Chapter 37: Donkey Problems in the Upper and Lower House of Parliament

Chapter 37 – Donkey Problems in the House of Lords and Commons

In the cafe on the corner, Darwin and Arthur were sitting in a corner seat talking, with several textbooks in front of them from Darwin’s classes at Edinburgh University.

Darwin was pouring out his life’s knowledge of pharmacology, while Arthur listened quietly, occasionally lifting his pen to record some of the more important points he considered on his manuscript paper.

Whenever Darwin got to a crucial point, Arthur would raise his hand and ask a few questions.

“So the most widely used narcotic drug is laudanum? And it’s still very easy to purchase?”

“Doctors prescribe it even for fevers and colds and headaches?”

“What? They prescribe it for insomnia?”

“The side effect is that it’s easily addictive? Well, that I do know.”

“You would treat patients through bloodletting therapy, this I did see in the clinic.”

“So it sounds like sucking blood with leeches doesn’t seem so disgusting to me, at least the patient won’t feel any pain.”

Time passed by, and Darwin took a long breath as he glanced at the page full of notes Arthur had recorded.

“Arthur, I think what was said today should be enough for you to digest for a while.”

Arthur nodded as he tucked his notes away in his bag and took a sip from his teacup.

“It’s been a long day, Charles.”

At the end of his sentence, Arthur glanced again at Elder, who was sitting on the sidelines holding a copy of the newspaper and reading it intently.

He asked, “But …… Elder, what are you following over here today? Didn’t you tell me that you’ve been working hard on your drafting skills every day lately?”

Unexpectedly, Elder was reading the newspaper with great vigor, and he waved his hand and said, “Wait for me to finish this paragraph first. I really didn’t realize that the other papers were so good. The content of a street tabloid like this, which sells for a penny, is always more powerful than the content of a regular newspaper which sells for four pence.”

Hearing this, Arthur couldn’t help but speak, “Even if you like reading this kind of newspaper, can you not say the selling price in front of me?

Everyone knows that there’s a three pence stamp duty on a newspaper, so anything selling for less than three pence is an illegal publication that hasn’t paid the tax.

Elder, I’m still wearing my police uniform, can you at least wait until I take it off?”

But Elder didn’t care whether Arthur was in uniform or not, he took Arthur by the arm in a gusto and pulled him over, and pointed to a paragraph in the paper and said to Arthur.

“Look at this bit, it’s got the council cursed out, and it says the bunch of donkeys have finally learned to stop braying.”

Arthur scanned the paper, which was mostly about the recent outbreak of the ‘Swain Riots’ in the rural areas.

Unable to bear the high basic cost of living brought about by the Grain Bill, coupled with the agricultural crisis that had erupted in recent years, the hired peasants had caused them to gather together, and whenever night fell, they would attack the landowners’ estates and burn down their granaries, destroying their threshing machines in the process.

This phenomenon has been particularly acute in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Kent, and several stories of landowners and clergymen being set on fire by enraged peasants have appeared in the newspapers in quick succession in the last few days.

Incidents similar to this kind of wreaking havoc while the night is still young have actually happened many times in Britain, and have even formed a standard set of riotous processes, and they are not just confined to the agricultural sector either.

The most famous of these was the Luddite movement that broke out in 1811.

At that time, Nottinghamshire hosiery merchants, in defiance of the rules of the trade, suppressed the price of hosiery by producing a kind of inferior stockings, thus seriously affecting the normal income of hand-knit hosiery workers.

A group of weavers organized secretly to destroy the merchants’ stocking looms and their wool and sock factories under the name of the fictitious “General Luther”, and if they found the owners they were to be hanged at once. The fire of Nottingham soon spread throughout England, and all manner of riots blossomed in the space of a year.

In order to suppress the workers’ riots, the British authorities even had to recall some of the army troops who were fighting in the Napoleonic Wars in the Iberian Peninsula.

At the height of the ‘Luddite Movement’, the number of British Army troops left at home to deal with the rioting workers even exceeded that of those who dealt with Napoleon.

Afterwards, the British government passed two other bills as a matter of urgency to deal with the Luddite movement, the Destruction of Machines Restrained from Destruction Act and the Malicious Destruction Act 1812.

But it was obvious that the rioting workers on the rise didn’t care that much.

Because the Luddite movement was almost always initiated by workers from all over the world, there was no unified organization, the British authorities cracked down on one wave after another, and this has been intermittent up to the 1820s there are still riots under the banner of ‘General Luddite’.

Although the Swain’s Riot was not under the banner of ‘General Ludd’ this time, they only changed the banner to ‘Captain Swain’, and the method of rioting was of course the same as before.

However, the Tory cabinet led by the Duke of Wellington was unusually quiet about this ‘Swain Riot’, although they still sent military police to the riot area to restore order.

But at the same time, they also uncharacteristically said that as long as the situation did not continue to expand, they would not send army troops to suppress it.

And over the next few days, things got more and more magical.

Almost at the same time as the Swain riots, Lord Suffield made a speech in the House of Lords on the advancement of the ‘establishment of the share-field system’.

He proposed to set aside 50 acres of land in every parish in the country as sharecropping, to be rented out to landless hireling farmers at a low price, and emphasized that this would not only effectively reduce the poverty rate and increase the employment rate of agricultural workers, but also ease the conflict between hireling farmers and landed farm owners.

Indeed, Lord Suffield had made similar proposals many times before, but this was the only one that won a standing ovation in the House of Lords.

The Speaker of the House of Lords was even generous in his praise of Lord Suffield’s idea as an outstanding, brilliant and creative proposal.

He said that although he had heard Mr. Lord’s proposal many times before, it was still fresh in his mind every time.

Only eight days after Lord Suffield’s speech in the House of Lords, Briscoe, a member of the House of Commons, likewise expressed his support for Lord Suffield’s initiative in the House of Commons, and also intended to put forward a feasible motion on the relevant issues.

For the first time since Arthur’s arrival in this country, he felt that the House of Commons of Great Britain was such an action-oriented body.

The Tories, who have always been known for their conservatism, suddenly made a 180-degree turn, which caught the Whigs, who had long been ready to impeach the Cabinet, by surprise.

With both parties nodding their heads at the same time, the implementation of the sharecropping system has almost become an irreversible certainty.

The only thing left to do was to enact the legislation.

This was the first time since the end of the Napoleonic Wars that the Upper and Lower Houses were in such harmony.

Elder covered his stomach and clapped his hands and laughed, this incident had almost contracted his laughter for the day.

“As the papers say, the donkeys have indeed stopped braying.”

As for Arthur, he rubbed his chin as if he saw something in it.

Suddenly, he figured something out, and Arthur smiled slightly and took the paper from Elder.

He muttered, “It seems there are times when a whip, when used well, can still make them pull the mill.”

(End of chapter)