London - Edward Rutherfurd [487]
“You don’t want to know,” the other answered, and would say no more.
Not long afterwards, Eugene retired to bed, glad to think that with any luck he would never see Silas Dogget again.
It looked as if a riot might begin.
The wind had got up at dawn and blown the London fog away; only a tiny residue of grime over the city was left to mark its passing. The day was bright with a tingling breeze, and the fair weather no doubt encouraged the crowd of four hundred people who were gathered in front of the handsome house in Fitzroy Square to hear the figure standing in the open upstairs window proclaim his shocking message.
“Do we believe,” he cried out, “in the Brotherhood of Man?” The crowd signified, with a roar, that it did. “Do you acknowledge –” this last word, said with particular emphasis, was Zachary Carpenter’s trademark as an orator – “I say, do you acknowledge that every man born has rights? Isn’t that common sense? Aren’t these the Rights of Man?” As a murmur of recognition greeted this, he positively exploded: “And do those inalienable rights not include,” he hammered the next words out like a drumbeat: “No taxation without re-pre-sent-a-tion?” And his small stout body and large round head fairly bounced.
It might seem strange that these doctrines which came straight from the writings of Tom Paine, the great propagandist of the American Revolution, should be proclaimed in a London street. Yet medieval Englishmen had said much the same thing in the days of Wat Tyler’s revolt and plenty of men nowadays possessed grandfathers who could remember old Levellers from the days of England’s Civil War. The free House of Commons, the Puritans, the Roundheads, the now independent Americans and the radical English were all different streams that had branched out from the same old river of freedom. King George III might have been furious with the Americans for breaking away, but many of his ordinary subjects had read Paine and sympathized with the plucky colonists.
“Did I make a mistake,” Zachary now asked the crowd, “or did Parliament abolish slavery?”
The crowd assured him that this was correct. Slavery had been outlawed within England since 1772, and, thanks to the efforts of reformers like the great William Wilberforce, the slave trade had more recently been forbidden even in Britain’s far-flung possessions overseas.
“Are you or are you not free-born Englishmen?”
The crowd let him know, with another roar, that they were as English as roast beef.
“Then why is it,” he cried, “that here, in this parish of St Pancras, we are treated no better than slaves? Why are free men trampled by a tyranny? Do you acknowledge that this is so?”
They did. They did with a bellow that shook Fitzroy Square.
Carpenter’s accusation was absolutely true. Even now, the old controversy over who should control the parish vestry, which had so infuriated Gideon Carpenter back in the days of King Charles, had still not been settled. Although the ancient area of the twenty-five city wards was still ruled by the mayor, aldermen and the now largely ornamental guilds, the vast and spreading metropolis outside had no central authority. Peace was preserved, streets paved, the sick and the poor were provided for by the parish. The parish built and organized. And of course to pay for it, the parish also taxed.
The parish of St Pancras was huge. Its base extended westwards from Holborn for over a mile; but from this base it swept up through city streets, then suburbs, then open field and sprawling village all the way to the hills of Hampstead and Highgate four miles to the north. Within this great domain now lived some sixty thousand souls, who were ruled by the parish vestry.
There were two kinds of parish nowadays. In one kind, the vestry was elected by at least some proportion of the householders. These vestries were termed “open”. In the other – a minority, but a significant one – the vestry, whose composition was laid down by Parliament, nominated itself without any reference to the people of the parish. Such vestries were