National Reform League — Propositions of the National Reform League, for the Peaceful Regeneration of Society — [1850]

Corporate Author: National Reform League
Title: Propositions of the National Reform League, for the Peaceful Regeneration of Society
Date: [1850]
Edition: Original edition
Format: Octavo
Pagination: 4 pages
Binding: Later cloth
Stock Code: 004196
Location: Bookroom

Original issue of this scarce four-page radical political pamphlet setting out the programme of the National Reform League, closely connected with the final phase of British Chartism and with the political thought of James Bronterre O’Brien.

Although the pamphlet itself carries no conventional dated imprint, the text states that the resolutions were unanimously passed at a crowded meeting of the National Regeneration Society on 16 March 1850, held in the large theatre of the Literary Institution, Leicester Square, London, on the motion of J. Bronterre O’Brien and seconded by Richard Hart. Contemporary and bibliographical sources date the publication to 1850, and the work is reproduced as such in the modern scholarly edition The Chartist Movement in Britain, 1838–1856.

The pamphlet is headed with the League’s principles:

“Liberty in Right: Equality in Law: Fraternity in Interest.”

It declares that parliamentary representation on principles similar to those of the People’s Charter was insufficient on its own and argues for a broader programme of political and social reform. The resolutions address poverty, poor-law reform, public and private indebtedness, taxation, land ownership, monetary arrangements and the structural causes of economic inequality. In this respect the pamphlet represents an important strand within late Chartism: the attempt to extend the movement beyond parliamentary suffrage towards a more comprehensive programme of economic and social reconstruction.

The opening paragraph is particularly useful historically because it records that the resolutions had also received the assent of the National Charter Association and the Fraternal Democrats, and had been carried at various public meetings. The document therefore provides direct evidence of the connections between Bronterre O’Brien’s National Reform League and the wider democratic and Chartist movement at the beginning of the 1850s.

O’Brien was one of the most intellectually substantial figures associated with Chartism. A journalist, political economist and radical reformer, he argued that political democracy could not succeed without fundamental changes to landholding, taxation, currency and economic power. The proposals set out here were later incorporated into discussions of his political economy and appear in his posthumously published Rise, Progress, and Phases of Human Slavery, where the Seven Propositions of the National Reform League are treated as a programme for addressing the social consequences of contemporary land, monetary and commercial systems.

The historical importance of the pamphlet is reinforced by its inclusion in modern scholarly collections of Chartist material. Gregory Claeys includes Propositions of the National Reform League in the final volume of The Chartist Movement in Britain, 1838–1856, placing it among the significant texts of the Chartist left around 1850.

Institutionally scarce. The exact 4-page 1850 pamphlet is recorded in specialist collections, including the Ohara Institute for Social Research, but appears to have very limited separately catalogued institutional representation.

This copy has been preserved in a later cloth binding, providing considerably greater protection than the pamphlet would originally have received. The binding is firm and sound. The four pages are generally nice and clean, with only light age-related wear. Very good indeed. Now housed in an easily removable clear acetate cover.

A particularly interesting survival from the last phase of organised Chartism, closely associated with Bronterre O’Brien and preserving the National Reform League’s attempt to unite parliamentary democracy with a wider programme of social and economic reform.

Stock code: 004196. Location: Bookroom.

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