610 Ch. 15 • Liberal Challenges To Restoration Europe
elected. Chartists objected to the monopoly of wealth and political influence
in Britain by a small percentage of the population, wealthy landowners and
the captains of industry. The Chartist movement remained overwhelmingly
peaceful, its members committed to acting as a “moral force” in British life.
Chartism was in some ways a movement that looked back into a past its
members imagined as being more moral than the period in which they lived.
Chartist leaders attempted to attract women to the movement by recognizing
the contributions of women workers to the family economy—despite the
resentment of many male craftsmen in working-class families that the gender
roles of many women seemed to be changing and that some men now found
themselves working alongside them. Some Chartists sought to convince hard
drinking and often wife-beating male workers to be more respectable. (How
ever, Chartist leaders rejected feminist pleas that their movement include
demands for the rights of women.) A small “Physical Force” group emerged
within the Chartist movement in northern England, threatening strikes and
even insurrection if Parliament did not yield, but this group remained small
and relatively unimportant.
In 1839, Parliament summarily rejected a Chartist petition with almost
1.3 million signatures. Undaunted, the Chartists tried again in 1842 when
the National Chartist Association carried a giant scroll with 3.3 million sig
natures to Westminster. Once again, Parliament turned the Great Charter
away. Thereafter, Chartism declined as a movement, despite a brief revival in
1848.
Yet Parliament enacted another significant reform. Passed by a
conservative-dominated Parliament in 1815 and 1828, the Corn Laws had