather than merely attempt to squeeze concessions from the state by the threat of mob violence. Acland's style of political agitation in Bristol and later Hull was primarily focused upon rabble-rousing but, alive to the new political mood, by the late eighteen-thirties he had reinvented himself as a ‘rational Radical’, willing to win support by discussion and argument rather than furnishing a thuggish show of mass support.75 Thus, during his pro-Poor Law tour he began his meetings with a historical overview of the Elizabethan Poor Laws followed by a discussion of the merits and demerits of the new law in which the audience were invited to elect their own chairman and actively participate in the debate.76 Rather than being swayed by melodramatic stories of maltreated paupers, Acland was keen to emphasize the need for revising poor relief in line with contemporary circumstance. He refuted the key arguments of the anti-Poor Law campaign one-by-one with inventive, if not always convincing, argument. During a public discussion at Salford town hall, for example, Acland denied that the new act contravened biblical teaching by separating man and wife as it had long been the practice in poor houses to divide paupers according to gender. Moreover, he claimed that the separation of man and wife through service in the army or navy was a similar ‘violation of the social compact’ and yet was widely accepted.77 As Pickering and Tyrrell note, Acland had a ‘Promethean capacity’ for upholding both sides of the argument and placed great emphasis upon fair play and etiquette.78 His manners were frequently remarked upon by the press. The Preston Chronicle, for example, admired his ‘fairness and candour’ and the way in which he ‘comported himself to the individuals who questioned him with all possible courtesy’ despite the hostile reception of the audience.79 His handbills and opening remarks stressed his willingness to hear both sides of the arguments. An advert for a lecture on the New Poor Law to be held in Leeds in December 1838 promised that he was willing to hear all opponents, entreating that ‘if I am wrong, have the kindness to prove me so’.80 Similar sentiments appeared on Acland's A.C.L.L. placards and handbills.81 However disingenuous such advertisements were in encouraging attendance, Acland's appetite for debate is unquestionable. His mannered approach was in tune with a popular appetite for staged public debate in which opponents argued their case point-by-point. Such encounters were deliberately presented as ‘gentlemanly’ rhetorical contests in which participants sought to defeat adversaries via eloquence and irrefutable argument. The staged political debate was pioneered by Robert Owen in the late eighteen-twenties and widely adopted during the eighteen-forties by a broad range of itinerant agitators, from anti-slavery campaigners, Chartists, Owenites and temperance advocates to A.C.L.L. lecturers. It was the pre-eminent tool for the quick-witted, articulate speaker with a contentious case to make. Most political oratory involved debate – whether heckling or formal discussion channelled via a chairman. Debate was the litmus test for the would-be popular orator – not everyone could think on their feet. The chief model for political debate was, of course, parliament. Another significant influence on the popular political debate was the court room. The British adversarial system of law allows both sides to speak before being cross-examined by the other party. The public debate follows this structure with the audience acting as jury. At the end of the debate it was the spectators who determined the victor by the customary show of hands. Given these similarities Acland's various libel trials in the late eighteen-twenties and eighteen-thirties provided useful training for the lectures and public debates in which he subsequently participated as paid political lecturer. There was a genuine belief that the public meeting or set debate could decide a question and that the speaker with the best argument would triumph. A letter sent to the A.C.L.L. headquarters in April 1839 reported that a powerful lecture by George Grieg in Doncaster had converted many of his opponents in the audience and left a ‘still greater number … unsettled in their former opinions’.82 Such a response was not unusual. Indeed, after hearing both sides of the argument it was acceptable for people to change their mind. There are several well-publicized cases of opponents admitting that they had lost the argument. Emma Martin, for example, initially attended Owenite meetings to challenge the lecturers, yet before long, she found herself won over by their appealing brand of socialism and feminism – so much so that she left her unhappy marriage to become a paid Owenite missionary. Acland too declared himself convinced by his opponent Edward Grubb during a public debate in August 1838 on the merits of teetotalism in Preston and publicly took the pledge the following day.83 Until the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846 Acland worked tirelessly as an itinerant free trade lecturer, frequently meeting Chartist orators in public debate. A spectacular encounter took place in the Chartist stronghold of Halifax in the summer of 1842. Acland, who had agreed to meet the Revd. Jackson in a public debate to settle the question of the Corn Laws, found, at the eleventh hour, that the Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor had taken his place. Word had got around and the hall was crowded to bursting point. After three hours of heated exchange a resolution was passed in favour of the Charter and nothing else, a defeat reported with typical hyperbole in the Northern Star as the ‘lion devoured Mr Acland’ (‘The lion of freedom’ being a popular nickname for O'Connor).84 The Acland v. O'Connor discussion was typical in allowing the audience to vote at the conclusion of the debate for or against the opening preposition: a mechanism which gave audiences a chance for democratic participation, engendering a real sense that political battles could be contested and won in the localities. The encounter was widely reported in the Chartist press and local and regional newspapers, further extending the impact of the debate.85 The importance placed on this defeat is indicated in a resolution passed at a subsequent meeting of Norwich Chartists who tendered a vote of thanks to West, Jackson and O'Connor, ‘for their spirited conduct in opposing Mr Acland at Halifax’.86 Despite the best endeavours of chairmen, and those in the audience willing to hear all sides of the argument, political gatherings in the eighteen-forties and fifties were volatile. Although certainly less unruly than the pre-reform political culture, itinerant lecturing was not for the faint-hearted. Acland, who had precipitated riots in Hull and endured the wrath of a Huddersfield mob, was not easily intimidated and his ability to withstand violent opposition was valued. He functioned as the A.C.L.L.'s outrider, opening up new localities, gauging the strength of the enemy and identifying potential problems. His key task was to allow ‘the local stock of turbulence [to be] expended’ prior to the arrival of more illustrious leaders, like Sidney Smith or Richard Cobden.87 One of the drawbacks of employing Acland was his extreme radical views, which had a tendency to shock the respectable following that was so vital to the league's success.88 Yet Acland in the late eighteen-thirties and eighteen-forties was a different man from the firebrand rabble-rouser of Bristol and Hull. Despite being badly mauled during a lecture in Saxmundham, Suffolk in May 1840, when a gang of roughs hired by local landowners forcibly removed him from the platform, he refused to press charges and continued on his tour, telling his A.C.L.L. paymasters that he wanted to ‘win by moral force’ and to ‘put legal proceedings out of the question until I get my head broke’.89 The A.C.L.L. did offer some protection to league lecturers in the shape of a legal adviser who could advise on ill-treatment and deliberate obstructions by magistrates.90 In Manchester it also bankrolled a less respectable means of protecting the league platform, the euphemistically named ‘Anti-Corn Law Police’.91 But, as a middle-class institution that sought to win by moral force, the A.C.L.L. sought to avoid spectacles of disorder if at all possible, particularly as rowdy behaviour alienated middle-class female supporters whose role was to prove crucial to the league's success.92 Unlike George Thompson, who was employed by the anti-slavery and free trade movements specifically to address wealthy and influential women, Acland did not deliberately court female audiences during his work for the A.C.L.L., although his arguments for cheap bread won him the support of the wives of farm labourers on at least one occasion. At a meeting in Clare, Suffolk, for example, local women acted as bodyguards protecting him from hostile crowds.93 The mid nineteenth-century platform was a resolutely masculine space and the radical political tradition in which Acland cut his political teeth ‘had its roots in pugilist and pub culture’.94 Yet ‘manliness’ could also be manifested in gentlemanly behaviour such as restraint and politeness. Professional lecturers like Acland were careful to operate within accepted codes of ‘manly conduct’ and ‘fair play’, which, in principle if not always in practice, acted as at break to unruly behaviour and offered all sides the opportunity to be heard.95 Acland's political trajectory suggests a shift from older manifestations of manliness (typified by his firebrand days in Bristol and later Hull) to an emerging form of masculinity that operated within the context of a more ordered political culture. Current historiography of the period between the first and second Reform Acts paints a picture of an unruly, often boorish, political culture. There is no denying that during the Chartist era public meetings convened to discuss controversial political issues did, at times, erupt into chaos and even violence. The well-documented fights between the Chartists and the Leaguers, the concerted opposition shown towards temperance advocates and the treatment meted out to Acland during his Poor Law tour all show that political culture could be noisy, boisterous and heated.96 Leaving aside the hustings, which were closely associated with carnivalesque misrule and drink-fuelled disorder (as documented by Lawrence and Vernon), this author would suggest that political meetings were just as remarkable for their order and restraint.97 Public meetings held to discuss the great social and political questions of the day (anti-slavery, temperance, free trade, non-denominational education and extension of the franchise) had a different character from those connected to the elections. These gatherings were portrayed very much as ‘town meetings’ in which local citizens could voice their opinions on matters of national interest. When they were hijacked or disrupted newspaper accounts convey a very real sense that riotous behaviour brought shame and dishonour to a town's or city's sense of civic pride.98 Most were held indoors and were governed by elaborate rules, etiquette and procedures which, under the watchful eye of an elected chairman, rather than stifling debate offered genuine spaces where political ideas could be discussed in the locality and opinions formulated. Take, for example, the Halifax working men who listened intently to the O'Connor v. Acland debate in the summer of 1842 and consequently were praised by the pro-free trade Bradford Observer for their decorum.99 Far from being a middle-class imposition, restraint and respectability had always been a dimension of plebeian radical politics. As indoor political discussions became more respectable, listening to topical lectures became an increasingly popular leisure activity: Acland, recognizing the public's appetite for political education and entertainment, was ready to capitalize on this trend. As early as 1838 he treated itinerant lecturing as a business venture not too dissimilar to that of a strolling theatre company. During his Poor Law tour he hired large music halls and theatres and offered a range of ticket prices (from 1s 6d in the orchestra to 6d in the gallery), and even his advertisements and handbills resembled those used in the acting profession.100 Acland's commercialized approach was mocked by the Northern Star, which snidely described his lecture and debate in Rochdale on the New Poor Law as a ‘Burletta’ and ‘Farce’.101 Yet Acland's attempt to turn political lectures into a commercial enterprise marks him out as something of a pioneer. While John Thelwall had lectured for money decades earlier, his topics were ostensibly literary rather than overtly political, and were delivered to polite Londoners rather than mixed provincial audiences.102 Similarly the lectures delivered during the eighteen-twenties and thirties by atheists and freethinkers such as the Revd. Robert Taylor and Eliza Sharples at the notorious Rotunda Theatre were tied to a specific building and confined to metropolitan audiences.103 Since the late eighteenth century, public lectures on scientific and other topics were popular in urban areas (often delivered by peripatetic lecturers) but it was not until the eighteen-forties and fifties that lecturing became a mass form of entertainment across the country as a whole.104 It was in these decades that celebrity orators such as John Gough, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Dickens embarked on extensive paid lecture tours. The best lectures were performances: listening to a witty speaker debating the key political topics of the day was remarkably attractive, especially on a drab winter evening when there might be very little else on offer. Both celebrity orators and professional political lecturers like Acland helped to open up the extra-parliamentary political platform to ‘respectable’ politicians, paving the way for the likes of Cobden, Bright and Gladstone to make political addresses outside the confines of parliament. The professional itinerant lecturers of the eighteen-forties also prepared the ground for the emerging profession of political agent, whose importance was to grow in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Indeed Moisei Ostrogorski has calculated that by the start of the twentieth century as many as 2,000 people in England and Wales were able to earn a living from professional political work.105 Acland's career trajectory illustrates how, during the Chartist era and beyond, gifted speakers could earn a living from their wits as political orators (other notable examples being George Thompson, the anti-slavery orator, and the former Chartist, Henry Vincent). Talented and industrious agitators like Acland, Thompson and Vincent were invaluable to reform movements for their ability to move chameleon-like across occupational, class and regional divisions.106 Acland tailored his free trade rhetoric according to his audience, hence the arguments he directed at tenant farmers differed substantially from those used to persuade the urban working classes.107 Thanks to his extensive education, mastery of Latin and ability to speak several languages, he was equally adept at dealing with the upper classes. He was, as a contemporary observed, exceedingly clever.108 Indeed, such was his reputation for talking himself out of an untenable position, that his Chartist detractors nicknamed him ‘Slippery Jemmy’; a name which implies a lack of integrity and a fluid political stance.109 Certainly during his long public career Acland moved between radical groupings. This article has already described how during his campaigns against corrupt corporations and disreputable magistrates in Bristol and later Hull he readily employed Cobbett's language of ‘Old Corruption’ and yet, less than a decade later, he whole-heartedly supported the New Poor Law – legislation which Cobbett bitterly opposed. A recent survey of urban political movements by Matthew Roberts delineates four main groups of radicals in the second quarter of the nineteenth century (albeit with some overlap between them). Roberts categorizes them as: Philosophic Radicals, who were followers of Jeremy Bentham; the ‘Manchester School’ of radicals, who campaigned against aristocratic monopoly; ‘moral reform’ radicals (often driven by deeply held religious conviction); and finally ‘popular radicals’, whom Roberts defines as a ‘loose alliance of extra-parliamentary agitators who campaigned for popular rights’.110 Acland clearly belonged to the last category, yet a case could also be made for partial membership of the other groupings during the various phases of his political trajectory. The first two categories cover his support for Poor Law reform and free trade respectively. Only the third category, ‘moral reform’, is a poor fit. While he did briefly lecture in support of temperance and even took the pledge, unlike other popular lecturers of the period (notably George Thompson or Thomas Cooper) he did not incorporate the language of popular religion or personal morality into his political speeches, nor was he driven by religious zeal. Acland belonged to the lower middle classes and needed a regular income to support his family. In this context it is hardly surprising that he pragmatically tailored his political arguments to suit the realities of his current employment. During the eighteen-fifties Acland became increasingly interested in the more technical aspects of electioneering, paying close attention to statistical analysis and the work of the registration courts – interests developed during his time with the A.C.L.L. and during his subsequent work for the Administrative Reform Association (A.R.A.).111 The A.R.A. used statistical analysis extensively to prove that the current parliamentary representation was inherently flawed and to highlight the ease with which the titled and the wealthy could buy themselves into parliament. In 1855 Acland penned a thirty-six-page pamphlet, Parliamentary Incongruities, which was sent to A.R.A. subscribers as a collection of ‘important facts to be considered’.112 Lessons learnt during this period were subsequently used as the basis for his electioneering handbook the Imperial Poll Book. Acland's transition from A.C.L.L. lecturer to freelance election agent was not atypical. Indeed H. J. Hanham attributes the strength of the professional agent in the north to the legacy of the A.C.L.L.113 As the diary of the Leeds agent H. J. Linforth (who worked for the Liberal party during the eighteen-eighties) illustrates, many of the techniques used by party agents – from dealing with magistrates to the workings of the registration courts – had been tried and tested decades before by Acland and his contemporaries.114 Yet while Acland's career as an election agent was based upon a rational analysis of constituency data, he remained convinced of the role of oratory in electoral success. He took great pains to improve his clients' public speaking prowess, teaching them how to deal with hecklers and insult with wit, how to speak with grace and good humour and not alienate the voters by being too aloof and proud. According to George Howell, Acland assisted his tongue-tied client, Sir Robert Clifton, at a political meeting in 1861 by placing a man in the audience whose job was to intervene when Clifton stammered and got into a muddle.115 The story goes that, as he floundered, a voice shouted out ‘Damn politics, Sir Robert, tell us who is to win the Derby’, a topic on which Clifton could talk with eloquence – and thus, having endeared himself to his audiences, he won the election.116 In addition to acting as an adviser and agent for a variety of political clients, Acland also continued to address public meetings and deliver political lectures well into his sixties. In September 1868, for example, he addressed the electors of Eye, Suffolk in his capacity as vice-president of the Reform League, expounding upon ‘Parliamentary reform, past, present and future’ (see Figure 3).117 The shift towards an increasingly professionalized form of political agitation evident in Acland's trajectory supports Vernon's case for a closure of the public political sphere as the unruly politics of the pre-reform era gave way to a more regulated political culture.118 Yet, as noted previously, chaired indoor political meetings were more likely to facilitate rational discussion. Moreover, while Acland abhorred the unreformed parliamentary system, he was successful precisely because he was adept at managing the potentially turbulent political meetings of the mid nineteenth century. Despite being an ardent supporter of parliamentary reform, Acland was well able to work within a corrupt and debased political system. While engaged in work for the A.C.L.L. he complained in a letter to his Manchester paymasters that during his last visit to Sheffield, the ‘pushy and presuming operatives’ cost him a ‘heavy score at the Angel’.119 According to George Howell, his motto while working as a political agent was ‘to win the election never mind the expense’.120 Figure 3. Open in new tabDownload slide ‘The coming election’, handbill in private collection. Reproduced by kind permission of Neville Acland. Victorian political campaigns utilized both print and oral communication, and certainly Acland operated effectively both on the page and on the platform, but this author would argue that his real significance lay in his itinerant lecture tours. For at the basic level of communication, the printed page was no match for the whirlwind that was Acland. Charisma, drama, entertainment and immediacy were the tools of the itinerant lecturer, and spirited oratory was a medium which powerfully convinced those with little access to books, newspapers or national political culture. Another advantage of the paid itinerant agent was the two-way flow of information. While a tract could not report on the political climate in a given locality, a political agent worked on a number of levels, from delivering eloquent addresses and establishing local branches, to measuring local political opinions; cultivating friendships with influential people and currying favour with newspaper editors – tasks which the persuasive Acland carried out with gusto. Throughout his public career Acland styled himself as an independent radical, supporting ‘the poor against the rich … [and] the weak against the powerful’.121 Although he failed to write an autobiography, towards the end of his life he made some efforts towards securing his reputation. In the preface to the second edition of the Imperial Poll Book, he claimed to have been present in the procession that welcomed Henry Hunt after his Peterloo imprisonment. He also described how he himself had ‘pined years in Tory gaols’ for daring to challenge the libel laws.122 In his retirement, Acland revived his newspaper the Bristolian primarily as a series of reminiscences which reminded readers of his selfless devotion to radicalism.123 Of course, such recollections are highly selective and many of his actions can be interpreted as both altruistic and self-serving. His various schemes, from bread associations to ferries, were arguably just as much about increasing the sales of his newspapers and raising the profile of James Acland as tackling injustice. It is tempting to interpret his high-profile attacks on corruption and unfair taxation in Bristol and Hull as nothing more than a blatant attempt to win over the rabble. But he showed admirable consistency in his political principles over his lifetime. For example, in 1846 he spoke at a meeting in Manchester called to protect local stall-holders from changes mooted by the corporation and during the eighteen-fifties he was secretary of the City of London Markets Protection Association.124 He also continued his quest for local government reform into the eighteen-fifties through his work with the London Municipal Reform Association and nationally via the Administrative Reform Association.125 Acland's interest in penal reform was also enduring – he published at least one article on this topic and gave evidence to a parliamentary committee on prison discipline in 1850.126 His preoccupation with parliamentary reform and the working man's loaf was similarly long-lived. Acland was not unusual in sustaining a wide range of radical interests and programmes over his life time. Comparisons can be made with contemporary figures such as George Jacob Holyoake or W. E. Adams, whose autobiographies suggest that, far from being disparate, the causes and organizations which they supported were part of a radical whole.127 Pickering and Tyrrell, citing Acland's willingness to speak both for and against the temperance cause, and his unscrupulous behaviour while employed by the Electric Telegraph Company, have dismissed him as ‘a mercenary pure and simple’.128 The man described at the beginning of this article, lecturing in support of the New Poor Laws, might appear nothing more than a mercenary – a tool in the hands of his Whig paymasters, as his Huddersfield critics insisted. It was without doubt strange for a radical and self-styled ‘friend of the people’ to lecture in support of the New Poor Law Act – and yet if we look more closely, was his line on poor relief consistent with his radical views? Acland was a stickler for facts, figures and equality before the law and a long-time critic of wasteful charities. While editor of the Hull Portfolio he had devoted considerable time to investigating the bequests and legacies attached to local charities, demonstrating how money was siphoned away from intended recipients by the town's corrupt oligarchy.129 His support for the New Poor Laws was consistent with his desire for transparency in all fiscal affairs, accountability and a national programme of administrative reform.130 Ultimately we will never know Acland's inner motivations, but to dismiss him as a ‘mercenary pure and simple’ diverts attention from his significant role in radical politics from the eighteen-twenties to the eighteen-sixties. Whatever his failings, Acland was undoubtedly a gifted speaker and a charismatic performer. His public life underlines the continuing importance of oratory in politics and the shaping of public opinion. Footnotes 1 N. C. Edsall , The Anti-Poor Law Movement 1834–44 ( Manchester , 1971 ); Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC J. Knott , Popular Opposition to the 1834 Poor Law ( 1986 ); A. Place , Pray Remember the Poor: the Poor Laws and Huddersfield ( Huddersfield , 2004 ). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 2 Leeds Mercury , 17 Nov. 1838 . 3 Champion & Weekly Herald , 25 Nov. 1838 . The Champion was a radical paper that was staunchly opposed to the Poor Law Amendment Act and thus this figure is likely to be an exaggeration. 4 The Huddersfield riot was widely reported ( The Times , 20 Nov. 1838 ; Leeds Mercury , 17 Nov. 1838 ; Northern Star , 17 Nov. 1838 ; Halifax Guardian , 17 Nov. 1838 ; Liverpool Mercury , 30 Nov. 1838 ; Hull Packet , 23 Nov. 1838 ; Morning Chronicle , 19 Nov. 1838 ). For a hostile account of Acland's Poor Law tour, see G. R. Wythen Baxter , The Book of the Bastiles; or the History of the Working of the New Poor-Law ( 1841 ), pp. 277 – 280 . 5 For eye witness accounts, see The National Archives of the U.K.: Public Record Office, HO 44/31 fos. 893–908, ‘ Riot at Huddersfield, copy of the Depositions ’, 12 Nov. 1838 . 6 Robert Lowery: Radical and Chartist , ed. B. Harrison and P. Hollis ( 1979 ); B. Harrison and P. Hollis, ‘Chartism, Liberalism and the life of Robert Lowery’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , lxxxii ( 1967 ), 503 – 535 ; Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat T. Cooper , The Life of Thomas Cooper (1st edn., 1872 ; repr. with introduction by J. Saville, Leicester, 1971); W. Dowling , Henry Vincent: a Biographical Sketch ( 1879 ). 7 P. A. Pickering and A. Tyrrell, The People's Bread: a History of the Anti-Corn Law League ( Leicester , 2000 ), p. 21 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 8 G. Stedman Jones , Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History 1832–1982 ( Cambridge , 1983 ); Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC R. McWilliam , Popular Politics in 19th-Century England ( 1998 ), pp. 33 – 38 . 9 Cited in M. Roberts , Political Movements in Urban England, 1832–1914 ( Basingstoke , 2009 ), p. 7 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 10 P. A. Pickering , ‘Class without words: symbolic communication in the Chartist movement’ , Past & Present , cxii ( 1986 ), 144 – 162 ; Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat J. A. Epstein , Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 ( Oxford , 1994 ); Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC K. Bowan and P. A. Pickering, ‘“Songs for the millions”: Chartist music and popular aural tradition’ , Labour Hist. Rev. , lxxiv ( 2009 ), 44 – 63 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat 11 P. Joyce , Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914 ( Cambridge , 1991 ) and Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Democratic Subjects: the Self and the Social in 19th-Century England ( Cambridge , 1994 ); Crossref Search ADS J. Vernon , Politics and the People: a Study in English Political Culture, c.1815–1867 ( Cambridge , 1993 ), pp. 107 – 158 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 12 J. C. Belchem , Orator Hunt: Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism ( Oxford , 1985 ); Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC J. C. Belchem , ‘Henry Hunt and the evolution of the mass platform’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , xciii ( 1978 ), 739 – 773 ; Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat J. C. Belchem and J. A. Epstein, ‘The 19th-century gentleman leader revisited’ , Social Hist. , xxii ( 1997 ), 174 – 193 ; Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat M. Taylor , Ernest Jones, Chartism and the Romance of Politics, 1819–69 ( Oxford , 2003 ); Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC J. Meisel , Public Speech and the Culture of Public Life in the Age of Gladstone ( New York , 2001 ). Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 13 D. Jones , Chartism and the Chartists ( 1975 ), p. 80 ; Pickering and Tyrrell, pp. 1 – 3 , 191. 14 Meisel , p. 5 . 15 Disappointingly, Rix has little to say on the earlier use of travelling political lecturers during the 1840s ( K. Rix , ‘“Go Out into the Highways and the Hedges”: the diary of Michael Sykes, Conservative political lecturer, 1895 and 1907–8’ , Parliamentary Hist. , xx ( 2001 ), 209 – 231 ). Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat 16 W. Ong , Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word ( 1982 ). 17 M. Hewitt , ‘The itinerant emigration lecturer: James Brown's lecture tour of Great Britain and Ireland, 1861–2’ , British Jour. Canadian Stud. , x ( 1995 ), 103 – 119 ; Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat ‘Popular platform religion: Arthur Mursell at the Free Trade Hall, 1857–66’ , Manchester Region Hist. Rev. ( 1996 ), 29 – 40 ; ‘Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Dawson and the control of the lecture platform in mid-19th century Manchester’ , Nineteenth Century Prose , xxv ( 1998 ), 1 – 24 ; ‘Platform-pulpit-rhetoric’ , Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies , iii ( Leeds , 2000 ); and special issue of Nineteenth Century Prose , ‘Platform, pulpit, rhetoric’ , xxix ( 2002 ). 18 H. Southall , ‘Agitate! Agitate! Organize! Political travellers and the construction of a national politics’ , Trans. Royal Geographic Soc. , xxi ( 1996 ), 177 – 193 ; Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat P. Howell , ‘“Diffusing the Light of Liberty”: the geography of political lecturing in the Chartist movement’ , in The People's Charter: Democratic Agitation in Early Victorian Britain , ed. S. Roberts ( 2003 ). 19 Harrison and Hollis, ‘ Chartism, Liberalism ’; and Harrison and Hollis, Robert Lowery . 20 D. Wahrman , ‘Virtual representation: parliamentary reporting and the language of class in the 1790s’ , Past & Present , cxxxvi ( 1992 ), 83 – 113 , at p. 85; Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat O. Anderson , ‘Hansard's hazards: an illustration from recent interpretations of married women's property law and the 1857 Divorce Act’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , cxii ( 1997 ), 1202 – 1215 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat J. Robson , ‘What did he say’? Editing 19th-Century Speeches from Hansard and the Newspapers ( Alberta , 1988 ). Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 21 For an excellent example of how the printed speech differed from that delivered, see the preface of R. Oastler , Damnation! Eternal Damnation to the fiend-begotten ‘Coarser Food’ New Poor Law. A Speech by Richard Oastler ( Leeds , 1837 ). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 22 R. Williams , ‘The press and popular culture: an historical perspective’ , in Newspaper History: from the 17th Century to the Present Day , ed. G. Boyce ( 1978 ), pp. 41 – 50 . 23 Manchester Local Studies and Archives (hereafter M.L.S.A.), Anti-Corn Law League (hereafter A.C.L.L.), letter book, fo. 191, 5 May 1839. 24 For details of Cobbett's northern lecture tour during the winter of 1829/30, see Cobbett's Weekly Register , 5 Dec. 1829 , 12 Dec. 1829, 19 Dec 1829, 2 Jan. 1830, 6 Feb. 1830. 25 Pickering , p. 145 . 26 Vernon , pp. 9 , 336–9. 27 Acland won the school elocution prize ( N. Acland , Memoirs and Correspondence of James Acland from 1799–1829, Compiled and Edited from Letters, Journals and Newspapers of the Author ( Colchester , 1996 ), p. 2 ). For his Latin studies, see a letter in the possession of descendant Neville Acland, J. Ackland to H. Ackland, Alfred House, 17 Sept. 1812. Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 28 Acland , Memoirs , pp. 27 – 28 , 67–72. 29 J. Acland , Imperial Poll Book of all Elections from the Passing of the Reform Act in 1832 to June 1869 (1st edn., 1865 ; 2nd edn., 1869). 30 Annual Register ( 1876 ), p. 143 . 31 Acland does have a sub-entry (see H. C. G. Matthew , ‘Frederick Haynes McCalmont (1846–80)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ( Oxford , 2004 ) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/58114> [accessed 28 Apr. 2011 ]). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Acland also features in F. Boase , Modern English Biography (6 vols., 1965 ), i . 10 – 11 . Kenneth Mahon (1914–72) planned, but never completed, a biography of Acland (Hull University Archives (hereafter H.U.A.), Mahon DDMM, DDMM(2)). J. Martin , ‘Acland, James (1799–1876)’ , in Dictionary of 19th Century Journalism ( 2008 ) online edn. <http://c19index.chadwyck.co.uk/home.do> [accessed 28 Apr. 2011 ]. 32 W. D. Rubinstein , ‘The end of “Old Corruption” in Britain 1780–1860’ , Past & Present , ci ( 1983 ), 55 – 86 ; Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat P. Harling , ‘Rethinking “Old Corruption”’ , Past & Present , cxlvii ( 1995 ), 127 – 158 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat Patricia Hollis, one of the few historians to appreciate the extent of Acland's radical career, commented on his ‘Cobbett-style radicalism’ ( Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England , ed. P. Hollis ( 1974 ), pp. 13 – 14 ). Crossref Search ADS 33 Vernon , p. 145 . H. Barker , Newspapers, Politics and English Society 1695–1855 ( Harlow , 2000 ), pp. 53 – 55 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 34 Acland , Memoirs , pp. 34 – 62 , 77–82. J. Latimer , The Annals of Bristol in the 19th Century ( Bristol , 1887 ), pp. 118 – 119 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 35 Epstein , Radical Expression ; Pickering , ‘ Class without words ’. 36 N. Acland , James Acland's Account of the Bristolian Bread Association, 1829–31 ( Colchester , 1996 ), pp. 153 – 154 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC For more information on Brandon Hill, see S. Poole , ‘“Till our Liberties be secure”: popular sovereignty and public space in Bristol, 1780–1850’ , Urban Hist. , xxvi ( 1999 ), 40 – 54 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat 37 R. McWilliam , The Tichborne Claimant: a Victorian Sensation ( 2007 ); and R. McWilliam , ‘Melodrama and the historians’ , Radical Hist. Rev. , lxxviii ( 2000 ), 57 – 84 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat 38 G. Russell , ‘The theatre of crim. con.: Thomas Erskine, adultery and radical politics in the 1790s’, in Unrespectable Radicals: Popular Politics in the Age of Reform , ed. M. T. Davis and P. A. Pickering ( Aldershot , 2008 ), 57 – 70 ; Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Epstein , pp. 32 – 36 . 39 A. A. D'Orley , The Humber Ferries ( Knaresborough , 1968 ), p. 27 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC See also K. Mahon , ‘James Acland and the Humber ferries monopolies’ , Transport Hist. , ii ( 1969 ), 167 – 187 ; Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat J. J. Sheahan , History of the Town and Port of Kingston-upon-Hull ( Beverley , 1866 ), pp. 201 – 204 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 40 Hull Packet , 3 Apr. 1832 ; Hull Portfolio , 13 March 1832 , 7 Apr. 1832. 41 The jury took only 10 minutes to reach a verdict ( Hull Portfolio , 7 Apr. 1832 ). Mahon , ‘ James Acland ’, p. 182 . 42 Hull Packet , 10 Apr. 1832 . 43 Morning Chronicle , 22 Aug. 1828 . Lord Ellenborough was one of the council in the treason trial of John Horne Tooke in 1794 and he also presided over the trial of James Watson in 1817 ( M. Lobban , ‘Law, Edward, 1st Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818)’ , O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16142> [accessed 21 Apr. 2011 ]). 44 Libel Act 1843, 6 & 7 Vict., c. 96. P. Harling , ‘The law of libel and the limits of repression, 1790–1832’ , Historical Jour. , xliv ( 2001 ), 107 – 134 ; Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat P. N. Amponsah , Libel Law, Political Criticism, and Defamation of Public Figures: the United States, Europe and Australia ( New York , 2004 ), pp. 41 – 51 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 45 Between the postponement of his sentencing in Nov. 1828 and Feb. 1829, when his case came up again, Acland was held on remand at the king's bench prison ( The Times , 20 May 1828 , 21 June 1828, 22 Aug. 1828, 25 Nov. 1828, 6 Feb. 1829, 12 Feb. 1829). M. Lobban , ‘Abbott, Charles, 1st Baron Tenterden (1762–1832)’ , O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12> [accessed 21 Apr. 2011 ]. 46 Lobban , ‘ Abbott ’. 47 The case rumbled on through 1832 ( Morning Chronicle , 12 Jan. 1832 , 1 Feb. 1832, 10 May 1832, 16 Nov. 1832). 48 T.N.A.: P.R.O., HO 52/20 fos. 195–6, 199A. Meanwhile Acland wrote a series of letters (1, 3, 4 and 5 Oct. 1832) to the home secretary, Lord Melbourne, blaming the unsettled state of Hull on the magistrates and corporation (T.N.A.: P.R.O., HO 52/20 fos. 243–8). Dissatisfaction with the terms of the Reform Act was evident in an address delivered at the A.G.M. of the Hull Political Union (see Hull Portfolio , 24 Nov. 1832 ). 49 H.U.A., DX/51/28, 4 Oct. 1832. 50 N. Arnold , ‘ The press in social context: a study of York and Hull 1815–55 ’ (unpublished University of York M.Phil. thesis, 1987), esp. ch. 4. 51 W. A. Gunnell , Sketches of Hull Celebrities or Memoirs and Correspondence of Alderman Thomas Johnson, and four of his lineal descendants from the year 1640 to 1858 ( 1876 , Hull ), pp. 460 – 461 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 52 Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire Archives (hereafter E.R.Y.A.), DDHE/31/1, ‘This Sketch of the First Attempt to Abolish the Market Tolls of Kingston upon Hull, 1st Novr 1831’, fo. 38. 53 An engraving of James Acland seated at his desk while editor of the Hull Portfolio clearly shows a picture on his office wall of three inverted crowns (E.R.Y.A., DDHE/31/1 fo. 37). 54 E. J. Evans , The Great Reform Act of 1832 ( 1983 ), pp. 53 – 54 . E. Pearce , Reform! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act ( 2003 ). 55 The Hull Political Union (Acland was a founding member) was active from Oct. 1831 ( N. D. LoPatin , Political Unions, Popular Politics and the Great Reform Act of 1832 ( Basingstoke , 1999 ), pp. 113 – 114 , 175). Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 56 Hull Portfolio , 28 Apr., 5 May 1832 . 57 Hull Packet , 1 May 1832 ; Gunnell , p. 462 . 58 Gunnell , p. 461 . 59 ‘This Sketch of my return home on the 3rd of Feby 1832, from the Court of Kings Bench’ (loose copy in the Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library, Hull Portfolio, ii). 60 M. Roberts , ‘ Reading Chartist banners: visual culture in early Chartism’, unpublished conference paper, ‘Social History Society Annual Conference ’, University of Manchester , 12–14 Apr. 2011 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 61 Bristol Mercury , 24 June 1876 . Boase , p. 11 ; Sheahan , p. 203 . 62 C. R. Dod , Electoral Facts from 1832–53 Impartially Stated: Constituting a Complete Political Gazetteer , ed. H. J. Hanham (1st edn., 1853 ; 2nd edn., Brighton , 1972), pp. 36 – 37 , 148–9. Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 63 Hull Portfolio , 6 Dec. 1832 . 64 M. Chase , ‘“Labour's candidates”: Chartist challenges at the parliamentary polls, 1839–60’ , Labour Hist. Rev. , lxxiv ( 2009 ), 64 – 89 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat 65 The Times , 10 Sept. 1841, 23 Sept. 1841 ; Era , 12 Sept. 1841 ; North Wales Chronicle , 21 Sept. 1841 . 66 Mahon , ‘ James Acland ’, p. 167 ; Baxter , p. 278 . For other attacks on Acland's character, see F. Adams , Eyes for the Blind; or an Insight into the Character and Principles of James Acland ( Hull , 1832 ). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 67 Arnold , p. 111 . 68 He was the editor of the North Cheshire Reformer during the latter half of 1837 and early 1838 and the proprietor of the short-lived Liverpool Politician during the summer of 1838. 69 The Grubb v. Acland debate took place on 16 Aug. 1838 ( P. T. Winskill , The Temperance Movement and its Workers (4 vols., 1892 ), ii . 32 – 33 ). For the Livesey debate, see Preston Chronicle , 4 May 1838, 19 May 1838 . For the Stephens debate, see Manchester Times , 16 Dec. 1837 . 70 Leeds Mercury , 17 Nov. 1838 . 71 N. McCord , The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838–46 ( 1958 ; 2nd edn., 1968), pp. 56 – 57 ; Pickering and Tyrrell, p. 21 . 72 Pickering and Tyrrell, pp. 191 – 216 . 73 Pickering and Tyrrell, p. 20 . 74 G. Saintsbury , Manchester ( 1887 ), pp. 152 – 153 . The literary scholar and historian George Saintsbury had spent some time working as a journalist on the Manchester Chronicle ( A. Bell , ‘Saintsbury, George Edward Bateman (1845–1933)’ , O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35908> [accessed 25 March 2011 ]). 75 Acland described himself as a ‘rational Radical’ during his Poor Law lecture tour ( Leeds Mercury , 17 Nov. 1838 ). Although he does not explicitly state what he means by this term this author would suggest that it refers to the fact that his political arguments were based on factual evidence rather than rhetorical flourishes. For a more detailed discussion of this theme, see J. Martin , ‘ Popular political oratory and itinerant lecturing in Yorkshire and the north east in the age of Chartism, 1837–60 ’ (unpublished University of York Ph.D. thesis, 2010), pp. 185 – 190 . 76 Manchester Times , 28 Apr. 1838 77 Manchester Times , 31 March 1838 . 78 Pickering and Tyrrell, p. 21 . 79 Preston Chronicle , 5 May 1838 . 80 Northern Star , 1 Dec. 1838 . 81 M.L.S.A., A.C.L.L., letter book, fo. 186, 3 May 1839. 82 M.L.S.A., A.C.L.L., letter book, fo. 180, 29 Apr. 1839. 83 Acland was during this period the joint proprietor of the Liverpool Teetotal Times so perhaps his motives were not entirely honourable (Winskill, pp. 32–3). 84 Northern Star , 9 July 1842 . 85 Northern Star , 9 July 1842, 16 July 1842 ; Bradford Observer , 14 July 1842 ; Derby Mercury , 13 July 1842 (repr. from the Halifax Guardian). For Acland's version of events, see Manchester Times , 23 July 1842 and Morning Chronicle , 26 Aug. 1842 . 86 Northern Star , 30 July 1842 . 87 G. J. Holyoake , Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life (2 vols., 1893 ), ii . 226 – 227 ; H. Ashworth , Recollections of Richard Cobden, MP and the Anti-Corn Law League ( 1876 ), pp. 76 – 77 . 88 McCord , p. 57 . 89 M.L.S.A., A.C.L.L., letter book, fo. 341, 8 May 1840; McCord , p. 57 . 90 Anti Corn Law Circular , 30 Apr. 1839 . 91 Pickering and Tyrrell, p. 147 ; D. Thompson , The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution ( New York , 1984 ), p. 289 ; Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC L. Brown , ‘The Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League’ , in Chartist Studies , ed. A. Briggs ( 1959 ), pp. 342 – 371 . 92 Pickering and Tyrrell, pp. 116 – 138 ; S. Morgan , ‘The Anti-Corn Law League and British anti-slavery in transatlantic perspective, 1838–46’ , Historical Jour. , lii ( 2009 ), 87 – 107 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat 93 Pickering and Tyrrell, pp. 132 – 133 . 94 A. Clark , ‘The rhetoric of Chartist domesticity: gender, language, and class in the 1830s and 1840s’ , Jour. British Stud. , xxxi ( 1992 ), 62–88, at p. 71 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat 95 M. McCormack , Public Men: Masculinity and Politics in Modern Britain ( Basingstoke , 2007 ). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 96 Brown , pp. 342 – 371 . 97 For a useful critique of Politics and the People, see J. Lawrence , ‘The decline of English popular politics?’ , Parliamentary Hist. , xiii ( 1994 ), 333 – 337 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat J. Lawrence , Electing our Masters: the Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair ( Oxford , 2009 ). Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 98 Martin , pp. 76 – 78 . 99 Bradford Observer , 14 July 1842 . 100 Northern Star , 1 Dec. 1838 . 101 Northern Star , 21 Apr. 1838 . The term ‘burletta’, which denotes a brief comic Italian opera, roughly translates as ‘little joke’. 102 N. Roe , ‘Thelwall, John (1764–1834)’ , O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27167> [accessed 8 Aug. 2011 ]. 103 H. Rogers , ‘“The prayer, the passion and the reason” of Eliza Sharples: free thought, women's rights and republicanism, 1832–52’, in Radical Femininity: Women's Self-Representation in the Public Sphere , ed. E. Yeo ( Manchester , 1998 ), pp. 52 – 78 ; Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Epstein , Radical Expression , pp. 136 – 137 ; I. McCalman , Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840 ( Oxford , 1993 ), p 190 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 104 F. W. Gibbs , ‘Itinerant lecturers in natural philosophy’ , Ambix , viii ( 1961 ), 111 – 117 ; Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat A. Fyfe and B. V. Lightman, Science in the Marketplace: 19th-Century Sites and Experiences ( Chicago, Ill. , 2007 ). Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC 105 Cited in Rix , p. 214 . 106 Dowling , Henry Vincent ; R. M. Gifford ‘ George Thompson and transatlantic anti-slavery, 1831–65 ’, (unpublished Indiana University Ph.D. thesis, 1999 ), pp. 213 , 233. 107 James Acland was also adept at distinguishing the interests of the tenant farmer from that of the aristocratic landowner (see The Law-Craft of the Land-Craft, with Legislative Illustrations, by James Acland one of the lecturers of the National Anti-Corn-Law League ( Glasgow , 1843 )). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 108 Brotherton Library, MS. 277/2/83, letter from T. E. Perronet Thompson to his mother, 24 June 1835. 109 Northern Star , 6 Feb. 1841 , 5 March 1842. 110 Roberts , p. 28 . 111 O. Anderson , ‘The Administrative Reform Association, 1855–7’ , in Hollis, Pressure from Without , pp. 262 – 288 ; M. Taylor , The Decline of British Radicalism 1847–60 ( Oxford , 1995 ), pp. 249 – 251 . Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 112 J. Acland , Parliamentary Incongruities and Electoral Anomalies as affecting the Representation of the People in the House of Commons ( 1855 ). 113 H. J. Hanham , Elections and Party Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone ( Hassocks , 1978 ), p. 238 . For information on Acland's career as an election agent, see Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Hanham , pp. 33 , 237–9 and Dod , pp. vii – cxliv . For late Victorian and early Edwardian agents, see Rix , pp. 209 – 231 . 114 Linforth was primarily concerned with organization. Unlike the Tory agent Michael Sykes, he does not appear to have made speeches in his own right ( J. H. Linforth , Leaves from an Agent's Diary ( Leeds , 1911 )). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 115 Sir Robert Juckes Clifton, 9th Baronet (1826–69), was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was fond of gambling and ‘lost heavily on the turf during his minority’. In 1861 he stood as an independent candidate at the parliamentary election at Nottingham (Boase, i. 650; M. Stenton , Who's Who of British Members of Parliament , i: 1832–85 ( Brighton , 1976 ), pp. 79 – 80 ). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 116 Bishopsgate Institute , George Howell papers , Howell , ‘autobiography’, fo. 29. See also extract reprinted in Hanham , pp. 237 – 238 . 117 Handbill in the possession of Neville Acland, 17 Sept. 1868. 118 Vernon , pp. 8 – 9 . 119 M.L.S.A., A.C.L.L., letter book, fo. 739, 9 Oct. 1840. 120 Bishopsgate Institute, Howell, fos. 29–30. 121 The Bristolian: or Memoirs and Correspondence of James Acland , 23 Feb. 1872 . 122 Acland , Imperial Poll Book , p. 8 . A claim somewhat undermined by Acland's evidence to the select committee on prison discipline in which he notes that, in all but one prison, he had a separate apartment and a servant (Report from the Select Committee on Prison Discipline (Parl. Papers 1850 [632], xvii), p. 643). 123 Acland revived the Bristolian between Feb. and May 1872. 124 Manchester Times , 21 Feb. 1846 ; Morning Chronicle , 14 Oct. 1850 . 125 The Times , 7 Oct. 1853 , 4 May 1854. 126 J. Acland ‘Penal economy’ , Sharpe's London Journal , ix ( 1849 ), 36 – 43 ; Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Report from the Select Committee on Prison Discipline , p. 643 . 127 Holyoake; W. E. Adams , Memoirs of a Social Atom (1st edn., 1903 ; repr. New York , 1968). Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC 128 Pickering and Tyrell, pp. 21 , 248–9. 129 Charities singled out included Gregg's Hospital, Lindall's Gift and Hawson's charity (Hull Portfolio, 10 Sept. 1831, 31 Dec. 1831). 130 Taxation, both locally and nationally, was a divisive issue in radical politics (Taylor, pp. 137–43). Francis Place was another radical who supported the New Poor Laws ( W. Thomas , ‘Place, Francis (1771–1854)’ , O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22349> [accessed 26 Apr. 2011 ]). Footnotes * The author would like to thank Neville Acland for sharing documents relating to James Acland in his possession and Matthew Roberts for his helpful suggestions. Copyright © 2012 Institute of Historical Research This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) Copyright © 2012 Institute of Historical Research
TI - Oratory, itinerant lecturing and victorian popular politics: a case study of James Acland (1799–1876)
JF - Historical Research
DO - 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2012.00607.x
DA - 2013-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/oratory-itinerant-lecturing-and-victorian-popular-politics-a-case-CvGxC0mmi3
SP - 30
EP - 52
VL - 86
IS - 231
DP - DeepDyve
ER -