John Wade

John Wade (* 1788 in London ; † September 29, 1875 ) was an English journalist, economist and historian.

Life

He started to work as a wool sorter. He read a lot and regularly visited the Francis Place bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London . There he borrowed books from Thomas Paine and Joseph Priestley , and met social reformers like Francis Burdett and Jeremy Bentham . The latter particularly impressed Wade and was referred to by him as the “apostle of reason”.

Wade was able to found the radical newspaper The Gorgon in 1818 with the support of Bentham and Henry Bickersteth, also mediated by Place , which dealt primarily with the trade union movement . Gorgon supported the long cotton spinners strike in Manchester in 1818 and criticized the Combinations Act , a law of the government of William Pitt from the year 1800, which was directed against the freedom of workers to form associations to enforce demands on their employers for working hours and wages . In 1819 the paper also supported the union organization of the London dock workers. Wade also advocated parliamentary reform.

From 1819 finished Wade his editorship and published in the same year, the Black Book: Corruption unmasked ( Black Book: Corruption Unmasked ). It reveals details about the income of the nobility and clergy, the civil list , police and courts, and government-business relations such as the East India Company . The book was a sales success and had a circulation of 50,000 copies. In a supplement ( Supplement ) is Wade also own reform program, which is the universal suffrage included, a free, non-denominational education and reforms of criminal and tax law.

In 1828 Wade became editor of the Spectator and published a number of other books. His 1833 published history of the middle and working class ( History of the Middle and Working Classes ) was also of Karl Marx received.

From 1830, Wade took increasingly conservative views. He verbally attacked Henry Orator Hunt , William Cobbett and John Cartwright with abusive language. Wade assumed that political reform could only be achieved by changing public opinion. Although he considered universal suffrage to be good and fair, he rejected the demand for corresponding changes in the law due to a lack of public support. He opposed the Chartists and called on the workers to instead join forces with the middle class against the corrupt aristocracy.

From 1862 he received a weekly pension at the instigation of Lord Palmerston .

Fonts

• The Black Book: Corruption Unmasked. 1819.
• Supplement to the Black Book. 1823.
• An Account of Public Charities in England and Wales. 1828.
• Police and Crimes of the Metropolis. 1829.
• History of the Middle and Working Classes. 1833. (3rd edition London 1835; excerpts from Manchester 1845.)
• British History, Chronologically Arranged. 1839. (5th edition 1847)

Web links

• John Wade on spartacus.schoolnet.uk