The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane · Chapter
XIII: To the Greeks Foolishness explained
Zachariah Coleman's wife falls ill with a fever, but he must attend a club meeting finalizing plans for the Blanketeers' March.
What happens
Zachariah Coleman's wife falls ill with a fever, but he must attend a club meeting finalizing plans for the Blanketeers' March. The march fails at Stockport, and Major Maitland is killed. Zachariah receives a warning to flee, and with Mrs. Carter's help, he leaves Manchester, encountering a starving weaver and finding shelter in a barn before heading to Liverpool.
Themes in this chapter
Suffering and Resilience
Zachariah's wife's illness, the starving weaver, and the marchers' endurance despite failure.
Social Class and Inequality
The overseer and parson's cruel treatment of the starving weaver; the impossibility of decent illness for the poor.
Religion and Hypocrisy
The parson's judgmental response to the weaver, contrasting with the Methodist weaver's faith.
Political Reform and Revolution
The Blanketeers' March as a failed reform effort; discussion of premature revolt as progenitor of success.
Characters to notice
- Zachariah Coleman
Attends the club meeting, cares for his ill wife, flees Manchester after the march's failure.
- Mrs. Coleman
Lies ill with fever; Zachariah leaves her in Mrs. Carter's care.
- Carter
Neighbor who offers to nurse Mrs. Coleman and helps Zachariah flee.
- Major Maitland
Accompanies the Blanketeers' March and is killed.
- Jean Caillaud
Draws lots with Zachariah to accompany the march; the lot falls on him.
- Pauline
Leaves a warning note for Zachariah to flee.
- William Ogden
His office is shut when Zachariah seeks him.
Key passages
“The mere discomforts of poverty are bad enough—the hunger and cold of it—but worse than all is the impossibility of being decently ill, or decently dying, or of paying any attention to those who take it into their heads to be ill or to die.”
Poverty's worst aspect is not just hunger and cold, but the inability to be sick or die with dignity, or to care for sick loved ones.
Highlights the theme of social class and inequality.
“It is a poor religion which makes no provision for disaster, and even for apparently final failure. The test of faith is its power under defeat, and these silly God-fearing souls argued to themselves that their Master's time was not their time; that perhaps they were being punished for their sins, and that when it pleased Him they would triumph.”
A weak religion cannot handle disaster; true faith is tested by defeat, and the marchers believed God's timing was different and that their suffering might be punishment for sin.
Reflects on religion and resilience in the face of failure.
“It is a commonplace that a premature outbreak puts back the hands of the clock and is a blunder. Nine times out of ten this is untrue, and a revolt instantaneously quenched in blood is not merely the precursor, but the direct progenitor of success.”
Conventional wisdom says early revolts set back progress, but often a quickly crushed rebellion actually leads to later success.
Commentary on political reform and revolution.
