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(PARLIAMENTARY REFORM). (MORE, HANNAH?). To the Mechanics, Artizans, and Labourers of London & Westminster. My Friends and Fellow Countrymen, The anxiety I feel for your welfare, induces me to offer you a word of advice:--?��Beware of those who lie in wait to deceive.?�� Our violent political Orators, have again recourse to the old worn out subject of a Reform in Parliament?Ķ [Caption title and beginning of text.] Broadside, 15?�� x 10-3/8?��, signed in type by ?��A Tradesman?�� at conclusion. Clean tear in margin at lower corner, triangular piece (1?�� a side) gone from center of left-hand margin with loss of first two characters from one line of text. Manuscript note, ?��taken in the street/8 Feby/17?�� in upper margin. Other than the flaws noted, a very good copy of an attractively printed piece. [London, Eng.]: W. Smith & Co., King St., Seven Dials, [1817]. $950.00

 

                                                                                              Rare, apparently unrecorded, not in WorldCat or COPAC databases, but possibly issued as part of the Cheap Repository Tracts, published under the auspices of Hannah More. Not in Kress.

                                                                                                             It is a patriotic appeal in favor of the status quo, ridiculing the idea that reform of Parliament can alleviate the distress of the people in a timely fashion. ?��Be not deceived?be true to yourselves?to your King?and to your Country;--always recollecting that the evils under which we all (more or less) suffer, are wholly imputable, not to the Crimes of Individuals, but to natural and uncontrolled causes?Ķ.?��

                                                                                                             What is surprising is that publications of this kind seem to have evoked so little reaction in print from the radicals. One angry comment ?Ķ was written by William Hone in 1817, during the depression which followed the cessation of the Napoleonic wars. On two occasions in Hone?��s Reformist Register he turned with anger to the subject of Cheap Repository Tracts, [writing]:

one of these, addressed ?��to the Mechanics, Artizans, and Labourers of London & Westminster,?�� and diligently stuck about the streets, has the impudence to say, that ?��the the evils under which we all (more or less) suffer, are wholly imputable, not to the Crimes of Individuals but to natural and uncontrolled causes?��; and with unfeeling audacity, tells the poor famishing creatures that read it, that ?��it becomes us to submit with Christian patience, to being put on short allowance.?��--Neuburg, Popular Literature: A History and Guide (Woburn Press 1977).

Neuburg goes on to note that two weeks later Hone returned to the same theme in the pages of Reformist Register, complaining about ?��a ballad hawked about the streets, written by Miss Hannah More, calling it ?��the dull lying consolation offered to the half-starved and miserable. We are already exhorted to be patient under affliction and to bear our crosses with humility; ?Ķ. to submit ourselves as we ought, to the stations allotted to us.?��