A Meeting of Delegates of the Agricultural Associations  

*La Plebe.*  
No. 18, 8 June 1877  

June 5.

At a meeting of delegates of the agricultural associations which took place the other day in Exeter Hall, Joseph Arch vigorously expressed sentiments hostile to war and was warmly applauded. The leader of the party of the agricultural labourers openly declared himself an advocate of peace, particularly because the sacrifices that war entails always weigh more heavily on the workers than on the other classes of society. The agricultural labourers in England do not yet officially participate in the political life of their country, but these imposing anti-war demonstrations of theirs cannot fail to exert a certain influence even on the classes on which the policy of the nation depends. The peasants, however, are beginning to feel the need to have a direct part in this policy themselves, and therefore, at their Exeter Hall meeting, they also dealt, and in a special manner, with the extension of the suffrage. They still constitute a caste of poor pariahs, not only in economic but also in political terms. They are therefore beating on the door of Parliament and demanding to enter: they no longer wish to be what they have been hitherto. And it is easy to imagine that these pretensions are not looked upon favourably by all those—and they are not few, especially among the clergy—who regard the subjection of the agricultural labourers as the basis of the entire political and economic system of England. On the other hand, the bourgeois parliamentary oppositionists are coming forward in order to seize the leadership of this peasant movement themselves and, with its aid, to attack their political adversaries, the men now in government. At the head of these bourgeois oppositionists stands Mr. Bright, who also spoke at the Exeter Hall meeting, and, skilfully ignoring the great economic-social question, delivered a resounding political indictment against the men now in power. Of course: the economic-social ground is very difficult and scorching ground for the bourgeoisie, and indeed in England the aristocracy has always shown itself far less embarrassed on it, because, by its social position, it is not forced, as the bourgeoisie is, to speculate on everything and everyone in order to enrich itself. The workers understand this state of affairs perfectly, and therefore, when they want to wrest concessions, they turn with more hope to the nobles than to the bourgeois, as they have shown in a recent address to Lord Beaconsfield. And as long as things remain on this footing, as long as the workers can play one off against the other with some small profit between the bourgeois and the aristocrats, England will certainly not have the violent socialist upheavals that are encountered in other countries, where the ruling classes present to the workers only one great, compact, and inexorable reactionary mass. But the day when the working classes can no longer draw any profit from the rival competition between the interests of the landed aristocracy and the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie, because that competition no longer exists, then we shall have in England too the beginning of the true revolutionary period. Up to now, the aristocracy has kept the working masses in good humour with philanthropic concessions: now it is the bourgeoisie which is trying its campaign by supporting the political tendencies of the workers and taking possession of them in order to direct them. We are on the threshold of the period of universal suffrage: and on this ground the bourgeoisie is preparing to display all the talent of its ability and cunning, that is, to make political concessions in order to safeguard its own economic interests and to leave the aristocracy behind. Be that as it may, this whole mechanism of the life of the three social elements, namely the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, and the nobles, means that the proletariat no longer feel themselves to be children or sentimentalists, but realise—as an orator at Exeter Hall well said—that their relations with the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy can be nothing but business relations.

The social movement in England—as you see—is slow, is evolutionist, not revolutionary, but it is nonetheless a forward movement.