Free The Darkest Walk of Crime by Malcolm Archibald Page B

why
we are driving a carriage through their streets,” Armstrong spoke quietly.
“It’s not something they see every day.”
    Pulling back the curtains from
the gleaming window, Mendick looked outside. Brick terraced streets followed
one another in row after squalid row, with the crowds becoming ever more
tattered, ever more hopeless.
    “Aye, that’s what we’re fighting
for,” Armstrong said. “Maybe our lives are worth losing, eh? We may die, but we
give hope to the hopeless.” Mendick was surprised to see compassion in the
acidic eyes. “You gave a glib enough answer, but for some of us, this is more
than just a pastime; it’s a crusade.”
    Mendick listened as Armstrong
spoke to him about Manchester.
    “It is an amazing city: the
phenomenon of the age, a microcosm of the new industrialism that has
transformed the country. What happens in Manchester is copied elsewhere, and
what we do here must be an example to others.” Again Armstrong sounded intense.
“We must succeed; we must make this government see that the
present system is murdering the people of this country.”
    “I agree,” Mendick said, and at
that moment, with the images of appalling poverty grinding past, he was not
insincere. “But how can we make them listen?”
    “As you know, we are torn as to
our methods.” Armstrong was nearly in tears at the frustration of constant
failure. “We have the Moral Force Chartists, who hope to use petitions to
persuade the government, either Whig or Tory, and we have the Physical Force
Chartists, who prefer sterner methods.”
    Mendick nodded; this was what he
had hoped to hear.
    “Physical force would appear to
be the better method,” he said. “We already tried the petitions in 1839 and 1842.”
    “And the beak handed me
twenty-one years’ transportation for my pains,” Armstrong reminded him, easing
himself into a more comfortable position. “So this time we have a combination
of both methods. We have O’Connor’s petition, which will be handed to Earl
Russell after a great meeting in London, but that will be combined with the
threat of physical force.” He looked out of the window as the carriage turned
off Oldham Road. “This is Angel Meadow; it is as bad as anything you have in London.”
    Mendick glanced outside. The
brick streets were uniformly narrow with scarcely enough space for the brougham
to pass between the smoke-blackened houses. Clad in rags that barely covered
their decency, crowds of gaunt men and women watched them from the doorways. 
Many seemed to be nursing injuries or deformities.
    “Pretty, isn’t it?” Armstrong
shook his head. “This is the result of Whig policies, of profit followed by
higher profit and expecting the poor to fend for themselves. Do you know that a
labourer in Manchester has an average lifespan of seventeen years? Seventeen
years! Sweet God, Mendick, at that age he’s hardly begun his life.”
    The venom was back in Armstrong’s
voice. “Aye, so we will offer the petition to Finality Jack Russell and his
Whigs, and if he turns it down again, why, then we will have an army ready up
here. Thanks to you and others like you.”
    So that was it, simple and
direct, the iron fist of physical force hidden within the velvet glove of the
petition.
    “Have you seen enough?”
Armstrong did not flinch when one of the watching destitute threw a stone which
bounced off the carriage. “Do you want to see more poverty, more suffering,
more dirt and disease, or shall we travel to our antidote for this disease?”
    Mendick was used to the slums of
London and had known the decaying Old Town of Edinburgh; he had seen the
teeming morasses of cities in China and the Middle East, but he was still
shocked by Manchester. This town was famed as one of the leading industrial
centres of the world; if it treated its people in such a manner, then any
future for the working majority seemed grim.
    “I think we need an antidote,”
he said.
    There was quite a crowd