Chartist Petition of 1838

The theme of this reading is to explain to us just what exactly the Chartist Petition of 1838 was. The Chartist Petition was written to successfully change Parliament's laws for both the working and middle class. This petition was centered around reform and meant for a social democracy. The men who wrote this wanted to make six main changes: universal male suffrage, a secret ballot, no property qualification for members of Parliament, pay members of Parliament, constituencies of equal size, and annual elections for Parliament. 

Several things that came to my mind when i read this is that the Chartist Petition was also commonly called the "People's Charter". This came from the movement of Chartism. The goal of this was to gain as much strength as they could, however the Chartist Petition was rejected. This was the first mass working labor movement to come together for a particular cause.

    

After reading this i noticed that it stated, "Universal suffrage will, and it alone can, bring true and lasting peace to the nation; we firmly believe that it will also bring prosperity." I just loved this because I just have a big hard for loving people and helping people and peace. I realized though that these people felt that there would automatically be peace once everyone could vote. This however is false because just because you can vote it doesn't mean that things are all going to be happy go lucky or that there will just automatically be peace. Because even when you have a large amount of the population that can vote, it doesn't mean that there will not be dissent among the people for reasons by election. 

    

 Reading this makes me think about how there are many reforms that have taken place. There are reforms like: the African American suffrage and also the women’s suffrage. These all have to do with the fight for equal rights for women just as human beings and in the workplace. 

This reading relates to the text because in the text there were members of the London Workingman's Association that met or talked with those who wrote the Chartist Petition or were part of the Parliament. We also learned about how the Chartist movement died after several years. Overall this reading was okay, for me it was kind of hard to grasp or understand. But it was a good reading.