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PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

HISTORICAL SERIES
No. XXXI

THE OHAETIST MOVEMENT

Published by the University of Manchester at

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (H. M. McKeohnib, Secretary)

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Photograph Lafayette

Mark Hovell

THE

CHAETIST MOVEMENT

BY THE LATK

MARK HOVELL, M.A.

Snd lAeutenant, The Sherwood Foresters,
am,d Lecturer in Military History in the University

edited and completed, with a memoir, by
Pkofessok T. F. tout

MANCHESTER
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD EOAD

LONGMANS, GREEN £3" CO.

London, New York, Bombay, etc.

1918

PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
No. CXVI

Ail rights reserved

PREFACE

In saying good-bye to Hovell in July 1916 I learned from him
that he had almost finished the first draft of the book on which
he had been workiag for several years, and I promised that,
should the fortune of war go against him, I would do my
best to get it ready for pubUcation. Within a few weeks I
was unhappily called upon to redeem my word. Mrs. Hovell
put into my hands all the material that her husband left
behind. I was delighted to find that it contained a fairly com-
plete draft history of the Chartist Movement up to the summer
of 1842, written out so neatly in his beautiful hand that it
would have made good printer's " copy " as it stood. I read
it with interest, and concluded that with a certain amount of
trouble it coidd be made eminently worthy of publication.
But the Chartists were far too remote from my general Une of
work to give me confidence in my own judgment, especially
as it was biassed by friendship and sympathy. Accordingly
I showed the draft to my colleague. Professor Muir, and to
Professor Graham Wallas, both of whom confirmed my favour-
able impression. Publication accordingly was resolved upon.
It remained to prepare the book for the press. As a first
step I was advised by Mr. Wallas to submit the manuscript
to Mr, Julius West, the author of a recently completed History
of Chartism, whose pubhcation is only delayed by war con-
ditions. Mr. West has been kind enough to go through the
whole manuscript and also to read the proofs. His help has
been of great service, not only in correcting errors, resolving
doubts, and removing occasional repetitions, but also in
advising as to the form which the pubhcation was to take.

V

vi THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

He also drew up the basis of the bibKography. Mr. West
informs me that his study and Hovell's have some points of
almost complete agreement, notably where both difier from
recent German writings. It is hardly needful to say that Mr.
West had come to his conclusions before this book had been
put in his hands.

The final preparation for publication I undertook myself.
I had discussed the progress of the book so often with Hovell
that I pretty well knew the lines on which he was working.
He was one of the most scholarly and systematic note-makers
that I have ever known, and the numerous note-books and
his great store of carefuUy prepared and neatly tabulated
slips afiorded copious material for carrying to the end the task
of revision. With their aid I have revised the whole book
with some care. There was little to do with the earlier part
save to add a few notes from the manuscript material, and
carry stiU further the process which Mr. West had begun.
My difficulties were greater with the concluding chapters,
which were put together, I suspect, under the adverse con-
ditions of active preparation for military service, and therefore
became increasingly incomplete until their abrupt conclusion
in May 1842. Here more revision, amplification, and correc-
tion were necessary, but even here I felt it my duty to treat
with the utmost respect all that Hovell had written. If I
have erred, it is in the direction of leaving things as I found
them. I must, however, emphasise the fact that what Hovell
left behind him was a rough draft, not a book ready for the
press. He had not completed even the digestion of his material.
Much less had he given it the literary form which would
have satisfied his critical spirit. Accordingly, what is here
published is not what the author meant to see the light. Had
he lived, it would have been much more definitive in its scholar-
ship and much more polished in its style. I hope, however,
that it will be recognised that the work was too good to put
aside, and that it may be received by readers not only as a
memorial of a brilliant career prematurely ended, but as a
serious contribution to the literature of a great subject.

PREFACE vii

I must now speak of the parts of the book for which I am
solely responsible. These are the Introduction, in which I
have tried to sketch Hovell's character and achievement, and
the long concluding chapter, which carries the history of
Chartism from the failure of the Petition of 1842 down to its
slow extinction in the course of the 'fifties. Dealing with the
latter firsts I may say that it was the result of my increasing
unwillingness, as I warmed to the work of revision, to publish
the book with its end — so to say — in the air. Though it is a
bad thing to attempt to finish another man's book, it is a worse
thing to publish a posthumous volume so incomplete that it
has little chance of filling its proper niche in literature. I
knew, too, that HoveU regarded the period which he had not
covered in his draft as strictly the epilogue of the Chartist
Movement, since the Chartists had done their best work by 1842 .
Accordingly when he gave a course of six popular lectures on
the Chartists he devoted only one of the series to the period
after 1842. Fortunately his note-books and " fiches " contain
copious material for carrying the narrative to its final con-
clusion, and suggested the general hnes on which he had
wished that it should be worked out. I have also made
much use of three treatises by Messrs. Rosenblatt, Slosson,
and Faulkner, published in 1916 in the Columbia University
Stvdies in History, and also of M. DoUeans' elaborate book
on Le Ghartisme, all of which have been published too recently
to be available for Hovell. How far I have succeeded it is
not for me to say, but it gave me real pleasure in making the
attempt ; and I have spared no paias in carrying it through.
In these days of universal warfare the Chartists seem a long
way removed from us, but they are at least a good deal nearer
actuality than the problems of fourteenth-century administra-
tion which under ordinary circumstances would have had a
first claim upon my time. A veteran can hardly find a more
acceptable war task than doing what in him lies to fill up a
void in scholarship which the sacrifice of battle has occasioned.

It was in this spirit that I have attempted a short appre-
ciation of Hovell himself. This is based partly upon material

b

viu THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

provided by friends, for whose help I am very grateful, but
mainly on personal knowledge and a large number of letters
which Hovell wrote to the lady who is now his widow, and to
myself. It would have been interesting to have published more
of these letters, but we thought that brevity was the sounder
policy. It would have been easy, too, for me to have let myself
go more freely than I have ventured to do, but here again reti-
cence seemed the best. As I pen these concluding lines I think
not only of HoveU himself, but of the many ardent and gallant
souls of which he was the type, and in particular of the many
contemporaries, comrades, and pupUs of his own, and the sadly
increasing band of those younger members of the Manchester
history school, who have gone on the same path and met the
same fate. The next generation will be the poorer for their loss.
In conclusion, I must thank other willing helpers, notably
Mr. J. L. Paton, High Master of Manchester Grammar School,
Mr. William Elliott, History Lecturer in the Manchester
Municipal Training College, Mr. Mercer, Head Master of the
Moston Lane Municipal School, the Eev. T. E. McCormick, Vicar
of St. Mary's, Ashton-on-Mersey, and Hovell's sister, Mrs.
Gresty, for biographical information. Professor Unwin, my
colleague, has been good enough to go carefully through the
proofs, and has made many useful suggestions and corrections.
Finally I must express my special thanks to Mrs. Mark HoveU
for the help she has given me at every stage of our sad task.
I should add also that the manuscript material left behind
by HoveU, his note-books and " fiches," have been deposited
by Mrs. Hovell in the Manchester University Library, where
they wiU be available for future workers on the same field.
The bibliography, originally drafted by Mr. West, has been
amplified by myself in the light of Hovell's notes and of a
rough bibliography found among his papers, and with special
reference to what has been added to the work since it left
Mr. West's hands. The index has been compiled by Mrs.
Hovell. The photograph of the author is reproduced by
kind permission of Mr. J. Lafayette, Deansgate, Manchester.

T. P. TOUT.

Manohbstbe, December 1917.

CONTENTS

PoBTEAiT OF Maek Hovell . . . To foce title

Preface ....... v-viii

Introduction : Mark Hovell, 1888-1916 xxi-xxxvii

CHAPTER I

The Charter and its Origin ... I-7

The National Charter — Its preamble — Six Points and minor
provisions — Its programme of Parliamentary Reform — Origins of
the movement fqr Parliamentary Reform — The Army debates in
1647 and the Instrument of Government, 1663 — ^The Radical
programme in the eighteenth century — Its revival after Waterloo —
Dissatisfaction of Radical reformers with the Reform Act of 1832.

CHAPTER II

The Industrial Revolution and its Conse-
quences ...... 8-27

1815-1840 the critical years of the Industrial Revolution —
Large scale production and machinery triumph over small pro-
duction and domestic organisation — Social and economic diflSoulties
resulting from the change — The transition easier in some industries
than others — The worst difficulties were in those trades where
the old and new systems long coexisted side by side — Contrast
between the spinning and weaving trades — ^The latter long a tran-
sitional industry, remainiag partly domestic, but under capitalist
control — 'The long agony of the handloom weavers — Instances of
various types — The silk-weavers of Coventry — The cotton-weavers
ix

THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

of Lancashire and the woollen-weavers of Yorkshire — ^The stook-
ingers and the hosiery trade in the Midlands — Bagmen and frame-
rents — Quarrying and mining — The butty and the gang system —
The employment of women and children — Want of organisation
and care for the welfare of the new industrial population — The
social and economic background of Chartism.

CHAPTER III

The Rise of Anti-Capitalist Economics and

Social Revolutionary Theory . . 28-51

Effects of the French Revolution and of the Industrial Revolution
on English political and social ideas — Social dislocation resulting
from Industrial Revolution — ^Movement and enterprise replace
security as basis of economic life — Practical grievances of the wage-
earners — Beginnings of socialistic literature — ^Thiee schools of early
sooialiBm — ^The agrarians and their revolt against enclosures —
Doctrine of natural right to the land — Thomas Spenoe — WiUiam
Ogilvie — ^Thomas Paine — The anti-capitalistic critics of the classical
economists — Charles Hall as the link between the first and second
schools — Influence of David Ricardo — His doctrine that Labour
is the source of value — Its development by Thomas Hodgskin to
claim for Labour the whole produce of Industry — The theoretical

Communists — Robert Owen — William Thompson and J. P. Bray

The new Trades Unionism and Robert Owen — ^The Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union — Its failure — The London group of
Labour leaders — Special position of the London artisans — Their
reaction from orthodox Owenism and its results — ^The disillusion
of the Reform Bill.

CHAPTER IV

The London Working Men's Association and

THE People's Charter (1836-1839) . . 52-77

Failure of the earlier working men's societies in London The

agitation in favour of unstamped newspapers— Its partial triumph
in 1836— The leaders in the agitation— Francis Place— WiQiam
Lovett— Henry Hetherington— James Watson— John Cleave—
The same men found the London Working Men's Association-
Two accounts of its origin— Part played by Lovett in it— Its objects,
membership, and proceedings— Its publications, especiaUy The

CONTENTS

XI

Boiten House of Commons — Its disousaions at Place's house —
Notable new members — Threatened disruption — J. B. Bernard
and the Cambridgeshire Farmers' Association — Rival short-lived
associations — ^The London Democratic Association — Extension of
Chartist associations over the country — Lovett's missionary zeal —
Addresses to the Queen and to Reformers — Public meeting at
Crown and Anchor — Petition to Commons drawn up — Parliamentary
supporters of the Association — Beginnings of more public propa-
ganda — -The prosecution of the Glasgow Cotton Spinners — Support
from the Birmingham Political Union — Committee to draft a Bill
empowered, but does nothing — Place and Lovett draw up the
People's Charter — ^Failure of the Parliamentary Radicals to give
effective help — Proposal for a National Convention — The elections
for it — DecUne in importance of the Working Men's Association.

CHAPTER V

The Agitation against the New Pook Law

(1834-1838) 78-98

Importance of Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 — ^The first
piece of radical legislation and the first-fruits of Benthamism —
Action of Edwin Chadwick and the Poor Law Commissioners —
Growth of resistance to the Act — Real suffering caused by it —
Plight of handloom weavers and stookingers — WilUam Cobbett's
arguments against it — Outdoor relief as the share of the poor in
the spoils of the Church at the Reformation — The opposition of
local interests to centralisation and bureaucraoy-^The cry of vested
interests — ^The resistance to the Act in Lancashire and Yorkshire,
1836 — John Pielden of Todmorden — Richard Oastler — Joseph
Rayuer Stephens — ^The Methodist spirit and the opposition to the
Act — The coming to the North of Augustus Harding Beaumont
and Feargus O'Connor — The Northern Liberator and the Northern
Star — Effectiveness of O'Coimor as an agitator in the factory
districts — Death of Beaumont— Absorption of the Anti-Poor Law
movement in Chartism.

CHAPTBE VI

The Revival of the Birmingham Political

Union (1837-1838) . . . • 98-115

Part played by the Birmingham Political Union in the struggle
for the Reform Bill— Its dissolution in 1834— Beginnings of bad

xii THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

trade, and setting up in 1836 of a Reform Association— Thomas
Attwood and the middle-olaes Birmingham leaders— Attwood's
Currency Schemes— Revival of the PoUtical Union— Parliamentary
Reform to be combined with Currency Reform— The middle-class
leaders and the working-men followers— Futile attempts to interest
the Government in currency reform— Alliance effected with the
Working Men's Association and the Anti-Poor Law agitators-
Douglas draws up the National Petition— Great meeting at Glasgow
adopts the policy- General propaganda work— Birmingham meet-
ing at Newhall HUl, August 6, 1838— Election of delegates to the
National Convention — Friction between the London Association
and the Birmingham Union — Difficulties caused by the Currency
Scheme — ^Rupture between the Union and the Northern extremists
— Violence of Stephens and O'Connor — O'Connor patches up some
sort of peace — ^Note on Attwood's Currency Theories.

CHAPTER Vn
The People's Paeliambnt (1838-1839) . . 116-135

Combination of the northern, midland, and southern movements
for the attainment of the Charter — ^The National Petition — The
National Convention— Election of delegates at public meetings —
Position of Manchester in the movement — Violence in the North —
First meeting of the National Convention, February 4, 1839 — Its
membership and characteristics — Debates as to the scope of the
Convention- — J. P. Cobbett's resolution limiting its work to super-
intending the Petition — Its defeat, followed by his withdrawal —
House of Commons invited to meet Convention — War declared
against the Anti-Com Law League — Discussions on procedure —
Rules and Regulations of the Convention drawn up — Clamour for
violent measures outside the Convention — Harney and the London
Democratic Association attack the nuld policy of the Convention —
Long delays and hesitations — Decreasing confidence within the
Convention — It Is increased by the unfavourable reports from the
" missionaries " sent into the country — Reports from Birmingham
and the south-west — Riots at Devizes — John Richards' reports
from the Potteries — Numerous resignations in the Convention,
including those of the Birmingham delegates — Debate on the right
to possess arms — Debate on ulterior measures — Divided counsels
and indecision — The problem referred to mass meetings — The
Petition handed to Attwood — Removal of the Convention to
Birmingham — Its lack of leadership the chief cause of its failure.

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER VIII

The Goveenmbnt prepares foe Action (1839) . 136-142

General prevalence of poverty and discontent, especially in the
manufacturing and mining districts — Local effects of the " mission-
aries' " \70rk — Illustrations from Newport (Mon.), Halifax, and
Manohestei? — Government preparations to resist threatened rising —
Prudence of Lord John RusseU — Lack of police and consequent
inevitableness of military action — The appointment of Sir Charles
Napier to command the northern district — His wise policy — The
disposition of his troops — Colonel Wemyss at Manchester — Govern-
ment proclamation against unlawful assemblies— Authorisation of
the formation of a civic force.

CHAPTER IX

The Convention at Birmingham (1839) . . '^43-159

Ministerial crisis of May 1839 — Its effects on Chartist calculations
— Inevitable postponement of the Petition — Isolation of the Con-
vention in London — Its complaints of lack of support — Comparative
attractions of Birmingham — Changed position there — Collapse of
the Attwoodites and transference of the Chartist leadership to
working men — Collins and PusseU — ^Fussell's account of the meetings
in the Bull Ring — Their prohibition — Last debates of Convention
in London — O'Connor's motion for transference to Birmingham
carried — " Address to the People " moved — O'Brien's violent
address carried in preference to Lowery's moderate one — May 13
the Convention reaches Birmingham — ^Its first work to issue " The
Manifesto of the General Convention " — Its terms — Ulterior meas-
ures to be adopted on failure of the Petition — Their weakness as
compared with language of Manifesto — Timid action and adjourn-
ment until July 1 — ^Action of civil and military authorities through-
out the country — Threatened Whitsuntide disturbances — Wemyss's
vigorous action against Ashton-under-Lyne — Riots at Llanidloes,
Monmouth, and Stone — Incendiary hand-bill circulated in Man-
chester — Napier's view as to the prospects — Precautions at Man-
chester — Kersal Moor demonstration — More resignations from the
Convention — ^Its resumed sessions after July 1 — July 4, Bull Ring
riot — Provoked by lack of judgment of magistrates — Convention
condemns them in resolutions signed by Lovett — Arrest of Lovett

xiv THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

and Collins — Threatened troubles at Ashton and Manchester-
Removal of Convention to London — It issues denunciation of
Birmingham magistrates and of paper money.

CHAPTER X

The Petition in the Commons : End of the U-^
Convention (1839) .... 160-173

July 12, 1839, Debate on Attwood's motion that the Commons
go into Committee to consider the National Petition — Speeches of
Attwood and Fielden — Lord John Russell's speech against the
motion — Disraeli's speech disapproving of Charter, but sympathising
with Chartists — ^The division — Motion defeated by 235 to 46 —
July 15-17, Debates in Convention— A "National Holiday" to
begin on August 12 — July 15, Renewed Riots in Bull Ring,
Birmingham — Cold reception of strike proposal — July 22, It is
rescinded by Convention on O'Brien's motion — Committee appointed
to take sense of people on the strike — Most places unfavourable —
Views of Northern Political Union and of Robert Knox — The
Trades Unions outside the Chartist ranks — Convention adjourns
BiU, August — Dying out of strike movement — Arrests and trials —
Trials of Stephens at Chester and of Lovett and Collins at Warwick —
Attitude of Lovett — Reassembly and dissolution of the Convention
— Its final weakness.

CHAPTER XI

Sedition, Privy Conspieaoy, and Rebellion

(1839-1840) 174-190

Attitude of physical force Chartists outside Convention— The
Newport Rising of November 4 — Difficulty in ascertaining the
truth as to its origin and course — ^The story of David Urquhart —
Beniowski and Russian uitrigues — Other versions of the story —
General rising projected for which an outbreak in South Wales was
to be the signal — Committees at various centres — ^Activity of Vincent
and, after his arrest, of Prost in Newport and the Monmouthshire
valleys — The rendezvous at Risca — The night march to Newport —
The fighting round the Westgate Hotel — ^The suppression of the
Rising and the arrest of the leaders — Preparations for their defence —
Ambiguous attitude of O'Connor — Preparations for a second risiag
throughout the country — Reports by magistrates and police —

CONTENTS XV

Bradford — Manchester — Birmingham — 'The hosiery districts —
London — Halifax — Nothing serious to happen — Depression of
Manchester and Birmingham Chartists — ^Trial and condemnation
of Frost, Jones, and Williams — Some small outbreaks, mainly in
Yorkshire, easily suppressed — 1840, Further trials and imprison-
ments — End of the first phase of Chartisni — Its want of homo-
geneity its chief weakness — Diversity of aim\made co-operation in
revolutionary action impossible. /

CHAPTER XII

The Chartist Revival (1840-1841) . . 191-212

Weakness of Chartism during spring of 1840 — Proposals to
organise the movement more thoroughly — ^The beginnings in
Scotland — ^August 15, 1839, Delegates meeting at the Uuiversalist
Church, Glasgow — ^Its resolutions — ^The Chartist Circular — Harney's
proposals — Schemes of " EepubUcan " — O'Cormor's plans for a
Chartist newspaper syndicate — Bevival of local bodies — Hether-
ington and the Metropolitan Charter Union — The Newcastle
Northern Political Union — July 20, 1840, Meeting at the Griffin,
Great Anooats Street, Manchester — Plans for the National Charter
Association drawn up and adopted — Its objects and methods — ■
Its revision to make it legal — Difficulties imposed by the law on
political associations — The provisional and the elected executives —
Plans of the moral force sections — Christian Chartism — The Chartist
Churches — ^Arthur O'Neill at Birmingham — Keport of his sermons —
Henry Vincent at Bath — David Brewster at Paisley — ^Lovett's
proposals— His correspondence with Place — His Chartism — His
plans for a National Association for Promoting the Improvement
of the People — Its educational and individualist poUoy — ^Place's
criticisms — July 25, Lovett's release and establishment in London
— ^Thomas Cooper's plans — His early career and character — How
he became a Chartist at Leicester — His Shaksperean Association
of Leicester Chartists — The revival resulting from aU these eflKirts.

CHAPTER XIII

Chartism versus Free Trade (1842-1844:) . 213-219

Parallel growth of Chartism and the Anti-Corn Law League —
Grounds for the antagonism between Chartists and Free Traders —
A phase of the class war — Policy of meeting-smashing — Divergencies

i THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

of aim of the Chartists — ^Illustrated from Williams at Sunderland
and Leach at Manchester — ^Attitude of the Northern Star — ^Futility
of Chartist attitude.

CHAPTER XIV

O'CoNNOEiSM (1841-1842) .... 220-229

August 30, 1841, release of O'Connor from York Gaol — His
influence on the agitation during his imprisonment — His direction
of the I^ational Charter Association — Petitions for the release of
the Newport leaders — Ways in which the Northern Star promoted
O'Connor's ends — ^Its journalistic success — Its commercial influence
— Chartist leaders become O'Connor's servants and dependents —
Continued faith of the mass of Chartists in him — ^Illustration of
this from Thomas Cooper — Demonstrations on O'Connor's release —
Demonstration and procession at Huddersfield and elsewhere —
Activity of O'Connor — ^Plans for the Association — A Convention
and a new Petition.

CHAPTER XV
False Doctrine, Heresy, and Schism (1841-1842) 230-250

(1) O'Connor's Breach with Lovett (1841) 230-236

O'Connor's campaign against his rivals — The essential incom-
patibility between him and Lovett — ^The National Association and
the National Charter Association — Lovett's bad tactics give colour
to the charge that the former was set up in rivalry to the latter —
Unmeasured attacks on Lovett — ^March 1841, Lovett's Address of
the National Association excites a new outcry — His democratic
idealism — Violent opposition of the Star — ^Its journalistic methods —
Members of the Chartist Association forced to dissociate themselves
from Lovett's Association — Lovett fails to get general Chartist
support, and is virtually ejected from the Chartist ranks.

(2) The Elimination of O'Brien (1841-1842) 236-240

O'Brien as the Chartist Schoolmaster — His services to Chartist

doctrine and propaganda — His financial dependence on O'Connor

His resentment of O'Connor's attitude — Beginnings of the breach

The General Election of 1841 — O'Brien denounced O'Connor's policy
of voting with the Conservatives — The result was that the Chartists

CONTENTS xvii

voted on no single principle — O'Brien's candidature at Newcastle-
on-Tjme — His address minimises the Chartist standpoint — Legal
problems arising from his refusal to go to the poll — October 1841,
his release — The British Statesman started as his organ.

(3) The Complete Suffrage Movement (1842) 240-250

The reshifting of Chartist interest to Birmingham — Contrast of
Birmingham Chartism in 1839 and 1842 — Partly a reflection of the
general change of the Chartist attitude, but largely due to the con-
tinued middle-class element in Birmingham Chartism — The Complete
Suffrage Movement and Joseph Sturge — Sturge's " Reconciliation
between the Middle and Working Classes " — ^The " Sturge Declara-
tion " drawn up at an Anti-Corn Law Convention in Manchester- —
Its principles illustrated — They are embodied in the Birmingham
Complete Suffrage Union — Its leaders — Edward Miall and the
Nonconformist — Herbert Spencer and his uncle — ^Friendly attitude
of Free Traders — The Union an attempt to organise a single Radical
party — Its Chartist supporters — ^Fierce opposition of O'Connor —
Attitude of the Northern Star — Complete Suffrage is "Complete
Humbug" — April 5, 1842, Complete Suffrage Conference meets at
Birmingham — Its indecisive discussions — Its hesitation to adopt
the Charter and its points — The conflict put off tiU a future date —
Stress laid upon the Chartist name — The Complete Suffrage Petition
drawn up — State of affairs in Chartist world in spring of 1842 — The
triangular duel of O'Connor, Lovett, and Sturge.

CHAPTER XVI

The National Petition of 1842 . . . 251-258

Progress of the Charter Association in organising the National
Petition — Bad trade adds to the Chartist difficulties — The Petition
ready — April 12, 1842, the Chartist Convention meets in London —
Arrangements for the presentation of the Petition — ^Address of
the Convention — Analysis of the Petition — May 2, The Petition
presented to Parliament by Buncombe — ^May 3, Dunoombe's motion
that the petitioners be heard — Maoaulay's declaration that universal
suffrage was fatal to property — Roebuck's ambiguous speech
denouncing O'Connor but supporting the motion — Lord John
Russell's and Peel's speeches — Defeat of the resolution.

xviii THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

CHAPTBE XVII
The Decline of Chartism (1842-1853) . . 259-312

(1) The Plug Plot and its Consequences

(1842-1843) 259-267

Meetings denouncing the rejection of the Petition — The general
strike — The Plug Plot — Chartist Conference in Manchester —
MacDouall's inflammatory manifesto — O'Connor's attack on
MaoDouall — Failure of the strike — ^The Government re-establishes
order — Prosecutions and punishments — MaoDouall driven into
exile — Revival of the Complete Suffrage Movement — Second
Birmingham Conference of December 1842 — Harney's defence of
the Chartist name — ^Lovett's resolution carried and break-up of
the Conference — O'Connor's fresh triumph — Sentences on the
rioters.

(2) O'Connor's Land Scheme and the

Chaetist Revival (1843-1847) . . 267-284

Sluggishness of Chartism in 1843 — The Birmingham Convention
(1843) — New organisation of the National Charter Association —
The Executive to meet in London — ^Transference of the Northern
Star from Leeds to London (1844) — O'Connor's Land Scheme
proposed — ^Its origin — O'Connor's Letters to Irish Landlords —
Reception of the Scheme at Birmingham (1843) and Manchester
(1844) — ^Further progress at the London Convention (1845) —
Details of the Scheme — ^Revival of prosperity weakens Chartism —
Opposition to the Land Scheme within the Chartist fold — Opposition
of O'Brien and Cooper — The National Land Compariy — DiflELculties
of the undertaking — O'Connor's qualities and defects — O'Connor-
ville opened — Ernest Jones becomes O'Connor's chief lieutenant —
Chartists and the General Election of 1847 — O'Connor returned for
Nottingham — His work in Parliament.

(3) Chartism and the Revolution op 1848 . 284-294

The Revolution of 1848 in Western Europe — The Chartist affinities
with the Continental rebels — ^Arthur O'Connor and his nephew
Peargus — O'Connor in Belgium — His relations with the German
democrats exiled in Brussels — Priedrich Engels and Karl Marx —
London as a revolutionary centre — The Chartist revival stimulated
by the fall of Louis Philippe — Chartist disturbances — March 6,

CONTENTS xix

The Trafalgar Square meeting — April 3, The Convention in London
— Preparations for the presentation of the National Petition —
O'Connor's Constitution - making — Counter - preparations of the
Government — April 10. T he meeting_on Kennington Common^^
Its peaceful and uneuthusiastic character — threateued disturbances
in Manchester — The analysis of the Petition by a Commons Com-
mittee — Collapse of the Land Scheme after a Commons Committee's
Report — Trials and imprisonments — Failure of the movement.

(4) The Last Stages of Chaetism (1849-1858) 294-300

Slow stages of the final collapse of Chartism — Illness and death
of O'Connor — Ernest Jones as leader — His qualities and their
defects — His journalistic efforts — His proposals for the reform of
the organisation — TTia failures and retirement — Other abortive
schemes for the reorganisation of Chartism — ^Lovett's People's
League — O'Brien's National Reform League — Clark's National
Charter League — Extinction of the Movement — Later history of
the Chartist leaders — Ernest Jones's life in Manchester — ^The Chartist
patriarchs.

(5) The Place of Chaetism in Histoby . 300-312

How far was Chartism a failure ? — ^The gradual realisation of its
poUtical programme, but not through the Chartists — Had Chartism
a social and economic programme ? — ^Negative character of the
politics of the period — The concentration of effort on the removal
of disabilities — ^Divergencies in the Chartist ranks as to the social
ideal — ^The schools of Chartism — ^The agrarian and the industrial
schools — Inability of the Chartists to unite except in negations —
Chartism as an effort towards democracy and social equality — Its
contrast with Young Englandism — Chartism and the Ghurohes —
Difficult position of the Chartist leaders — ^Their necessary want
of experience — ^Their indirect influence in the next generation —
Their protest against Cobdenism and Utilitarianism bore fruit in
the next generation — ^Value of its pioneer work — ^Its preparation
of the workers to take a real share in political and social movements
— Its influence on Continential socialism — The beginningsi . of
popular democracy.

BiBLIOGEAPHY ...... 313-317

Index 319-327

INTRODUCTION

MAEK HOVELL (1888-1916)

The auttor of this book belonged to the great class of young
scholars of promise, who, at the time of their country's need,
forsook their studies, obeyed the call to arms, and gave up
their lives in her defence. It is well that the older men, who
cannot follow their example, should do what in them lies to
save for the world the work of these young heroes, and to pay
such tribute as they can to their memory.

Mark HoveU, the son of William and Hannah Hovell,
was born in Manchester on March 21, 1888. In his tenth
year he won an entrance scholarship at the Manchester
Grammar School from the old Miles Platting Institute, now
replaced by Nelson Street Municipal School. It was the
earhest possible age at which a Grammar School Scholarship
could be won. From September 1898 to Christmas 1900 he
was a pupil at the Grammar School, mounting in that time
from lie to Vb on the modern side. Circumstances forced
him to leave school when only twelve years of age, and to
embark in the bUnd-alley occupations'"«hich were the only
ones open to extreme youth. Fortunately he was enabled to
resume his education in August 1901 as a pupil teacher in
Moston Lane Municipal School, whose head master, Mr. Mercer,
speaks of him in the warmest terms. Hovell also attended
the classes of the Pupil Teachers' College. From November
1902 to February 1904 a serious illness again interrupted his
work, but he then got back to his classes, and at once went

xxi

xxii THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

ahead. Mr. W. Elliott, who first gave him his taste for history
at the Pupil Teachers' College, fully discerned his rare promise.
" He was," writes Mr. Elliot, " undoubtedly the brightest,
keenest, and most versatile pupU I have ever taught, and his
fine critical mind seemed to delight in overcoming difficulties.
He was a most serious student, but he possessed a quiet vein
of humour we much appreciated. We all looked with con-
fidence to his attaining a position of eminence." This opinion
was confirmed by the remarkable papers with which in June
1906 he won the Hulme Scholarship at our University, which
he joined in the folio wing October. This scholarship gives
full liberty to the holder to take up any course he likes in the
University, and Hovell chose to proceed to his degree in the
Honours School of History. During the three years of his
undergraduate course he did exceedingly good work. After
winning in 1908 the Bradford Scholarship, the highest under-
graduate distinction ia history, he graduated in 1909 with
an extremely good first class and a graduate scholarship.
In 1910 he took the Teachers' Diploma as a step towards
redeeming his pledge to the Government, which had contributed
towards the cost of his education.

The serious work of life was now to begin. It was the time
when the Workers' Education Association was first operating
on a large scale in Lancashire, and he was at once swept up
into the movement, being appointed in 1910 assistant lecturer
in history at the University with special charge of W.E.A.
classes at Colne, Ashton, and Leigh, to which others were
subsequently added. He threw himself into this work with
the greatest energy. He took the greatest pains in presenting
his material in an acceptable form. His youthful appearance
excited the suspicions of some among his elderly auditors.
They used, Mr. Paton tells me, " to lay traps for him. He
seemed to know so much, and they wanted to see if it was all
' got up for the occasion.' But he was a ' live wire.' He used
to heckle me fine after education lectures at College." This
early acquired skill in debate soon rode triumphant over the
critics. He did not content himself simply with giving

INTRODUCTION xxiii

lectures and taking classes. In order to get to know his pupils
personally, he stayed over week-ends at the towns where he
taught. He had long Sunday tramps with his disciples over the
moorsj and though he never flattered them, and was perhaps
sometimes rather austere in his dealings with them, he soon
completely won their confidence and afiection. I remember
the embarrassment felt by the administrators of the movement,
when a class, which had had experience of his gifts, almost
revolted against the severely academic methods of a continuator
of his course, and was only appeased when it was fortunately
found possible to bring him back to his flock without com-^
promising the situation. He continued in this work as long as
he was in England, and when the winter of 1913-14 took him
to London, he had the same success with the south-country
workmen as with the men he had known from youth up in the
north. Mr. E. H. Jones, the secretary of his Wimbledon
class, thus describes the impression he made there with a
course on the " Making of Modern England " :

Many of the students had misgivings as to the success of what
appeared to them as a dull, drab, and dreary subject. These
doubts were further increased when, at the first prehnmiary
meeting, a slim, quiet, unassuming, and nervous young man got
up, and in a hesitating maimer outliaed the chief features of the
course. The first lecture, however, was sufficient to ensure the
success of the venture. His thorough knowledge of the subject,
his clear and incisive style, together with a charming personahty,
held the attention of the class. His reaUstic description of the
condition of the people, especially of the working classes, during
the early part of the nineteenth century — the homes they lived in
and the lives they lived — showed us at once a man with a large
heart, one who sympathised with the sorrows and the sufierings of
the people. His great desire was to serve his fellows by educating,
and so exalting the manhood of the nation. We, who knew him,
understand the motives which prompted him to offer his Ufe for
the sake of our common humanity. He hated t3rranny ; the beat
of the drums of war had no charms for him, unless the call was in
the cause of Justice and Liberty." ^

This appreciation is not overdrawn. There was nothing in
Ho veil of the clap-trap lecturer for effect. His rather conserva-

1 The Highway, December 1916, pp. 56-57.

XXIV

THE CHAKTIST MOVEMENT

tive point of view knew little of short cuts, either to social
amelioration or to the solution of historic problems. He
offered sound knowledge coupled with sympathy and intelli-
gence, and it is as much to the credit of the auditors as of the
lecturer that they gladly took what he had to give.

Hovell's lecturing, important as it was, could only be
subsidiary to the attainment of his main purpose in Hfe. As
soon as he graduated, he made up his mind to equip himself
by further study and by original work for the career of a uni-
versity teacher of history. His degree course had given him
a practical example of the character of two widely divergent
periods of history, studied to some extent in the original
authorities. One of these was the reign of Richard II., which
he had studied under the direction of Professor Tait. He had
sent up a degree thesis on Ireland under Richard II., written
with a maturity and thoughtfulness which are rarely found
in undergraduate essays. This essay he afterwards worked
into a study which we hope to print, when conditions again
make academic treatises on mediaeval problems practical
politics. It was evidence that he might, if he had chosen,
become a good mediaevalist. But his temper always inclined
Mm towards something nearer our own age, and his other
special subject, the Age of Napoleon I., seemed to him to lead
to wide fields of half-explored ground in the first half of the
nineteenth century. He attended for this course lectures of
my own on the general history of the period, and made a special
study of some of the Napoleonic campaigns, which he studied
under the direction of Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, then lecturer in
Military History at Manchester, and now Chichele Professor
of that subject at Oxford. It was Mr. Wilkinson's lectures
that first kindled his enthusiasm for military history.

Hovell's main bent was towards the suggestive and little-
worked field of social history, and his interest in the labour
and social problems in the years succeeding the fall of Napoleon
was vivified by the practical calls of his W.E.A. classes upon
him. I feel pretty sure that it was the stimulus of these classes
that finally made him settle on the social and economic history

INTEODUCTION xxv

of tLe early Victorian age as his main subject. It was upon
this that he gave nearly all his lectures to workmen. Indeed,
much of the vividness and directness of his appeal was due to
the fact that he was speaking on subjects which he himself
was investigating at first hand. A deep interest in the con-
dition of the people, a strong sympathy with all who were
distressfully working out their own salvation, a rare power of
combining interest and sympathy with the power of seeing
things as they were, made his progress rapid, and increasing
mastery only confirmed him in his choice of subject. Finally
he narrowed his investigations to the neglected or half-studied
history of the Chartist Movement, and examined with great
care the economic, social, and pohtical conditions which made
that movement intelligible.

Hovell's teachers were not unmindful of his promise, and
in 1911 his election to the Langton fellowship, perhaps the
highest academic distinction at the disposal of the Arts faculty
of the Manchester University, provided him with a modest
income for three years during which he could carry on his
investigations, untroubled by bread problems. He now cut
down his teaching work to a minimum, and threw himself
whole-heartedly into his studies. Circumstances, however,
were not very propitious to him. He was a poor man, and was
the poorer since his abandonment of school teaching involved
the obligation of repaying the sums advanced by the State
towards the cost of his education. The work he now desired
to do was perhaps as honourable and useful as that for which
he had been destined. It was, however, different. He had
received State subsidies on the condition that he taught in
schools, and he chose instead to teach working men and
University students. So far as his bond went, he had, there-
fore, nothing to complain of. The Board of Education,
though meeting him to some extent, was not prepared, even
in an exceptional case, to relax its rules altogether. While
recognising the inevitableness of its action, it may perhaps
be permitted to hope that the time may come, even in this
country, when it will be allowed that the best career for the

xxvi THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

individual may also be the one which will prove the most
profitable to the community. Otherwise, the compulsion
imposed on boys and girls, hardly beyond school age, to pledge
themselves to adopt a specific career may have unpleasant
suggestions of something not very difierent from the forced
labour of the indentured cooUe or Chinaman.

Other difficulties stood in HoveU's way. He had to con-
tinue his W.E.A. classes until he had completed his obligations
to them, and it required moral courage to avoid accepting new
ones. The University also had its claims on him, and untoward
circumstances made his lectureship much more onerous than
it had been intended to be. In the spring of 1911 a serious
illness kept me away from work, and between January and
June 1912 the University was good enough to allow me two
terms' leave of absence. On both occasions HoveU was asked
to deliver certain courses of my lectures, and I shall ever be
grateful for the readiness with which he undertook this new
and onerous obligation. But he gained thereby experience in
teaching large classes of students, and it all came as part of
the day's work. Despite this his study of the Chartists made
steady progress.

A further diversion soon followed. Up to now Hovell's
work had lain altogether in the Manchester district, and
Wanderjahre are as necessary as Lehrjahre to equip the scholar
for his task. The opportunity for foreign experience came
with the oSer of an assistantship in Professor Karl Lamprecht's
Institut fiir Kultur- und Universalgeschichte at Leipzig for the
academic session of 1912-1913. This ofier, which came to
him through the kind offices of Sir A. W. "Ward, Master of
Peterhouse, was the more flattering since the Leipzig Institute
was a place specially devised to enable Dr. Lamprecht to
disseminate his teaching as to the nature and importance of
KuUurgeschichte. Reduced to its simplest terms Lamprecht's
doctrine is that the social and economic development of
society is infinitely more important than the merely political
history to which most historians have hmited themselves.
Not the State alone but society as a whole is the real object

INTRODUCTION xxvii

of tte study of the historian. Various doubtful ampHfications
and presuppositions involved in Lamprecht's teaching in no
wise impair the essential truth of the broad propositions on
which it is based.

Hovell's own studies of social history showed him to be
predisposed to sjnnpathy with the master. But he had never
been in Germany, and his German was almost rudimentary.
However, he worked up his knowledge of the tongue by
acquiring from Lamprecht's own works the point of view of
the great apostle of Kulturgeschichte. Accordingly by the time
Hovell reached Leipzig, he had acquired the keys both of
the German language and of Lamprecht's general position.
He found that Lamprecht's Institute, though loosely con-
nected with the University, was a self-contained and self-
sufficing seminary for the propagation of the new historic
gospel, and looked upon with some coldness and suspicion
by the more conservative historical teachers. It was a wise
part of the system of the Institute that certain foreign
" assistants " should present the social history of their own
country from the national point of view. Towards this task
HoveU's contribution was to be an exposition of the social
development of England in the nineteenth century, so that
his Chartist studies now stood him in good stead. He was,
however, profoundly convinced of the high standard required
from a German University teacher, and made elaborate pre-
parations to give a course of adequate novelty and thorough-
ness. Unfortunately he found that the students who gradu-
ally presented themselves were far from being speciahsts.
They were not even anxious to become speciahsts, and were
nearly aU somewhat indifferent to his matter, looking upon
the lectures and discussions as an easy means of increasing
their familiarity with spoken EngUsh.

The beginning was rather an anxious time, especially when
presiding over and criticising the reading of the referate, or
students' exercises, which alternated with his set lectures.
He was impressed with the power of his pupils to write and
.discuss theic themes in English, though glad when increasing

xxviii THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

familiarity with German enabled him also to deal with their
difficulties in their own tongue. The only other academic
work that he essayed was taking part in Professor Max
Forster's Enghsh seminwr. The lightness of the daily task
gave him leisure for looking round, and seeing aU that he could
see of Germany and German social and academic life. He
attended many lectures, delighting especially in Forster's
clear and stimulating course on Shakespeare, broken on one
occasion by a passionate exhortation to the students to forsake
their beer-drinkings and duels, and to cultivate manly sports
after the EngHsh fashion, so as to be able the better to defend
their beloved Fatherland. He was much impressed by Wundt,
the psychologist, " a little plain and unassuming-looking man
dressed in undistinguished black, lecturing with astounding
clearness and strength, at the age of 81, to a closely packed
and attentive audience of fully 350 students, who look on him
as the wonder of his age, and are eager to catch the last words
that might come from the lips of the master." He heard all
that he could from Lampreoht himself, with whom his rela-
tions soon became exceedingly cordial. He found him genial,
friendly, and good-natured, and he was impressed by his
dominating personality and missionary fervour, his broad
sweep over aU times and periods, the width of his interests,
and the extent of his influence. He sincerely strove to under-
stand the mysteries of the new science. The very abstract-
ness and theoretical character of the Lamprechtian method
was a stimulus and a revelation to a man of clear-cut positive
temperament, schooled in historical teaching of a much more
concrete character. It was easy to hold his own in the English
seminar where the discussions were in his own tongue. But he
gradually found himself able to take his share in Lamprecht's
seminar, where all the talk was in German. " My reputation
among the students," he writes, " was founded on my know-
ledge that the predecessor of the Reichsgericht sat at Wetzlar."
It was a proud moment when he had to explain that the
master's confusion of the modern English chief justice and the
justiciar of the twelfth century was the natural error of the

INTRODUCTION

XXIX

foreigner. He was still more gratified when called upon by
Lamprecht to read an elaborate treatise in German on the der
englische Untertanenbegriff, the English conception of political
subjection. His only embarrassment now was that he could
never quite convince himself that there was any specifically
English conception of the subject at all, and that he rather
wondered whether Lamprecht knew whether there was one
either. But however much he criticised, he never lost his
loyalty to the man. His doubts of the Lamprechtian system
became intensified when he found underlying it errors of fact,
uniform vagueness of detail, and cut-and-dried theoretical
presuppositions against which the broad facts of history were
powerless to prevail. One of his last judgments, made in a
letter to me in June 1913, is perhaps worth quoting :

Professor Lamprecht is lecturing this term on the history of the
United States. His course is exceedingly interesting, but I am
bound to say that his history strikes me as highly imaginative. He
never speaks of the English colonies. They are always " teutonisoh,"
except when (as to-day) he says in mistake " deutsoh." Thus
Virginia in 1650 was " teutonisoh." He persistently depreciates the
English element on the strength of the existence of a few Swedish,
Dutch, and German settlements. By some magic Eughsh colonists
cease to be English as soon as they cross the ocean, so that their
desire for freedom and political equality owes Uttle or nothing to the
fact of their being English. He carefully distinguishes even Scots
from English. He views the history of America down to 1763 as
an episode in the eternal struggle of the " romanisoh " and " teuto-
nisoh" peoples, and the beginning of the decided triumph of the latter,
whose greatest victory of course was in 1870-71. I am firmly
convinced that he neither understands England, nor the English,
nor English history. Still, although I don't agree with haU he is
saying, I find his method of handling things interesting ; he stimu-
lates thought, if only in the effort to follow his.

The whole period at Leipzig was one of intense activity.
HoveU enjoyed himself thoroughly. He was always eager to
widen his experiences, and found much kindness from seniors
and juniors, Germans and compatriots. He made a special
ally of his French colleague, who did not take Kulturgeschichte
quite so seriously as he did. The two exiles spent the short
Christmas recess in a tour that extended as far as Strassburg,

XXX THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

where they moralised on the contrasts between the new
Strassburg, that had arisen after 1871, and the old city, that
still sighed for the days when it was a part of France. At
Leipzig Hovell revelled in the theatres, in the Gewandhaus
concerts, the singing of the choir of the Thomas Kirche, and
the old Saxon and Thuringian cities, churches, and castles.
He was specially impressed with the orderly development from
a small ancient nucleus of the modem industrial Leipzig, with
its well-planned streets and spacious gardens, with which the
Lancashire towns which he knew contrasted sadly. He
attended aU manner of students' festivities, drank beer at
their Kneipen, and witnessed, not without severe qualms, the
bloodthirsty frivohties of a students' duel. He was present
when the King of Saxony, whose personality did not impress
him, came to Leipzig to spend a morning in attending University
lectures and an afternoon in reviewing his troops. He saw
Gerhard Hauptmann receive an honorary degree, and delighted
in the poet's recitation of a piece from one of his unpublished
plays. He was so quick to praise the better sides of German
Ufe that he was condemned by his French colleague for his
excessive accessibility to the Teutonic point of view. His
appreciation of German method extended even to the police,
whom he eulogised as efficient, and not too obtrusive in their
activities. He recognised the thoroughness, economy, and
thiiftiness with which the Germans organised their natural
resources. He spoke with enthusiasm of the ways in which the
Germans studied and practised the art of living, their adapta-
tion of means to ends, their avoidance of social waste. He
was struck with the absence of visible slums and apparent
squalor. The spectacle of the material prosperity obtained
under Protection led him to wonder whether the gospel of
Cobden in which, like aU good Manchester men, he had been
brought up, was necessarily true in all places and under all
conditions. But he had enough clarity of vision to see that
there was another side to the apparent comfort and opulence
of Leipzig. He was appalled at the lack of method and
organisation when individual enterprise was left to work out

INTRODUCTION xxxi

details for itself, as was notably instanced by the slipstod,
li^'PPy-go-lucky ways in which the affairs of the Institute
and University were conducted. He watched with keen
interest elections for the Saxon Diet or Landtag, when
Leipzig's discontent with the constitution of society rose
triumphant over an electoral system as destructive to the
expression of democratic control as that of the Prussian Diet
itself. Things could hardly be weU when Leipzig returned, by
overwhelming majorities, both to the local and to the imperial
Parliaments, Social Democrats pledged to the extirpation of the
existing order. A constitution, cimningly devised to suppress
popular suffrage, and manhood voting yielded the same result.
Another aspect of German opinion was strange and painful
to him. He had been taught that in Germany the enthusiasts
for war were as negligible an element as the " militarists " of
his own land. But he soon found that the truth was almost
the reverse of what he had expected. From the beginning he
was appalled, too, by the widespread evidence of deep-rooted
hostility to England, even in the academic circles which re-
ceived him with the utmost cordiality. The violence of the
local press, the denunciations of England by stray acquaint-
ances in trains and cafes, seemed to him symptomatic of a
deep-set feehng of hatred and rivalry. He saw that Lamp-
recht studied English history in the hope of appropriating
for his own land the secret of British prosperity, and that
Forster exhorted the students to play football that they might
be better able to fight England when the time arrived, and
that both were confident that the time would soon come.
He was disgusted at the crass materialism he saw practised
everyTvhere. He was particularly moved by a quaint exhorta-
tion to the local public to contribute handsomely to celebrate
the Emperor's jubilee by subscribing to a national fund for
missions to the heathen. No one saw anything scandalous
or humorous in a spiritual appeal based on the most earthly
of motives, and centring round the arguments that a large
collection would please the Kaiser, and that, as England and
America had used missionaries as pioneers of trade and might,

xxxii THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Germany must also " prepare the way for world-power by the
faithful and unselfish labours of her missionaries in opening
up the economic and political resources of her protectorates."
He saw that Deutschland uher alles meant to many Germans
a curious dislocation of values. An agreeable yoimg j>rivat-
docent, who visited him later in England, showed something
of the same spirit when, coming with a Manchester party on an
historical excursion to Lincoln, he saw nothing to admire in
the majestic city on a hiE nor in the wonderful cathedral. Far
finer sites and much better Gothic art were, he solemnly
assured ua, to be seen in Saxony and the Mark of Branden-
burg. Very few of his few German friends had Hovell's keen
sense of humour.

Hovell's stay in Germany was broken by a visit to England
at Easter 1913, when he attended the International Historical
Congress in London, where he introduced me to Lamprecht.
I was much impressed with the fluency and accuracy which
Hovell's German speech had now attained, as well as with the
cordiality of his relations to his large German acquaintance.
He returned to Leipzig for the summer semester, and was back
in England for good by August.

The novel Leipzig experiences had thrown the Chartists into
the shade, the more so as HoveU found the University Library
capriciously supphed with English books, and catalogued in
somewhat haphazard fashion. But he profited by the oppor-
tunity of a careful study of the important works which notable
German scholars had recently devoted to the neglected history
of modern British social development. He found some of
these monographs were "too much after the German style,
rather compendia than analytical treatises, but useful for
facts, references, and bibliographies." Others of the " more
philosophic sort " gave him " good ideas," and he regarded
Adolf Held's Zwei Bucher itber die sociale Geschichte Englands
" specially good." Stef!en's Geschichte der englischen Lohn-
arbeiter, the translation of a Swedish book by a professor at
Goteborg, and M. Beer's Geschichte des Sooialismus in England
were also extremely useful. But he was soon on his guard

INTEODUCTION xxxiii

against the widespread tendency to wrest the facts to suit
various theoretical presuppositions, and to reahse the funda-
mental bUndness to EngHsh conditions and habits of thought
that went along with laborious study of the external facts of
our history. Though he by no means worked up all his
impressions of German authors into his history, the draft,
which he left behind him, bears constant evidence alike of
their influence and of his reaction from it. It was at this
time he first saw his work in print in the shape of a review
of Professor Liebermann's National Assembly in the Anglo-
Saxon Period, contributed to a French review.

On returning to England Hovell established himself in
London, where he worked hard at the Place manuscripts
(unhappUy divided between Bloomsbury and Hendon), the
Home Office Records, and other unpublished Chartist material.
During the winter he took a W.E.A. class at Wimbledon. By
the summer of 1914 he was ready to settle at home again and
to put together his work on the Chartists. His fellowship
now coming to an end, he undertook more W.E.A. courses in
the Manchester district for the winter of 1914^1915, and a
small post was found for him at the University, where he
received charge of the subject of military history. This study
the University prepared to develop in connection with a
scheme for preparation of its students for commissions in the
army and territorial forces.

No sooner were these plans settled than the great war
broke out. The classes in mihtary history were reduced to
microscopic dimensions, since aU students keen on such study
promptly deserted the theory for the practice of warfare.
Though anxious to follow their example, Hovell remained at
his work untU the late spring of 1915, finding some outlet for
his ambition to equip himself for military service in the
University Officers' Training Corps, in which he was a corporal.
In May, as soon as his lectures to workmen were over, he
apphed for a commission. He had nothing of the bellicose
or martial spirit ; but he had a stern sense of obhgation and
a keen eye to realities. Like other contemporaries who had

xxxiv THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

sought experience in Germany, he fully realised the inevitable-
ness of the struggle, and he knew that every man was bound
to take his place in the grave and prolonged efiort by which
alone England could escape overwhelming disaster. " I don't
think," he wrote to me, " I shall dislocate the economy of
the University by joining. What troubles me is of course
my book. I have written nearly a chapter a Week since
Easter. At this rate I shall have the first draft nearly completed
by the end of another three months, and I am therefore very
keen to finish it. If there were no newspapers I could keep
on with it ; but the Chartists are dead and gore, while the
Germans are very much alive."

In June HoveU was sent to a school of instruction for officers
at Hornsea, where they gave him, he said, the hardest " gruel-
ling " in his life, and from which he emerged, at the end of
July, at the head of the list with the mark " distinguished "
on his certificate. He was gazetted in August to a
" Kitchener " battalion of the Sherwood Foresters, the
Nottingham and Derby Regiment. But officers' training
had not yet become the deftly organised system into which
it has now developed. When HoveU joined his battalion at
Whittington Barracks, near Lichfield, he found himself one of
a swarm of supernumerary subalterns, who had no place in
the scheme of a battalion fuUy equipped with officers. As
there were no platoons available for the newcomers to com-
mand, they were put into instruction classes, hastily and not
always efiectively devised for their benefit. He rather chafed
at the delay but enjoyed the hard life and the new experience.
It was soon diversified by a course of barrack-square drill with
the Guards at Chelsea, by an informal assistantship to a colonel
who ran an instructional school for officers, by a very profitable
month at the Stafi College at Camberley, where he soon " felt
quite at home, seeing that the place is so like a University with
its lecture-rooms and hbraries and quiet places," and by a period
of musketry instruction in Yorkshire, where an evening visit
to York gave him his first practical experience of a Zeppehn
raid. Altogether a year was consumed in these preliminaries.

INTRODUCTION xxxv

In June 1916 Hovell was back with, his battalion, now
camped in Cannock Chase. On June 3 he married Miss Fanny
Gatley of Sale, the Cheshire suburb in which his own family
had lived in recent years. A little later he wrote : " We
managed a whole week in the Lake District, where it rained
all the time. Then I went back to my regiment and my wife
came to stay two miles away." Then the attack on the Somme
began, and " we heard rumours that o£B.cers were being ex-
ported by the hundred." On July 4 he received orders to
embark, and crossed to France a week later. There were
some vexatious delays on the other side, but at last he joined
one of the regular battalions of his regiment in a small
mining village. The battalion had been crueUy cut up in the
recent fighting on the Somme, and the oflB.cers, old and new,
were strangers to him. But by a curious accident he found an
old friend in the chaplain, the Eev. T. Eaton McCormick, the
vicar of his parish at home. He was now plunged into the real
business of war, and did his modest bit in the reconstitution of
the shattered battalion. " I blossomed out," he wrote, " as an
expert in physical training, bayonet fighting, and map-reading
to our company. AU the available N.C.O.'s were handed over
to my care, and they became enthusiastic topographers."

Before the end of the month the battalion was reorganised
and moved back into the trenches. On August 1 he wrote to me
in good spirits :

Behold me at last an officer of a line regiment, and in command
of a small fortress, somewhere in !Prance, with a platoon, a gun,
stores, and two brother officers temporarily in my charge. I thus
become owner of the best dug-out in the line, with a bed (four poles
and a piece of stretched canvas), a table, and a ceiUng ten feet thick.
We are in the third hue at present, so life is very quiet. Our worst
enemies are rats, mice, beetles, and mosquitoes.

This first experience of trench life was uneventful, and the
battalion went back for a short rest. The remainder of the
story may best be told in the words of Mr. McCormick, Writing
to Hovell's mother to tell her the news of her son's death.

Mark and two other officers of the Sherwood Foresters dined
with me on Wednesday last, August 9. We were a jolly party and

xxxvi

THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

talked a lot about home. After dinner he asked me if it would be
possible for him to receive the Holy Commiinion before going into
the trenches, and next morning I took him in my cart two miles
away, where we were having a special celebration for chaplains.
That was the last I saw of him alive. He went into the trenches
for the second time in his experience (he had been in a different part
of the line the week before) on last Friday. On Saturday night at
9.10 P.M., August 12, it was decided that the Sherwood Foresters
should explode a mine imder the German trenches. Mark was told
off to stand by with his platoon. When the mine blew up, one of
Mark's men was caught by the fumes driving up the shaft, and
Mark rushed to his rescue, like the brave lad that he was, and in
the words of the Adjutant of his battalion, " we think he in turn must
have been overcome by the fumes. He fell down the shaft and was
killed. The Captain of the company went down after him at once
and brought up his body.". . . They knew that he was a friend of
mine, as I had been telling the Colonel what a brilliantly clever man
he was, and what distinctions he had won, so they sent for me, and
the men of his battalion carried his bodyreverentlydown the trenches.
We laid him to rest in a separate grave, and I took the service myself.
It was truly a soldier's funeral, for, just as I said "earth to earth,"
all the surrounding batteries of our artillery burst forth into a
tremendous roar in a fresh attack upon the German line. . . . He has,
as the soldiers say, " gone West " in a blaze of glory. He has fought
and died in the noblest of aU causes, and though now perhaps we feel
that such a brilliant career has been brought to an untimely end,
by and by we shall realise that his sacrifice has not been in vain.

Over a year has passed away since Hovell made the supreme
sacrificej and the cannon still roar roimd the British burial-
ground amidst the ruins of the big mining village of VermeUes
where he lies at rest. While north and south his victorious
comrades have pushed the tide of battle farther east, the
enemy's guns still rain shell round his unquiet tomb from the
hitherto impregnable hnes that defend the approach to LiUe.

Nothing more remains save to record the biri;h on March
26, 1917, of a daughter, named Marjorie, to HoveU and
his wife, and to give to the world the unfinished book to
which he had devoted himself with such extreme energy.
This work, though very different from what it would have
been had he lived to complete it, may do something to
keep his memory green, and to suggest, better than any
words of mine can, the promise of his career. But no
printed pages are needed to preserve among his comrades

INTRODUCTION xzxvii

in the University and army, his teachers, his friends, and
his pupils, the vivid memory of his strenuous, short life of
triumphant struggle against difficulties, of clear thinking,
high hving, noble effort, and of the beginnings of real achieve-
ment. For myself I can truly say that I never had a pupil
for whom I had a more lively friendship, or one for whom I
had a more certain assurance of a distinguished and honour-
able career. He was an excellent scholar in many fields ; he
could teach, he could study, and he could inspire ; he had in
no small measure sympathy, aspiration, and humour. He
possessed the rare combination of practical wisdom in afiairs
with a strong zeal for the pursuit of truth ; he was a magni-
ficent worker ; he kept his mind open to many interests ;
he had a wonderfully clear brain ; a strong judgment and
sound common -sense. I had confidently looked forward to
his doing great things in his special field of investigation.
How far he has already accomplished anything noteworthy
in this book, I must leave it for less biassed minds to determine.
But though I am perhaps over-conscious of how difEerent this
book is from what it might have been, I would never have
agreed to set it before the public as a mere memorial of a
promising career cut short, if I did not think that, even as it is,
it wUl fill a little place in the literature of his subject. When
he finally set out for the front he entrusted to me the com-
pletion of what he had written. I have done my best to fulfil
the pledge which I then gave him, that should anything un-
toward befall him, I would see his book through the press.-

CHAPTEE I

THE CHAETEE AND ITS ORIGIN

The Ctartist Movement, whicli occupied so large a space in
English public afiairs during the ten years 1838 to 1848, was
a movement whose immediate object was political reform and
whose ultimate purpose was social regeneration. Its pro-
gramme of political reform was laid down in the document
known as the " People's Charter," issued in the spring of 1838.
Its social aims were never defined, but they were sufficiently,
though variously, described by leading men ia the movement.
It was a purely working-class movement, originating exclu-
sively and drawing its whole following from the industrialised
and unpropertied working class which had but recently come
into existence. For the most part it was a revolt of this body
against intolerable conditions of existence. That is why its
programme of social amelioration was vague and negative.
It was an attempt on the part of the less educated portion of
the community to legislate for a new and astounding condition
of society whose evils the more enlightened portion had been
either helpless or imwiUing to remedy. The decisive char-
acter of the political aims of the Chartists bespeaks the strength
of political tradition in England.

The " People's Charter " is a draft of an Act of Parliament,
a Bill to be presented to the House of Commons.^ It is drawn
up in a clear and formal but not too technical style, with
preamble, clauses, and penalties, all duly set forth. It is a

1 The Charter is divided into thirteen sections :

I. Preamble. YIII. AiranSementforKegistration.

II. Franchise. IX. Arrangement for Nomina-

III. Ectnal Electoral Districts. tions.

IV. Registration OfBcer. X. Arrangement for Elections.
V. Returning Officer. XI. Annual Parliaments.

VI. Deputy Returning Officer. XII. Payment of Members.

VIL Registration Clerk. XIII. Penalties.

B

2 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

lengthy document, occupying some nineteen octavo pages, but
brevity itself in comparison with a fully-drawn Bill for the
same purpose from the hands of a Parhamentary draughts-
man. The preamble is as follows :

Whereas to insure, in as far as it is possible by human fore-
thought and wisdom, the just government of the people, it is
necessary to subject those who have the power of making the laws
to a wholesome and strict responsibility to those whose duty it is
to ohey them when made.

And whereas this responsibiUty is best enforced through the
instrumentality of a body which emanates directly from, and is
immediately subject to, the whole people, and which completely
represents their feelings and interests.

And whereas the Commons' House of Parliament now exercises
in the name and on the supposed behalf of the people the power of
making the laws, it ought, in order to fulfil with wisdom and with
honesty the great duties imposed on it, to be made the faithful and
accurate representation of the people's wishes, feelings, and interests.

The definite provisions fall under six heads — the famous
" Six Points " of the Charter. First, every male adult is
entitled to the franchise in his district after a residence of three
months.^ Second, voting is by ballot. Third, there wiU be
three himdred constituencies divided as equally as possible on
the basis of the last census, and rearranged after each census.
Fourth, Parliament is to be summoned and elected annually.
Fifth, there is to be no other qualification for election to Parlia-
ment beyond the approval of the electors — that is, no property
qualification. Sixth, members of Parliament are to be paid
for their services.

Besides these fundamentals of a democratic Parliamentary
system, there are minor but highly important provisions. The
Returning Officers are to be elected simultaneously with the
members of Parliament, and they are to be paid officials. All
elections are to be held on one and the same day, and plural
voting is prohibited under severe penalties. There is no
pauper disqualification.^ AU the expenses of elections are to
be defrayed out of an equitable district-rate. Canvassing is
illegal, and there are to be no public meetings on the day of
election. A register of attendance of the members of ParUa-
ment is to be kep^a logical outcome of payment. For the
infringement of the purity of elections, for plural voting,

1 Residence of three months is only mentioned casually. In connection
with registration. 2 Added in 1842.

THE CHARTER AND ITS ORIGIN 3

canvassing, and corrupt practices, imprisonment is tte only-
penalty ; for neglect, fines.^

As an arrangement for securing the purity of elections and
the adequate representation of pubHo opinion in the House of
Commons, the " People's Charter " is as nearly perfect as could
be desired, and if a sound democratic government could
be achieved by the perfection of political machinery, the
Chartist programme would accomplish this desirable end. The
Chartists, like the men of 1789 in France, placed far too great
a faith in the beneficent efiects of logically devised democratic
machinery. This is the inevitable symptom of political inex-
perience. We shall nevertheless see that there were Chartists,
and those the best minds in the movement, who realised that
there were other forces working against democracy which
could not be removed by mechanical improvements, but must
be combated by a patient education of the mind and a building
up of the material welfare of the common people — the forces
of ignorance, vice, feudal and aristocratic tradition.

The political Chartist programme is now largely incorpor-
ated into the British Constitution, though we have wisely
rejected that midtiphcation of elections which would either
exhaust pubUc interest or put an end to the stabihty and con-
tinuity of administration and poUcy. In itself the Chartist
Movement on its political side represents a phase of an agita-
tion for Parliamentary Reform which dates in a manner from
the reign of EHzabeth.^ The agitation began therefore when
Parhament itself began to play a decisive part in public affairs,
and increased in vehemence and scope according as the im-
portance of Parliament waxed.

The abuses of the representative system were already
recognised and turned to advantage by pohticians, royal and
popular, during the latter half of the sixteenth and the first
half of the seventeenth century; but beyond a single timid
attempt at reform by James I. nothing was attempted until
the great poHtico-refigious struggle between 1640 and 1660.
It is here that we must look for the origins of modern radical
and democratic ideas. The fundamentals of the representa-
tive system came up for discussion, and in the Instrument of
Government, the written constitution which established the
Protectorate in 1653, a drastic scheme of reform, including
the normalisation of the franchise and a sweeping redistribution

1 For full text see Lovett, lAfe and Struggles, pp. 449 et sea. This is the

reTlsed

2

led edition of 1842, but is substantially the same as that of 1838.
Porritt, Vnreformed House of Commons, Cambridge, 1903, i. 1.

4 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

of seats, was made. In the preliminaries to this the question
whether true representation was of persons or of property,
which goes to the root of the matter, was debated long and
earnestly by the Army in 1647. In the debate on the Agree-
ment of the People, the Kadical and Whig standpoints are
clearly exhibited.^

Mr. Pettus — Wee judge that all inhabitants that have nott
lost their birthright should have an equaU voice in Elections.

Bainborough — I think its cleare that every man that is to Uve
under a Gtovemment, ought first by his owne consent to putt himself
under that Government.

Ireton — . . . You must fly for refuge to an absolute naturall
right. . . . For my parte I think itt is noe Bight att all. I think
that noe person hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing
or determining of the afEaires of the kingdome and in chusing those
that shall determine what lawes wee shall bee ruled by heere, noe
person hath a right to this, that hath nott a permanent fiked interest
in this kingdome.

Here obviously the question of manhood or property suffrage
is the issue. Colonel Rich declared that manhood suffrage
would be the end of property.

Those that have noe interest in the kingdome wiH make itt their
interest to choose those that have noe interest. Itt may happen
that the majority may by law, nott in a confusion, destroy pro-
pertie : there may bee a law enacted that there shall bee an equality
of goods and estate."

There was at the same time a demand for short and regular
ParUaments, and that elections should be made " according
to some rule of equality or proportion " based upon " the
respective rates they (the counties and boroughs) bear in the
common charges and burdens of the kingdome ... to render
the House of Commons as neere as may bee an equall repre-
sentative of the whole body of the People that are to elect."
Parliament was to be elected biennially and to sit not more
than eight months or less than four.*

Here, therefore, is the nucleus of a Eadicial Programme :
Manhood Suffrage, Short Parliaments, and Equal Representa-
tion. We have even a hint at the doctrine of " absolute
naturall right," which lies at the base of modern democratic
theory since the French Revolution, and which found an echo
in the minds of all Chartists two hundred years after the famous

1 Clarke Papers, ed. Firth, 1. 299-307.
» Ibid. p. 315.

s ma. pp. 363 et seq., "Agreement of the People." Gardiner, Select
Documents of the PitrUam BevoliMm, " Heads of the Fropoeals."

THE CHAETEE AND ITS OEIGIN 5

debates at Putney. With the downfall of the Commonwealth
Buch conceptions of abstract pohtical justice were snowed under
by the Whig-Tory reaction. Henceforth both parties stoutly
upheld the " stake in the kingdom " idea of representation.
The height of this reaction came in the High Tory days of Queen
Anne, when the legal foundations of the aristocratic regime
were laid. The imposition of a property qualification upon
would-be members of Parliament dates from 1710, when it was
enacted that the candidate for a county must possess £600
a year and for a borough £300 a year, in both cases derived
from landed property.^ This act was passed in the face of
some Whig opposition, as the Whigs would have made excep-
tions in favour of the wealthy merchants of their party. Two
years later followed the first of the enactments throwing
election expenses upon the candidate.^ A further diminution
of popular control resulted from the Septennial Act, though
this was a Whig measure.

The Eadical tradition, however, was not dead but sleeping.
It lived on amongst the dissenting and nonconformist sections,
whose ancestors had fought and debated in the days of Crom-
well and had been evicted in 1662. The revival of Noncon-
formity under the stimulus of Methodism, the growth of
political and historical criticism during the eighteenth century,
and the growing estrangement between the House of Commons
and the people at large, brought about a resurrection of
EadicaUsm. In the second half of the century the Eadical
Programme appeared in fuU vigour.

The first plank of the Eadical platform to be brought into
public view was the shortening of the duration of Parhaments.
In 1744 leave to bring in a Bill establishing Annual Parha-
ments was refused only by a small majority. In 1758 another
Bin was refused leave by a much more decisive vote. In 1771
Alderman Sawbridge failed to obtain leave to introduce a
similar measure, although he had the moral support of no less
important persons than Chatham and Junius.* In the same
year a WUkite society recommended that Parliamentary
candidates should pledge themselves to support a BUI to
" shorten the duration of Parhaments and to reduce the
number of Placemen and Pensioners in the House of Commons,
and also to obtain a more fair and equal representation of the
people."*

1 Ponitt, 1. 166. 2 Ibid. I. 185-195.

3 Yeitoh, The Genesis of Parliamenlary Reform, p. 34.
* Ibid. p. 32.

6 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

By this time the flood of controversy aroused by the Wilkes
cases was in full flow, and the tide of Radical opinion was
swelled by the revolt of the American Colonies. In 1774: Lord
Stanhope, and in 1776 the famous Major John Cartwright,
published more sweeping plans of Parhamentary Reform.
Cartwright's scheme is set forth in the pamphlet, Tahe yow
Choice. Annual Parliaments and the payment of members
are defended and advocated on the ground that they were
" the antient practice of the Constitution," an argument which
was a maiostay of the Chartist leaders. Payment of members
was in force down to the seventeenth century, the oft-cited
Andrew MarveU receiving wages from his Hull constituents
as late as 1678. In claiming Annual Parliaments as a return
to ancient ways Cartwright had the authority, such as it was,
of Swift.^ Universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and the aboUtion
of plural voting also found a place in Cartwright's scheme,
but he maintained the property quaMcation for members of
Parliament.* Thus four of the six " points " of the Charter
were already admitted into the Radical programme. It only
required a few years to add equal electoral districts and the
abolition of the property qualification.

These were added by a committee of reformers under the
guidance of Fox in 1780. The whole programme figured in
the interrupted speech of the Duke of Richmond in the House
of Lords in the same year and in the programme of the Society
of the Friends of the People (1792-95). The Chartists were
not unaware of the long ancestry of their principles.* There
was a prophetic succession of Radicals between 1791, when the
first worlong men's Radical society — the London Correspond-
ing Society — ^was founded, and 1838, when the Charter was
published. Down to the outbreak of the French Revolution
the Radical faith in England, as in France, was maijily confessed
in middle-class and some aristocratic circles. Wilkes, Fox,
Sawbridge, and the Duke of Richmond are types of these early
Radicals. With the opening of the States-General and the rapid
increase of terrorism in France the respectable English Radicals
began to shelve their beliefs. On the other hand, the lower
classes raUied strongly to the cause of Radical reform, and the
Radical programme fell into their keeping, remaining their

1 lAfe of Major John Cartwright, by his niece F. D. Cartwright, London,
1826, i. 82. « . >

2 Veitcli, p. 48.

8 LoTett, Life and Struggles, p. 168. The preface to the first (1838)
edition of the "People's Charter" contains a brief liistory of the "Six
Points from 1776 onwards.

THE CHAETEE AND ITS OEIGIN 7

exclusiTe property for tie next forty years. When the middle
class in the days after Waterloo returned to the pursuit of
Parliamentary Eef orm, it was reform of a much less ambitious
character. The working classes still held to the six points.
During these forty years Eadicalism became a living faith
amongst the working class. It had had its heroes and its
prophets and its martyrs, and when the salvation promised by
the Whig reform of 1832 had proved illusory, it was perfectly
natural to raise once more, in the shape of the "People's
Charter," the ancient standard of popular reform.

By this time, however, the six points had acquired a wholly
different significance. In the minds of the early Eadicals they
had represented the practical realisation of the vague notions
of natural right. The programme was a purely pohtical one,
and was scarcely connected either with any specific projects
of social or other reforms, or with any particular social theory.
It represented an end in itself, the reahsation of democratic
theory. By 1838 the Eadical programme was recognised no
longer as an end in itself, but as the means to an end, and the
end was the social and economic regeneration of society.

CHAPTBE II

THE INDUSTEIAL REVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

The years 1815-1840 represent the critical years of the In-
dustrial Eevolution. The inventions and discoveries of the
previous century had provided the framework of a new in-
dustrial society, but the real social development, with the ideas,
poHtical and economic, and the new social relationships
which grew out of it, appeared in fuU force only in the genera-
tion which followed the battle of Waterloo. It was then
that the victory of machine production became an acknow-
ledged fact, and with it the supremacy of large-scale production
and large-scale organisation over domestic production and
organisation. The rapid growth of production for the foreign
.market gave to industry a more speculative and competitive
character, whilst the lack of real knowledge and experience
gave rise to rash and iQ-considered ventures which helped to
give so alarming a character to the crises of 1816, 1826, and
1836. Though fluctuation in trade was not the creation of
the Industrial Eevolution, it seems clear that the increase of
large-scale production for distant markets, with a demand
which was seldom gauged with any exactitiide, caused these
fluctuations to be enormously emphasised, so that the crises
above mentioned (with the last of which the Chartist Move-
ment is closely connected) were proportionately far more
destructive than depressions in trade now are. The rapid
accumulation of capital and the development of credit facihties
aided in the rise of a class of employers who were not the
owners of the capital which they controlled. Thus the social
distance which separated employers and employed was
widened as capital seemed to become more and more imper-
sonal. Under the old domestic system the employer resided
as a rule in the neighbourhood of his work-people, but the new

8

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 9

captains of industry, wiose fathers had perhaps been content to
follow the example of the domestic master by living next to
their workshops and factories, built themselves country houses
farther away from the town, whilst their employees festered
amidst the appallingly insanitary streets and alleys which had
grown up around the factories. This separation was emphasised
when, with the rise of joint-stock companies, the employer be:
came practically the agent for a number of persons who had
no other connection with or interest in industry than those
arising out of the due payment of dividends. Such conditions
arouse no particular feelings of discontent at the present day,
but at a time when organisations for mutual protection against
oppression were very infrequent and seldom very efEective, it
was felt that the personal and social contact of the employer
and his workmen was the only guarantee of sympathetic treat-
ment.'- This divorce of classes in industrial society was
making headway everywhere, even in those industries which
were still imder domestic arrangements, as- the industry fell
more and more into the hands of large wholesale houses. Crude
ideas of class war were making their presence felt amongst the
working people, whilst employers, who were influenced by the
equially one-sided political economy of the period, tended to
regard the interests of their class as paramount and essential
to the development of national prosperity. The bane of the
industrial system was the encouragement it gave to the rise
of a brood of small capitahsts but little removed in culture and
education from the working people themselves, slender of
resources, precarious in position, and therefore unable to abate
one jot of the advantage which their position gave them over
their workmen, often unscrupulous and fraudulent, and gener-
ally hated by those who came under their sway. There was
as yet no healthy public opinion such as at present reacts with
some eSect upon industrial relationships, though such an
opinion was growing up by the year 1840. Ignorance allowed ■
many abuses to flourish, such as the hideous exploitation of
women and children in mines and collieries as weU as in other
non-regulated industries. Working men might with reason
feel that they were isolated, neglected, and exposed to the
oppression of a social system which was not of their own
making or choosing, but which, as they thought, was not
beyond the control of their united power.

1 See the very interesting remarka in the report on the silk industry
of CoTentry. Parliamentary Papers, 1840, xxiv. pp. 188 et seq.

10 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Tie transformation of industrial orgamsation from tie
domestic to tie large-scale system of production was by no
means completed in tie year 1840. It is even doubtful wietier
tie large-scale system was as yet tie predominant one. Tie
weaving trade, tie iosiery trade, and tie iardware industry
as a wiole were carried on under systems wiici were eitier
domestic or at least occupied a transitional position between
tie old and tie new systems. Even in tie mining industry
tie influence of large capitalists was by no means universal, as
an examination of tie Reports of tie inquiries into tie Truck
System and into tie employment of ciildren in 1842 and
1843 will siow.^ It was in tiese as yet unrevolutionised or
only partially revolutionised industries tiat tie worst abuses
and tie most oppressive conditions prevailed — abuses wiici
are erroneously supposed to be tie outcome of tie developed
" capitalistic " system.

By tie eigiteenti century domestic industry was in general
under capitalistic control. Wiilst maintaining outwardly tie
organisation as it flourisied in tie ieyday of tie gUds, tie
system bad really undergone a radical ciange. Tie small,
independent, but associated producers of tie Middle Ages iad
been able to maintain tiemselves because tiey iad only to
satisfy tie demands of a fairly well known and only slowly
developing market. Custom was strong and regulated largely
tie relations between producer and consumer, and between
master, journeymen, and apprentices. Rates of pay, prices,
iours of labour, quaities, and kin^s of output were all fixed
by custom and tradition wiici often received tie sanction
of tie law of tie land. Gradually tie market grew and demand
became less easy to gauge. Tiis caused a new factor to enter
tie organisation — tie merciant manufacturer, wiose function
it was to attend to tie marketing of goods produced in eaci one
particular industry. Tie wider tie distance in point of time
and place between producers and consumers, tie more im-
portant did tie functions of tie merciant manufacturer
become, until ie, in fact, controlled tie industry by virtue of
bis possession of capital. Witiout capital tie gap between
producer and consumer could not be bridged. Goods migit
now be produced many mentis before tiey were consumed,
and sold long before tie purciase money was ianded over.
Furtiermore, tie exiaustion of local supplies of raw material
in some industries and tie introduction of industries dependent

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Ix., xv. ; 1843, xiil.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 11

upon foreign supplies— such as silk and cotton— rendered the
co-operation of accumulated capital essential. Thus the
master manufacturers lost their independence and became mere
links between the merchant capitahst and a hierarchy of em-
ployees. The journeymen and apprentices sank one step lower
in consequence. So far the influence of the capitahst merchant
left the organisation of labour untouched. Gradually, however,
the desire to extend operations, the growth of capital, and the
natural development of the markets for goods induced a desire
to cheapen production. Forthwith came a greater specialisa-
tion and division of labour. Apprenticeship ceased to be
essential to good workmanship, because an aU-round know-
ledge of the processes of production was no longer requisite,
but only special skill in one branch. The Act of Apprentices
of 1562 fell into obhvion in many trades, and there grew up a
generation of mere journeymen who would remain journey-
men to the end of the chapter. The master workman became
a mere agent, often for a distant, seldom seen, employer.
Where apprenticeship still lingered, it was often a means of
exploiting the labour of children. The customary relation-
ships which had governed wages and regulated disputes
lost all meaning, and competitive notions were substituted
for them.

In some industries this development went on faster and
farther than in others. In the spinning trade specialisation
had early «a- caused a series of mechanical inventions which
by 1790 culminated in the application of steam-power and
brought into being the factory system of production. In this
the lot of the worker, though bad, was better than that of the
domestic industriahst of the succeeding generation. In the
weaving trade technical difficulties delayed the introduction
of efficient machinery till after the battle of Waterloo, whilst
in some cases where machinery was available prejudice and
conservatism delayed its introduction. Whilst therefore in
the spinning trade the transformation was quick and merci-
ful, in the weaving trades it was slow and terribly destructive^
The Government Reports of the time give a very vivid picture
of the forces of disintegration and reorganisation at work, and
show how efficient an engine of oppression the domestic
system could be when the domestic spirit and atmosphere had
gone out of it, and an eager, competitive, and commercial spirit
had come into it.

In the Coventry silk trade, of which we have an admirable

12 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

account,^ control of the industry was at the beginning of the
nineteenth century in the hands of merchant manufacturers
of the type above described. Labour was organised under the
master weaver who owned looms at which he employed journey-
men and apprentices, although apprenticeship was abeady
aping out of fashion. When, however, the boom in trade,
which was caused by the temporary disappearance of foreign
competition during the war, came to an end in 1815, it brought
about great changes in the trade. Control had passed to the
large wholesale houses of London and Manchester.^ The large
profits had caused many master weavers to become inde-
pendent traders, backed by the credit of the London houses.
When the crash came they were unable to hold out and became
either agents for the London houses to which they supplied
goods on contract, or they feU back into the ranks of journey-
men. In any case the London houses came to be the direct
employers of labour and the master weavers were mere middle-
men. Eegular apprenticeship ceased altogether in many
branches during the trade boom, and a new system of appren-
ticeship was introduced which was in fact a means of obtaining
cheap child labour. Prices and wages fell, owing to the com-
petition of machine-made goods from Manchester and Maccles-
field, owing to the substitution of cotton for sUk goods, and
owing to the easier access to the trade. Competitive rates of
wages were substituted for the customary rates which had
obtained under the old system. Collective bargaining and
attempts to get Parliamentary sanction for fixed wage-rates
were from time to time resorted to. The latter course was
uniformly unsuccessful, but the success of the attempts at
collective bargaining depended upon the facilities which the
weavers had for combined action. In the town of Coventry,
where the labour was concentrated and the old traditions still
survived,* the recognition of the weavers' standard of life was
stiU effective, but in the country viQages the weavers were
dispersed, ignorant, and wholly at the mercy of unscrupulous
employers.* In these districts where the worst-paid work was
done, and wages were incredibly low — ^four or five shillings a
week — there seems to have been a total absence of any civilising
medium. Education was almost unknown, and the parishes
were served by clergy who were non-resident and scarcely

1 Parliameiniarv Papers, 1840, xxiv. 2 ]Md. VV- 33-34.

s There was a complicated tudustrial hierarchy at Coventry which
lundered the growth of a true class feeling.
* P. 36.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 13

ever visited ttem. In Coventry itself wages stood in 1838
much where they had been in the latter years of the eighteenth
century, but the extraordinary complexity of the organisation
in 1838 ^ makes it impossible to say more than the Government
Commissioner — that the Coventry weavers were relatively
worse off, compared with other classes,^ than they had formerly*
been. Others had prospered ; they had stood still. Besides,
a weaver, who was middle-aged in 1838, could easily remember
the time when he earned twice as much for the same work.'
Such memories, in the absence of real knowledge as to the
causes of such changes, were likely to be anything but soothing,
and to cause men to give a ready belief to the easy explanations
of the socialistic orators and pamphleteers of the time.* In
fact the only persons who thought at aU upon poUtical ques-
tions were frankly sociaHst.

The Coventry trade suffered, as did all others to a greater or
less degree, from enormous fluctuations. In December 1831
two-thirds of all the looms in the town were idle,^ whilst in
November 1838 scarcely any were unemployed. It was cal-
culated that on the whole there were four persons doing work
which could be accomplished by three working fuU time.
This state of affairs was encouraged previous to 1834 by the
abuses of poor reUef, which, as the Commissioner remarks,
merely subsidised labour for the distant London houses and
helped to keep down wages by creating a swollen reserve of
labour.* In 1830 the poor rates were used to bribe electors
(as all weavers who had served a regular apprenticeship were
enfranchised), and were more than trebled in consequence.

In spite of these drawbacks the Coventry weavers were
perhaps the most fortunate survivors of the old state of affairs.
Their neighbours of the immediate vicinity were far worse off.
They pursued, as the Commissioner thought, almost an animal
existence. There were perhaps twenty thousand individuals
in a state of extreme destitution, filth, and degradation, in the
town of Nuneaton and its neighbourhood. It is pleasing to read
that things had once been worse.'

The silk-weavers were, of all those engaged in the trade of
handloom-weaving, much the best situated. The worst off
were the cotton-weavers. It is not easy to say exactly how

1 There were five different systems of production and organisation at
work (iWd. p. 36).
, 2 P. 327. " Pp. 288-9; of. also pp. i, 77-78.

4 P. 187. 5 P. 12.

8 Pp. 304-7. ' Pp. 302, 322.

U THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

many handloom cotton-weavers there were in 1835 or 1838.
It was estimated that there were in the Glasgow area in 1838
36,000 handlooms devoted mainly to cotton/ but in a, small
percentage of cases to a mixed sUk and cotton fabric. In
Carlisle there were nearly 2000 ; in the Manchester district from
8000 to 10,000. In Bolton there were 3000. Looms were very
numerous also in the Blackburn-Colne area, and in the
Accrington-Todmorden districts.^ Perhaps there were more
than 25,000 handlooms in Lancashire, which nimiber, added to
the figures above given, will give over 60,000 handlooms in all
devoted to cotton-weaving, idclusive of the number in which
mixed fabrics were woven. An estimate made at Carhsle gave
an average of two persons to each loom ; in Manchester of two
and one-third,* which suggests that between 120,000 and
150,000 individuals were in 1838 stiU dependent upon the pre-
carious trade of handloom cotton- weaving. As the Committee
of 1834r-35 estimated the total number of handloom weavers
ia aU four branches (cotton, linen, wool, silk) as 840,000, this
estimate is perhaps not exaggerated. The cotton-weavers did
not form any very considerable proportion of the population
of Lancashire — perhaps 60,000 or 70,000 out of a nulUon
and a quarter in 1838; but as they were concentrated in a
comparatively small area, and as there were amongst them
old men, who in the halcyon days of handloom-weaving had
acquired knowledge and culture and could make their influence
felt by other people, they attracted considerable attention.

The comparative slowness with which machinery was
applied to weaviag was due to several causes. There was the
technical difficulty ; there was the very heavy cost of the
machines, and there was the period of abnormally high prices
at the beginning of the nineteenth century which encouraged
manufacturers to produce on the old lines so as to reap the
immediate profits with as little capital outlay as possible.
A great boom in handloom-weaving marked the years 1795-
1805. Wages were high owing to the abnormal demand for
weavers as compared with spinners. The industry was
swamped by an influx of unskilled hands who quickly learned
sufficient to enable them to earn vastly more than they had
earned elsewhere. Irish labourers poured into Lancashire
and Glasgow. A flood of small masters appeared and for a
while prospered. The end of the war brought on a terrible

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1840, ^cxIt. p. 6.

2 Parliamentary Papers, 1839, xlll. pp. 684, 678, 602.

3 Pp. 584, 678.

THE INDUSTEIAL EEVOLUTION 15

collapse, as the figures given will show. A cambric weaver,
who earned from twenty to twenty-four shillings a week in the
years 1798-1803, was earning from twelve to sixteen shillings
during the years 1804-1816, after which he could earn no more
than six or seven shillings. Prices for weaving in some cases
fell as much as 80 per cent during the same period.^ This
collapse was rendered more destructive by the more rapid
introduction of power-looms after the period of abnormal
trade was over. Thus in 1803 there were but 2400 such looms ;
in 1820, 12,150 ; in 1829 there were 45,000 ; in 1835 nearly
100,000, of which 90,000 were used in the cotton trade alone. ^
The lot of the weavers was not improved by the subterfuges
of the small employers, who cut and abated wages without
mercy in their efiorts to avoid bankruptcy. Though the
number of handloom-weavers constantly decreased, the process
was delayed by the influx of stiU poorer labourers from Ireland,
and by the practice of the weavers, in many cases compelled
by poverty, of bringing up their children to the loom, a practice
which was encouraged by the evil state of the conditions of
labour in the factories, which were often the only alternative.
By 1835 the handloom cotton-weavers were mostly em-
ployed by large manufacturers, who in many cases had power-
loom factories as weU. Thus the handloom-weavers fell into
two classes — those who competed with power and those who did
not. The former were the worse ofE. They formed a kind of
fringe around the factory, a reserve of labour to be utihsed
when^the factory was overworked. Thus they were employed
only casually, but helped, with the aid of doles out of the poor
rates, to keep down the general level of wages for weaving in
and out of the factory. Terrible are the descriptions of the
privations of these men. The weavers of Manchester made a
retxirn in 1838 of 856 families of 4563 individuals whose average
earnings amounted to two shillings and a penny per head per
week. Of this amoimt one-half was devoted to food and
clothing. Exactly half of these poor souls Uved on only one-half
of these amounts — or one penny per day for food and clothing.*
Such reports are confirmed from other towns such as Carlisle,
where the average earnings were somewhat, but little, larger.*
A much smaller average was reported by the weavers of Ashton-
under-Lyne.* Without relying wholly on these ex fwrte state-

1 Steflen, Oesoh. der englischen Lolmarbeit (Stuttgart, 1900-5), 11. pp.
19-20.

'^ Parliamentary Papers, 1839, xlll. p. 591.

3 Pp. 578 et sea. * P- 58i.

16 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

ments, it is clear from the general consensus of reports that
wages of one penny an hour for a seventy hours' week were
frequent, and even general. The Commissioner said that it
was unwise to tell the whole truth on this point, as it was either
discredited or gave the impression that such evils were beyond
remedy.^

It is not to be supposed that the case of the handloom-
weavers was a case of exploitation of industrious and honest
men by unscrupulous employers. The reports make it abund-
antly clear that the trade had become the refuge for cast-offs
from other trades. There were, however, cases of real hard-
ship, especially where old weavers were concerned. Their
lot was exceedingly hard, as they could remember days of
prosperity, and often possessed knowledge and education which
only served to embitter those memories. The case of some of
the Irish immigrants was also hard, because they had been
enticed into England by manufacturers for the purpose of
reducing wages and breaking strikes.^

Against bad masters these poor men had little protection.
Combined action was impossible ; there were no funds to
support a strike ; and the least threat of such proceedings
brought into use more power-looms. In the distressful days
of 1836-42 labour was a drug in the market, and to transfer to
another industry was therefore possible to very few. The re-
formed Parliament was not unsympathetic ; * it inquired twice,
in 1834 and 1838-40, but could not devise a remedy, though it
could and did understand the nature of the evU. To relieve
such a body of men out of poor rates in such a way as to raise
them in the scale of citizenship was impossible in a generation
which applauded the deterrent poor law of 1834. To men who
had for years besought Parliament to remedy their iUs, the
Poor Law Amendment Act must have come as a piece of cruel
and calculated tyranny, and have completed the ahenation of
the weavers and similarly situated classes from the established
order of things.

The system xmder which wages were paid in the weaving
trade was a source of immense irritation and oppression.
Wages were always subject to deductions. Some of these
abatements were payments for the preparation of the beam
ready for weaving, which was an operation which no weaver

1 ParUamentary Papers, 1840, xxlv. p. 7.
^ Parliamentary Papers, 1836, xxxiv. p. xxxvU.

3 See, e.g., the instruotionB issued to Assistant Commissioners who
Inquired in 1838-40. ParUamentarv Papers, 1837-38, xlv.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 17

could perform for himself. These were sanctioned by custom,
but others were not. Wholesale deductions were made" for
faults in weaving. The weaver had legal aid against unjust
abatements of this sort, but as he received no pay till the
question had been submitted to arbitration, poverty usually
compelled him to submit at once to the extortion. ^ By this
means nominal wages could be largely reduced by tyrannical
masters. In one case arbitration was precluded by withdraw-
ing a percentage of the market price beforehand, and in another
no wages were stated at all when work was given to weavers.*
No wonder the experience of the weavers seemed to give point
to the teachings of writers hke Hall and Thompson, to whom
wealth represented a power given to the rich to oppress the
poor, and capital a means whereby the employer might extract
from the labour of his men so much surplus value as would
leave them no more than enough to support a precarious and
miserable existence.

The situation of those weavers who were employed in the
wool trade was much better than that of the unfortunate
cotton-weavers. Some of the old conservatism of the trade
stUl remained, and machinery had not yet made any great
headway in it.^ It was still, both in the West Riding and in
Gloucestershire, a domestic industry largely in the hands of
small masters, but these were themselves in the control of
large wholesale houses.* The trade of master weaver was in the
southern district annihilated by a strike in 1825 which induced
the large employers to set up handloom factories and employ
the journeymen direct.* The master weavers were compelled
to accept work in the factories on the same terms as their own
journeymen — a situation which was hardly likely to produce
amiable feehngs amongst them.* The manufacturers, being
in the power of the London houses, for which they really
worked on contract, seem to have sweated their employees.
They were men of little capital and eager to acquire profits.
They were unable to do this otherwise than by cutting wages.
Strikes were frequent, but it was quite impossible for the
weavers to compel the masters to stick to the agreed lists.
They practised truck on occasion also.' The introduction df
the hated factory system,* combined with the other grievances,

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1839, xlii. pp. 592-4. 2 P. 598.

' Power-looma introduced 1836, pp. 377 (ei aeg.

* Parliamentary Papers, 1840, xxiv. pp. 358, 529, 401.

■■ Regular apprenticeship had of course died out.

6 Pp. 436-9. 7 Pp. 457-8. 8 Pp. 437.8.

C

18 THE CHAETIST MOVEMiiJNT

gave rise to a feeling of intense bitterness between masters and
men. Wages were low, but not so low as in the cotton trade.
Factory weavers earned in 1838 nearly twelve shillings a week ;
outdoor master weavers eight, and outdoor journeymen six.^
These wages were much lower than those of 1825^ and of
1808, and the Assistant Commissioner estimated that seven
weavers out of ten had to seek occasional relief from the poor
rates.*

The hosiery trade afiords another example of the abuses
to which the domestic organisation of production may lead
when the domestic, semi-paternal motive has gone out of it and
given place to a purely commercial and competitive spirit.
This change seems to have begun in the hosiery trade about
the middle of the eighteenth century when the old Chartered
Company lost its privileges. The trade then fell largely into
the hands of large hosiers of Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester.
The two former localities produced both silk and cotton
hosiery, but Leicester specialised in worsted goods. The raw
material, that is spun yarn, was of course purchased from
Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire. At the time of the
Government inquiry in 1844-45 * these large houses were both
merchants, purchasing goods from outside makers, and manu-
facturers on their own account, employing knitters in their own
factories. But the bulk of the labour was still performed in
domestic workshops, scattered all over the three counties.
The knitting was done by a frame which was a compUcated
piece of machinery, costly to purchase when new, and costly
also to maintain in repair. Thtjs it was rarer than in the hand-
loom-weaving trade for the knitter to own a frame, and the
custom had obtained throughout a century for frames to be
hired by the worker at a fixed rent which was deducted from
•wages.^

In 1844, therefore, employment in the hosiery trade could
be obtained from two sources. The first was the hosier himself,
either in his factory or as direct employer at home. The hosier
supplied frame and yarn, and the price of labour was usually
stated on a " ticket." In the second case, which was the more
common, the work was obtained from a middleman or " bag-
man " who received yarn from the wholesale dealer, distri-
buted it to knitters, and deducted from the market price of
labour certain expenses which represented the wages of his

1 Pp. 404-5. 2 Pp. 374-5. 3 P. 415.

< Parlmmentarv Papers, 1845, xv. 5 Report, p. 46.

THE INDUSTEIAL REVOLUTION 19

own labour and responsibility. Obviously the wages of tbe
knitter were less when employed by a bagman than when
employed directly by the hosier.^ It was upon the bagman
system that attention was concentrated in the inquiry of
1844r-45.

The bagman was, as a rule, a man of small capital who had
induced hosiers to entrust their yarn to his keeping. He was
the sole intermediary between the hosier and many scattered
knitters. He alone knew the price of goods and the margin
between prices and wages. He could not make profit on raw
material, nor increase the margin by extending his sphere of
operations as a large capitalist employer might. He depended
entirely upon his deductions from wages and upon the rent
he obtained from frames. The Report of 1845 is a chorus of
denunciation of his doings in these two respects.

The rent of frames was a fixed one and bore no relation to the
amount or value of work done, nor to the capital value of the
frame itself. It was an old customary payment sanctioned by
a century of usage. It was open to any one to make frames
and hire them to the various workers in the industry.^ A class
of people was thus called into existence whose sole connection
with the industry was the income from rents,* which were paid
week by week without abatement for slack time, so that the
rent became a first charge upon the produce of the industry.
Frames could be hired to hosiers, bagmen, or knitters them-
selves. In practice the last never happened, because the
knitters were too poor to guarantee the rent. The bagmen
paid higher rents than the hosiers, as there too there was an
element of risk. Consequently the bagman had to recoup
himself from the wages of the loiitters, as he had no margin for
economies on the side of the hosier.

Thus force of circumstances drove the bagman to exploit
the knitters. Framework-knitting had largely ceased to be a
skilled trade since the introduction of an inferior make of
stockings about 1819.* Access to the trade was therefore easy,
apprenticeship being a thing of naught. Trade was always
fluctuating owing to the changes of fashion. New goods were
continually being introduced. Thereupon a new influx of
hands, attracted by the good pay in the special branch, took
place. Very soon the fashion changed, and the new hands

1 Report, pp. 59-67. » P. i6 ol Report.

* Some frame-owners, however, had been knitters who had saved their
money and invested in frames against old age (p. 52 of Report).

* Report, p. 12.

20 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

went to swell the ranks of those employed upon the staple
products.1 AH this was bad for the poor " stockinger," but
the Eeport of 1844-45 makes it clear that his weakness was
ruthlessly exploited by unscnipulous and grasping " bagmen."
Not content with deducting the 30 or 40 per cent from wages,
allowed by custom for his normal labour and trouble of
fetching and carrying yarn and goods, the bagman resorted
to underhand tricks. He understated the warehouse prices
and pocketed the margin ; he exacted rent for frames when
the price of the goods was scarcely sufficient to pay it. In
slack times he would give one week's work for one Imitter to
two or even three and draw full rents for two or three frames
instead of one.^ Finally he resorted to truck.

The Eeport of 1845 is fuU of bitter and violent denunciations
of the bagmen. None of them is so eloquent as that quoted by
Mr. Podmore,' but a few are worth quotation : Samuel Jen-
nings was employed by T. P. of Hinckley, who paid all his
wages in truck and even charged him rent upon his (Jennings')
own frame.* One knitter sued his employer in court. " On
Saturday the 23rd of December I settled with C. (defendant),
and then had one pound of candles on credit, and he also lent
me sixpence in money. On the 6th of January I reckoned
with him for five dozen stocking feet which I had made during
the week. I was in his warehouse and his son was present.
My work came to 3s. 6Jd. He dedttcted for frame rent 2s. OJd.,
candles 5Jd., money borrowed 6d., leaving 6^d. to be paid to
me." ^ Thomas Eevil declares " our middlemen walk the streets
like gentlemen, and we are slaves to them." This latter was
hterally true, as the knitter was always in debt to truck masters,
and was consequently unable to quit his employment for fear
of imprisonment. The fortunes made by hosiers and bagmen
were another source of indignation. Bagmen were often
ignorant people of obscure origin, and the rapid rise to fortune
of exceptional bagmen, who were more able or more unscrupu-
lous than their fellows, was a source of extreme bitterness. One
case was quoted where a shop-boy had in a few years acquired
sixty or seventy frames and never paid a penny in coin as
wages.

It is to be expected that wages were low. Indeed with
hosiers, bagmen, and frame-owners to satisfy out of the produce

1 Report, p. 97. 2 Report, p. 67.

3 lAfe of R. Owen, 11. p. 448.

* Parliamentary Papers, 1845, xv. p. 76 ol Evidenee.
6 P. 73 of Bvidenoe.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 21

of the industry, and considering the bad situation of the
knitters as regards collective action, the wonder is that wages
were not lower. Wages had been artificially reduced by the
action of the old poor-law administration in paying out-relief
as subsidies to wages. That had of course ceased when the
inquiry was made, but a prolonged depression during 1839-42
had reduced thousands of stookingers to destitution.^ The
whole industry was stagnating, so that there seemed little
prospect of improvement in the condition of the poor knitters.
At the time of the inquiry thousands of them were earning for
sixty or seventy hours' labour five or six shillings a week. At
the same time it must be remarked that extreme lowness of
wages was apparently chronic in the trade, and it is probable
that the distress of the 'forties was not exceptional. It was,
however, unaccompanied by the extended out-relief of former
days since the introduction of the New Poor Law, and the
operatives who had formerly borne privation with some resig-
nation were now, through the agency of Chartist and Syndical-
ist orators, furnished with explanations of their evil situation.
The district had been a hotbed of Owenism in 1833-34 and of
Chartism ever since 1839, facts which show that the spirit of
resignation had given way to a spirit of revolution.

It is necessary to dwell at some length upon the situation ■
of the handloom-weavers and the " stookingers." These two
classes of workers were the most ardent of Chartist recruits.
They graduated for the most part through the school of Anti-
Poor Law Agitation, and furnished many " physical force "
men. Furthermore it is clear from the Chartist speeches that
the weavers and stocMngers were regarded as the martyrs of
the economic system and as an in(£cation of the inevitable
tendency of the system — an awful example to the workers
as a whole.

A modern reader may ask why these workers persisted in
an occupation so ill requited. Apart from the natural inertia
which makes man of all baggage the least easy to move, there
were special causes operating at the time under survey. One
was that occupation in other trades was not easy to get owing
to trade depression. This was especially the case with the
one occupation for which stocMngers and weavers were suitable
— ^factory labour. There were sufB.cient and good reasons
too, as every one knows, for avoiding factories in those days.

1 See liife of Thmnas Cooper, 1872, pp. 123-43; also Report, pp. 95
el seq.

22 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Further, men brought up to the frame and loom were as a rule
totally unfitted for other occupations when they reached
middle age. Poverty prevented them from apprenticing their
children in better-paid trades, and compelled them to employ
their families at the earliest possible age, long before they
reached their teens. To be sure, the coal and iron mines and
the railways took more and more of the yoimg men and, sad
to say, young women and children. Thus these industries
were recruited largely from the families of those actually
employed in them, but a natural elimination, especially in the
weaving trade, caused those who were young, hardy, and
enterprising to leave it, whilst the old, worn-out, the shiftless,
and the young children remained. These, either from discon-
tent engendered by memories of more prosperous days, or by
reason of their ignorance, or through hopelessness of improve-
ment, were a ready prey for the revolutionary literature which
was freely circulated amongst them.

The case of these industries is not the only one which gave
support to those Klassenkampf theories which form so
conspicuous a part of the Chartist philosophy. Amongst all
classes of society the evils of the factory system were held in
abhorrence. That those evils were great is sufiSciently clear
from any impartial account of the early factories. That they
attracted universal attention is testified by the immense
literature upon the subject. The popularity of the agitation
which was led by Sadler and Oastler during the 'thirties is a
sign of a developing public conscience. Amongst the working
people, however, the agitation was also a part of the general
campaign against Capitalism. In other industries, indeed, the
exploitation of child-labour was the work not of the capitahst
employer, but of the workers themselves. It was done even
where there was no excuse on the score of poverty.^ There
employment by the master was a welcome reform. One of the
leaders of the Lancashire operatives in the ten hours' campaign
was John Doherty, a Trade Union leader of renown and a
prominent Chartist. In fact, factory agitation was the one
form of Trade Union action which was both safe from legal
attack and popular amongst other classes than the operatives
themselves. The factory masters were denounced not merely
because they did on a large scale what many small employers
were doing on a small scale, but also because they represented

1 E.ff. Staffordshire potteries, Birmingham metal trades. Parliamentary
Papers, 1843, xlll. paasim.

THE INDUSTEIAL REVOLUTION 23

that developed Capitalism which the working classes were
being taught by many writers — of whom in this respect James
O'Brien was not the least virulent — ^to hate with their whole
souls.

Turning now to other industries, the same transitional state
of organisation is to be found in such industries as mining and
quarrying, which are at the present day almost exclusively
under the control of large capitalists. The Reports of 1842-44 ^
dealing with these industries reveal a variety of industrial
structure. In the Portland stone quarries, gangs of quarry-
men prospected on their own account. In coUiery districts
custom varied considerably. In Stafiordshire the men were
employed by sub-contractors called by the euphonious name
of " butties." In Northumberland and Durham the work
was controlled by large owners, as is generally the case nowa-
days. The gang system seems to have prevailed in Leicester-
shire, parts of the West Riding, the Lothians district and North
Wales ; the " butty " system in StafEord, Shropshire, Warwick,
and Derby ; the proprietor system in the two great northern
fields, Lancashire, South Wales and Monmouth, and in
Lanarkshire.^ Where the gang system prevailed the miners
contracted, through the agency of their own elected or selected
heads, with the owners of the minerals, to procure the coal or
iron at specified prices. The owner furnished machinery and
sank the shaft ; the miners did the rest. The butty system
was the same except that the contract or charter was procured
by one or two small capitahsts who owned the tools and hired
the miners.* Under the third system the whole personnel,
machinery, and tools were controlled by the proprietors.*

Where the workmen were largely independent contractors
under the gang system, they could hardly complain of the con-
ditions of their labour, but under the other systems complaint
was loud and continuous. The butties occupied much the
same position in the mining industry as the bagmen in the
framework-knitting. They were bound to supply coal or iron
ore at a fixed price. They hoped to recoup themselves out of
the profits of labour. Being men of small capital, they were

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Ix. (Truek) ; 1843, xOl.CSperaal Report
on Staffordshire), p. 1 ; 1843, xlil. p. 307 (Employment of OMdren m
Manufactures) ; 1842, rv. (Employment of Children m Mmes and CoUienes) ;
1844, xvl. (Inspector of Mines).

2 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, xv. p. 39. ... . , ..

3 Parliamentary Papers, 1843, xiii. (Staffs), pp. xxnii-xxxiv, Ixii.
« P. ciii.

24 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

always in a precarious situation, as each coal-getting venture
entaUed a large element of risk. If the price fixed by the
" charter " proved unremunerative, they were compelled to
grind profits or avoid losses out of wages. They resorted to all
sorts of practices : compelled miners to work at certain jobs
without pay ; ^ increased their daily tasks surreptitiously ;
abused the labour of children, especially pauper apprentices,
in a perfectly inhuman fashion ; ^ and finally and inevitably,
paid in " truck." * When butties existed, accidents were
frightfully frequent. Lack of capital induced slipshod and
wasteful systems of propping.* Naked lights were used.
Dangerous places were worked as a common thing. One
thing, however, butties did not do : they did not employ girls
and women down the shafts. That appalling iniquity was
perpetrated by the miners themselves, but never where butties
had control.^ Wages were not low, as wages went in 1840.
In Stafiordshire daily wages were 4s. previous to the strike
of 1842, when a reduction to 3s. 6d. was attempted. In the iron
mines wages were rather lower — 2s. 6d. to 3s. a day. These
wages were of course far from princely, and they were materially
reduced by the system of paying in truck or " tommy." * In
some, perhaps many cases, the system of paying wages in
goods was at first productive of much advantage, especially
where the collieries were remotely situated, and the purchase
of goods from the nearest market-town was inconvenient. But
it was so easy to abuse the practice that few who adopted it
avoided the temptation. The practice was all but universal
in the mining industry, whatever the organisation. It was
widespread in other trades too ; and this in spite of the act of
1831 against it.' As that act, however, required the workman's
evidence, actual or anticipated intimidation was su£B.cient to
make it a dead letter.

These abuses were not the only ones connected with the
mining industry. The revelations made in 1842-43 by Govem-
ment inquiries show that the industry was being carried on
everywhere with as complete a disregard for humanity and
decency as could be found in the society of heathen savages.

1 Vol. xiil. (Staffs), pp. xxxv-rxxvii.

2 ParUameivtary Papers, 1842, xv. p. 40.

3 Parliamentary Papers, 1843, xiii. (Staffs), pp. iTnrriir et sea.
* P. xxvii.

6 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, xv. p. 35.

6 A Tivld description of the truck system of tlie Midlands, deriyed
largely from oflcial sources, is to be found in Disraeli's Sybii, published
in 1846. See also Parliamentary Papers, 1843, xiii. (Staffs), pp. l-rmriY
et sea. 7 1 and 2 Wm. IV. o. 37.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 25

Children were being employed at an incredibly early age.^
Five, six, and seven years was a frequent age for commencing
work in the mines ; exceptional cases of four, and even three
years were found. Monotonous beyond measure was the
labour of these mites who sat in the dark for a dozen hours a
day to open and shut doors. A boy of seven smoked his pipe
to keep him awake.^ The childTen employed were of both
sexes, and girls of tender age were condemned to labour like
beasts of burden, harnessed to trucks of coal.* Pauper appren-
tices were practically sold into slavery, and treated occasionally
with the utmost ferocity.* The employment of adolescent
girls and women was not unknown, especially in Lancashire
and Yorkshire, where, one may suspect, they were driven from
the handloom-weaving, the decay of which was no doubt
responsible also for the exceptionally early employment of
children in those districts.® At the same time it must be
noted that the employment of girls and women, where it
prevailed, was not a recent introduction. Lancashire witnesses
declared that it had existed since 1811.*

The consequences of this employment of workers of both
sexes underground, considering the extreme ignorance and
semi-barbarism of the colliery population, is better imagined
than described.' In fact the reports reveal a state of filth,
barbarism, and demoralisation which both beggars description
and defies belief. Clearly Lancashire, Yorkshire, South Wales
and Monmouthshire, and the Lothians of Scotland were the
worst districts, but all were bad enough. The prevalence of so
appalling a state of afiairs is to be explained only by consider-
ing the general isolation of the mining districts. Some, as in
Monmouth, Durham, the Pennine districts, were situated
amongst remote moorlands. In every case the opening of
mines had gathered together a promiscuous population into
districts hitherto impopulated. Houses were built for the
accommodation of the employees by the colliery masters
themselves. Beyond that little care seems to have been
exercised over the population so concentrated. Churches were
seldom built. The want of reUgious ministrations was occa-
sionally supplied by Chartist preachers.* The only source of
social life was the demoralising atmosphere of the pit or the

1 ParUamentary Papers, 1842, xv. pp. 9-18.

2 P. 18. 3 Pp. 24-36. ■> Pp. 40-43.
■i Oldham is poiated out as a curious and mysterious exception.
6 P. 27.

' See especially LancaeWre case on p. 132.

8 Parliamentarv Papers, 1843, xUi. (Staffs), p. cxxxvu.

26 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

equally insidious delights of the pubUc-house, usually the
property of the butty or the colliery masters. The Newport
rising of November 1839 was engineered whoUy in such public-
houses in the remote hiU districts.'-

Respectable people in the neighbourhood seem to have
considered the collier population as utterly hopeless and irre-
deemable and took little steps to ameliorate or improve their
lot. The masters, we are assured, never entered the pits to see
what was going on, and abuses went unchecked.^ Parents were
allowed to bring their children into the pit almost at any age.
Women were even allowed to become hewers of coal.' The
dress of both sexes was so alike as to be practically indistinguish-
able, even in the light of day.* Thus the blame for the horrific
condition of the mining population seems to be distributed
amongst aU the classes concerned — ^masters, butties, parents,
and the pubUc generally. There was a fearful awakening of
the public conscience when the Report of 1842 was published,
and the exclusion of women and children from the mines was
voted in Parhament without a murmur.

The task of those who had previously sought to make an
impression upon this population was hard but not hopeless.
They met with no great sympathy from those who had the
means to help. The Rural Dean of Birmingham^ was quite
unable to persuade a landowner to give a quarter of an acre of
land to build a church, although his land was annually increas-
ing enormously in value. Another wealthy owner, who drew
£7000 a year without ever seeing one of his employees,
openly boasted of the fact.* The vicar of Wolverhampton
applied to a man who was supposed to have £50,000 a year from
mines for funds to build a church, but the man of wealth said
his mines would be worked out in seventy years and the church
would then be of no use.' But though the task of reformers
was hard, it was occasionally successful, as at Oldham where,
owing apparently to the development of education, mainly
in Sunday schools, a public opinion had grown up which made
the mining population there an honourable exception to the
general state of semi-savagery.^ On the whole it is the isola-
tion, geographical and social, of the mining population which

1 Additional MSS. 34,245.

2 FarUamentary Papers, 1842, xrv. pp. 12, 126.
8 In West Biding (p. 24).

* Vol. XT. passim,

s Parlia-memtary Papers, 1843, xiii. (Staffs), p. 2.

6 P. 4. 'P. 73.

8 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, xvli. App. p. 833.

THE INDUSTEIAL REVOLUTION 27

forces itself most upon one's attention in reading the dismal
reports. The coUiers had occasionally a dialect which was
totally unintelligible to educated ears. They were almost a
foreign people. In fact, the inhabitants of Monmouthshire
spoke of the colliery districts, where the outbreak of 1839 was
brewing, in the language of people who lived on the frontiers
of a hostile territory.

The total mining population in 1840 was about three-
quarters of a million, the actual number of persons employed
being about one-third that number. The census return of
1831 enumerates trades and handicrafts, but omits this large
industry entirely.

It wtU not be necessary to enter into detailed descriptions
of other branches of industry. It will be sufficient to say that
other industries, such as the pottery and metal trades of the
Midlands, were being earned on under conditions which, if not
so flagrantly bad as those above described, were yet sufficiently
demorahsing.^ Wolverhampton, Bilston, and WillenhaU seem
to have been the home of the most appalling degradation — a
perfect inferno where children were brutalised by severe labour
and savage treatment, and grew up into stunted, stupid, and
brutal men and women.^ Hard by was the nail-making
district of Dudley where the population is said to have been
more degraded even than the miners.*

It is necessary to keep clearly in mind this social and
economic background of the Chartist Movement. A politico-
social movement which was engineered amongst such men (and
it is clear that the more prosperous and intelligent organised
workers kept aloof from it) could scarcely be compared with
the working-class movements of the present day, organised
as the latter are by men of clear and shrewd, though perhaps
limited outlook, of uncommon ability, backed by three genera-
tions of experience and a solid organisation.

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1843, xill.
2 Pp. 27, 33. ^ (Staffs), pp. t, tI.

GHAPTEE III

THE RISE OP ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL
BEVOLUTIONAEY THEORY

During tte first three decades of the nineteenth century
English political and social ideas underwent a profound change.
This mental revolution may be attributed to two main causes,
the French Eevolution and the Industrial Eevolution. Both
of these produced difierent efiects upon the difierent classes
of the community. The French Eevolution commenced by
arousing the traditional poUtical radicaUsm of the English
middle class, but the violence of the Eevolution itself, together
with the teachings of the Economists, who apparently demon-
strated the incompatibility of the interests of the employing
and employed classes, drove the middle class to resist even
moderate measures of poUtical change. At the same time
the theories and presuppositions of the Eevolution, based as
they were on the doctrine of the Rights of Man, took a great
hold upon the imagination of the working classes and produced
levelUng theories whose justice seemed aU the stronger, as the
actual course of events seemed to demonstrate the evils which
flowed from social and economic inequality.

The Industrial Eevolution, especially during the years
1800-1840, was largely on the social side an instrument of social
dislocation. Down to the middle of the eighteenth century
Enghsh agricultural society was still largely feudal in spirit.
The internationahsm of feudalism, which had given Westerli
Europe a superficially homogeneous society, was gone, but
otherwise feudal conceptions still held sway. The landowner
was stiU the head of a local social system — Mr. Wells's " Blades-
over " — which comprised household, farm tenants, labourers,
officials. Social relationships consisted largely, on the part of

28

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 29

the lower orders, of feelings of more or less contented depend-
ence upon the great man at the top — feehngs which were
religiously inculcated on the basis of " the station of Ufe in
which it has pleased God to place you." On the other hand
the landowner repaid such sentiments with some real degree
of personal interest in the welfare of his subjects, and main-
tained a certain amount of security and stabiUty, which enabled
them to live with some expectation that their lot would never
be worse, though it might not be better. Stability, security,
and dependence were the essentials of this social system. In
industry relations were otherwise but not essentially difierent.
The merchant manufacturer played the part of the landowner.
He was often in personal touch with those he employed, hving
usually in the neighbourhood. The family system of manu-
facture kept alive feelings of associated enterprise and mutual
dependence. The market was known; prices were fixed by
custom and not merely by competition. Steady trade rather
than speculative enterprise was the rule and the ideal.

Under the influence of that commercial and speculative-
spirit which prepared the way for the great changes both in
agriculture and industry, these social relationships broke down.
They were unsuited to a period when movement and enterprise
replaced solid security as the basis of economic Hfe. The
unlimited unknown of commerce was preferred to the hmited
known, and Captain Cook's voyages into the distant Pacific
were paralleled by many a commercial speculator in the
realms of economic enterprise. Acquisition of wealth, which
opened up to many the prospects of social advancement,
destroyed the old feeUng of contented acceptance of that
station of hfe in which they were born. Hence came the
increasing speciahsation in agriculture and industry, the en
closures which alone made possible the improvement of agri-
cultural methods, and the machinery which superseded men.
Employers employed no longer men but hands, no longer
human beings but labour, and the relation between the two
gradually developed into the payment of cash which was held
to cover all the obligations of the one to the other. Payment
for labour, conditions of housing, help in bad times, education,
all these were now commuted in the pajrment of a weekly
wage. In industry this process was encouraged by the rapid
rise to fortune of poor men who had never been influenced by
the ancient semi-feudal traditions or by the surviving gild
spirit.

30 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

^ The consequence was the formation of a large class of wage-
earners who were thrown back upon the earnings of their
own hands, and had little claim, besides their labour, to the
consideration of society. The natural tendency to association,
which under not dissimilar circumstances had appeared so
strongly in the early days of the French Revolution, i.e. the
Federes, and was the most significant manifestation of national
as distinguished from feudal ideas, was in England checked, if
not suppressed, by the ferocious Combination Laws. It was
not until 1833, with the passing of the first important Factory
Act, that public opinion admitted the industrial employees
to a claim upon society and pubhc attention. The Factory
Acts and cognate legislation substituted a public guarantee,
based on the authority of the State, for that private and tradi-
tional guarantee of the conditions of life which semi-feudal
society had maintained. But between the disappearance of the
one and the establishment of the other lies a fuU generation,
during which the working classes, often ignorant, unled, ill-
advised, sought refuge in their isolation and helplessness
against economic and governmental oppression.

In a world of injustice and inequality, the working men
found hope and a caU to action in those theories of natural
rights and justice which the French Revolution had popular-
ised. The rights of man were contrasted with the wrongs
inflicted by the new state of society, and out of the conflict
were developed political and social theories of a social-demo-
cratic character. It is not maintained that Enghsh Sociahsm
developed out of the ideas of the Revolution. It was, on the
other hand, largely a native growth, deriving its strength from
its criticism of the developing English industrial society, and
its economics from the writings of Ricardo. At the same time
its constructive side, which of course was its weakest, was
based upon theories of abstract justice, and these notions had
received a great impetus from the French Revolution,
Through Paine and Godwin they had been introduced in a
complete form to the English pubUc. Yet, as has been pointed
out previously, such ideas were prevalent within a limited
circle during the Puritan Revolution, and may even be traced
in the famous Vtofia of More and the equally famous
couplet of John Ball. The pre-revolutionary ferment in
France did produce its socialistic writers — MoreUy, Mably,
and to a degree Rousseau himself. Though the teaching of
MoreUy as to the beneficent influence of suitable environment

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 31

upon tuman ctaracter iS' in many cases akin to ttat of Robert
Owen, there is little doubt that the latter founded his theory
largely upon his own experience at New Lanark. In any case
the socialistic theory of the Revolution was of Httle practical
importance in the events of that stormy period. The futile
conspiracy of Babeuf was the only serious attempt to give the
Revolution a sociahst character. It was, however, recalled
to the minds of the English Chartists by James O'Brien, who
translated Buonarotti's account of it.

Early English Socialist teaching falls into three classes.
The first and least thoroughgoing, and the one which appeared
first in order, was mainly a revolt against the enclosures. It
-was predominantly agrarian in character. It is represented
by William Ogilvie, Thomas Spence, and Thomas Paine.
These are mainly advocates of land reform of some sort or
other, but similar ideas form part of the schemes of the more
thoroughgoing writers. The second class is mainly a criticism
of the classical economists, and is rather anti-capitalist than
constructively socialist. It is represented by Charles Hall,
Thomas Hodgskin, Charles Gray, Piercy Ravenstone, and
William Godwin. Finally there is a large and important body of
communist doctrine associated with the great names of Robert
Owen, Thompson, and J. F. Bray. These writers were mainly
concerned with the problem of distribution, but Bray and
Thompson preface their constructive schemes by a masterly
criticism of the dominant " bourgeois " economics, which, taken
with the ideas of HaU and his fellows, in all essentials anticipates
that of Marx.

There is one quality which is common to nearly aU this
body of socialistic and kindred doctrines. That is the reaction
towards agriculture and the land, the tendency to regard the
growth of large-scale industry as abnormal, unnatural, and
dangerous. This is not to be wondered at. The process of
enclosure was far from complete even as late as 1800, and it
did not seem too late to put a stop to it. In any case agricul-
ture was still considered the natural avocation of the majority
of the nation. The growing abuses of the early factory system
recalled to many, by way of contrast, the fresh air and green
fields of their youth. It is significant that Hall, one of the
most conspicuous opponents of manufactures, was a medical
man. Apart from these considerations it was held, with some
degree of justice, that only by applying his labour to land
could a man attain the ideal of socialist theory — the full

32 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

produce of his labour. It was supposed that a nation working
exclusively upon the land might thus solve the proUem of
distribution.

This is not the place for a detailed analysis of this mass of
socialistic literature, which is to be found in the excellent
works of Beer, Menger, and Podmore.^ But as these socialistic
notions formed a large part of the mental equipment of
Chartists, a general sketch of their tendency is essential to
a proper understanding of the Chartist Movement. The rela-
tion of the Chartist Movement to the evolution of sociaUst
ideas is somewhat complex. The Chartist Movement was not
a homogeneous thing. It was a general protest against in-
dustrial and political oppression, and as the protest swelled
the movement swallowed up a variety of agitations of a special
and locaj, character, some of which bore little relation to
socialist propagandism. It is true that some of the leaders
of Chartism were downright Socialists — as we should call them
to-day. James O'Brien (commonly known as Bronterre
O'Brien) was the unremitting advocate of land nationahsation
and collective control of the means of exchange.^ William
Lovett, the noblest of them all, was persuaded that individual
ownership of industrial capital was the prime evil of society.
Hetherington was a disciple of Owen and Thompson. In spite
of this, however, the Chartist Movement was carefully dis-
tinguished by its more prominent adherents from the SociaUst
Movement of the period, which was a communist movement
guided by Robert Owen, Lloyd Jones, and WUliam Pare.
Eeargus O'Connor's Land Scheme was the very antithesis of
Socialism, but it was also not a real Chartist scheme.

The Land Reformers, Spence, Ogilvie, and Paine (the ex-
member of the Revolutionary Convention and the author of
the Rights of Man), are one and aU under the influence of
Natural Rights. They belong to the period which preceded
the birth of economic analysis, and therefore detailed criticism
of the existing social and industrial system plays little part in
their discussions. They proceed by the deductive method,
commencing with a statement of the natural and inherent
rights of mankind. Clearly the right to subsist upon the land
of his birth is the most obvious of these rights. Hence the

1 Max Beer, Oeschichte des SozialiSTrms in England (1913) ; A, Menger,
Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag (1891), translated as The Rigid to
the whole Produce of Labour, by M. E. Tanner and H. S. Foxwell (1899) ;
F. Podmore, Life of Robert Owen (1906).

2 For O'Brien's plans for the nationalisation of the laud see Nlehuus,
Englische Bodenreformtheorien, Leipzig (1910), pp. 99-108.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 33

deduction ttat the land is the common possession of mankind,
a proposition to which Locke gave the seal of Ms authority,
but which is probably as old as mankind itself. Spence
declares indignantly that " Men may not hve in any part of
this world, not even where they were born, but as strangers
and by the permission of the pretender to the property thereof."
Paine suggests that God had not set up an Estate Office in
Heaven where title-deeds to perpetual rights over land could
be acquired. Ogilvie, a much soberer and more scientific
writer, contents himself with the statement that land in its
uncultivated state was the common property of mankind.

Naturally the particular conclusions to be drawn from these
very wide premises vary immensely. Spence arrives at the
absolute prohibition of private property in land ; Ogilvie
allows a system of private property with taxation of unearned
increment and the parcelling of large estates — a remarkable
foreshadowing of the modern policy, and based, like it, upon
a more scientific consideration of the question ; Paine aims
at paying, out of heavy succession duties upon landed property,
an old-age pension to every person as compensation for the loss
of his rights ia land. Thomas Spence (1750-1814) was the most
outspoken and extreme of the three writers. He probably did
as much as any other reforming zealot to popularise that
fanatical and unreasoning hatred of the landed aristocracy
which characterised Enghsh radical and revolutionary opinion
during the early part of the nineteenth century, and which
formed so large a part of the oratorical stock-in-trade of
Vincent, O'Connor, O'Brien, and the like, in the Chartist
Movement. A sturdy, stifE-necked, fluent Eadioal, with much
of the rebel in his nature, Spence made many zealous disciples
and a powerful enemy — the " panic-stricken Toryism " of the
Government. He passed a stormy forty years of political
agitation, between 177S and 1814, and died in poverty, as
many other good men did at that time. A sample of Spence
ought to be given. One of his pamphlets, the Rights of
linfants (1797), is in the form of a dialogue between a mother
and a member of the aristocracy. The mother asks who
receives the rents :

Arislovfat — ^We, to be sure.

TToman^You, to be sure ! Who the DevU are you 1 Who
gave you a right to receive the rent of our common ?

Arisloorat — ^Woman, our ancestors either fought for or purchased
our estates,

D

34 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Woman — Well confessed, villains ! Now out of your own mouths
will I condemn you, you wicked Molochs. And so you have the
impudence to own yourselves the cursed brood of ruffians who by
slaughter and oppression usurped the lordship and dominion of
the earth to the exclusion and starvation of weeping infants and
their poor mothers ? Or at the best the purchasers of those ill-
got domains ? O worse than Molochs, now let the blood of millions
of innocent babes who have perished by your vile usurpations be
upon your murderous heads. . . . Yes, villains ! you have treasured
up the tears and groans of dumb, helpless, perishing, dying infants.
O you bloody landed interest ! you band of robbers ! Why do you
call yourselves ladies and gentlemen ? Why do you assume soft
names, you beasts of prey ? Too well do your emblazoned arms
and escutcheons witness the ferocity of your bloody and barbarous
origin ! But soon shall those audacious Gothic emblems of rapine
cease to offend the eyes of an enlightened people, and no more make
an odious distinction between the spoilers and the spoiled. But,
ladies and gentlemen, is it necessary, in order that we eat bread
and mutton, that the rents should be received by you ? Might not
the farmers as well pay their rents to us, who are the natural and
rightful proprietors ? . . .

Hear me, ye oppressors, ye who live sumptuously every day, ye
for whom the sun seems to shine and the seasons change, ye for
whom alone all human and brute creatures toil, sighing, but in
vain, for the crumbs which fall from your overcharged tables. . . .
Your horrid tyranny, your infanticide is at an end !

And did you really think, my good gentlefolk, that you were
the pillars that upheld the universe ? Did you think that we
should never have the wit to do without you ? . . .

Then comes Spenoe's panacea :

We women (as our men are not to be depended on) will appoint
in every parish a committee of our own sex (which we presume
our gallant lock] awed spouses will at least for their own interests
not oppose) to receive the rents of the houses and lands already
tenanted, and also let to the best bidders, on seven years' leases,
such farms and tenements as may from time to time become vacant.

Out of the funds so obtained the expenses of the parish
and the taxes will be paid, an allowance be given for each child
born and each person buried, and the surplus divided equally
amongst the inhabitants of the parish. The famous Newcastle
Lecture of 1775, Spence's first utterance upon the question of
the land, contains substantially similar proposals, but also
suggests certain pohtical reforms — the abolition of the standing
army and the formation of a militia, universal manhood sufirage
and vote by ballot. Spence left many disciples who were not
without influence during the succeeding decades.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 35

William Ogilvie (1736-1819) comes chronologically next
after Spence. His work, An Essay on the Right of Property
in Land, was published in 1782. He stands, however, far
above Spence both in depth of thought and in his influence
upon later generations. He was a, Professor of Humanity
at Aberdeen, an excellent scholar and a man of intellectual
eminence. He was also a Scottish laird and well versed in
agriculture and estate management. Ogilvie conceived agri-
cidtuTe to be the most suitable and profitable occupation for
mankind. The 'higher virtues would inevitably fail amongst
a people who lived wholly by manufacture and industry.
Ogilvie was thus the earliest foe of the modern industrial
society.

Starting, like Spence, with a declaration of the common
right of mankind to the land, Ogilvie plunges into an analysis
of the greatest importance. Land, he declares, has three
values, the original value, the improved value, and the im-
provable value, corresponding to the value of the land in its
natural uncultivated state, the value of the improvement due
to cultivation, and the value of the possible improvement of
which it is capable. This statement at once puts the discus-
sion upon a higher plane than Spence's dogmatic assertion of
natural rights to land, and the analysis is worthy of a country-
man of Adam Smith and David Hunje. Probably Ogilvie was
stimidated by the reading of Smith's great work. In an estate
worth £1500 a year Ogilvie suggests £200, £800, and £500 as
the original, improved, and improvable value. The first
and third cannot belong to the landowner, but the second is
undoubtedly private property, as it arises from the labour
already applied to it. Ogilvie would recover the original value
by a tax upon land, and the improvable or accessory value by a
tax upon unearned increment or " the augmentation of rents."
Apart from this he is the enemy of large estates, which he
desires to break up. He calculates that there is sufficient land
in Great Britain to give 10 acres to every citizen. Every land-
owner who has more than that quantity of land must surrender
the surplus. Of the 10 acres remaining the landowner will
have a right to all the three values. From the surplus fund
of land a parcel of 40 acres will be granted to every adult male
who applies. He wiU cultivate it for his lifetime and be subject
to quasi-feudal obligations. Failing such measures Ogilvie
advocates a Board of Land Purchase to multiply small holdings.
Measures ought to be taken to discourage the growth of manu-

36 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

factures until agriculture is developed to the highest possible
degree.

Ogilvie's scheme is not so much a scheme for the recovery
of the lost rights to land as the purely utihtarian one of
maintaining the ascendancy of agriculture. The agricultural
society of the later Middle Ages is his ideal, a society of small
landholders held in the bonds of mutual dependence and
mutual obligations.

The veteran Thomas Paine (1737-1809) has an equally
utihtarian purpose. The title of his work, published in 1797,
is a resume of its contents : " Agrarian Justice, opposed to
Agrarian Law and Agrarian Monopoly, being a plan for
MeHorating the Condition of Man by creating in every Nation
a National Fund, to pay to every Person, when arrived
at the Age of 21 Years, the Sum of £15 Sterhng, to enable
him or her to begin the World ; and also £10 Sterhng
per annum during fife to every Person now Uving of the
Age of 50 years and to aU others when they shall attain
that Age."

The gist of Paine's argument was that the majority of
mankind had lost its rights in the land. It was impolitic to try
to recover the land itself, but the owners of land could be com-
pelled to compensate the dispossessed out of their revenues.
This compensation fund would be raised out of a succession
duty of 10 per cent upon inheritances passing in the direct
line, and of twice as much upon those passing to collateral
heirs. A fund of 5| millions would thus be raised annually,
which would be sufficient for the purposes indicated. Similar
proposals had already found a place in Paine's Rights of Man.
Paine's imderlying idea— that the landowners ought to com-
pensate the common folk for the loss of their rights in the
land — was seized upon by Cobbett as the basis of his opposi-
tion to the Poor Law of 1834. Cobbett regarded the Poor
Rate as the compensation fund, and taught that the receipt
of rehef was a right and not charity.

Closely allied with these three agrarian reformers, and
standing, too, under the influence of Rousseau and the RigUs
of Man, is Charles Hall. Hall's book, however, by its greater
economic insight, as well as the incisive attack upon the
developing industrial system, forms a transition between the
criticism of the agrarian system and the anti-capitalistic
teachings which followed the publication of Ricardo's work
in 1819. It was pubhshed in 1805 under the title Effects of

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 37

Civilisation on the People in European States.^ Hall was a
doctor of medicine of considerable attainments who, soon
after he gave to the world his famous book, was consigned to
the Fleet Prison for debt, and died there about 1820 at the
age of eighty. It was natural that a man so circumstanced
should take the pessimistic view of civilisation made current
by Eousseau's famous Discourse. Hall's work is a terrific
denunciation of the oppression of the poor which seems to
be the inevitable consequence of the existing state of society.
As a doctor of medicine Hall was acquainted to the fuU
with the terrible effects of extreme poverty and overwork
undertaken in pestilential factories. These evils are the result
of two great faults in the organism of society — Private Property
and Manuiactures. The latter is even worse in its conse-
quences than the former. By their means Civilisation divides
mankind into Rich and Poor, and gives the former power to
oppress the latter. Riches is a power directed to oppression.
No despotism is worse than that of Capital. Capital is the
means whereby the Rich rob the Poor of the larger part of their
produce. It is not Nature, as Malthus declares, who condemns
the Poor to poverty, starvation, and death, but Capital.
Capital is given in the form of wages and material to the
labourer that he may produce more goods, but even the goods
given as capital were originally taken from the labourer. The
latter is powerless to keep more than a very small share of his
produce because he is at the mercy of the Rich, and the law
will not allow him to combine with his fellows for better pro-
tection. The development of manufactures has not, as Adam
Smith declared, freed the workers from dependence, but has
plunged them into a worse slavery than ever. It is a slavery
which propagates disease, vice, ignorance, and revolution.
Manufactures are withdrawing labour from agriculture and so
increasing the cost of food. Hunger is added to other evUs.
The more manufactures develop, the greater the gulf between
rich and poor. Such a tendency will end in social anarchy
and revolt, out of which, as in France, a mihtary despotism
will assuredly arise. But the rich may prevent this by declar-
ing a war. The war against France is a case in point.

Hall's furious analysis ought logically to lead to sweeping
proposals of remedy, but these are of the most modest de-
scription, amounting to no more than the abolition of primo-
geniture and the restriction of manufacture of articles of luxury.

J Niehuus, aa above, pp. 67-76, analyses Hall's work.

38 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

This logical anti-climax is a feature of nearly all the earlier
writings of this school. It results partly from a want of sound
economic teaching — a want which the yet indeterminate state
of the science could not supply. It is due partly no doubt to a
typically English unwillingness to push the arguments based
upon natural rights to a logical conclusion. Later Socialist
writers worked with better materials than Hall. They used
the theoretical groundwork furnished by David Eicardo
(1772-1823) and the practical experiments of Eobert Owen
(1771-1858).

^ The second decade of the nineteenth century saw an im-
portant advance in socialistic theory. The violent fluctuations
in trade, the advance of factory production, the dismal con-
ditions which followed the end of the great war, the panic-
stricken measures of the Government to repress popular
movement, and the increasing unrest of the manufacturing
population, all seemed to attest the truth of Hall's most
pessimistic prophecies. On the other hand, socialist thought
received important reinforcements. In 1813 appeared Robert
Owen's 'Mew View of Society, which came as a gospel of hope
and happiness to many who desired the welfare of their fellows.
It held out a promise of infallible success in the improvement
of the lot of the poor and the oppressed. In 1817 appeared
Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, the
indirect source of nearly all socialist economics.

Owen, it is true, remained almost untouched by the develop-
ment of economic theory. He was an empiric from first to
last. His first work, the New View, contained the essence of
all his teaching — that any character, from the best to the worst,
may be given to any community by the application of the
proper means, which means are generally under the control
of those who have influence in human afiairs. In itself this
doctrine, that human character was the creation of environment,
was by no means new. It had been almost a commonplace
in pre-revolutionary France. But backed as it was by the
evidence of the marvellous work accomphshed at New Lanark
by Owen himself, " by the application of suitable means,"
Owen's teaching at once acquired commanding authority.
It at once became the theoretical and practical stand-by of the
Factory Reformers. It taught others to see in a properly
constituted government the means of social regeneration. It
was therefore a chief source of Chartist theory. Many leading
Chartists, Lovett, O'Brien, Hetherington, Watson, Dr. Wade,

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 39

and others, began their public career under Owen's auspices.
Owen himself was hostile to extensive political action and dis-
trustful of popular control, so that he and his special followers,
who took the name Socialists, kept steadfastly apart from all
political movements and propagated their teachings in the
form of Communism. Owen was neither a politician nor a
demagogue. He appeared . only once as a popular leader.
That was during 1829 to 1834, when he inspired the Co-opera-
tive Labour Exchange and Syndicalist movements, which will
be dealt with later.

It was Ricardo's fate, whilst writing what was intended to be
at once an explanation and a defence of the capitalistic system
of production, to furnish the enemies of capitaHsm with their
most deadly weapons. Modern economists have felt it incum-
bent upon them to modify or reject the Ricardian premises
which led to such astounding and subversive conclusions.^
The discussion as to what Rioardo actually did mean, or what
he took for granted, may safely be left to experts. It is suffi-
cient to indicate those points upon which anti-capitalistic
theory seized. These relate of course to the claims of Labour.
Ricardo says, for instance, that " the comparative quantity of
labour " is " the foundation of the exchangeable value of all
things," and that this doctrine is " of the utmost importance in
political economy," ^ Further, he speaks of the " relative
quantity of labour as almost exclusively determining the
relative values of commodities." ' Though he introduces
reservations allowing that labour apphed to making of tools,
implements, and buildings, that the elements of time, risk,
rate of profits, and quahty of labour also influence value, he
keeps these reservations in water-tight compartments and
permits the superficial reader to assume that they are of no
importance in comparison with the great fact of Labour. The
rough-and-ready conclusion was drawn — Labour is the source
and measure of Value.* In the hands of an ingenious writer
hke Hodgskin the reservations are indeed noted, but only to be
swept away. As tools, implements, and buildings are created
by labour, their value too depends upon the labour expended

1 E.g. Marshal], Principles, p. 561.

2 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 3rded. 1821, oh. i. sect. 1.

3 Ibid. sect. 2.

* William Thompson, On the Distribution of Wealth (edition of 1850),
sect. 1 ; " Wealth is produced by Labour : no other ingredient hut Labour
makes any object of desire an object of wealth. Labour is the sole imiversal
measure as well as the characteristic distinction of wealth." " Wealth
is any object of desire produced by labour." " Labour is the Bole parent
of wealth."

40 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

upon them, and tie claim of the capitalist to a reward for their
use is without foundation. The quality of labour is of no
account, as aU labour is equally necessary.

The " natural price of labour is that price which is necessary
to enable the labourers one with another to subsist and to
perpetuate their race without either increase or diminution."
" The market price for labour is the price which is reaUy paid
for it. . . . However much the market price m^y deviate from
its natural price it has, like commodities, a tendency to con-
form to it." It is pretty clear that Eicardo did not mean the
absolute a,nd indispensable minimum of necessaries of Ufe
when he referred to " subsisting," but spoke of the " comforts
which custom renders absolute necessaries." That is, not mere
subsistence level, but the customary standard of Ufe was the
basis on which the natural price of labour was to be calculated.
But such qualifications could hardly hold their own against
such language as, "It is only after their privations have
reduced their number, or the demand for labour has increased,
that the market price of labour will rise to its natural price." ^

The question naturally suggested itself. What proportion
did the reward of labour bear to the value created by labour ?
This question was solved to the great satisfaction of Sociahsts by
a reference to the statistics of Patrick Colquhoim. Colquhoun
demonstrated, apparently on insufficient evidence, that the
national income in 1812-13 was 430 millions. Of this the
working classes, including the army, navy, and paupers,
received somewhere about one quarter.^ Clearly, therefore,
the labourer, so far from receiving the value his labour
created, received only one quarter, the remainder being
distributed amongst capitalists, landlords, and Government
in the shape of profits, rents, and taxes. This statement
of the case was improved upon by later writers who assumed
that the proportion received by the labourer was decreasing.
HodgsMn speaks of the labourer's having to make six loaves
before he can eat one.

Here, then, was capitalistic economy convicted out of the
mouth of its greatest champion, and a host of writers seized
upon the damning evidence and hammered it at white heat
into a terrific indictment of the greed and rapacity of capital-
ists, landlords, and " tax-eaters." Socialists, like James O'Brien,

1 Eicardo, Principles of PolUicdl Economy and Taxation, chap. v.

2 Beer, p. 162. Colqutoun's book, published In 1814, was a Treatise
on the Population, Wealth, Power, and Resources of the British Empire in
every Quarter of the World.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 41

and Eadicals, like Cobbett, argued themselves into tempestuous
incoherence, whilst lesser men, like certain of the Chartist
leaders, decorated their speeches with phrases culled from the
writings of their betters, and perorated in pseans of praise upon
the virtues of the producers of all wealth, and in torrents of
vituperation upon the robbers who stole it from them.

Thomas HodgsMn was the first of the popular writers to take
advantage of Ricardo's work. Ricardian economics had been
the stand-by of the employers in the Trade Union controversy
of 1824-25. Their argument, put briefly, was : high wages,
low profits ; low profits, slow accumulation of capital ; slower
accumulation, less capital ; less capital, diminished demand
for labour ; diminished demand for labour, collapse of wages ;
hence poverty, distress, privation at work to redress the balance
upset by high wages and large families. Therefore all depended
upon keeping up rate of profits. This constituted the claim
of capital to a share of the produce of industry. It was this
claim which HodgsMn proceeded to refute in his famous little
pamphlet, called Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital,
or the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved (1825).

The argument commences with a statement of Ricardo's
definitions. Commodities are produced by the united applica-
tion of Labour, Capital, and Land, and are divided between
the owners of these. The share of the landlord is rent, but as
rent is merely a surplus of the fertile over the less fertile land,
it cannot keep the labourer poor. The share of the labourer
is that quantity necessary to enable the labourers one with
another to subsist and perpetuate their race without either
increase or diminution. The share of capital is all that remains
after the landlord's surplus and this bare subsistence of the
labourer have been deducted. On what grounds does Capital
claim this large share ? M'CuUoch repUes that Capital enables
us to execute work that could not otherwise be performed :
it saves labour and it enables us to produce things better
and more expeditiously. MiU says that Capital suppUes the
labourer with tools and raw materials. For this the owner
expects a reward. Capital is also an agent combining with
labour to produce commodities. Further, the capitalist saves
and accumulates more capital upon which Labour depends.
For all this Capital deserves reward. HodgsHn proceeds to
examine these ideas.

The goods which are given to the labourer to maintain him
until his wares are brought to market are not the result of

42 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

accumulation or saving but of concurrent production by other
labourers. The labourer has indeed no stock of food and
clothing, but neither has the capitalist. The capitalists do not
possess one week's stock of food and clothing for the labourers
they employ. These goods are being concurrently produced
by other groups of labourers. Food at least cannot be stored
up. In fact, the only thing which can safely be said to be stored
up is the skill of the labourer. If this were not so, the various
commodities could never be produced at all. Each set of
labourers relies upon the due performance by the other sets
of their stipulated social tasks. This is clearly true where
industrial operations are not completed within the year and
there can be no exchange of products. It is not capital which
stores up this skilled labour, but wages and parental care. In
fact, the reason why capital is able to support and employ
labour is that capital implies already the command of some
labour and not the accumulation of goods.

It is true that Fixed Capital does increase the productivity
of labour to an immense degree. But obviously these instru-
ments of production are themselves the produce of labour.
The economists say that they are stored-up labour and as such
entitled to payment. But they are not stored up but used.
They derive their utility from present labour and not because
they are the result of past labour. Everything depends upon
the use made of these machines, and peculiar skiU is required
of the labourer in using them. In the creation of fixed capital
three things are required : knowledge and inventive genius ;
manual dexterity to make the machines ; sMU to use them.
The great services of fixed capital are due to these qualities
and not to the dead machines. And when did an inventor
receive the due reward of his genius ?

Circulating capital does not, hke fixed capital, add to the
productivity of labour, but the capitalist claims the same rate
of profit on both. In either case the profit is derived from the
power capital gives over labour. This power is of old standing,
and is derived in the first instance from the monopoly of land and
the state of slavery which consequently ensued.

The position of the capitalist is as follows. One set of
labourers is making food ; another is making clothing.
Between them steps in the capitalist and appropriates in the
process of exchange the larger part of the produce of both.
He separates the two groups so that both believe that they
depend upon him for their subsistence. The result is that the

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 43

labourer must give at least six times as much labour to acqmre
a particular commodity as that commodity would require to
make. For one loaf the labourer must give the labour of six. i
The capitalist therefore imposes an infinitely worse tax upon
labour than the Corn Laws, but he is sufficiently influential to
make it appear that the latter alone are the cause of all the
evils under which the labourer sufEers.

Under the present system Mr. Ricardo is perfectly correct
in stating that the labourer will only obtain from the capitalist
as much as will enable him to maintain his kind without
increase or decrease. The exactions of capital are the cause
of poverty.

In the concluding part of his argument HodgsMn displays
the characteristic moderation of the earlier writers. Capital
being unproductive, it follows that the labourer ought to receive
the whole produce of his labour. But how is this to be deter-
mined, seeing that no labourer produces any commodity
independently ? It can only be determined by the judgment
of the labourers themselves as to the value of their labour.
Hence the labourers ought to be free to bargain and, if
necessary, to combine for the purpose.

HodgsMn allows that the capitalist who directs labour
deserves a reward as a working man ; but the idle capitahst
has no claim at all upon the produce of labour. Trade union
action will be good so far as it deprives the idle capitalist of
his profits, and bad if it puts the industrious employer out of
action.

Thus the whole of the elaborate argument ends in a justi-
fication of Trade Unionism. It has an atmosphere of arti-
ficiality and sophistry which would rob it of all value for a
modern reader. It depends too much for its efiect upon the
exploitation of the false and verbal distinctions which marred
contemporary economic theory. It is clever rather than con-
vincing. It is weak at the one point where it ought to have
been strong, namely, the explanation of capital as power over
labour. He takes refuge in remote historical theory. Whilst
he acknowledges the services which management of industry
confers, he justifies a refusal to pay higher wages to the master
than to the labourer on the ground that all labour is equally
necessary in society — a manifestly false conception.

From the " wrong twist," which Eicardo unconsciously
and Hodgskin consciously had given to economic theory, de-
veloped several divergent lines of radical and socialist doctrine.

44 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

On the one hand there was the revolutionary pessimistic
school, represented by James O'Brien, who pushed the appar-
ent admissions of Ricardo (with whose views Malthus was
associated) to a terrifying conclusion, and prophesied a revolu-
tionary termination to the oppression of capital. The present
system condemned the poor to eternal and undiminishing
poverty, whilst the rich throve on the surplus value extracted
from the labour of the poor. The right of the labourer to the
whole produce of his labour became an axiom. But the gulf
between the practical wrongs of labour and its theoretical
rights would grow until it was filled with the debris of the
shattered capitalistic system. Then would miUtant labour
march across and take possession of its true and undiminished
heritage.

The other school, represented by WiUiam Thompson and
J. F. Bray,'^ was more scientific in its methods, more positive in
its conclusions, and less mihtant in its language. Thompson and
Bray devoted themselves to further analysis of the conception
of surplus value — ^the five loaves which HodgsMn's labourer
produces but does not receive ; they also examined the mech-
anism of exchange, through which, as Hodgskin suggests, the
extraction of surplus value is accompUshed. In both respects
they left very little for later thinkers to add to the results of
their inquiry. Both writers were much imder the influence
of Robert Owen, and saw in Owen's co-operative communities
the solution of the problem. The labourer could only obtain
the fuU produce of his labour in communities in which co-opera-
tive production, voluntary exchange, and co-operative distri-
bution were the basis of industrial organisation. They were
therefore enthusiastic advocates of the Owenite schemes.
They were not popular writers in the sense that Hodgskin was.
Their works were excellently written, but they were without
popular appeal. They wrote with the serene tranquilhty of
men who awaited with sure and certain hope the accomphsh-
ment of their highest desires. They wrote for a small circle,
and their task was to give a scientific foundation to the purely
empiric notions of Owen. But the mass of working people
whom the teachings of Owen reached interpreted them in
the light of bitter experience, and had little patience with the
ideal schemes of Thompson and his friends.

Manifold was the influence of this body of doctrine upon

1 Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy, or the Age of Might and the
Age of Btght, Leeds, 1839.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 45

the mind of the worldng class. Various truths had been
established. The industrial system was flagrantly unjust. The
power of capital was founded upon robbery perpetrated
generations ago. It was exercised to rob the labourer of three-
quarters, nay, five-sixths, of the wealth he created, and to
keep him, his fellows, and his posterity, down to the uttermost
minimum of subsistence, leaving him a prey to the competing
demons of high wages with over-population, and low wages with
privations. The monopoly of capital was the great social
evil ; the destruction of it was the basis of future happiness.
The source of all the ills under which the labouring class suffered
was revealed. Low wages, fluctuations, insecurity, bad houses,
disease, poverty, pauperism, ignorance, and vice — all this was
the work of the twin monopoHes of land and capital.

The decade 1825-1835 was a very critical period in the
history of the working classes of this country. A multitude
of hopes and fears, of excitements both internal and external
in origin, played upon the minds of the industrious masses.
The Industrial Eevolution was extending its sway; the im-
proved power-loom of 1825 and the locomotives of 1830 repre-
sented its latest triumphs. The commercial crisis of 1826 was a
threatening omen, whilst the emancipation acts of 1828 and
1829 inspired hopes of poUtical freedom which rose sky-high
with the death of George IV., the return of a reform ministry,
and the news of the July Revolution in France. The agitation
of 1830-32 for the Reform Bill was mainly political in character,
and suspended temporarily agitations of a very different nature.
Among these was the Trade Union movement which had taken
a new lease of life since 1825, when it had been reheved from
the worst of its legal restrictions.

The new Unionism derived its economics from Hodgskin,
and its inspiration from Robert Owen. Owen's chief merit was
that he filled the working classes with renewed hope at a time
when the pessimism, both of orthodox economists and of
their unorthodox opponents, had condemned labour to be an
appendage of machinery, a mere commodity whose value, like
that of all commodities, was determined by the bare cost of
keeping up the necessary supply. Owen laid stress upon the >
human side of economics. The object of industry was to
produce happier and more contented men and women. It
had not done so hitherto because of the bad system of distri-
bution and exchange. To cure this, Owen made two proposals.
The first was a co-operative system of production and distri-

46 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

bution which took form in the co-operative comiminities set
up under his auspices. The other was the restoration of the
natural standard of exchange, namely, the labour standard,
which had been superseded by the introduction of money.
Owen had that incomparable and serene self-confidence
which made his Utopian proposals ring Hke a revelation in
the minds of those who listened. They were led to beheve
that there was an infallible short-cut out of the Slough of
Despond to the Celestial City. There was consequently a
tremendous outburst of Owenite literature and a rapid
growth of Owenite societies between 1825 and 1830. It
was during this period that Hodgskin, Gray, and Thompson
added their quota to the mass of criticism directed against
existing society and its economic theory. Co-operative
trading societies, societies for the spread of co-operative (that
is, Owenite) education, exchange bazaars based upon labour
value, and attempts to set up co-operative or commun-
istic colonies, all flowed from the inspiration of Owen. But the
greatest Owenite triumph of these years was the capture of
the Trade Union movement in 1832-34.

Since the revival of 1825 Trade Unionism had developed
in the direction of action upon a large scale. The constant
defeat of local unions produced the belief that successful action
was only possible when the whole of the workers in an industry
were brought into line. This belief was apphed first in Lanca-
shire, which county, by reason of the greater concentration
of workers and factories, ofiered the most favourable theatre
for industrial warfare. A great general union or federation,
in which all parts of the United Kingdom were represented,
was attempted in the cotton industry in 1830. It was followed
by a stUl larger union including other trades and calling itself
"National." In 1832 this was followed by the Builders'
Union, which in its turn was superseded by the largest scheme
of all in 1834 — the Grand National Consolidated Trades
Union. This last was a purely Owenite scheme. It included
a vast variety of trades- — agricultural workers, both skUled
and unskilled, bonnet-makers, tailors, hosiers and framework
knitters, gas-workers, builders, textile workers of all sorts,
engineers, and cabinet-makers.

Owen's idea was that of a glorified Exchange Bazaar, with
which he had been experimenting in London in 1832. The
producers in each branch of industry were to be organised into
National Companies. Production would be regulated by a

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 47

central organisation, and exchange would be carried out on
the basis, presumably, of labour value, or perhaps exchange
would be dispensed with and the distribution of goods be
performed by the central body on some equitable plan. To
organise such a scheme would have taxed the resources of a
modern state to the uttermost, and to control hundreds of
thousands of harassed and oppressed workers, brimming with
renewed hopes, burning with zeal and fired with indignation
against their old enemy, Capital, was a task from which the
boldest modern Labour leader would shrink. But the serene
optimism of Owen saw only the promised land, the perils of
, the way being ignored. The members of the Union pressed
recklessly on. The first step was to acquire the means of
production, and to achieve this a series of strikes on a hitherto
unheard-of scale was instituted. Weapons of terrorism were
not eschewed. But the assault failed : the organisation was
too weak, Government came to the aid of capital, the law was
invoked, and the movement smashed.

There were clearly many aspects of the activity of Owen,
and each was represented by a different group of disciples.
There was first the little group which drank the pure water of
Communism — Gray, Thompson, Bray, Pare, Lloyd Jones,
and their followers, who took the name of Socialists. This was
a select body and came comparatively little into the hght of
publicity. There were also groups of factory reformers,
. such as those who formed the Society for Social Regeneration
— a tjrpically Owenite designation. This was led by Fielden of
Todmorden, and was connected with local societies throughout
the North of England. Educationalists in plenty derived
inspiration from Owen. They, however, concern us little.
There were also the half-converted Trade Unionists whose
movement collapsed in 1834. Not the least important of the
Owenite converts, however, was the little group of London
artisans whose story is related by William Lovett the Chartist,
and to whose activities the Chartist Movement owes its origin.

Socially and politically London differed considerably from
the manufacturing towns of the North and Midlands in
1830, and this difierence was then greater than it is now,
when the more general diffusion of wealth and learning
has considerably lessened the supremacy of London in these
respects. London was then probably the only EngHsh city in
which there was a considerable body of highly skilled artisans,
for there alone was there a large wealthy and leisured class

48 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

whose wants could find employment for skilled handicraft.
The manufacturers of the north, even when wealthy, did not
always adopt a style of living commensurate with their
earnings, for they often lacked the tastes which accompany
hereditary riches. But London was alike the centre of
society, fashion, politics, affairs, law, medicine and letters.
It was the home, for part of the year at least, of an enormous
proportion of the wealthy and leisured class. To meet their

• needs arose vast numbers of superior craftsmen, employed upon
the better-class wares which found their best market in West-
minster and the City. The political and commercial life of
the metropolis furnished the most important of these artisans,
from the political point of view. These were the compositors,
employed upon the various newspapers and in the printing and
publishing houses. These were necessarily men of fair education,
keen intelligence, and of some acquaintance with the afiairs
of the world.

Apart from their superior rates of pay, these artisans of the
capital had various other advantages over the mass of working
people elsewhere. They had strong trade societies in which

•• they were able to maintain apprenticeship regulations and
high rates of wages, and as experts in trade union methods
they were well acquainted with the problems of agitation
and organisation.^ Living as they did in the centre of aSairs,
these men enjoyed opportunities of education and of inter-
course which were far beyond what the " provincial " centres
could provide. The districts of London were not then so
specialised nor the difierent social classes so segregated as
they have since become, under the influence of improved com-
munications. The central districts. Charing Cross, Soho,
Seven Dials, Holborn, Fleet Street and the City, contained a
very mixed population in which Francis Place the tailor kept
shop a few doors away from the Duke of Northumberland's
town house. Seven Dials and Spitalfields, and parts of
Holborn contained festering rookeries in which pauperised sUk-
weavers, labourers, and criminals found a refuge. The excellent
little group of men who founded the London Working Men's
Association hved in the district between Tottenham Court
Road, Gray's Inn Lane, Charing Cross, and Fleet Street.
Here during the late 'twenties and the early 'thirties flourished
political and social discussion of every description. Dr. Birk-
beck had started theJLondon Mechanics' Institution, which still

1 E.g. Lovett'B difflonlty with the Cabinetmakers' Union.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 49

exists as the Birkbeck College, where in 1827 Thomas Hodgskin
was appointed lecturer in political economy. Place's shop
at Charing Cross was the focus of middle-class radicalism.
Eichard Carlile's shop in Fleet Street, his sometime shopman
James Watson's shop in Bunhill Fields, disseminated radical
and anti-Christian literature and kept alive the radical
traditions of 1816-1822, associated with the names of Wade,
Wooler, Carlile himself, Henry Hunt, and William Benbow.
Carlile ran the Eotunda, a building not far from the southern
end of Blackfriars Bridge, in which working men radicals
met frequently in eager and heated debate. John Gale Jones,
a hero of the London Corresponding Society, was a favourite
speaker there. Various coffee-houses, such as Lovett's,
were equally well known centres of radical intercourse. The
debates in the House of Commons, the latest scandal which
threw light upon the degenerate character of the aristocracy,
the astounding events in France, the latest Owenite idea,
Cobbett's speeches, the vices of the Established Church, and
the evil consequences of priestcraft, Hodgskin's economics,
the reputation of Malthus and Ricardo, aU these in their infinite
variety were subjects of general discussion in these rendezvous
of the London artisans. Ever since the days of Pitt and Fox,
Westminster had been the scene of exciting political Ufe. It
was one of the largest constituencies, with ten thousand
electors, and its franchise was wide. Westminster was,
needless to say, therefore a radical constituency, and its radical
vote had been organised on a system which anticipated
Chamberlain's Birmingham caucus, by Francis Place, amongst
whose followers many of the better-class artisans must be
reckoned.

Amongst these London artisans the radical tradition had
always been strong. The London Corresponding Society had
risen from amongst London artisans, and two of its greatest
members, Gale Jones and Francis Place, were stiU active in
poUtical affairs down to 1838, by which time the radical tide
had mingled with the sociahst torrent. The struggles of
CarlUe, Wade, and Wooler for freedom of press and conscience
had preserved the radical idea in those days after 1819, when
organised agitation was an ofience punishable by transporta-
tion. After 1825, however, the younger generation of working
men in London began to drift over to the new doctrines of
social rights promulgated by Hall, Thompson, Hodgskin,
Gray, and above all Robert Owen. Hodgskin lectured at the

50 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

London Mechanics' Institution on political economy from 1827.
Whilst Hodgskin proAdded the weapons for the attack upon
the existing system, it was Owen who provided the ideal of the
new.

Owen, however, never commanded the entire allegiance of
the mass of London working men, owing to his dislike of
political methods, and his condemnation of the radical re-
formers. They therefore took up his ideas in a form which,
though acceptable to themselves, cut them away from the
thoroughgoing disciples who believed in the communistic idea.
Thus they formed in the spring of 1829, whilst Owen was away
in America, the First London Co-operative Trading Associa-
tion and a sister society, the British Association for Promoting
Co-operative Knowledge. The first was an experiment in
retaU trading, which, it was hoped, would lead to the accumu-
lation of capital in the hands of associations of working men,
and ultimately to the capture of all national trade and industry
by such associations. This was perhaps the first working-
class experiment in Owenism, and illustrates the sanguine
optimism which the Owenite teachings produced. The second
was a propagandist body and was instrumental in setting up
a number of other societies throughout London, which led to
the conversion of very many workiiig men to socialistic ideas.
Although Owen, on his return, laughed in a benevolent fashion
at these puny efforts, he did not hesitate to use the material
thus provided to set up his Labour Exchange scheme in 1832.
Its failure no doubt confirmed the leaders of the working
men in their view that the regeneration of society could not
be accomplished without the aid of political power, and that
democracy was the necessary preUminary to social justice.

These views were specially represented by the National
Union of the Working Classes and Others which grew out of
the British Association for the Promotion of Co-operative
Knowledge on the latter's decease early in 1831.^ The hopes
of pohtical radicals ran high in these days, and the National
Union took a great part in fomenting the general excitement.
The members were bitterly opposed to the Reform BUI of 1832,

1 There is apparently some confusion in the narratlTe given by Place
and followed by Beer, p. 239 (Wallas, pp. 269, etc.) as to the origin of the
National Union of the Working Classes. There are, in fact, two stories,
which are probably duplicates. There is an account in Lovett's hand-
writing in Additional MSS. 27,822, pp. 17 et sea., in which the National
Union, eto^, is deriyed from the Brilish Association for Promoting Oo-
operatiye Knowledge. On the close anticipation of the Chartist programme
by this society see E. DolWans, Le Ohartisme, i. 26-29. Lovefi, Watson,
Hetherlngton and Cleave were its leading spirits.

ANTI-CAPITALISTIC ECONOMICS 51

which, was in truth but a very small instalment of democracy,
and their conduct and language increased in violence as the
prospects of a middle-class victory in the reform campaign
became brighter. With the passing of the BiU the com-
bination of political disappointment with anti-capitahst
notions caused vague ideas of class war to take clearer shape
and become as unquestioned truths in the minds of the working
men. These views are aheady prevalent in the debates of the
National Union as reported in the Poor Man's Guardian.

CHAPTER IV

THE LONDON WORKING MBN'S ASSOCIATION AND THE PEOPLE'S
CHARTER (1836-1839)

The London Working Men's Association was the last of a
series of similar organisationsj extending as far back as 1829,
and iQcIuding the First London Co-operative Trading Associa-
tion, the British Association for Promoting Co-operative
Knowledge, and the National Union of the Working Classes
and Others, which covered the period from 1829 to 1833. The
character of these bodies has already been described. They
present a gradual evolution from " voluntary communism to
^social democracy," ^ that is, from non-political Owenism to a
belief that democracy is the necessary prehminary to social
equity and justice. This evolution was modified by two events
which had a very disturbing influence upon the minds of think-
ing working men. The Reform Bill of 1832 was a profound
disappointment to them, and the sudden attack by the new
middle-class Parliament upon the Trade Unions, ending in
the barbarous sentence on the Dorchester Labourers in 1834,
was a stiU greater blow. The ideas of the working classes
took on a sharper edge. The Reform Bill and the Dorchester
Labourers' case were regarded as cause and efiect ; the middle
class were using their newly acquired political supremacy to
further their economic interests. Hence the idea of class war,
which made the possession of political power more essential
than ever to the working classes. Without the franchise the
working men would be absolutely at the mercy of the midd,le
class. — '^,

The National Union faded away during 1833-34 on the rise '
of militant Owenism in the shape of the Grand National Con-

1 Wallas, lAfe of Francis Place, p. 269.
52

LONDON WOEKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 53

solidated Trades Union. The little group of men, from whose
exertions the whole series of unions and associations took its
rise, had already for some time been devoting themselves to
another agitation, the object this time being the abolition of
the stamp duty on newspapers. This agitation had achieved
a partial victory in 1836, when the stamp'duty was reduced
from fourpence to one penny. This was a solid gain to working
men, to whom the newspaper became for the first time access-
ible. Within a year or two of the reduction there was a rapid
growth of popular, radical newspapers which played a very
important part in the Chartist movement itself. This agita-
tion had been carried through largely by the exertions of five
men — Francis Place, Wilham Lovett, Henry Hetherington,
John Cleave, and James Watson, who had been the leading
spirits ever since 1829.

William Lovett was thirty-six years of age in 1836. He
was born at Penzance in Cornwall of humble parentage. His
father, whom he lost when he was stiU an infant, was the captain
of a small trading vessel. His mother reared him upon stern
Methodist lines. He was sent to two or three schools at
which he acquired some acquaintance with the three E's.
He served an apprenticeship to rope-making, but his tastes lay
more in the direction of cabinet-making wMch he contrived to
learn in his spare time.^ In 1821 he migrated to London, and
after some difficulty he succeeded in obtaining entrance to the
trade and society of the Cabinetmakers, of which society he
eventually became President.^ He thus took a place in the
van of the trade union movement, to which he was able to
render able service. He was methodical, careful, and business-
like, qualities which were highly prized in those early days,
when there were few to whom correspondence, the keeping of
books, accounts, and minutes could be safely entrusted.
Lovett was the universal secretary.

Lovett's political education began in a small literary society
called the " Liberals," of which he gives us no details.* He
joined the London Mechanics' Institute, where he heard
Birkbeck, and probably Hodgskin, lecture. He also heard
Eichard Carhle and Gale Jones speak in the various cofiee-
houses where radicals congregated. From Carhle he derived
a hatred of dogmatic and intolerant Christianity and was
persuaded " that Christianity was not a thing of form and

1 lAle and Struggles, pp. 1-10. ^ ibid. pp. 24-32.

s Ibid. pp. 34 et seq.

54 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

profession for mercenary idlers to profit by," ^ a belief whicli
led bim into disputation witb his wife who was a devout
Cburchwoman. Hetberington certainly and Watson probably
shared these views too.

Lovett's radical views were quickly reinforced by the
teachings of Hodgskin, Owen, and others. He became an
enthusiastic believer in Owenism. He was storekeeper for
the First London Co-operative Trading Association in 1829.

I was induced to believe that the gradual acoumulation of
capital by these means would enable the working classes to form
themselves mto joint stock associations of labour, by which (with
industry, skUl, and knowledge) they might ultimately have the
trade, manufacture, and commerce of the country in their own
hands.*

He continued to take an active part in the Owenite pro-
paganda down to the failure of the famous Labour Exchange
Bazaar which was founded in 1832, but with the militant
Owenism of 1834 he had nothing to do, devoting himself to
his own afiairs and the Newspaper Tax campaign. He was also
a prominent member of the National Union of the Working
Classes, and took a great part in its activities.

Lovett's expressions of his political and social opinions are
comparatively rare, but one or two may be cited. In 1836 we
find him arguing in the columns of Hetherington's Twopenny
Dispatch.^ Individualism is the great cause of the evil lot of

■^the working classes. The right of individual property in
land, machinery, and productive power ; the right of individual

^accumulation of wealth, " which enables one man to engross
for luxury what would suffice to make thousands happy " ; and

^ the right to buy and sell human labour by which the multitude
are made subservient to the few — these are fountains of social
injustice. Through these rights guaranteed by existing laws,
industry is improperly directed to enriching the few instead of
benefiting the many. Individual property means individual
interests and a tendency under any form of government to influ-
ence legislation in favour of individual interests. The Corn
Laws are a case in point. Individual interest and not surplus
population is the root of social evQ. Lovett is thus a social
revolutionary. Permanent social happiness is to be expected
only from the substitution of some higher principle than self-

1 Life and Struggles, p. 37. 2 /jrf(j. p. 41.

3 September 10, 1836.

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 55

interest as the basis of human society. Without this, changes
in the form of government are futile.

At the same time the enfranchisement of the people under
a truly democratic system would be a step towards bringing
about this substitution. Thus Lovett in a conversation with
Place in 1837 : " People would contend for a better state if
they had political power." Place : " No, if they had intelli-
gence." ^ Lovett undoubtedly agreed with Place. AH his life
Lovett believed that education was the indispensable prehmin-
ary to social regeneration. It was not so much intellectual
conviction as a passionate sense of the injustice of things as
they were that drove him into political agitation.^

On a later occasion Lovett expressed himself at greater
length upon the evils of individual accumulation of capital.
The primary evil is the trafficking in human labour.

This he conceived to be a pernicious principle in society. We
admitted an individual to avail himself of the small savings of his
own industry, or it may be of the assistance of his friends, and with
these means thus to trafflck in human labour, to buy it cheap and
sell it dear, and as his means increased, to purchase machinery
or other productive powers, and thus to supersede human labour.
The fruits thus accumulated we allow him to transmit to his children :
they, becoming rich, intermarry and mix with the aristocracy, and
thus by this principle we are building up exclusion and corruption
on the one hand faster than we can reform evils on the other.'

Lovett was a tall, thin man with a delicate frame and an
ardent spirit. A description by an admirer runs thus :

Mr. Lovett is a tall, gentlemanly-looking man with a high and
ample forehead, a pale, contemplative cast of countenance, dark-
brown hair, and possessing altogether a very prepossessing exterior,
in manner quiet, modest and unassuming, speaking seldom, but
when he does so, always with the best efiect. His voice is good
though not powerful, his figure commanding, and the slow, clear
and distinot enunciation of lus thoughts at once arrests the attention
and sympathy of his audience.*

Place's description is more critical :

Lovett was a journeyman cabinet-maker, a man of melancholy
temperament, soured with the perplexities of the world. He was

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 263. ^ ^

2 W. J. Linton, Memories, p. 40 : " Lovett was the gentlest of agitators,
a mild, peaoe-loTlng man, whom nothing but a deep sense of sympathy with
and duty towards the wronged could have dragged Into public life."

3 The Charter, February 17, 1839, p. 51. „ „
* Brief Sketches of the Birmingham Conference, 1842.

56 THE CHARin^^Tii!^^m!^j.i j.

however, an honest-hearted man, possessed of great courage and
persevering in his conduct. In his usual demeanour he was mUd
and kind, and entertained kindly feelings towards every one whom
he did not sincerely believe was the intentioned enemy of the work-
ing people ; but when either by circumstances or his own morbid
associations he felt the sense, he was apt to indulge in, of the evils
and wrongs of mankind he was vehement in the extreme. He was
half an Owenite, halt a Hodgskinite, a thorough believer that
accumulation of property in the hands of individuals was the cause
of all the evils that existed.*

And again :

He is a tall, thin, rather melancholy man, in ill-health, to which
he has long been subject, at times he is somewhat hypochondriacal ;
his is a spirit misplaced.'

Lovett was therefore a man of a not unfamiliar revolutionary
type. His was an impulsive and sensitive spirit which, felt
the wrongs and sufierings of others as keenly as those inflicted
upon himself, liable to the extremes of melancholy and of
enthusiasm ; an intellectual revolutionary difiering from his
more reckless colleagues in possessing an austere morality,
unswerving honesty and courage, and a better insight into the
difficulties and dangers which beset the path of the reformer.
Lovett was no orator : sensitive and diffident, and endowed
with but a weak voice, he did not shine in assemblies of any
size. As adviser and administrator he was invaluable. He
was a more competent guide than leader. He lacked the will
to impose himself upon followers, and disdained to gain a pre-
carious authority by exercising the arts of a demagogue, for
which role, indeed, he lacked nearly aU the quali&cations. In
fact Lovett carried his democratic ideas to the extreme of
repudiating leadership altogether * — an idea which he perhaps
owed to Hodgskin who, we are told by Place, was an anarchist.
This, unfortunately, was neither good theory nor good practice.
Good leadership was exactly what the working people wanted
in those days. Leaders they had and Lovett was the best of
them.

Henry Hetherington was eight years older than Lovett.
He was a compositor by trade and had spent a little time abroad
in Belgium. He, Uke Lovett, was educated in the radical and
Owenite traditions, and was a thoroughgoing free-thinker.
He is described by Place as an honest-hearted fellow who was

1 Additiona] MSS. 27,791, p. 67. 2 Tbid. p. 241.

3 Linton (James Wataon, p. 41) eaya Lovett was " impracticable."

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 57

liable to be imposed upon by rogues. He was the leader of the
working-class agitation for the abolition of the newspaper-
duties. He was the publisher of a series of radical unstampe'd
newspapers of which the most important were the Poor Man's
Guardian, started in 1831 as a weeldy penny paper for the people,
and the Twopenny Dispatch, started in 1835 on the decease of
the Guardian. He was also partially responsible for the
Republican, the Radical, and the Destructive or People's Con-
servative in the years 1831-34. He was an active member of
the various unions of which mention has been made. He was
a better speaker than Lovett, having more confidence and not
being handicapped by physical difficulties. He acted as
missionary for the National Union in 1831.^ He was a down-
right, clear-headed, and trustworthy man. His fight against
the newspaper stamp showed him to be a stubborn and in-
genious campaigner, and he no doubt supplied some of the
qualities in which Lovett was lacking. He was prosperous
in his business after 1835 and was apparently a generous
giver.

Hetherington left behind a remarkable statement of his
views in 1849 :

I calmly and deliberately declare that I do not believe in the
popular notion of the existence of an Almighty, All-Wise and
Benevolent Grod, possessing intelligence and conscious of his own
operations. ... I believe death to. be an eternal sleep. ... I
consider Priestcraft and Superstition the greatest obstacle to human
improvement and happiness. I die with a firm conviction that
Truth, Justice, and Liberty will never be permanently established
on earth till every vestige of Priestcraft and Superstition shall be
utterly destroyed. ... I have ever considered that the only religion
useful to man consists exclusively of the practice of moraUty and
in the mutual exchange of kind actions. In such a religion there
is no room for priests. . . . These are my views and feelings ia
quitting an existence that has been chequered by the plagues and
pleasures of a competitive, scrambling, selfish system : a system
in which the moral and social aspirations of the noblest human
being are nullified by incessant toil and physical deprivations :
by which indeed all men are trained to be either slaves, hypocrites,
or criminals. Hence my ardent attachment to the principles of
that great and good man Robert Owen. I quit this world with
the firm conviction that his system is the only true road to human
emancipation : that it is indeed the only just system for regulating
the affairs of honest, intelUgent human beings — ^the only one yet
made known to the world that is based on truth, justice, and equality.

1 Republican, July 30, 1831.

58 THE CHARTIST MOVifiMJiJNi

While the land, machines, tools, implements of production and the
produce of man's toil are exclusively in possession of the do-nothings,
and labour is the sole possession of the wealth producers — a market-
able commodity, bought up and directed by wealthy idlers, never-
ending misery must be their {sic) inevitable lot. Robert Owen's
system, if rightly understood and faithfully carried out, rectifies
all these anomalies. It makes man the proprietor of his own labour
and of the elements of production : it places him in a condition to
enjoy the entire fruits of his labour, and surrounds him with cir-
cumstances which will make him intelligent, rational, and happy. ^

A powerful testimony indeed to the inspiration and influ-
ence of Robert Owen. Hetherington shared the prevalent
view of his circle that Owen's system could not be carried into
practice until the working classes were enfranchised.^

James Watson was a year older than Lovett, having been
born in Malton in 1799. When eighteen years old he went to
Leeds as a diysaltei's apprentice. There he came into contact
with the struggling radicals of the Carlile - Bamford period,
when radicalism was almost equivalent to high treason. As a
result he volunteered to keep open Richard Carlile's shop
whilst the radical champion was in Dorchester Gaol, and so
reached London in 1822. In the following year he was visited
with the usual penalties and found himself in gaol also, where
he improved his mind with Gibbon, Hume, and other anti-
clerical historians. In 1825 he came into contact with the
generous Julian Hibbert, a scholar and a gentleman of re-
publican ideas, who dragged Watson through a serious illness
and bequeathed to him a sum sufficient to set him up as a
printer and publisher. He took a prominent part, with Lovett,
Hetherington, and others, in the various Owenite ventures from
1828 onwards, and also in the campaign against the newspaper
taxes. In 1834 he was imprisoned for publishing blasphemous
writings. A letter he wrote from Clerkenwell Gaol to his wife,
to whom he was but newly married, shows the same melan-
.choly outlook which we have already observed in Lovett.

Do not let my staidness disconcert you or make you think I
am unhappy. Remember, my dear Ellen, what a school of
adversity I have been trained in, the obstacles I have had to
encounter, the struggles I have had to make ; to which add that
my studies, by choice I admit, have been of a painful kind. The
study of the cause and remedy of human woe has engrossed all
my thoughts.

1 G. J. Holyoake (edited by), lAfe and Character of H. Hetherington, etc.,
1849. 2 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 263.

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 59

His favourite poem, significantly enough, was William
CuUen Bryant's Thanatopsis. Watson was a kindly, lovable
man, an honest Yorkshireman with the broad and generous
qualities bred on the Yorkshire moors, a man^ we are told, after
the fashion of Cromwell's Ironsides.

Watson and Lovett, perhaps Hetherington too, represent
an interesting revolutionary type. They are intellectual men
whom modern education might have lifted into quite other
spheres of life, where their abilities would have found that
expression which poHtical agitation alone seemed to oSer in their
own day. They were men driven into revolutionary thought by
the appalling misery which they saw around them and which
tinged their whole mental outlook with a melancholy which
sought refuge in political agitation. A feeling of baffled help-
lessness in the face of the massed array of vested interests,
ignorance, prejudice, and conservatism added bitterness to
their thoughts. But a horror of violence, of bloodshed, and
of hate deprived them of that callous, calculating recklessness
which is essential to a physical force revolutionary, and they
were helpless in face of such men when the movement which
they started took on the nature of a physical force demon-
stration.^

John Cleave was about the same age as Hetherington. He
was the latter's right-hand man in the agitation for the un-
stamped press. He kept a bookseller's shop in Shoe Lane at
the Holborn end, and was the publisher of the Weekly Police
Gazette, which attained a very large circidation. He was less
refined and perhaps less able than his three colleagues, but he
was a capable and fluent speaker of courage and conviction.
Like Hetherington he was very useful as delegate or missionary.

These were the leading spirits in the London Working Men's
Association which came into existence in the summer of 1836.
We have two accounts of its foundation, from Place and from
Lovett. Place relates how John Black, editor of the Morning
Chronicle,wh.o had assisted very enthusiastically in the campaign
for a free press, and had therefore come into contact with the
Lovett and Hetherington group, tried, during the summer of 1834
when that campaign was at its height, to form the artisans into
a study circle. On applying to Lovett with this suggestion, he
found him " cold and especially guarded." He received no
more encouragement from the other members of the group.
Place attributed this to the growing jealousy conceived by the

1 W. .1. Linton, James Watson, a Memoir, 1879, pp. 1-73.

60 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

artisans against the middle class, as a result of their great
disappointment over the Reform Bill.^ Lovett's account con-
firms this important particular. On the conclusion of the
campaign against the newspaper taxes, he relates, it was seen
that the agitation had brought together a number of influential
working men-—

. . . and the question arose among us whether we could form and
maintain a union formed exclusively of this class and of such men.
We were the more induced to try the experiment as the working
classes had not hitherto evinced that discrimination and independent
spirit in the management of their political affairs which we were
desirous to see. . . . They were always looking up to leadership
of one description or other. ... In fact the masses in their political
organisations were taught to look up to great men (or to men pro-
fessing greatness) rather than to great principles."

The main difierence between Place and Lovett is that Place
suggests that Black did, after all, have something to do with
the foundation of this famous body, whilst Lovett does not
allude to him. The minute-book of the Association * gives the
following particulars :

At a meeting of a few friends assembled at 14 Tavistock St.,
Covent Garden, June 9, 1836, William Lovett brought forward a
rough sketch of a prospectus for the Working Men's Association
(i.e. the question had akeady been discussed). It was ordered to
be printed for fiu?ther discussion.

On July 17 it was proposed to invite some thirty-three
persons to form the nucleus of the Association. Amongst
these original members were of course Lovett, Hetherington,
Watson, and Cleave. Of lesser importance were Richard
Moore, a carver in wood, an honest, unobtrusive man ; John
Gast, the famous shipwright of Rotherhithe ; Richard Hart-
weU, a compositor ; and Richard Cray, a Spitalfields silk-weaver
who wrote a very curious report upon the handloom silk-
weavers of London. Lovett acted as Secretary and Hethering-
ton as Treasurer.*

The objects of the Association are thus stated by Lovett :

To draw into one bond of unity the intelligent and influential
portion of the working classes in town and country. To seek by
every legal means to place all classes of society in possession of the
equal political and social rights.

Then foUow two specific demands, " a cheap and honest

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 23. 2 ii/c and Struggles, pp. 91-2.
3 Additional MSS. 37,773. " Additional MSS. 37,773, p. 6.

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 61

press " and " the education of the rising generation," the
latter of which, and especially the determination with which
it was pressed upon the attention of the public by the Associa-
tion, awards to this little group of artisans a not unworthy
place amongst the pioneers of English education. The methods
adopted are as follows :

To colleot every kind of information appertaining to the interests
of the working classes in particular and to society in general, especi-
ally statistics regarding the wages of labour, the habits and condition
of the labourer, and all those causes that mainly contribute to the
present state of things : to meet and communicate with each other
for the purpose of d^esting the information acquired.

The views and opinions based upon this were to be published
in the hope of creating " a reflecting public opinion " which
would lead to a gradual improvement of the working classes
" without commotion or violence." The formation of a
library and the provision of a proper place of meeting close
a programme of agitation as laudable in its objects as it is
sound in its methods.

Conceiving its purposes in this serious spirit, the Association
was naturally correspondingly careful in its choice of members.
It rigidly excluded aU but genuine working men, though it
admitted to honorary membership members of the middle
class, " being convinced from experience that the division of
interests in the various classes in the present state of things
is too often destructive of that union of sentiment which is
essential to the prosecution of any great obj ect. " ^ Thus several
radical members of Parliament were elected honorary members.
Francis Place, James O'Brien, John Black of the Morning
Chronicle, Feargus O'Connor, Robert Owen, W. J. Fox, later
member for Oldiam, and Dr. "Wade, Vicar of Warwick, a jovial,
eccentric doctor of divinity weighing some twenty stones, and
an enthusiastic Owenite, aU were similarly honoured by admis-
sion to the Association.^

Even genuine members of the labouring classes were not
admitted without careful inquiry. Proposals for admission
were frequently rejected or put back for further investigation.
It was preferred to keep the Association small rather than
depreciate the quality of its membership, or to run the risk of
faction' and disunion. These precautions were very necessary
in view of the difficulties previously experienced in keeping

1 LoTett, lAfe and Struggles, pp. 92-3.
" Additional MSS. 37,773, pp. 8-11, 24-5.

62 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

together similar bodies. Stringent as tiey were, they did not
prevent reckless and revolutionary persons from entering and
disturbing the unity of the Association. The total number of
members admitted between June 1836 and 1839 was 279,
exclusive of 35 or more honorary members. It is unUkely
that the total strength was ever greater than 200. The sub-
scription was one shiUing per month, sufficiently considerable
to exclude many would-be members. The receipts rose to
£20 in the quarter ending June 28, 1837, and there was a
surplus of 4:8. 8d. After this the Association quitted the
peaceful waters of quiet educational activity and launched
out on the stormy ocean of public agitation.^

The earliest proceedings of the Association were concerned
with the appointment of committees and sub-committees to
investigate and report upon various subjects of working-class
interest. One committee inquired into the composition of
the House of Commons and pubhshed a famous report, called
The Rotten House of Commons, towards the end of 1836.
Another committee inquired into the condition of the sUk-
weavers of Spitalfields, and a manuscript report, drawn up by
Richard Cray, found its way into the archives of the Chartist
Convention of 1839.^ It has no claim whatever to scientific
accuracy, but is noteworthy as a pathetic description of the
decay of a once reputable class of artisans, and as a specimen
of popular anti-capitalistic thought. A third committee about
this time drew up an address of sympathy with the Belgians,
then endeavouring to establish their autonomous constitution.
Another committee, in which, as we may justifiably surmise,
Lovett was the chief, published the Address and Rules of the
London Working Men's Association for benefiting Politically,
Socially, and Morally the Useful Classes. It was principally
an exhortation to their fellows in the country to found similar
societies. They must use caution in selecting members, exclud-
ing the drunken and immoral. For real political education a
selected few is better than a carelessly gathered multitude ;
a mere exhibition of numbers must be avoided — how difier-
ent this from the mass demoiistrations of 1831-32 ! Failure
and disappointment may be the immediate reward, but know-
ledge and enlightenment will conquer in the end. Before an
educated people Government must bow. These admirable

1 Additional MSS. 37,773, pp. 28, 42, 57. The publications of the
L.W.M.A. are In a Tolnme collected by Lovett and presented to the British
Museum (8138 a 55).

^ Additional MSS. 34,215 B, pp. 3-20.

LONDON WOEKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 63

sentiments received unstinted praise from no less a person
than Francis Place himself, who otherwise was quite out of
sympathy with the social democratic tendency of the Associa-
tion.^

The Rotten House of Commons was a scathing attack
upon the unrepresentative character of that House and a
stirring denunciation of the Reform Bill of 1832. It was
strongly reminiscent of similar pamphlets published by the
aristocratic radicals of the Wilkes epoch. The gist of the
pamphlet is that the House of Commons is now the scene of a
struggle between landed and moneyed interest, both equally
dangerous to the interests and well-being of the useful classes.
The bias of the argument is distinctly against the industrial
and commercial faction.

Will it, think you, fellow-countrymen, promote our happiness,
will it give us more comforts, more leisure, less toU, and less of the
wretchedness to which we are subjected, if the power and empire
of the wealthy be established on the wreck of title and privilege ?
... If the past struggles and contentions we have had with the
monied and commercial classes to keep up our wages — our paltry
means of subsistence — ^if the infamous Acts they have passed since
they obtained a portion of political power form any criterion of their
disposition to do us justice, Uttle have we to expect from any acces-
sion to that power, any more than from the former tyrants we have
had to contend against.

Some of these men had put on the cloak of reform, but
intended not to lose their exclusive privileges ; others were for
gradual reform " lest we should make any advance towards
depriving them of their exclusive prerogative of leading us from
year to year through the poUtical quagmire where we are daily
beset by plunderers, befooled by knaves, and misled by hypo-
critical impostors " — a master-hand here truly.

Then foUows a recital of the various interests represented in
Parliament — Fundholders, Landholders, Money-makers, nobles
of all ranks, Army, Law, Church, Manufacturers, and Employers
— showing how incompatible such representation is with the
true interests of the useful classes. The remedy is obvious —
universal suffrage, ballot, annual parliaments, equal repre-
sentation, abolition of the property qualification for members
of Parliament, but above aU a free press. Out of 6,023,752
males of full age only 839,519 had the vote. One-fifth of the
latter elect a majority of members of the House of Commons,

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, pp. 221-4.

64 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

for 331 were elected by only 151,492 votes, that is, one-fortieth
of the male adult population had the power to make laws
binding upon millions.

This pamphlet was published and scattered broadcast.
It became the stand-by of radical orators throughout the
country and spread the repute of the Association amongst
working people everywhere. The Association published many
other pamphlets during 1837, but none attained the celebrity
of this one.

In January 1837 the Association accepted an ofier of
Francis Place to hold a study and discussion circle on Sunday
mornings. Place left short notes of these conversations, which
apparently consisted of duels between equally convinced
exponents of orthodox and Hodgskinite economics. Place
confessed his failure to convert the workmen, in a note which
he later appended :

In a few, and only a few, instances have I been able to convince
some of the trades delegates, who have consulted me, of the absurdity
of the notion that everything produced or manufactured belongs
solely to the people who made it, and this too without reference
to the many hands it has gone through, the manufacturing hands
being alone contemplated by them.*

This association with so thoroughgoing a supporter of
orthodox, " Malthusian " economics as Place was destined
very soon to bring the Association into bad odour when the
agitation against the new Poor Law became violent, that law
being universally regarded as a product of " Malthusian "
subtlety.

The Association was growing both in numbers and in influ-
ence during the first year of its existence. It received notable
recruits, including the redoubtable orator, Henry Vincent,
who joined in November 1836,^ and was quickly elected on the
committee. Vincent was a young man of twenty-three or
thereabouts, short, slight, extremely prepossessing, and with
an unusual gift of speech. Like Hartwell andfHetherington,
Vincent was a compositor. By midsummer 1837 the Associa-
tion was exactly a hundred strong. It had gathered a library of
radical and socialistic literature. We read, for example, that
Messrs. Williams and Binns of the Sunderland Mechanics'
Institution (of whom more hereafter) presented the Association
with a copy of Hampden in the Nineteenth Century and were

> Additional MSS. 27,819, pp. 229-63. a Ibid. 37,773, pp. 24-8.

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 65

rewarded with duplicate copies of Thompson's Distribution of
Wealth, and two Owenite works by Edmonds. Also " on the
departure of Citizen Wm. Hoare the Association presented
him with a splendid copy of Thomas Paine 's works." ^

Early in the existence of the Association danger raised its
head in the shape of a deputation from the Cambridgeshire
Farmers' Association, whose leader, a certain J. B. Bernard,
was a currency maniac of the Attwood type. The report of a
committee appointed to deal with the question, which was one
of co-operation between the two bodies, is worth noting as an
early indication of the Chartist habit of desiring to suppress
all special agitations in favour of a general political movement.

The points urged on the part of the farmers were an adjustment
of the currency so as to raise prices to enable them to meet their
engagements or a reduction of burthens proportionate to their
means. ... It was replied on the part of the Association that the
workiug classes were opposed to the raising of prices, as their increas-
ing numbers, together with the new powers of production, were
obstacles which would prevent their wages from being raised in
proportion to high prices : also that, if by this plan they could reUeve
the farmer, they would then lose his co-operation in seeking a better
state of things.

The report goes on to say that the Association urged upon
the farmers the desirability of combining to acquire political
_power.*

Bernard, however, had other ideas than that of co-operating
with the Association. He wanted to play a part of his own.
Early in 1837 he established himself in London, having acquired
some interest in the London Mercury, a popular radical organ
run by'i one John Bell, and edited by James O'Brien. He
attached himself in a parasitic sprt of way to O'Brien and to
Feargus O'Connor, who had been a political free-lance since he
had lost his seat in Parliament in 1835. All these, except
Bernard, were honorary members of the Working Men's
Association, and we may presume had been somewhat piqued
by the cool and independent way in which the working man
had received them. They commenced a rival radical agitation
both in London and all over the country, and from their efiorts
sprang various associations, with programmes including such
items as Universal Suffrage, the " Protection of Labour,"
and the abolition of the New Poor Law. These societies
received a patronising blessing from the older association.

1 Additional MSS. 37,773, pp. 61, 50. ^ Una. 37,773, p. 11.

66 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

The leaders of this new movement were conspicuous members
of a violently revolutionary clique, headed by Neesom, a
man of sixty or so; George Julian Harney (born in 1817),
who had been Hetherington's shop-boy, had passed several
sentences for selling unstamped papers, and had filled his
head with the doings of Marat and other Jacobins of '93;
AUan Davenport, an old cranky radical, who died not long
afterwards, and a few others. Most of these individuals
played a part in the Chartist Movement, though not a very
reputable one.

The setting up of this agitation was the signal for war
between the Bernardites and the Working Men's Association.
It arose apparently out of a trade squabble between Hether-
ington and the Mercwry proprietors, as owners of rival papers.
Hetherington was accused of smashing up a meeting called
by Bernard at Barnsley in May 1837. O'Brien denounced
Hetherington and his fellows as " scheming impostors,"
" bought tools of the Malthusian Party " in the pages of the
Mercury. Hetherington retorted in kind by calling his rival
newspaper proprietors Tories in disguise.'^ There was a stormy
meeting of the Working Men's Association in June, when BeU
and O'Brien appeared to answer charges against them.^ The
dispute between these rivals was not improved by the inter-
vention of Augustus Harding Beaumont,' a young and fiery
poUtician of exceedingly ill balanced mind.

The Working Men's Association, however, enjoyed an almost
complete victory over its rivals. Its worst enemies seem to
have collapsed about the summer of 1837. Bernard and Bell
quarrelled, the Mercury was sold,* and O'Brien left stranded,
until he began to write for O'Connor in the Northern Star.
O'Connor and Beaumont found a more congenial field for their
demagogic activities amongst the half -starved weavers, the
factory operatives, and the semi-barbarous coUiers of the North
of England. Harney, Neesom, and the rest applied for admis-
sion to the Working Men's Association, which they obtained
only with difficulty.^ Harney at once began to cause trouble
by entering into a controversy with O'Connell on the subject
of the Glasgow Cotton Spinners. This was regarded by the
Association as a breach of etiquette. Harney was censured.
He replied by publishing the correspondence with O'Connell

^ London Mercury, May 28, iTiiiie 4, 1837.

» Additional MSS. 37,773, pp. 52, 56.

s London Mercury, June 18, 1837. * AuBuet 13. 1837.

6 Additional MSS. 37,773, pp. 62, 74, 7S.

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 67

in the Times, together with some disrespectful remarks upon
the leading men in the Association. A stormy scene resulted
in the resignation of Harney and his friends. They at once
retaliated by setting up a rival society called the London De-
mocratic Association. This thoroughgoing O'Connorite body
carried on a propaganda of extreme violence, to the great dis-
gust of the older and soberer Association in Gray's Inn Lane.^

Thus began the historic quarrel of Lovett and his followers i
and O'Connor. It was primarily the result of sheer incom-
patibility of temper between the sincere, self-sacrificing, but
somewhat sensitive and resentful London artisan, who knew
working men and shared their best aspirations, and the bluster-
ing, egotistical, blarneying, managing, but inteUectuaUy and
morally very unreliable Irishman, who probably had never
done an honest day's work in his life. It was secondarily a
division between Lovett and a man whose methods of agita-
tion included everything anathematised in the Address and
Rules — hero-worship, clap-trap speeches, mass demonstra-
tions leading to physical force ideas, and even more reckless
oratory. The quarrel thus begun was never healed, and
exercised throughout a baneful effect upon the Chartist
agitation.

Whilst this strife was proceeding, the Association had been \
extending its influence by encouraging the formation of similar
associations in the country. Occasional appUoations for copies (
of the Rules were received in the early months of the Associa-
tion's career and a special sub-committee was appointed in
February 1837 to deal with these. ^ This was followed up by
the despatch of " missionaries " into the country to help in the
foundation of daughter associations. Cleave made the first
such tour to Brighton in March.* Hetherington was in York-
shire in May and again in September. These two combined
agitation with the prosecution of their newspaper business.
The two flourished well together, as other agitators, like
O'Connor and Beaumont, discovered. In August 1837
Vincent and Cleave were at work in Yorkshire, Vincent visiting
amongst other places his old home at HuU. The efforts of
these able speakers were crowned with success, and within a
few months over a hundred working-men's associations sprang
into being.*

1 AddiUonal MSS. 37,773, pp. 85-98. ^ Ibid. 37,773, pp. 26, 37.

8 Ibid. 37,773, p. 40.

* Ibid. 37.773, pp. 62, 63, 65, 67 ; 27,819, p. 68 ; 27.822, p. 82.

68 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

This missionary zeal was backed up by a stream of pub-
lications. An Address to Reformers on the Forthcoming
Elections (the general election on death of William IV.) iirged
that only candidates who pledged themselves to Universal
Sufirage " and aU the other great essentials of self-govern-
ment " should be supported. Next came an Address to the
Queen on Political and Religious Monopoly, which the
working men wanted to present in person to the Queen. They
were told by the Lord Chamberlain that they must attend
the next levee in court dress. This of course was out of the
question, so they contented themselves with a spirited and
indignant protest. An address on the subject of National
Education, pubUshed late in 1837, is probably from the hand
of Lovett as it contains the germ of the proposals afterwards
' developed in the book Ghartism. It sketches a plan of state-
aided, but not state-controlled, secular national education,
based largely upon an older scheme of which Place has pre-
served the details.^ Ignorance, says Lovett, is the prolific
source of evil, as knowledge of happiness. Poverty, inequahty,
and poHtical injustice follow inevitably from the fact that one
part of society is enUghtened whilst the other is in darkest
ignorance. The fearful prevalence of crime and the callous
severity of punishment are equally the fruits of lack of educa-
tion.

Is it consistent with justice that the knowledge requisite to
make a man acquainted with his rights and duties should be pur-
posely withheld from him, and then that he should be upbraided
and deprived of his rights on the plea of ignorance ?

A true Lovett touch this 1

The school buildings should be provided by Government,
but the power of appointing teachers, selecting books, and the
general management of the schools shoidd be in the hands of a
local school committee. This body should be elected by uni-
versal adult sufirage (women being enfranchised too), should
sit one year and report every half-year. The expenses of
maintenance, salaries, books, and the like should be met by a
local rate, whilst a Parliamentary Committee, appointed ad
hoc, should supervise the Government's disbursements. Five
types of schools are recommended : infants' schools for pupils
from three to six years old ; preparatory, for children from
six to nine ; high schools for children from nine to twelve ;

1 Additloiial MSS. 27,819. pp. 13-14 and 236.

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 69

colleges for students of twelve years upwards ; and normal
sctools for teacters. Illuminating are the remarks upon
educational method, as representing a reaction against the
memory-cram of Lancaster and Bell. Illuminating, too, is the
remark that cleanliness and punctuality are to be enforced
" as the best means of amalgamating class distinctions."

Shortly afterwards, in December 1837, the Association
issued an Address to the Reformers of Great Britain and
Ireland. This was in reply to an address by the Birmingham
Union, which had recently declared for the democratic reform
of Parliament. With this Address the London Working
Men's Association made its second great step towards the
foundation of the Chartist agitation.

The first step had been taken early in the same year. On
the last day of February a pubUc meeting was called under
the Association's auspices in the famous Crown and Anchor
Tavern in the Strand. This was the first public appearance
of the Association and created a great stir. AH the principal
members spoke. Feargus O'Connor and John Bell were
present, not, we are assured, with the goodwill of the promoters
of the meeting. A petition to the House of Commons was the
result. This petition was the basis of the People's Charter.
The preamble lays down

. . . that obedience to laws can only be justly enforced on the certainty
that those who are called onto obey them have had, either personally
or by their representatives, a power to enact, amend or repeal them.
That aU those who are excluded from this share of political power
are not justly included within the operation of the laws : to them
the laws are only despotic enactments and the legislative assembly
from whom they emanate can only be considered parties to an
unholy compact devising plans and schemes for taxing and subject-
ing the many. . . . That the universal poUtioal right of every
human being is superior and stands apart from all customs, forms,
or ancient usage : a fundamental right not in the power of man to
confer or justly to deprive him of \aic\. That to take away this
sacred right from the person and to vest it in property is a wilful
perversion of justice and common sense, as the creation and security
of property are the consequences of society, the great object of
which is human happiness. That any constitution or code of laws
formed in violation of man's pohtical and social rights are \sic\ not
rendered sacred by time nor sanctified by custom.

Conversely, a constitution of this kind could only be main-
tained by force and fraud.

The prayer of the petition contained the " six points of the

70 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Charter." The United Kingdom shotdd be divided into two
hundred equal electoral districts retuining one member each.
Every person (women included) above twenty-one years old
should be entitled to be registered as a voter after six months'
residence. Parliament should be re-elected annually on June
24, Midsummer Day. The only qualification for candidates
should be nomination by at least two hundred electors.
Voting should be by ballot. Parliament should sit from the
first Monday in October until its business for the year was
accomplished. It was to rise in any case not later than the
first of September following. The hours of business were to
be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The salary of each member was
fixed at £400 a year.'-

The petition is interesting as a sample of popular radical
theory, which preserved a strong flavour of abstract doctrine
long after the middle-class radicals had become disciples of
Bentham in theory and opportunists in practice. It is note-
worthy that this original conception of universal sufirage
included women's suffrage, a demand which the Charter after-
wards abandoned. The belief that Government, as it then
existed, was maintained by force or fraud was not allowed to
remain a mere statement of a theory. It explains the faith
of many later Chartists in the power and influence of mass
demonstrations which were expected to prove to the Govern-
ment that its physical force foundation was no longer sound.

The meeting at the Crown and Anchor aroused the interest
of the small group of radical members of Parliament which
included Sir WiUiam Molesworth, Daniel O'ConneU, Hindley,
Sharman Crawford, Joseph Hume, John Arthur Eoebuck,
and others. These encouraged the Association to continue
its public exertions. The leaders of the Association began
to sound their parliamentary friends as to the possibiEty
of getting the question of universal sufirage introduced
into the House of Commons. A conference was arranged
between the two groups, and took place on May 31 and
June 7, 1837. The basis of discussion was the petition of
February drawn as a bUl. Most of the members of Parliament
were disinclined to present a bill of so sweeping a character,
and suggested a policy of opportunism and reform by instal-
ments. O'ConneU was specially zealous in his advocacy of
the " fourpence in the shilling policy," but his suggestions met
with httle approval. The working men were not prepared
1 Iiovett'a pampblets, 8138 a S5.

LONDON WOEKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 71

either to surrender the leadership of the popular reform move-
ment, as O'Connell had suggested, or to abate one jot of their
demands. However, Eoebuck agreed to present the Associa-
tion's petition for universal sufirage, and the others promised
to support him.i For various reasons, however, nothing more
was done until the spring of 1838. The Association pubhshed
an account of these proceedings in its Address to Reformers
on the Forthcoming Elections.^

From this time onwards the London Working Men's Associa-
tion gradually abandoned its quieter methods of agitation, and
made with its radical programme a pubUc bid for the leadership
of working-class opinion. Its missionary tours were immensely
successful, and its petition and the various manifestos it had
published found a wide and enthusiastic response. During
the latter months of 1837 the working classes in the manu-
facturing districts began to be infected with a vague but wide-
spread excitement. The trade boom was over and unemploy-
ment was on the increase. Agitators like Hetherington,
Cleave, and Vincent found audiences ready made at every
street corner. As the year wore on the failure of the harvest
began to tell its tale ; prices rose as wages fell. Discontent
was growing apace. Resentment against the New Poor Law
added to the excitement. The handloom weavers of the
northern counties were especially touched by the new regula-
tions, whose, rigour had passed almost unnoticed in the years
of good trade and cheap corn, which followed the passing of the
Poor Law Amendment in 1834. Agitations sprang up hke
magic. Under the stimulus of Stephens, O'Connor, Oastler, and
other orators of a fiery and sentimental character, the working
people of the North broke out into a furious campaign against
the restriction of poor rehef. Radical papers hke the Northern
Star^ and the Northern Liberator carried the flaming words of
the various orators to the ears of thousands who had not heard
them spoken. Nor did these speeches lose much in being
reduced to print, as they were read out loud by orators of equal
passion and less eloquence, in public-house and street-corner
meetings. Birmingham was rousing the Midlands to a cam-
paign of a different character, in which it was endeavouring to
enlist working-class support.

It was at this moment, too, that the Government aroused
the antagonism of aU Trade Unionists by the prosecution of the

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 210 et sea.
2 Lovett, Idfe and Struggles, pp. 164-72. s See later, pp. 93-6.

72 THE CHAKTIST MOVEMENT

Glasgow spinners who were accused of assassinating a blackleg
of grossly immoral character.^ The memory of the Dorchester
Labourers was still fresh, and Archibald Alison, who was
writing the history of modern Europe to " prove that Pro-
vidence was on the side of the Tories," had, as Sherifi of
Lanarkshire, the case in hand. Already Alison was breathing
out threatenings of slaughter against the Trade Unionists
within his jurisdiction.^

Into the last-named affair the Association threw itself with
energy. A Parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the
Trade Unions as a whole was set on foot, largely on the initiative
of Daniel O'Connell, who was regarded as displaying unusual
animosity against them. A Committee of Trades Delegates
was set up in London to watch over the inquiry on behalf of the
Unions ! The London Working Men's Association appointed
three of its members on this Committee, Lovett, of course, being
Secretary, and gave twenty-five shillings out of its scanty
funds towards expenses.^ The Parhamentary Inquiry fizzled
out in spite of the voluminous charges of Alison, and the Com-
mittee found it necessary to do no more than issue a manifesto
or two and to give help to the witnesses for the Trade Unions
during their visit to London.

TMs action gained the Association further support. Three
of the accused spinners were admitted as honorary members,
and thus communications were opened up with the working
people of the North. The London Working Men's Association
was rapidly becoming a propagator of worMng-class sohdarity.
With its hundred and fifty allied associations in all parts of the
country,* the Association could safely lay claim to the leadership
of working-class opinion. Its agitation was not local : it was
national and general. It aimed at no partial measures but at
a radical reform of the institutions of the country, which would
pave the way to social legislation in any desired sense.

In fact the Association was carried away by the excite-
ment of the times and its own success in winning support for
its radical programme. It had already achieved a considerable
triumph, for the Birmingham Pohtical Union in its desire to
gain popular support for its Currency scheme had declared in
favour of the radical programme. The Association was spurred
on by this success and by the desire to seize and maintain

' 1 ParliameKtarv Papers, 1837-38, vUl. 211-12. 2 Pp. 92-187.

a Additional MSS. 37,773, p. 99.

* See Address of Badical Reformers of England, Scotland, and Wales to
the Irish People (1838) lor list.

LONDON WOEKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 73

control over the whole movement, of which it fondly imagined
it was the author.

It was this feehng, no doubt, which induced the Associa-
tion to take up again in the spring of 1838 the project of a
Parliamentary Bill embodying the specific radical demands,
which had been mooted in the previous year. The idea
underlying this proceeding was that, as the Bill was about to be
presented to the Commons by Eoebuck or some other radical
member, a great and general agitation should be set on foot
throughout the country with a view to bringing to bear upon
the House of Commons that pressure which, it was believed,
had compelled the Government to pass the Bill of 1832.

At the meeting of June 7, 1837, a committee of twelve had
been appointed to draw a BiQ. The committee consisted of
O'Connell, Eoebuck, Hindley, Leader, Col. Perronet Thompson,
and Sharman Crawford, all members of ParUament; and Lovett,
Watson, Hetherington, Cleave, Vincent, and Moore of the
Working Men's Association. This appointment had been
announced to the working men of the country in the address
on the forthcoming elections, and had raised great expecta-
tions. But the Parliament men did not keep their side of the
bargain. O'Connell went on a trade union hunt which robbed
him of aU support amongst the English working people. Eoe-
buck, as agent of the Assembly of Lower Canada, was busy
with the case of the Canadian rebels, and the others were
probably already involved in the Free Trade agitation, in
which they foresaw much greater prospects of success than
in a Bill compelling the House of Commons to sit daily from
10 tiU 4 for £400 a year. Lovett was therefore advised i by
Eoebuck and urged by the Association to draw up the Bill
himself. This he did in the intervals when he was not
engaged in earning his living. " When I had finished my
work I took it to Mr. Eoebuck, who, when he had read it,
suggested that I should show it to Mr. Francis Place of
Brompton ^ for his opinion, he having taken a great interest
in our association from its commencement." Place suggested
improvements in the text, and the amended measure was
discussed by the committee of twelve. Eoebuck wrote the
preamble, an address was prefixed to it by Lovett, and the
whole was printed and pubhshed on May 8, 1838, as the
" People's Charter." ^

*i Place had in 1833 left the shop at 16 Charing CrosB, and taken a honee
at 21 Brompton Square. Q. Wallas, Life of Francis Place, p. 330.
2 P. 164 et aeq. Additional MSS. 27,819, 210 et sea.

74 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

These proceedings throw some light upon the relations of
the Association and the ParUament men. That the latter
should be content to allow a bill of this importance to be drawn
by an enlightened cabinetmaker and a radical tailor suggests
that they had no particularly sanguine views as to its prospects
in the House of Commons. Nor were they enthusiasticaUy in
love with its provisions. Scarcely any of them were as radical
as the " People's Charter." Place says they were all lukewarm,
which is very Hkely. But the Association was also very luke-
warm in its co-operation with the Parliamentary Radicals.
Its members were very suspicious and very jealous. They
were intensely desirous of keeping the leadership of the move-
ment out of the hands of middle-class men who had " betrayed "
them in 1832 and prosecuted them in 1834. The Parliament
men were kept scrupulously at a distance and the Association
negotiated with them in a spirit of cold and exaggerated
independence. The class-war ideas, revealed by such pam-
phlets as The Rotten House of Commons, prevented any
hearty co-operation, and iiltimately put a stop to any common
action at all between the working men and the other classes
of society. In any case the Parliamentary Radicals played
no further part in the whole movement.

The pubfioation of the " People's Charter " was a triumph for
the Association. The name itself recalled much, for there
had been a string of pamphlets with similar titles since 1831.
The document and the petition which accompanied it received
the assent of radical working men in all parts of the country.^
The programme which they put forward rapidly swept away
all local and specific demands. Factory Reform, Currency
Reform, abolition of the New Poor Law, of Truck, of the Corn
Laws, all these demands were buried in the great demand for
democratic institutions through which aU the just desires of
the people might become law. "Within six months of the
publication of the Charter the larger part of the working
classes was united under its standard. Few of the local leaders
were able to resist the popularity of the Charter. Oastler and
Stephens were steadfast in their refusal to caU themselves
Chartists, and they were swept aside. O'Connor shouted as
usual with the largest crowd and became a Chartist stalwart
when he was sure that the Charter was the best thing to
shout for.

The Working Men's Association laboured with increasing

> Additional MSS. 37,773, p. Ill et seq.

LONDON WORKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 75

energy in the popularisation of the Charter. It was presented
with some ostentation to the great demonstrations at Glasgow
and Birmingham in May and August 1838. Vincent went on
missionary tours which took him to Northampton, Manchester,
Bristol, Bath, Trowbridge, and Birmingham.^ From these
journeys, in fact, he never returned, for he took up his residence
at Bath, where he attained immfense popularity as an orator
and as editor of the Western Vindicator, a paper as inflam-
matory as Ms own speeches. Through this organ Vincent
became a furious and reckless preacher of social revolution, a
circumstance which made him the first victim of Government
action in 1839. HartweU,^ another missionary, was similarly
afiected by the immense audiences which gathered to hear
him on his wanderings. He, too, deserted the quiet ways of
the Association for the turbulent methods of the North and
Midlands.

The behaviour of these two members was a chief symptom
of the break-up of the Association, which, as it were, died in
giving birth to the Chartist agitation. Some of the members,
led by Vincent and HartweU, were desirous of turning the
Association into a large agitating body, like the unions of
1831-32, or like the enormous bodies then rapidly mobilising
in the North and Midlands. They wanted it to desert the
placid methods of the past two years. They considered that
their twb years' agitation had sufficiently educated the opinion
of the people, and that the time was now ripe for more ener-
getic measures, for a public display of strength, and it might
be for an actual revolution. Motions began to, be introduced
at the meetings of the Association with a view to increasing
its numbers, a step which shows that the Association had
travelled far from its sober declaration against the fascination
of mere multitudes.' These tendencies were stimulated by
the great meetings at Glasgow and Birmingham, at the latter
of which the Association was represented by Vincent, Hether-
ington, and the Rev. Dr. Wade. The proposal for a Con-
vention was taken up with enthusiasm and the elections were
carried out at a public meeting in Palace Yard, Westminster,
on September 17, 1838. The notion of a Convention carried
with it suggestions of revolutionary activity, and by the end

1 Additional MSS. 37,773, pp. 116, 117, 133. „ „ ,

2 Place calls HartweU " a reckless, evilly-disposed feUow.' Hartwell
had been treasurer to the Dorchester Labourers' Fund, which position he
lost imder grare suspicion ol dishonesty.

3 IMd. 37,773, pp. 106-108.

76 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

of tte year there was a distinctly revolutionary party in the
Association. HartweU contrasted with pain the apathy of
London as compared with the rest of the country. O'Connor was
beginning to gain a following amongst the London Democratic
Association as at Birmingham, and at a meeting on December
20, 1838, Lovett found himself overborne by the party of
physical force.'- Both at Birmingham and in London the influ-
ence of excitement and of O'Connor sufficed to reduce, if not to
annihilate, the party of moderation.

The meeting at Palace Yard was practically the last spec-
tacular proceeding of the London Working Men's Association.
It was a great meeting. The Association packed it carefully
with supporters and sympathisers. It was a pubhc meeting
only in a formal sense. The High BaUifE of Westminster was
the convener, and so the law was observed. The resolutions
were all cut and dried. Eight delegates were proposed for
election — Place, Roebuck, O'Brien, Lovett, Hetherington,
Cleave, Vincent, and Hartwell. Place and Roebuck decHned,
and Moore and Rogers were elected in their place. There were
present at the meeting delegates from all parts of the kingdom,
Ebenezer EUiott of Sheffield, quickly lost to Chartism, Douglas
and P. H. Muntz of Birmingham, Feargus O'Connor, and several
of his northern fire-eaters, and delegates from Edinbmgh,
Colchester, Carmarthen, Brighton, Ipswich, and Worcester.

So the great movement got under weigh. Henceforward
the London Working Men's Association was swallowed up in
Chartism. Its leading members were transferred to a higher
sphere of activity in the People's Parliament, but when the
revolutionary intoxication had passed they returned without
regret to the qiiiet educational activity wMch some had rehn-
quished with much misgiving, whose results were surer and
better, though visible only to the eye of faith.

Sanguine to the end, however, though its finances were
depleted, the Association lent its aid to the project of founding
a newspaper to serve as a Chartist organ in London. London
alone was without a Chartist newspaper. Glasgow, Newcastle,
Leeds, and Birmingham were well supplied, but not so London.
A Committee of thirty was appointed by a meeting of London
Trade Societies in September 1838, and a prospectus of a
weekly paper to be called The Charter was issued. Lovett was
Secretary to this Committee, and Hartwell was apparently
manager of the printing department. WiUiam Carpenter, the

1 Additional MSS. 27,820, pp. 354-58.

LONDON WOEKING MEN'S ASSOCIATION 77

■i

writer of the once famous Political Letters, a Radical of some
repute, was appointed editor. Hetherington was publisher.
The capital was to be raised by subscriptions amongst the trade
societies and similar associations. The paper was issued for
the first time on Sunday, January 27, 1839. It was very
badly managed, and as an experiment in voluntary associated
enterprise it was a failure. It cost sixpence, which was more
than working people could afiord to pay, and it was too sober
to appeal to the mass of Chartists to whom the language of the
Northern Star was more intelligible. Carpenter was a poor
editor, and the management was careless. The paper never
paid its way and was sold early in 1840.^

The immediate purpose of the London Working Men's
Association was the formation of an organised body of working-
class opinion. "It was first necessary to buHd good founda-
tions which could hold out through long agitations. Hence
the foundation of Working Men's Associations and the precau-
tions suggested in the choice of members. The next step
was to furnish a programme and the materials for propaganda.
Hence the pamphlets all urging the foundation of a distinct
working-class party which should rival and ultimately over-
throw the two historic " capitalistic " parties. So far so
good. Unfortunately, however, the materials for building up
the party were but poor. The Associations throughout the
country were not up to the standard of the London Associa-
tion ; their members were men of less understanding and were
easily carried away by the excitement around them. The
organised trade societies, which form so strong an element,
with their funds and organisation, in the modern Labour Party,
came but little into the movement. Finally, when the Bir-
mingham and the northern agitations threatened to break up
the scheme altogether, the London Working Men's Association
admitted them, violent, unorganised, and undiscipUned as
they were, and so created a party which was certainly big,
but was not the sound, organised, and orderly party which they
had planned. After 1839 the London Working Men's Associa-
tion virtually ceases to influence the Chartist movement. It
had done its work, and though it was stiU in existence in 1847,
it was never in its later years any more than a backstairs
organisation.

1 Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 22 ; 34,245 A, p. 398. Letters in Place
GoUeotion, vol. 66, at Hendon,

CHAPTER V

THE AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR ^AW
(1834^1838)

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was passed with little
or no opposition in Parliament in accordance with the report
issued by the commission of inquiry appointed in 1832. "The
provisions of the Act may be divided into two parts, those
concerning the new organisation of the system of reUef, and
those deaUng with the principles on which relief was to be
administered. The unit of local administration under the
new Act was the union of parishes. For each union an elective
board of Guardians of the Poor was set up. As the poor rates
were exclusively levied upon buildings and land, the franchise
was a property franchise admitting of both plural and prozy
votes, a system which placed chief control in the hands of the
wealthier owners of property. The central administration,
created for the first time, was a Parliamentary Commission
of three members, whose powers, though wide, were defined
by the Act, and whose competence was limited to a period of
five years from the passing of the Act. The principles on
which rehef was to be granted were frankly deterrent. They
may be summarised thus : That rehef should not be offered to
able-bodied persons and their families, otherwise than in a well-
regulated workhouse. That the lot of the able-bodied pauper
should be made less eligible than that of the worst situated
independent labourer outside.

For two years the Commissioners, or ratlier their secretary,
Edwin Chadwick, laboured successfully to introduce the new
system into the rural districts. When, however, they com-
menced operations in the manufacturing areas in 1836, they
met with an opposition whose violence and fury grew with the
passing of the period of good trade into a period of unparalleled

78

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW 79

depression and distress whicli lasted with scarcely a break
tm 1842.

The campaign which now commenced with a view to re-
pealing the Act had a double character. It was a conserva-
tive opposition to a radical measure, and it was a popular
outburst against what was conceived as a wanton act of
oppression.

The Act of 1834 was the first piece of genuine radical legis-
lation which this country has enjoyed ; it was the first fruits
of Benthamism. For the first time a legislative problem was
thoroughly and scientifically tackled. It bore on its surface
aU. the marks of genuine Eadicalism, desire for centralised
efficiency and a total disregard of conservative and vested
interests. Under the old system each parish had been an
almost independent corporation, administering reUef and
levying rates with scarcely a shadow of control from the
central Government. Under these circumstances abuses and
vested interests had grown up to an appalling extent. Parishes
often fell into the hands of tradesmen, property owners, manu-
facturers, public-house keepers, and the Hke, who exploited
both paupers and pubUc in the interests of their own pockets.
These, of course, ofiered a strenuous resistance to the new
measure. Then there was a genuine regret on the part of
antiquarians and conservatives to see the parish, a very
ancient unit of local government, superseded by an artificial
unit, designed largely with a view to diminishing the influence
of local feehng. The diminution of local independence was
of course carried stiU farther by the strong control exercised
by the Commissioners, who therefore came in for an incredible
amount of abuse. No abusive epithet was bad enough for the
" three kings of Somerset House." Their power was alleged
to be despotic, to be unconstitutional, to be derogatory to the
sovereignty of Parliament, and so on.

The popular opposition was of a totally difierent character.
It was directed against the deterrent character of the new
system, though the popular leaders did not of course disdain
to use the political arguments of their learned and Parliament-
ary allies, and vice versa. The basis of popular hatred of the
law is thus stated by a competent authority :

People now are prone to look upon the stormy and infuriate
opposition to the Poor Law as based upon mere ignorance. Those
who think so are too ignorant to understand the terrors of those
times. It was not ignorance, it was justifiable indignation with

80 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

•which the Poor Law scheme was regarded. Now, the mass of the
people do not expect to go to the workhouse and do not intend to
go there. But through the first forty years of this century ahnost
every workman and every labourer expected to go there sooner
or later. Thus the hatred of the Poor Law was well founded. Its
dreary punishment would fall, it was believed, not upon the idle
merely, but upon the working people who by no thrift could save,
nor by any industry provide for the future.*

Without going quite so far as to include tte whole of the
industrious classes as actual or potential paupers, one may
safely assert that to hundreds of thousands of working people
outdoor relief was a standing source of subsistence supple-
mentary to their scanty wages, and to probably an equal
number outdoor relief was an occasional and even frequent
resort. The substitution of workhouse relief made that
public institution the prospective home of a vastly larger
proportion of the poorer classes than would be the case at
the present time, so that the deterrent system of relief came
as a terrible shock to those who had been wont to rely upon
poor relief without experiencing any loss of self-respect or of
personal liberty.

The purpose of the Act of 1834 was to attack the abuses of
outdoor reUef to able-bodied persons. These abuses were
serious enough, but it was acknowledged that they were far
more prevalent in the agricultural districts than in the manu-
facturing areas, where wages were higher on the whole and a
greater spirit of independence was prevalent. During the years
of 1823-49 the average expenditure on poor rehef per head of
population was three times greater in the agricultural counties
of Cambridgeshire, Sufiolk, Essex, and Lincolnshire than in
the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. In these agricultural
counties practically the whole of the working class was pauper-
ised. In the manufacturing districts only certain grades of
labour were in that situation. The handloom weavers, the
stookingers of Leicester, Nottingham, and Derby, whose
situation was being reduced to that of second-rate, unskilled
labour, and the multitude of Irish labourers who were swarming
into the English manufacturing areas — ^these provided the mass
of pauperism in those parts.

The situation created by the New Poor Law was particu-
larly galling to the handloom weavers, so recently respected
and influential members of industrial society. Hence it was

1 Holyoake, ii/fc of J. B. Stephens, p. 69.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW 81

amongst them that the opposition was strongest. Under the
old system their wages, as they were reduced by economic
pressure, were reinforced by outdoor relief. Many had come
to look upon this as legal compensation for their loss in wages
and resented its withdrawal as a piece of downright robbery.
Of course the system was on the whole a bad one. It did
help to perpetuate a class of labour which might otherwise
have been absorbed into other occupations. It often provided
reserves of cheap labour for factory masters. It occasionally
allowed other persons than factory owners to fill their pockets
at the expense of the public. Owners of tumble-down cottages,
for example, being also guardians, paid their own rents to
themselves by way of out-relief to their miserable tenants.^
At the same time none but an official, to whom human beings
were as documents in pigeon-holes, would expect a middle-
aged, worn-out handloom weaver to be usable in any other
industry, and most of the handloom weavers, who were not
Irish immigrants, were oldish men, quite unfit for anything
else. It was sheer cruelty to refuse them relief altogether,
except in a detestable workhouse, where they were separated
from wife and children, with little prospect of ever getting out
again. No wonder they preferred to starve. The stocMngers
were in similar case^ except that they had not the same memory
of days of prosperity, and their indignation was perhaps less
tinged with bitterness. Even factory workers were not im-
mune from the terrors of the workhouse during the years which
followed the great trade collapse in 1836-37, whilst the unskilled
general labourers, who were often Irish immigrants, added an
element of a turbulent character to the opposition to the new
enactment. It was therefore in the factory and handloom
areas of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire that the cam-
paign against the workhouse was most violent. Carlisle was
also the scene of furious outbursts. There the mass of the
population was engaged in handloom weaving, mostly in the
employ of one firm — that of Peter Dixon. The hosiery dis-
tricts were equally excited by the new system of relief and
played considerable part in the campaign which began in
Lancashire as soon as the efiect of the Act was realised.

The theoretical basis of the popular movement was supplied
by William Cobbett (1762-1835), pamphleteer, journalist,
radical, tory, agriculturist, moral adviser, popular historian,

1 See Eeports on Bolton and Maoolesfleld Unions, Parliamentary Papers,
1846, TOl. xxxTl.

G

82 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

and, since 1832, member of Parliament for Oldtam. Cobbett
Lad been almost alone in Ms opposition to the Poor Law
Amendment Bill in Parliament, and soon after it became
law he published his views upon it in his Legacy to Labourers.
This little book is an excellent example of Cobbett's contro-
versial gifts. Its arguments are as clear and telling as its
style. Its bold assumptions and sweeping assertions, as well
as its grotesque errors of fact (Cobbett alleges that the popu-
lation of England had not increased during the previous
half -century), are all characteristic of this unparalleled contro-
versialist, and furnished ammunition of which his even more
uncritical followers made unsparing use.

The Legacy must be read in connection with Cobbett's
admirable but rather perverse History of the Reformation.
The two together form a strong plea for regarding poor rehef
as a legally recognised commutation of the rights of the poor
in the land. The seizure of the lands of the Church which, he
maintained with some truth, were granted for charitable pur-
poses (an argument applied over and over again by his followers
to justify the disendowment of the Anglican Chuxch) was fol-
lowed by the provisions regarding relief of the poor on which
the famous Act of 1601 was based. This Act, Cobbett argued,
recognised the legal right of the poor to assistance from the
receivers of rent. The Act of 1834, a " Bourbon invention,"
repealed this right and destroyed it without compensation.
This was the main contention, and it formed the theme of
most of the speeches deUvered by Anti-Poor Law orators.
Thus O'Connor at Dewsbury in December 1837 : " Had you
any voice in the passing of this law ? . . . Did you send repre-
sentatives to Parliament, thus to betray you and rob you of
your inheritance ? " ^

Cobbett's argument goes further than this. On what
ground, he asks, was this legal right abrogated 1 On the
ground that poor rates were swallowing up the estates of the
landlords. This was in fact absurd. Are the landlords
ruined by the poor, to whom they pay £6,700,000, when they
pay thirty millions to usurers ^ and seven to " sinecurists " ?
Was the country being ruined for a paltry seven millions when
the taxation paid was fifty-two millions ? And, further, even
suppose the landlords were paying more, was it not a fact that
they were receiving ten or twenty times as much rent as they

1 G. R. W. Baxter, The Book of the BastUea, p. 392.
2 I.e. National Debt interest.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOK LAW 83

had formerly received ? Not the poor, but the army, the debt,
the clergy, the sinecurists, the pensioners, the privy councillors,
were swallowing up the estates of the landlords.

The object of the Act was to compel the people of England
to live on a coarser diet. He, Cobbett, had seen the official
instructions to this efiect. As no one but the weakest would
accept rehef under the new system, labourers would be pre-
pared to work for any wages they could get. Thus the English
labourer would be screwed down to Irish wages and Irish
diet. Oastler paraphrased this into a corrupt bargain^between
landlords and factory masters to provide cheap labour for the
factories.^ Further, the Act abrogated that " neighbourly,"
system of relief which had flourished so long, in favour of a
tyranny exercised by three distant commissioners and their
secretary, who were perfectly unmoved by pity or compassion,
and whose minions were to ste^ themselves to equal callousness.^

This publication found an echo everywhere in the manu-
facturing districts. The new Act was denounced as the
" Coarser Food BUI," and " Irish wages " became a very useful
and effective bogey. The evil effects of the old system Cobbett
and his readers absolutely ignored. It is true that the whole-
sale demoralisation which accompanied the old system was
not so prevalent amongst the manufacturing people, but even
there it had the effect of prolonging the agony of the handloom
weavers and similarly situated workers, by subsidising them
in their hopeless conflict with the machine weavers. The
relief paid in aid of wages benefited no one but the employer of
handloom weavers, who was able to extract the current rate
of profits without having to set up expensive power-looms.
The competition of subsidised labour only tended to reduce
wages aU rormd, even in the factories. Thus the old system
tended to make the situation of the half-pauperised labourer
the normal standard of Uf e, whilst the new aimed at setting up
that of the independent labourer. There is little evidence to
show that the new system actually did tend towards reducing
wages, so that the " coarser food " and " Irish wages " cries
were sheer absurdities, although they acquired a certain show
of reality during the very distressful years of industrial de;^res-
sion which followed the coUapse of 1836.

The centralisation which characterised the Act of 1834 was
its strongest point, and it was this which earned the new
system the deepest hatred of the classes affected by it. Under

1 Baxter, pp. 356, 366, 412. ^ Legacy to Labourers, pp. 7-27.

84 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

the old system it was quite easy to bring pressure to bear upon
the relieving authorities, independent, isolated, and unsup-
ported as they were by the authority of the State, and com-
posed very often of persons who had no interest in keeping
down expenditure. This was the " neighbourly system " of
Cobbett; the system under which the local publican main-
tained his family and relatives out of poor rates ; under which
the sweater of framework knitters undersold Saxon hosiers
by " making up " wages otit of poor funds, and imder which
workmen on strike demanded relief as a substitute for trade
union funds.^ Occasionally, however, the old system was
capable of better use. Thus in 1826 the manufacturers of
Lancashire tried to establish a minimum wage for weavers,
and called upon the various Poor Law authorities to relieve
those who could not obtain work at the minimimi fixed, until
trade improved and they were all employed. But under the
new system local pressure was powerless, except, as we shall
see, through an organised and widespread movement. The
units of administration were larger, the local authorities were
much stronger, as they were elected and supported by the
wealthier and more influential classes. Moreover, behind the
local unions stood the Poor Law Commission with its wide and
all-pervading powers.

For the first time English local opinion came into contact
with the official mind. The haphazard, rule-of-thumb method
of administration, which admitted of infinite variation of
practice, and totally excluded the scientific and consistent
treatment of any social problem, was replaced by a rigid uni-
form system, administered by officials whose authority was
derived only in part from local opinion, and whose practice
was dictated by precise and rigid rules, against which local
opinion was powerless. The new administrator of poor relief,
who could not be moved by persuasion or threats, who re-
ferred applicants of all descriptions to the " Act of the 4 Will.
IV.," who treated all questions in a clear but totally objective
and unemotional fashion — such a personage was a new and
terrific apparition. The English working man, whether in
town or country, to whom the local magistrates were the
source of aU public authority, and the local magistrates them-
selves with lingering feudal notions of local autonomy, and a
considerable idea of their own importance, were equally
enraged at the calm assumption of authority by distant com-

1 Third Report of Poor Law Commissioners.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW 85

missioners and local Boards of Guardians who could not be
coerced. Against such a system parochial agitation was
powerless. The only remedy was the repeal of the Act. That
required a more than local movement.

The agitation against the New Poor Law began in 1836.
It was divided into two parts : an organised attempt to pre-
vent the introduction of the laWj and a popular movement of
protest against the law itself. This latter movement, which
was later absorbed into the Chartist Movement, was of a totally
diSerent character from the agitations which were then com-
mencing in London and Birmingham under the auspices of the
Working Men's Association and the PoUtical Union. This
difference was of decisive influence upon the fate of Chartism.

The Anti-Poor Law Movement, on its popular side, was,
in fact, a rebellion in embryo which never came to fuU develop-
ment. Its historical ancestry may be traced back through
the Pilgrimage of Grace, Jack Cade, and the Peasants' Revolt.
It was a protest against social oppression, against a tyranny
which hurt the poor by making them poorer. It was a mass
demonstration of misery. It had no programme but redress
of grievances. It had no social theory but the restoration of
rights which had been taken away, and no pohtical theory
except a belief that the sovereign's duty was to protect the poor
against the oppressor. It has been well said that the reasons
which men give for an opinion they hold are often totally
different from the reasons which led them to take up such an
opinion. Thus whilst the theoretical opposition to the New
Poor Law was based on Cobbett's book, the real grounds of
protest were far older in origin than that. The leaders of the
movement drew their inspiration from the Bible, from a beHef
that the Act was a violation of Christian principles. Now this
tendency to hark back to the Bible and to Christianity as a
basis of political and social practice is the most interesting phase
of the whole Chartist Movement. Religious sanction for radical
opinions is the only refuge for persons unacquainted with
abstract political, or social, or economic theory. And natur-
ally so, for nowhere do we get the standards of eternal justice
so clearly set up for us as in the pages of the New Testament.
Thus we find that the authority of the Bible or of Christian
teaching in some form or other is claimed in aU the movements
we have mentioned. John Ball's famous couplet may well
furnish the text on which all the later popidar movements
may furnish the sermon. Thus the Anti-Poor Law agitation,

86 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

led by a Wesleyan minister, a religious, sentimental opponent
of child-labour, and a philantbropic employer, falls into line
with all these earlier movements. It is racy of the soil, and
a most remarkably interesting revival of a popular religious
sentiment, dead since the Tudors, and brought to life again
by the disciples of John Wesley.

Relying thus on a higher sanction than that of the State,
the popular leaders urged their followers to resist the Act even
to the extreme of armed rebelUon. The movement was thus
of extraordinary vehemence and violence. The rank and
file were men already rendered desperate by continuous and
increasing poverty, ignorant and unlettered men deprived, or
fearing to be deprived, of a resource on which they had long
counted, men coarsened by evil surroundings and brutahsed
by hard and unremitting toil, relieved only by periods of un-
employment in which their dulled minds brooded over their
misfortunes and recalled their lost prosperity. The popular
agitation was entirely without organisation. It centred ex-
clusively in the personality of a few leaders. Its methods were
thus far removed from those of the Anti-Corn Law League or
the London Working Men's Association. It was not educative ;
it appealed not to reason but to passion and sentiment. Its
leaders were not expert agitators, aiming at the conversion of
public and Parliament, but mob orators, stirring up passions
and spreading terror, hoping to frighten the G-ovemment into
a suspension or a repeal of the hated Act. Hence there was
always an element of futility in the movement. The Reformed
ParUament could not be terrorised ; it was too strongly sup-
ported by the mass of educated and propertied people. Per-
haps a glimmering notion that this was the case explains the
ease with which the leaders of the agitation were persuaded to
range their followers under the Chartist standard.

Cobbett having died in 1835, the leadership of the agitation
in the North devolved largely upon his colleague in the repre-
sentation of Oldham, John Fielden of Todmorden. Fielden
came of a manufacturing family which had risen to fortune
during the Industrial Revolution. He and his brother were
owners of extensive spinning and weaving factories at Tod-
morden, where the family reigned in semi-feudal state over an
obedient population. In politics and sympathies Fielden was
a Tory, though, being a Free Trader, he was classed as a Radical
in Parhament. He was distinguished by an attitude of
Owenite benevolence towards his workpeople. In earher days

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW 87

he was a great advocate of the minimum wage idea for hand-
loom weavers, and his projected " Boards of Trade," to fix the
wages of these unfortunate operatives, received the approval
of the Select Committee of 1834r-35. He was an early convert
to the Owenite schemes for factory reform, and in 1832 founded
the " Society for National Regeneration " in which Owen was
interested. This Society started an agitation for factory
reform, in which several leaders of the Anti-Poor Law agitation
were active. Fielden's own part in the latter agitation was
small but important. He represented it in Parliament, where
he was indefatigable in the presentation of petitions. By his
own exertions he prevented the introduction of the Act of
1834, or of the Registration of Births, Marriages, and Deaths
Act of 1837, which was closely connected with it, into the
Todmorden area at all. It was a good generation later before
pressure from Whitehall compelled the Todmorden Union to
build a workhouse.^ Fielden also encouraged similar resistance
in neighbouring towns, hke Huddersfield and Bury. This re-
sistance was so eSective that Lancashire and the West Riding
were administered under the old system for several years after
the Act was otherwise in fuU working order.

Two of Cobbett's sons, J. P. and R. B. B. Cobbett, both
lawyers, played some part in the movement. They helped
to run a periodical called the Champion, in which Fielden
was also interested. As demagogues the two Cobbetts were
failures, and when the agitation assumed a ferocious law-
breaking character, they fell out, and played no further part
except as the legal advisers of Chartist prisoners.

The real leaders of the Anti-Poor Law agitation were
Richard Oastler and Joseph Rayner Stephens. Oastler (1789-
1861), " the factory king," was steward to the family of
ThornhiQ, whose estates lay about Huddersfield, and he himself
lived at Fixby Hall, the home of the absentee ThornhiUs, upon
the moors on the Lancashire side of Huddersfield. He had
come into prominence in 1830, when he opened a campaign
against the exploitation of chUd-labour in the Yorkshire
factories, an agitation which brought him into touch with
Fielden, Robert Owen, and Michael Thomas Sadler. Stephens
(1805-1879) was the son of a Wesleyan minister, and was
educated at the Manchester Grammar School. In 1825 he
entered the Wesleyan ministry and went ofE to a mission

1 See lor the resistance to the new Poor Law in Todmorden, J. Holden,
A Short History of Todmorden, pp. 188-93.

88 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

station at Stockiolm, Sweden, where he seems to have done
good work and got himself well liked.^ In 1830 he returned
and took up a call at Ashton-under-Lyne. Four years later,
owing to his taking an active part in a disestablishment
campaign, he was compelled to sever his connection with the
Methodist body. Like Gladstone shaking ofi the dust of
Oxford, Stephens now felt himself unmuzzled, and plunged at
once into a vehement Factory agitation, emulating in Lanca-
shire the repute of Oastler in Yorkshire. He continued, also,
to preach as a free-lance, and a chapel was erected for him at
Ashton, which remained his headquarters.

It would be a far from unprofitable occupation to speculate
on the influence of Methodism, both within and without the
Church of England, upon the politics of the early nineteenth
century. Oastler himself was a member of the Established
Church, but his father was a Methodist of the first generation
and a personal friend of John Wesley. In those days the gulf
between Church and Methodist chapel was not wide, and pro-
fessional convenience may have determined Oastler's choice of
worship. In aU his modes of thought he was a very rephca
of Stephens.

The strength of the Methodist movement was its appeal to
those religious emotions in the masses of the people, which in
a carefully organised form were the strength of the mediaeval
Church, and which even in these days are not so overlaid with
rational considerations as to be insensible to the appeal of a
General Booth or a Spurgeon. The appeal of Wesley, as a
protest against the soulless, high-and-(6y formalism of the
Church of England, was essentially popular. He re-established
the notion that even the agricultural labourer had a soul, a fact
which tended to be obscured by the social arrangements then
coming into force. He taught, and his followers taught,
vigorously, effectively, the existence of a God who cared for all
the dwellers upon earth, who would not let even a sparrow fall,
and who went to the extreme sacrifice to purchase from the
evil adversary the souls of all His children. These teachings,
which showed an effective contempt of dogma, were pressed
home by a mixture of general and personal appeal, and general
and personal denunciation, culled largely from the language of

1 He learnt how to preach In Swedish, and acquired a strong taste for
Scandinavian literature, which he communicated to Us younger brother,
George Stephen3}(1813-1895), professor at Copenhagen between 1855 and
1893. There was a touch of the undisciplined imagination of the
Chartist preacher in some of the constructive work of the author of the
Rvmio Monuments.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW 89

th.e Old Testament applied with ingenuity and freedom, as
th-ough tte preaciiers were not tied by a strict belief in tte
verbal inspiration of Holy Writ.

Both the theology and the methods of Methodism were
turned directly to the purposes of political agitation by
Stephens and Oastler. In fact it may be safely said that
Stephens went a long way towards making the factory and
poor law movement into a kind of rehgious revival. He
issued forth from the chapel, and sermons were his chief weapon
in the war upon Mammon. With Stephens and Oastler alike
the Bible was the source of all political and religious teaching.
Says Oastler : " I have resolved to go right on. I take the Bible,
the simple Bible with me, without either note or comment, and
in spite of all that men or devils may devise against me, I will
have the BiU." ^ Oastler had an extraordinary faculty for play-
ing upon the feelings of his audience, tears and shudders being
equally at his command. Some of his speeches even now
cannot be read without tremors, especially those in which he
produced, as evidence of factory horrors, the scalp of a girl who
had been caught in a driving belt.

Stephens's special gift was denunciation. He conceived him-
self as a successor of Bishop Latimer or of those Old Testament
prophets, summoned by the Almighty to chastise the Jeroboams
and Ahabs of their time, prophets " who told kings what they
were to do and the people likewise, who told senates and
legislatures what kind of laws they were to make and what
laws they should not make." He imagined himself at war
with Satan, whose reality and vitality, already an established
dogma of the Wesleyan community, was vouched for by the
existence of such persons as Malthus and the Poor Law Com-
missioners. These he compared to Pharaoh who ordered a
massacre of innocents, but unfavourably, as Pharaoh was
frank about the matter whilst the Commissioners were hypo-
oritical."

Both Oastler and Stephens were thoroughgoing Tories.'
In fact Stephens's pohtical ideal was a theocracy of the Old
Testament type in which the preacher announces the wiU of
God, the kiag enforces it, and the people submit to it. Altar,
Throne, and Cottage are the true homes of mankind. In a
society of this description neither class distinctions, factories,

1 December 20, 1832. Election speeclieB In Manchester Keferenoe Library.

2 Sermon at Gharlestown (Aebton), January 6, 1839 (Man. Lib.,
T498, 10).

3 See Oastler's amazing election address In the 1832 election.

90 THE CHAETI8T MOVEMENT

parliaments, nor poor laws have any place. The Bible is the
charter and the Decalogue the law of the land. It is easily
conceivable how Stephens and, to a lesser extent, Oastler
could become leaders of an armed insurrection against the
Poor Law Amendment Act. That Act was conceived as a
" law of devils," the work of a Parliament which stood be-
tween Throne and Cottage, and which carried on its evil work
through commissioners who were as murderous as Pharaoh of
old. It was lawful to resist such a law.

If Lord John Russell wanted to know what he (Stephens) thought
of the New Poor Law, he would tell him plainly, he thought it was
the law of devils ... if vengeance was to come, let it come : it
should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, Umb for Umb, wit^
for wife, child for chUd, and blood for blood.^

In Lancashire and Yorkshire the eloquence, activity, and
fearlessness of Stephens and Oastler raised them to a pitch
of popularity and authority such as few men have attained.
Their personal influence was immense, and they were rewarded
with passionate adulation for their exertions in the popular
cause. Lovett was probably thinking of these two eminent
demagogues when he penned his bitter lines about the tendency
of worlang people to look up to leaders. Another hostile
critic relates of Stephens :

He was utterly careless of other men's opinions and paid little
or no regard to the feelings of any but those he wished to command :
and these were the working people. Over these he domineered,
carrying everything he wished with a high hand : he was obeyed,
almost adored, by multitudes, ... Of personal consequences he
was wholly reckless.'

Thus did Stephens exemplify in his own person the poUtical
supremacy of the preacher. In Ashton and in many of the
other small manufacturing towns his word was law. And
Oastler's reputation in Yorkshire was no whit less. It was
a Wesley- Whitefield crusade again. The appeal was to the
same class of people, the methods were the same, only the
object was difierent.

In the hahds of these two men Toryism assumed a terrifying
aspect. They lashed their followers into a continuous state of
fury which finally culminated in threats of insurrection and
of incendiarism. They seized without inquiry upon every

1 Holyoake, Lite of J. B. Stephens, p. 122.
2 Place, in Holyoake's IJfe, p. 76.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOE LAW 91

argument which would help to discredit the New Poor Law and
the Commission which supervised its enforcement. Did the
Act authorise the segregation of the sexes in the workhouse ?
Then it was a beastly Malthusian device, and Stephens could
pour out sentimental references to the destruction of peaceful
family life, and dilate upon the villainies of " Marcus," to the
horror of his hearers. " Marcus " was the pseudonymous
author of a ghastly parody of " Malthus on Population," in
which various devices for painless infanticide were described.
Stephens afiected to believe that this absurd pamphlet was
the work of the Commissioners or of their myrmidons, and
the hoax, if it was such at first, quickly became a serious belief.
No abuse, in fact, was bad enough for the " Malthusians,"
which term itself became the supremely abusive epithet for all
enemies of the popular caxise.^

The agitation spread rapidly. In every town on both sides
the Pennine border, committees sprang into existence to carry
on the good work. Most of these committees had already
seen service in the Factory Act agitation. In fact it may be
said that nearly the whole of the Anti-Poor Law campaigners
had transferred their energies temporarily from the Factory
Movement. In Manchester, R. J. Richardson of Salford, a
wordy, pedantic logic-chopper of the worst description, and
William Benbow, an old Radical who had been through the
desperate days of Hampden Clubs, Spencean propaganda and
Peterloo massacre ; ^ in Bury, Matthew Fletcher, a medical
man of sorts ; in Ramsbottom, Peter Murray MacDouall, a
very young medico destined to be important in the Chartist
Movement, became the best-known local leaders. Yorkshire
had William Rider and Peter Bussey, the former a jouinahst
with the Northern Star, the latter a beer-house keeper at
Bradford. Wherever the opposition was strong, as at Tod-
morden, it was found impossible to elect the Boards of
Guardians or to find ofi&cials willing to serve. Riotous pro-
ceedings followed the attempts to enforce the law by the
introduction of the Registration Act of 1837, for which the

1 Maokay, History of English Poor Law, 1S34-1898, pp. 239-41.

2 Herr Beer, In his careful research upon Benbow's (Sozialismtis, pp.
249-51) career, ha sapparently overlooked a passage In Hunt's MeTnoirs
(London, 1820-22), toI. iii. pp. 409 et seg., where Benbow of Manchester
Is mentioned along with Samuel Bamford of Middleton as delegate to a
meeting at the " Crown and Anchor," 1817. Bamtord, In his lAfe of a Badieal
(c. 1. p. 8), calls him " William Benbow of Manchester." Hunt, in the Oreen
Bag Plot, 1819, says, " Benbow of the Manchester Hampden Club " was
reported by a Goyemment spy to have been manufacturing pikes in 1816.
I feel sure that this is William Beubow, the Chartist. See later, p. 138.

92 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

unit of administration was tte same as that of the Poor Law,
the Guardians being also the registration authority. The
Bury folk denounced the attempt to introduce the Poor
Law via the Registration Act as " low cunning and deceit,"
" illegality and moral turpitude." ^

Within a few months after the campaign opened the ex-
citement throughout the two shires was already high. It was
sufficient at least to attract the attention of radicals and
revolutionaries of all kinds. The London Working Men's
Association was already feeling its way to estabhsh similar
associations amongst the factory population. Much more
important, however, was the coming into the North of two men
who had hitherto confined their pohtical attention to the
capital. These were Augustus Harding Beaumont and Feargus
O'Connor.

Beaumont was a youngish man of somewhat superior birth
and in well-to-do circumstances. He was a kind of Byron, an
aristocrat who threw himself recklessly and probably uselessly
into popular revolutionary movements. He was of a wild
disposition, uncontrolled temper, and unbalanced intellect.
He had seen some stormy doings in France, and had become
a figure in London radical circles, where he was on the Dor-
chester Labourers' Committee. In speech he was brutally
candid and vehement to the verge of madness. In fact it
was an outburst of this description at a public meeting in
January 1838 which carried him oS and prevented him from
adding to the difficulties of the other Chartist leaders. In 1837
he founded at Newcastle-on-Tyne a paper called the Northern
Liberator, which was one of the best of the popular newspapers.
It took a vehement part in the campaign led by Oastler and
Stephens, and in other respects it was noted for its intelHgent
interest in foreign affairs.

Feargus O'Connor deserves some special reference. He
was born in 1794 of an Irish laipded family in County Cork.
His family had in the preceding generation been closely associ-
ated with nationalist and revolutionary movements, and con-
sequently enjoyed no little popularity in the county and
elsewhere. Both his father, Roger, and his uncle, Arthur
O'Connor had been United Irishmen. Roger had claimed for
his family a highly dubious descent from the Kings of Con-
naught ; Arthur, a more serious and prominent rebel, had
been the chief agent in bringing about a French invasion of
1 Maokay, p. 251.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW 93

Ireland, and was still living in exile in France. The family
remained fairly weU-to-do, and Feargus lived the rollicking
life of a young squireen. He was educated at Trinity CoUege,
Dublin, and was called to the Irish bar, but never practised to
any extent. Of his life in Ireland O'Connor afterwards gave
many fantastic accounts,^ but there is reason to believe that
it was of a somewhat lurid description.^ In 1832 the joint
influence of Daniel O'Connell and his own family procured the
election of Feargus for the county of Cork. He entered Parlia-
ment as one of O'Connell's " tail." He was perhaps one of the
best of a rather second-rate lot.* He had courage and readi-
ness in debate and an independence of character which brought
him under O'Connell's ban. At the election of 1835 he was
again returned, but unseated on the ground that he was not
qualified to sit— an objection which was probably as sound in
1832 as in 1835, had O'Connell seen fit to allow it to be brought
forward in the earlier year. That interrupted his parliamentary
career for twelve years. He settled, somewhat precariously
circumstanced, no doubt, in Hammersmith, and became
acquainted with English radical movements in which for a
year or so he played but an inefEective role. The growing
agitation in the manufacturing districts ofiered him a better
chance of distinguishing himself. He toured the North in
August 1836, and made the acquaintance of Stephens and
Oastler, and finally followed the example of Beaumont, quitting
London and fixing himself in Leeds as the proprietor of the
famous Northern Star, a weekly radical paper, which first
beamed on the popular political world in November 1837.

O'Connor was a big, rather handsome-looMng man endowed
with great physical strength and animal feelings. He was
capable, especially when his mind became disordered, of in-
credible feats of exertion and endurance, so that as a travelling
agitator he was perfectly ubiquitous. No journey was too
long to undertake. As an Irishman he dearly loved a " row,"
and was supremely in his element in such Donnybrook afiairs
as the Nottingham election riot of 1842. He was well versed
in aU the arts of popularity, and could be all things to all men.
With rough working men he was haU-feUow- well-met, but he
could be dignified when it was necessary to make a more serious
impression. He was almost irresistible in conversation, with
his fine voice, his inexhaustible stock of anecdote, in short,

1 National Instructor, 1850. ^ O'Connell's Correspondence, i. 370.
» IMd. i. 391. 412, 430.

94 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

with his true Irish blarney. These talents were equally dis-
played from the platform. He had a great beU-fike voice,
such as was Henry Hunt's chief oratorical asset. In fact he
resembled Hunt sufficiently to be regarded by his Manchester
admirers as the true wearer of that prophet's mantle.
O'Connor could tune his song to suit any ear. In Parliament
he was a good House of Commons man and spoke more sensibly
than many. To the London artisans he spoke as an experienced
politician. In the North, amongst the fustian-jackets and
unshorn chins he was the typical demagogue, unloading upon
his unsophisticated hearers rigmaroles of absurdity and
sedition, flavoured by irresistibly comic similes and anecdotes.
He worked on his popular audiences by flattery of the most
flagrant character, or by constant references to the sacrifices he
had made in the cause of the people. He had a pretty faculty
for denunciation. The following is a delightful specimen. He
was once hissed by wealthy folk in his audience at Sunderland.

Yes — ^you — ^I was just coming to you, when I was describing the
materials of which our spurious aristocracy is composed. You
gentlemen belong to the big-beUied, little-brained, numskull aristo-
cracy. How dare you hiss me, you contemptible set of platter-
faced, amphibious politicians ? . . . Now was it not indecent in
you ? Was it not foolish of you ? Was it not ignorant of you to
hiss me ? If you interrupt me again, I'll bundle you out of the
room."-

As a political thinker O'Connor was quite negUgible. He
was totally without originality in this respect and borrowed
all his ideas. James O'Brien, who wrote for the Sta/r, was
perhaps his chief source of inspiration. He took up the pre-
valent ideas as he found them and proceeded regularly from
the less to the more popular. At 6ist he was advocating the
" three points " of EadicaUsm, then it was Factory Legisla-
tion, then the Poor Law, then the Charter. He never origin-
ated any movement, probably not even the Land Scheme
which was later associated with him. He came into the
various agitations and turned them into channels which ran
in anything but the direction desired by their originators.
His serious speeches were sometimes miracles of incoherence
and absurdity, even when he had revised them for the Northern
Star. One short specimen must suffice here :

I am one of those who from experience has [sic] learned that
1 Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 159.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOE LAW 95

consideration of foreign interests has been forced upon us by neglect
of our domestic resources : and I believe that overgrown taxation
for the support of idlers and the unrestricted gambling speculations
upon labour, applied to an undefined and unstable system of pro-
duction without regard to demand, is the great evil under which
manual labourers are suffering.*

O'Connor's reply to Cobden in the famous debate at North-
ampton in 1844 ^ may well be studied from tMs point of
view. His inability to follow out an argument became greater
with the advance of mental disorder.

In the North of England O'Connor's rise to popular leader-
ship was rapid in the extreme. Within fifteen months from
the foundation of the Northern Star, he was the universally
acknowledged leader in those parts. The apparition of an
apparently wealthy newspaper proprietor, of superior educa-
tion, an ex-member of Parliament, and undoubtedly sincere
in his championship of the people's cause, was a welcome
one to the leaderless multitudes. Stephens and Oastler were
prevented by other duties from assuming complete control,
whilst the older trade union leaders, like Doherty, were not
sympathetic with so disorganised a movement. O'Connor
was further welcomed for the sake of his rebellious ancestry,
which lost neither in numbers nor in rebelliousness in his
frequent references. In 1838, when O'Connell made his attack
upon Trade Unionism, it was remembered in O'Connor's
favour that he had been O'Connell's enemy. At the end of
the same year the arrest of Stephens removed his most serious
rival, who, however, had already been losing ground through
the drifting of the Anti-Poor Law agitation into Chartism — a
process much encouraged by O'Connor — and through his con-
demnation of Radicalism, for it was his habit to pose as a Tory
and a Royalist.

O'Connor had, in fact, all the instincts and certain of the
qualities requisite for domination. Hence his quarrel with
O'Connell. He wanted himself to be the O'Connell of the
English Radicals, and, actually succeeded in reducing the later
Chartist leaders to the position of a " tail." He was a man of
energy and will, and had some commercial instincts which
saved Mm from the disasters into which cleverer men, like
O'Brien, fell. His foundation of the Northern Star was a great
stroke of business. He took over the funds, to which he him-
self contributed little or nothing, from a committee, of which

1 Northern Star, April 17, 1839. 2 Ibid. August 10, 1844.

96 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

tie Swedenborgian ex-minister William Hill was chief, and
floated tte concern very successfully. Hill became editor,
and a good editor too, and Joshua Hobson ably assisted as
publisher, but the power which " boomed " the paper was
O'Connor. He encouraged working men to subscribe by pub-
lishing any and every report of any meeting, however insigni-
ficant, and simple weavers were delighted to discover that they
had " given it to the capitalists in fine style." They saw their
names in print and their speeches were praised editorially.
The Sta/r quickly became an institution, and no public-house
was complete without it. It made no pretence at being an
" elevating " paper. Like many cheap papers to-day, it gave
the public exactly what the public wanted. In fact O'Connor
and his men may be regarded as pioneers of cheap jouinaUsm.
They gave away things for nothing, and sometimes rose to
illustrations, especially portraits of Radical heroes. Through
the Star O'Connor rose to power. He made money by it. He
exercised " graft " through it. Chartist leaders became his
paid reporters, and his reporters became Chartist leaders. It
was Tammany Hall in embryo. The paper could make or
unmake reputations, and local leaders went in terror of its
censure. Place declared that the Northern Star had degraded
the whole Radical Press.^ It was truly the worst and most
successful of the Radical papers, a melancholy tribute to the
low level of intelligence of its readers. The same explanation
win perhaps do for O'Connor's success as well, for the paper
was an expanded O'Connor. For a while after its foimdation
the paper did furnish some ammunition for Radical orators in
the articles written by O'Brien. It was the educative effect
of O'Brien's leaders that caused O'Connor to style him the
" schoolmaster of Chartism." When these ceased the paper
sank to a lower level.

For such a man, conceited even to megalomania, ambitious,
energetic, to a certain degree disinterested and sincere, an
agitator and demagogue to his finger-tips, the North of England
presented an ideal field of operations. A great vague mass of
desperate, excited, and uneducated labourers was crying out for
leaders in the campaign against the new oppression of the
Poor Law. Their lack of programme was paralleled by
O'Connor's disregard of programmes. He came forth to lead
them he knew not whither, and they followed blindly.

At first O'Connor was compelled to play a comparatively

1 Additional MBS. 27,820, p. 154.

AGITATION AGAINST THE NEW POOR LAW 97

modest part. He was one amongst several leaders almost
equally endowed with powers of denunciatory oratory, and
in tke latter months of 1837 and throughout 1838 their fol-
lowers' desire for passionate expression was almost satiated
with the torrents of rhetoric, poured forth from a multitude of
platforms and repeated afresh in the pages of the Sta/r. Beau-
mont, O'Brien, O'Connor, Oastler, Stephens, and a host of
lesser men vied with each other in the luridness of their oratory.
The climax in this stage of the movement came in January
1838. On the 1st there was a meeting at Newcastle-on-Tyne
to demand the repeal of the Poor Law Amendment Act.
O'Connor, Stephens, Beaumont, and others were present.
Stephens's peroration was conspicuous even amongst much
sulphurous oratory :

And if this damnable law, which violated all the laws of God,
was continued, and all means of peaceably putting an end to it
had been made in vain, then, in the words of their banner, " For
children and wife we'll war to the knife." If the people who pro-
duce all wealth could not be allowed, according to God's Word, to
have the kindly fruits of the earth which they had, in obedience to
God's Word, raised by the sweat of their brow, then war to the
knife with their enemies, who were the enemies of God. If the
musket and the pistol, the sword, and the pike were of no avail,
let the women take the scissors, the chUd the pin or needle. If
all failed, then the firebrand — aye, the firebrand — the firebrand, I
repeat. The palace shall be in flames. I pause, my friends. If
the cottage is not permitted to be the abode of man and wife, and
if the smiling infant is to be dragged from a father's arms and a
mother's bosom, it is because these hell-hounds of commissioners
have set up the command of their master the devil, against our
God.i

A week later a great meeting was held at Leeds, where
Beaumont, O'Connor, John Taylor, and Sharman Crawford,
M.P., were the speakers. Crawford protested against the un-
bridled language of the three demagogues, whereupon Beau-
mont rose and denounced his critic with such passion that he
fell into some mental derangement, which, coupled with his
foolishness in flinging out of the overheated room on to the
top of the London stage-coach, brought about his death on
January 26, 1838. He was not yet thirty-seven years old.^

So month after month the North of England was lashed into
frenzy by these leaders. It is hard to say what wotdd have

1 Northern Star, January 6, 1838.
9 Additional MSS. 27,821, vv- 14-24.

98 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

become of this movement, had it not been swallowed up in
Chartism. Probably it would have died away, burned itself
out. It was not a revolutionary movement, nor were its leaders
revolutionaries. It is true that there were real revolutionaries,
like O'Brien, John Taylor, and William Benbow, among
them, but their time was not yet come. The true revolu-
tionary does not give way to rhetoric like the example of
Stephens above quoted. Mere words wiQ not satisfy him,
and we have no evidence that either Stephens, Oastler, or
O'Connor was prepared to go beyond mere words. Their
business was to protest, which they did thoroughly, and to
prevent their own suppression under the six Acts, which they
did partially and temporarily. When they found that, as a
result of their exertions, the New Poor Act was not enforced, and
that they could still harangue their followers unmolested, they
were virtually in, the position of an army which accomphshes
by mobilisation all that a successful campaign would bring,
and which, being unwilling to disband without attacking some-
body, allows itself to be led anywhere. So the agitation passed
into Chartism. It gave up its negative character and acquired
a positive programme. It became more organised under the
influence of Birmingham and London Radicals. But these
Northern Chartists retaining their violent methods and their
incendiary leaders, gave that tumultuous aspect to the move-
ment by which it is best known. Fully developed Chartism
derives its programme from London, its organisation from
Birmingham, its personnel and vehemence fiom Lancashire
and Yorkshire.

CHAPTER VI

THE EBVIVAL OF THE BIEMINUHAM POLITICAL UNION
(1837-1838)

The Birmingham Political Union, which, had played so great ,
a part in the Reform movement of 1830-32, declined and dis- 1
solved in 1834 after four years' activity. Like other politically \
minded people, the leaders of this Union awaited quietly the fruits
of their labours in the form of measures of social reform. Mean-
while they took full advantage of the trade boom of 1832-36.
Even politicians must earn their Uving,' and the leaders of the
PoUtical Union were flourishing bankers and manufacturers to
whom prosperous trade was not without attractions. During
these years the Reformed Parliament was energetically at
work and gave forth the result of its labours in the Poor Law
Amendment Act and the Municipal Reform Act of 1834r-35.
Good trade, enormous business with the United States, and
super-luxuriant harvests diverted public attention from politics,
and no doubt the reaction was wholesome after the excitement
of the Reform Bill campaign. The militant Owenism, which
had largely contributed to the downfall of the Birmingham
Union in 1833-34, passed away, to all appearances, as quickly
as it had arisen. In 1836, however, came the first indications
of an economic collapse, heralded by astounding events in the
United States. As the year wore on the magnitude of the
collapse grew, and Birmingham trade began to sufier severely.
Distress and unemployment increased to an unparalleled
extent. The austerity of the New Poor Law now became
apparent, and all the ugly symptoms of social unrest made
their appearance.

The leaders of the old Union, many of whom were now
members of the new Corporation of the town, felt it incumbent
upon them to take measures to ameliorate the sad state of

100 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

many of their fellow-townsmen and former faithful followers.
A Eeform Association was set up in 1836 with this object.
It quickly developed into something more. Instead of seeking
merely to reUeve the local distress, the leaders determined to
devise a remedy for the general evU. It was not far to seek.
Thomas Attwood (1783-1856), the Birmingham banker, had
long possessed an infallible plan, and his colleagues easily
became true believers. Here is his diagnosis and his remedy.
The cause of distress is the dearness of food and the dearness
of money. The landlords pass laws to make food dear and
the money lords pass laws to make money dear. The result
is great distress which drives people to the workhouse. But
the relentless cruelty of the dominant classes pursues them
here also and converts their place of refuge into a horrible
dungeon. To crown aU, the tyrants have established a PoUce
Force to repress all protests and to nip sedition in the bud.^
What was the remedy ? Obviously the repeal of the Corn
Laws and the Money Laws, but especially the latter. Peel's
Act of 1819, which authorised the return to gold payments
and the " restriction " of the currency, must be repealed, and
proper measures must be taken to regidate the currency accord-
ing to the state of trade. The great panacea was the " ex-
pansion " of the currency by the issue of more paper money.
As blood to the body so currency to trade : more blood better
health. Paper money would increase business, destroy unem-
ployment, increase wages, decrease debts, in fact make every-
body happy.

Being a banker Attwood could pose as an authority, and he
had long gathered round him a body of fervent disciples who
had fought the glorious campaign of 1830-32 under his leader-
ship. Among these were R. K. Dpuglas, who urged his views
in the Birmingham Journal ; T. C. Salt, a lamp manufacturer ^
employing one hundred men, and a man of considerable
influence amongst working people; Benjamin Hadley, an
alderman, and a churchwarden of the Parish Church;
George Edmonds, a solicitor, a guardian of the poor, and a
convinced Radical; George Frederick Muntz, who made a
fortune by the manufacture of a metallic compound known
as " Muntz metal " ; P. H. Muntz, also a man of finance ;
and Joshua Scholefield, who with Attwood himself represented
the borough of Birmingham in Parliament. The working-
class wing of the party was led by John Collins, a shoemaker

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 75. « Charter, March 3, 1839, p. 81.

EEVIVAL OF BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 101

and a Sunday School teaclier, an honest character, held in
very high respect, and an orator of some talent.

Early in 1837 •"■ this group began to agitate the currency theory
in and out of Parliament. As the distress in the town grew, so
did the activity of the old Unionists, in their capacity of the
Birmingham Reform Association. In April 1837 they decided
to enlist working-class support for their movement and to call
upon the ancient glories of 1830-32. On the 18th they passed
a resolution, restoring the name Birmingham Political Union.^
The formal revival took place on May 23, and a few days
later the Union, which already numbered over 5000 members,
published its first address to the public, asking for support
in its endeavours to find a remedy for the existing distress.^

This, as it later appeared, was a fatal step. The revival of
the Union was more than the revival of a name : it was the
resurrection of a programme whose realisation was compatible
with the Currency Scheme only in the sanguine minds of the
followers of Attwood, and even they were not unanimous in
their optimism. On June 19 a great meeting of the Union
decided upon a programme of Parliamentary Reform which
included Household Sufirage, Vote by Ballot, Triennial Parlia-
ments, Payment of Members of Parliament, and the abolition
of the Property Qualification.* The Attwoodites had thus
added to their dubious measure of Currency Reform, which was
scarcely calculated to awaken the enthusiasm of the working
classes or of any other class except that of debtors who would
like to avoid payment, a political reform in which they were
only secondarily interested. To carry one measure of doubtful
value, they proposed to agitate for five others which, though
much more desirable in themselves, were calculated to arouse
the very strongest resistance. Supposing that their influence
in Birmingham was due to the manifest advantages of Currency
Reform, they continued to keep that measure as the first plank
of their platform. It is doubtful whether the working classes
of Birmingham were really concerned about currency at all,
but they were concerned about the vote.* The position of the

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 75.

2 lUd. 27,819, pp. 79-84.

3 Ibid. 27,819, p. 94. * Ibid. 27,819, p. 99.

° This is demonstiated In my opinion by the ease with which O'Connor
was able to undermine the influence of the Attwood group in December
1838. Place was hostile to the Currency Scheme, and ridiculed the Att-
woodites mercilessly. He charges them with intending to smuggle the
Currancy Scheme into the Chartist programme without obtaining the assent
of the Chartists or even of the working men of Birmingham l.ibid. pp.
134-8).

102 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Attwoodites was thus false, and its weakness was quickly
exposed when they turned their programme over to the work-
ing classes as a whole. The Currency plan was quietly shelved
and with it the Birmingham Political Union.

The split between the working-class members of thedJnion
and their wealthy leaders, which developed gradually during
1838, was at first hidden under the show of general harmony.
The great meeting of June 19, 1837, at which fifty thousand
persons are said to have been present, decided to send petitions
to the Premier asking for immediate measures of rehef.^ The
deputation urged its Currency Scheme, suggested action by
Order in Council as being more expeditious than by bUl, and
came away satisfied that Melbourne was a convert. Attwood
was re-elected to Parliament, on the monetary question, as he
thought. The activities of the Union were extended into the
neighbourhood of Birmingham and societies were formed to
spread the Attwood gospel.^ In this connection Place made
the famous sally, noted by Mr. Graham Wallas. " Adhesion
meant submission to Mr. Attwood and his absurd currency
proposal, which few understood and all who did condemned."
The London Working Men's Association, which was acting
demurely in alliance with the Radical group in the Commons,
made ofEer of alliance with the Birmingham Union in the cause
of Universal Suffrage. The offer was not publicly accepted,
as the communication came under the Corresponding Societies'
Acts, and was therefore imlawful.*

In the autumn when Parhament reassembled the currency
\ campaign began afresh but culminated, it is to be feared, in
'a total defeat on November 2, 1837. A deputation led by
Attwood harangued Melbourne and Spring Rice, the Chancellor
'of the Exchequer, for two hours, but unfortunately for their
success the speakers had the most diverse opinions upon the
remedy to be adopted, and as all the members of the deputation
spoke, it is not surprising to know that Melbourne was not
prepared to act upon such discordant advice.* The deputation
went back to Birmingham to report progress. The difference
of opinion widened. Some were for continuing the currency
campaign ; others under P. H. Muntz, Hadley, and Salt were

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 111.

2 Ibid. 27,819, pp. 114-16. Place suggests that the Currency notion was
thrust on them.

3 Perhaps the Birmingham people were not sorry, as they did not want
equal alliance but preponderant influence.

■> Additional MSS. 27,819, pp. 127 etaeq. ; on the authority of the Birming-
ham Journal,

EEVIVAL OF. BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 103

for shelving it in favour of Universal Suffrage. On November 7
P. H. Muntz brouglit forward a resolution to ttat effect, and
carried it in spite of opposition and some uproar. '^ This
decision saved the situation and the Union for the time being
by securing a wider working-class support for it, but it piled
up difficulties for the future. A movement in favour of
Universal Suffrage could not long remain tied to the apron-
strings of the Birmingham Union, as was fondly hoped, and the
currency question still remained to be solved. Douglas com-
promised by inserting an Attwoodite clause into the National
Petition of 1838, which clause was contumeUously rejected by
the Convention in 1839.

Meanwhile the resolution of November 7 had unexpectedly
large results. Lord John Russell had roused the ire of Radicals
by his " finality " declaration. On the 28th Douglas carried a
resolution of protest in the Council of the Union, and on
December 7 the Union called upon all Radicals to unite in an
attempt to procure the reform which Lord John had declared
impossible. This was an appeal to Caesar with a vengeance.
The Radicals of Great Britain were mainly amongst the work-
ing classes, and in rousing them to political action the Birming-
ham Union had stirred up a giant which was destined to turn
and rend it. The first response to the appeal was made by the
London Working Men's Association, and these two organisa-
tions began to agitate on a much larger scale. Political ex-
citement was growing. The accession of Queen Victoria was
expected to have great and good things in store for the work-
ing people. Meanwhile distress and unemployment increased.
The population of the North of England began to become
restive. Stephens and Oastler were active and had recently
acquired an accession of agitating violence in O'Connor and the
Northern Star, and in A. H. Beaumont and the Northern
Liberator. It was a bad time to appeal to working-class feelings.
The better sort of working people were angry over their 1832
disappointment, dismayed by their Trade Union failure of 1834,
and saw in the prosecution of the Glasgow Cotton Spinners a
declaration of the Government's hostility to their legitimate
aspirations ; whilst the poorer operatives in the domestic
industries were horrified at the deterrent Poor Law Administra-
tion. Fiery sentimentalists, like Oastler and Stephens, found
it easy to rouse such a population to fury. Even in normal
times it was an unruly people. From 1830 onwards order was

1 Additional MSS. 27,819, pp. 145-8.

104 THE CHAETI8T MOVEMENT

only maintained in Manchester by military force.^ It was
to tMs stormy ocean that Attwood and his friends proposed
to entrust their frail currency bark. An early shipwreck
awaited it.

The Birmingham Union now entered upon a dazzling phase
of activity. Its leaders fancied themselves as victorious
generals, once more leading the legions of industrious patriots
into the legislative citadel, as they fondly supposed had been
the case in 1831-32. They would set up their standard in the
Midlands and call all worMng men into it. They anticipated
that their massed battalions would overawe Melbourne as
easily as Wellington or Lyndhurst. They were moral force
men^ but they fancied that moral force meant only a display
of the potentialities of physical force. Edmonds spoke darkly
about the substantial thing behind moral force which produced
the impression upon rulers.^ Attwood, carried away by
excitement and disappointment, on December 19, 1837,
denounced the Radicals in the House for their imspeakable
dulness in remaining unconvinced by his Currency eloquence,
and voted them a dogged, stupid, obstinate set of fellows
from whom the people had really nothing good to expect.
He was for extreme measures and substituted Universal
Suffrage for Household Suffrage in his political creed. He
would get two million followers — a force to which Government
must bow.*

This speech and its programme provided the raw material
for the National Petition, as it came to be called. The meeting
of June 19 had decided upon a petition in favour of Eadical
reform, and the document itself was drawn up by R. K.
Douglas. The Petition in its final shape demanded Repeal of
Peel's Act of 1819 and of the Corn Laws ; and the amended
> political reforms mentioned by Attwood in December.

Agitation began in the immediate neighbourhood of Bir-
mingham and was pursued for some three months. In March
1838, a great step forward was taken, and it was decided
to send a missionary to Glasgow.* That town, in common
with most of the other industrial centres, was labouring under
severe depression. In the immediate neighbourhood there
were thousands of handloom weavers whose distress was
chronic during normal times and acute during the depression.

1 J. p. Kay, Working Classes in Manchester, 1832.

2 Additional MSS. 27,819, p. 149.

8 Ibid. 27,819, p. 162. * Ibid. 27,820, p. 68.

REVIVAL OF BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 105

The operatives in the factories had been terrified by the prose-
cution of their leaders. In general there was plenty of com-
bustible material for an agitator. The Birmingham Union
sent CoUins as their emissary. His business was to bring
over the discontented of Glasgow to the Attwoodite standard,
and to persuade them to organise an agitation on the same
lines as at Birmingham. Collins did his work effectively, and
his enthusiastic reports gladdened the hearts of the Birming-
ham leaders, who, we are assured by an unfriendly witness',
badly needed the stimulus.^ From this time.^nward the
monster petition idea gathered support and substance. At
Birmingham there was jubilation to excess. Men began to
think in millions, but while Douglas moderately hoped
for two million supporters. Salt was admonished by P. H.
Muntz to expect six millions. So confident were the
leaders of ultimate success that they already began to talk
of coercing Government by " ulterior measures," ^ assuming
already that the millions who were to sign the Petition would
be efiective political warriors instead of what they for the most
part were — non-combatants who hoped the Birmingham
people would win. This assumption that all S3rmpathisers are
as zealous and determined as their leaders, is common to all
enthusiasts, and explains much that seems the height of folly
in the subsequent developments of the movement. But the
confusion of signatories and supporters was common to all
Chartists for a long time.

CoUins acted the part of an Attwoodite John the Baptist
with great efficiency, and in May the time was ripe for the
Messiah himself to appear in Glasgow. On April 24 CoUins's
mission culminated in a conference of trades at Glasgow which
resolved to call a monster meeting on May 21, and to invite a
deputation from Birmingham.^ This was duly reported by
Collins to headquarters, and the Birmingham leaders made an
enthusiastic response. At a monster meeting on May 14 a
deputation was appointed, consisting of Attwood, Joshua
Scholefield, P. H. Muntz, Hadley, Edmonds, Salt, and Douglas.
To this meeting was presented a draft petition which was to be
sent to Glasgow for adoption there. This was the first public
appearance of the National Petition.*

The Glasgow Demonstration was an immense success. It
was believed that one hundred and fifty thousand Radicals,

1 Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 76. = Ibid. 27,820, p. 73.

s Ibid. 27,820, p. 78. " Ibid. 27,820, pp. 82, 89.

106 THE CHAETI8T MOVEMENT

marslialled under thirty-eight banners, took part. Besides
Attwood and his friends, there were other speakers, including
James M'Nish, the hero of the Cotton Spinners' trial, and
two delegates, Murphy and Dr. Wade, from the London
Working Men's Association. These last named presented to
the meeting the " People's Charter." ^

This meeting, therefore, brought the beginning of an organised
" national " movement a step nearer. It still remained to
cultivate the other fields of discontent in the North of England
and in Wales. Glasgow, Birmingham, and London were now
apparently brought into line. The Birmingham Petition and
the London Charter were both made public. What was equally
important, plans for future agitation and organisation were
suggested. Attwood made two remarkable propositions —
the summoning of a National Convention to concentrate the
Radical strength, and a General Strike of all the industries —
masters and men together, in order to humble the common
enemy, the Government. It was to be a modern secession
to the Sacred Mount, peaceful, complete, and efEective. Un-
fortunately for Attwood, he had been long since forestalled in
the idea of a General Strike, and by men of less peaceable
natures.

From Glasgow the deputation went on a tour in Scotland
as far north as Perth, visiting Edinburgh, Kilmarnock, Stirling,
Dundee, Cupar, Dunfermline, Elderslie (Eenfrew), accom-
panied occasionally by Dr. Wade.^ It returned in great triumph
to Birmingham, leaving Collins to work his way slowly through
the North of England where he made acquaintance with J. E.
Stephens, whose methods and language horrified him.' He
popularised the National Petition in the industrial districts
of Lancashire and Yorkshire some time before the People's
Charter obtained a footing there. Meetings began to be held
in June and July* in support of the Petition, whilst the first
mention in the Northern Star of the Charter is on July 16
in connection with a meeting at Dewsbury. The idea of a
Convention took hold of popular imagination. On July 17
the Birmingham Union held a meeting at which the plan of a
Convention took practical form, and the residts of its delibera-
tions were made public. It was to be called the General
Convention of the Industrious Classes, and was to consist of

1 Additional MSS. 27,820, pp. 109-119.
2 Northern Star, June 2, 1838. » Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 141.

■• E.g. Leeds, June 5 ; Oldham, July 1.

REVIVAL OF BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 107

not more ttan forty-nine members. No delegate was to be
elected as the representative of any organised body, or by any
organisation, but elections must be made in meetings called
with every legal formality and open to the public at large.
These precautions were necessary in view of the laws against
Corresponding Societies. The Birmingham people would lead
the way at a meeting on August 6, at which their delegates
would be elected,^ and the People's Charter and National
Petition adopted.

The meeting on August 6, 1838, at Newhall Hill is the official
beginning of the Chartist Movement, that is, of the union of
all working-class Radicals in one movement. Besides the
Birmingham leaders, there were present Peargus O'Connor
and R. J. Richardson, representing Yorkshire and Lancashire
respectively ; Wade, Henry Vincent, and Henry Hetherington,
representing the London Working Men's Association ; Purdie
and Moir, representing Scotland. A crowd of 200,000 people
lined the side of the hill at the foot of which the hustings were
placed. To those on the platform the crowd presented a
wonderful sight, and the enthusiasm generated by the pres-
ence of so vast an assembly was immense. Attwood was the
principal figure. It was perhaps the climax of his Radical
career, and he improved the occasion with a speech which
lasted, on a moderate computation, two and a quarter hours,
in which he reviewed the whole case against the Government
and looked forward to a sure and speedy victory. The
ultimate goal was the abohtion of the Corn Laws, the Money
Laws, and the Poor Law of 1834, and a reform of the Factory
System. P. H. Muntz appealed for an abandonment of all
sectional movements in favour of Petition and Charter. These
were enthusiastically adopted, and the meeting proceeded to
an election of delegates to the Convention. No less than eight
were appointed, all the Union leaders being elected except
Attwood, who, as Member of Parliament, would help the
cause there. These delegates were authorised to take charge of
the arrangements for the summoning of the Convention and
the circulation of the Petition.

Thus a great general working-class movement began its
career. For the next three years the forces of working-class
discontent, of popular aspirations and enthusiasms were con-
centrated as they had never been concentrated before under
the standards of the National Petition and the People's Charter.
1 Northern Star, August 4, 1838.

108 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

The Attwoodites were intoxicated with the unexpectedly large
success of their schemes and contemplated with satisfaction
their future progress towards a sure and certain victory. But
the Birmingham Union died in giving birth to the Chartist
Movement.

For a time all went well. The election of delegates was
carried out in all parts of the country during September and
the following months.^ Nevertheless from this time forward
the Birmingham Union lost hold upon the Movement, and when
the Convention met leadership was already gone from their
delegates. The Union itself began to collapse and it was the
Convention which dealt the final blow.

This downfall was due to a combination of forces working
both within and without the Union. In the first place the
Birmingham Political Union was an anachronism, a resur-
rection from the days before militant Owenism had inculcated
the idea of a class war. It was a body whose rank and file
were working people and whose leaders were middle-class men.
As such it was opposed to the prevailing tendency amongst
working people. The London Working Men's Association
was founded with the idea of excluding any but hona fide
artisans, and though it in practice was prepared to co-operate
with middle-class people, it made no concealment of the fact
that it held such co-operation to imply no subordination.
The London working men would accept no terms but equal
alliance. They had drunk deep of the liquor of O'Brienism
and, in the somewhat limited social philosophy at their disposal,
identified the middle class with the capitalist employing class,
whose elimination was one of the principal articles of their
creed. The working men of the North, who had suffered more
personally from the evils they denounced, held the same views,
but in a cruder and more violent form than did the skilled
artisans of London. Neither section, however, believed that the
interests of middle class and working class could possibly be
identical, or that a middle-class leader was to be trusted. The
mere fact that a middle-class leader was zealous for a particidar
object was a guarantee that that object was not one for which
working men should strive.

There are early hints that the London Working Men's
Association was not inchned to allow the Birmingham leaders
or their programme to take first place in the national move-

1 Place, Additional MSS. 27,820, gives notices of thirty-eight meetings
between August 6 and December 18, of which fourteen elected delegates.

EBVIVAL OF BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 109

ment. The presence of Dr. Wade at Glasgow, Edinburgh, and
Birmingham was very significant. Wade had been a member
of the old Birmingham Union in 1832, and had created a storm
by advocating the formation of a Working Men's Union on
the ground that middle-class leadership could not possibly
be satisfactory to working men. Middle-class people would
invariably be attracted by speculative bubble schemes which
would depreciate labour.^ He used the language of militant
Owenism of which he, Vicar of Warwick as he was, was a prop
and pillar. He was in fact a Christian Socialist of an early
generation and a pronounced type. He was active in various
purely Owenite societies in London and a member of the semi-
Owenite National Union of the Working-Classes. For his
temerity the Birmingham Union proposed to exclude him,
and it is probable that the old leaders of the new Union were
not pleased to be haunted by his presence and his continual
thrusting forward of the Charter.^ The London W.M.A. had
other reasons for suspecting the Attwoodites besides class
prejudice. They did not like the Currency Scheme. O'Brien,
who borrowed some currency lore from Attwood, thought his
plans unsound and said so.

The Currency Scheme was in truth a great source of weak-
ness. The Attwoodites had obtained popular support by
promising immediate benefit for both master and man from
the adoption of their scheme. When the political programme
was added, a body of supporters was obtained who were far more
concerned for the vote than for paper money. Place indeed
did not hesitate to ascribe the coUapse, not only of the Bir-
mingham Union, but also of the whole movement, to the Cur-
rency Scheme. Attwood and his lieutenants, he declared,
were not at aU eager for the Petition and Charter, and started
the movement for Universal Sufirage as a means of intimidat-
ing Government to accept the Currency notion. Hence they
were always ready to let it drop. This conduct played into the
hands of the violent leaders.* Place further maintained that
the Attwoodites themselves considered with some misgiving the
possibility that a Parliament, elected by Universal Suffrage,
might not care to legislate about the Currency, either because
the question was not understood or because a remedy could not
be devised to smt all opinions.* This is certainly a damaging

1 Additional MSS. 27,796, pp. 333-4. „ , , ,

2 Attwood said later that he never saw the Charter till the meeting of
August 6, and had no ttaie to examine It or he wotdd not have supported It.

s Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 2. * Ibid. 27,820, p. 41.

110 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

statement, for if Attwood and Douglas felt that the nation
as a whole would reject their panacea, it is easily conceivable
that their enthusiasm for Eadical reform would evaporate.
But Place adds to his indictment. He declares that, having
come to the conclusion that the Currency Scheme would not
meet with universal approval or be universally comprehended,
they smuggled it into the National Petition, hoping that their
" tacking " would be unnoticed in the popular enthusiasm.^
With all respect to Place as a shrewd pohtician and a contem-
porary observer, it must be confessed that he proves too
much. He later on praises Douglas for his caution and
moderation,^ and it is permissible to hope, therefore, that
Douglas was not such a reckless trickster as this sort of con-
duct implies. Furthermore, there was a sufficient fund of
currency ideas in popular circles to make a project of currency
reform seem less criminally absurd than Place thought it was.*
The currency question was not res judicata by any means, and
even Peel's currency theories could be called into question by
reputable authority in the next generation.

Apart from class hatred and currency schemes, the Birming-
ham Union incurred the hostility of many of its new disciples
by its moderation. It was this more than anything else that
ruined the Union and eliminated it from the movement.
When Attwood and his colleagues transformed a more or less
local and harmless currency agitation into a national political
movement, they found that they were not the only agitators
in the field, and that their reputation was as nothing amongst
those whom they aspired to lead, compared with that of mob-
orators like Stephens, Vincent, or O'Connor. Hence from the
very beginning they figured as generals of brigade rather than
as commanders-in-chief. Throughout the whole Chartist array
there was no commander-in-chief — no one with the authority
of a Cobden or the capacity for organisation of a George
Wilson.

The immediate cause of rupture between the northern
extremists and the Birmingham Union, which occurred in
November-December 1838, was the fiery campaign of J. E.
Stephens, to whom the People's Charter seemed to give renewed
fire and eloquence. From the beginning of September Chartist

1 Additional MSS. 27,820, pp. 132-8.

2 Ibid. 27,820, p. 274.

' Cobbett had agitated the question: see alao 1834, Comm. on Hand-
loom Weavers, qq. 973 et seq. 5560-66. This committee made some Tague
statements on the question in the report, p. xv.

REVIVAL OF BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 111

meetings, often by torchlight,^ began to be held in Lancashire
and Yorkshire, at which Stephens was a regular speaker. On
October 29 there were violent speeches at a torchlight meeting
at Bolton, where delegates were elected to the Convention. On
the following day Douglas made a grave speech on the subject
to the Union. Salt specifically denounced O'Connor, who had
talked moral force to Salt and violence in Lancashire.^ This
was, in fact, O'Connor's practice. He varied his tone accord-
ing to his audience, like a true demagogue. Salt thought
O'Connor was playing them false.

In any case O'Connor aided considerably. On September 8
the Northern Star published an article headed : " The National
Guards of Paris have petitioned for an Extension of the Sufirage,
and they have done it with Arms in their hands." On October
18 he was present at the great meeting at Peep Green, Bradford,
and made vaguely suggestive remarks upon tyrannicides whilst
his lieutenant, Bussey, advised the audience to get rifles.*

O'Connor attended the meeting at Preston on November 5
at which Marsden was elected delegate. He made a speech in
which he declared that the power of kings was only maintained
by " physical force." The Government would not dare to use
physical force against them as at Peterloo because they (the
Government) knew that the wadding of the first discharge
would set fire to Preston. That was not threatening language
but soothing language, intended to prevent the Whigs from
firing the first shot. At the same meeting James Whittle
referred to the authors of the New Poor Law in terms of Psalm
109. Technically O'Connor's speech was not an appeal to
violence, but it was calculated to familiarise his audience
with suggestions of an unpeaceable character. On the follow-
ing day at Manchester he said he was for peace, " but if peace
giveth not law, then I am for war to the knife." O'Connor
seldom made direct and unqualified declarations.* The next
day at Manchester O'Connor pooh-poohed Douglas's idea that
three years' agitation would be required to secure the Charter.
Why wait three years ? if the Charter was good it was good
in 1839 as in 1842. Would delay serve their cause ? Would not
the agitation evaporate ? ^

Meanwhile the agitation waxed fast and furious. Stephens
made a speech at Norwich so violent that the Northern Star

1 B.g. at Bolton, Bradford, Rochdale, Oldham, Bury-

2 Additional MSS. 27,820, pp. 272-4. iVortAem Stor NoTember 17,
laqa 3 Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 260.

°'rm. 27,820. p. 287. » Ibid. 27,820, p. 292.

112 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

expurgated it.'' Douglas obtained an account and declared
to the Birmingliam Union that something must be done as
Stephens was elected a delegate to the Convention. The
Birmingham people were beginning to regret their precipitancy
in admitting such roaring lions into peaceful currency pastures.

At the weekly meeting of the Union on November 13 there
was an unexpected visitor. It was O'Connor, who, following
his usual custom, entered when proceedings were in full swing
in order to concentrate all attention upon himself.^ He had
come to defend himself against the calumnies of Salt and
Douglas. He had been charged with traitorously preaching
physical force, and had gone so far as to declare that on Sep-
tember 29, 1839, all moral agitation must come to an end and
other measures be taken, if the Charter were not by that time
obtained. O'Connor, who made a very ingenious defence,
had had some legal training. He pointed out, amongst other
things, that it was quite necessary to fix a limit to peaceful
agitation because the people would become impatient and the
agitation would gradually die away.' This was probably a
true statement of the attitude of the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Chartists at least, but it augured badly for the soundness of the
Chartist cause and the discipline of its zealots. O'Connor
scored, too, by pointing out that the Birmingham leaders had
sinned also in the matter of violent language. That was true.
The real difierence between Birmingham and the northern
Chartists was that the Birmingham leaders regarded a display
of numbers — of " physical force " — as a useful background
to lend reality to their views, but the northern people looked
upon physical force as the whole picture.

A week later O'Connor appeared again before the Union,
evoking cheers and sympathy by pretending to be on his trial
before the honest working men of Birmingham. Meanwhile
Stephens was breathing fire and slaughter with undiminished
vigour. On November 12 he attended a meeting at Wigan
and denounced the London and Birmingham leaders as old
women.* He probably felt, what many of his followers later
on openly said, that the Charter-Petition agitation would
smother the Anti-Poor Law Movement in which he was so

1 Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 295.

2 O'Connor was uninvited. His habit of IntrudiiiS where he was not
required was a cause of Immense friction, as he was seldom content to be
passive, and sometimes diverted meetings to purposes for which they were
never intended.

8 Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 304. Northtm Star, November 17.
* Northern Star, November 17.

REVIVAL OF BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 113

absorbed. In view of this language, the meeting of November
20 at Birmingham was exciting and stormy. The Union was
divided between Salt and O'Connor. Muntz was hissed.
The meeting was adjourned.^ The attack on O'Connor was
renewed in the Birmingham Journal of November 24, in which
Douglas roundly declared that, whatever O'Connor's party said
and professed, their real programme was illegality, disordee,
and CIVIL war.^

There was a final conference on November 28, O'Connor
again attending. The meeting was awaited with much mis-
giving. Apparently the Birmingham leaders were not unani-
mous as to the course to be pursued with respect to their unruly
ally. Some were for repudiating him, which was perhaps the
most honourable course. Others were for conciliation, think-
ing that a repudiation of O'Connor would remove the northern
counties, and perhaps Scotland too, from the agitation. At
the same time O'Connor, seeing the wide possibilities before a
great national agitation, and knowing how popular the Petition-
Charter programme was becoming, was prepared to make con-
cessions to the nominal leaders of the movement. The result
was that the meeting passed ofi with a restoration of harmony,
both sides giving the soft answers that turn away wrath.
Douglas and Salt spoke with absurd adulation of the Irish
demagogue. Salt apologised. O'Connor was gracious.
George Edmonds, who wanted to get rid of O'Connor at any
price, tried to pin him down to an explicit repudiation of force,
but O'Connor shuffled and the meeting was in his favour.
Collins suggested a middle course which did not bind O'Connor
to a repudiation of Stephens and all his ways. This was
accepted and the meeting broke up, the Birmingham leaders
fancying that they had at last muzzled their inconvenient
rival. But the impression left by a study of these proceedings
is rather that O'Connor had undermined the authority of the
leaders in their own Union, especially amongst the working
people over whom no one could so easily acquire influence as
he. He no doubt relied upon his blarneying capacity when
he invited himself into the Union meeting on November 6.
If he did, his confidence was justified by the outcome.'

Nevertheless O'Connor's conduct was for a time distinctly
moderated after this event. At Bury he addressed a torch-
light meeting on December 8. This was " the most remark-

1 Northern Star, November 24. 2 Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 324.

3 Ibid. 27,820, pp. 327-41.

I

114 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

able " of the torchlight meetings. It was held in defiance
of Fielden's warning that the Government was prepared to
prosecute the conveners of and participators in such gatherings.
The speeches, O'Connor's included, were apparently milder
than usual. A week later he repudiated physical force in the
Northern Star. He did not prevent the insertion in the same
paper of a letter from O'Connell denouncing himself, Oastler,
and Stephens by name. It seemed as if harmony were
completely restored, but it was a very delusive peace which
reigned, and equally short-lived.

NOTE ON ATTWOOD'S CUBRENCY THEORIES

That these were really deserving of the ridicule heaped upon
them by Place will be evident to the attentive reader of the reprint
of Attwood's article of 1822 in the Birmingham Journal of May 5,
1832. The source of all social evils was the resumption of cash
payments in 1819, which made debts, contracted previous to 1819
in an inflated currency, payable in a restricted currency, and thus
enhanced the burdens of debtors. The argument runs thus :

In 1791 Currency and Prices were in a normal state. Prom
thence till 1797 the Currency became depreciated and prices rose
owing to the creation of £5 Bank of England notes, the extension
of other note issues, and the growing burden of taxes and loans.
By 1797 currency was depreciated 50 per cent. Not only paper
but gold too was depreciated, the latter, as Cobbett showed, by
sympathy. From 1797 onwards, by reason of the Bank Restriction,
there was a further rise in the prices of property and labour of from
50 to 70 per cent, making 100 per cent or 120 per cent in all. Thus
the loans and obUgations contracted between 1797 and 1819 were
contracted in a currency which possessed only one half the value
it had before the war. This appUed both to public and private
contracts, to industrial debts as well as to the rents of farms.
Eurthermore the high taxation during the war was only possible
through the inflation of the currency, since the high prices reduced
the actual value absorbed by the taxation (e.g. a tax of 40s. was
discharged by goods worth only 20s.).

Pubhc obligations contracted during the war amounted to 1247
millions, private obKgations to 1245 miUions, making roughly
2500 millions. Government by removing the Bank Restriction
practically doubled these obUgations, making them 5000 miUions.
This measure was the measure of a body of creditors ; hence their
eagerness to double the burden of their debtors. Had Parliament
been a body of debtors it would have halved the burden of debtors.
A body composed of both would do what reason and justice required
— coin ten old mint shillings into one pound sterling. Even this
measure would leave prices double those of 1791.

REVIVAL OF BIRMINGHAM POLITICAL UNION 115

In this treatise confusion and error are so confounded as to
make it difficult to know which fallacy to handle first. One or two
errors of mathematics may be tackled first. He says before 1797
the currency was depreciated 50 per cent. Later on he says this
50 per cent rise of prices was increased another 60 or 70 per cent.
A 50 per cent depreciation of currency is not the same as a 50 per
cent rise of prices which he assumes is the case, but a 100 per cent
rise. This error curiously enough is avoided a few lines further on,
where he makes a rise of 100 per cent or 120 per cent in prices
equivalent to a depreciation of currency by one half (unless, of
course, this statement is a lucky shot which was really aimed at
the wrong target but hit the right one).

Finally the highest percentage of depreciation of paper as ex-
pressed in gold between 1797 and 1819 was not more than 25 per
cent, equivalent to a rise in prices of goods as expressed in paper
money of 33J per cent. One may feel sure that for the most part
contracts would be made with the requisite reservations on this
point, and hardship would be more nominal than real on the return
to cash payments.

The soundness of Attwood's economics may be deduced from
the fact that he assumed that it was a matter of no consequence
whether prices rose through development of trade — i.e. of demand —
or through depreciation of the currency. It was a distinction
without a difference, he thought.

CHAPTEE VII

THE people's PAELIAMENT
(1838-1839)

These is something mysterious about the facility with which
the Anti-Poor Law Agitation passed over into Chartism, with
whose objects it had apparently nothing in common. During
the summer of 1838, meetings, caUed to protest against the
Poor Law Amendment Act, found themselves listening to
speeches in favour of the Charter and assenting to resolutions
in support of the National Petition. Some explanations may
be hazarded. In the first place, the Anti-Poor Law Agitation
had come to a crisis. It had prevented the Act from being
enforced, with the result that, during the greater part of
the period of trade depression (1836-42), out-reUef was paid as
usual. Thus the leaders had to face the question — whether
to be content with this achievement or to go on agitating until
the Act was repealed. The latter alternative, in view of
Stephens's exhortations, might involve armed insurrection,
unless — here was the crux of the matter — a national agitation,
on the lines suggested by Birmingham and London, succeeded
in putting pohtical power into the hands of the people. Then
the peaceful repeal of the Act would be easy. This reasoning
will explain the eagerness of the northern leaders to justify
to the Chartist Convention the possession of arms, and their
immediate resort to arms and drilling as soon as the National
Petition was rejected. The Northerners probably looked upon
the Birmingham and London men as potential reinforcements
in the event of extreme action. The Birmingham proposals
for joint action would be welcome, both from this point of view
and from the existing lack of organisation in the North — ^a
defect which would be remedied by the creation of a central
body like the proposed Convention. One last point may be

116

THE PEOPLE'S PAELIAMENT 117

hinted at. In November 1838 O'Connor at a meeting at Man-
chester said it was necessary to put a period to agitation, lest
the enthusiasm should evaporate.^ Perhaps we shall not be
wrong in assuming that enthusiasm for Poor Law repeal had
already begun to evaporate, and to be replaced by discontent
of another description.

However that may be, the growth of distress and privation
during the year 1838 tended inevitably to weld the agitations
together. Scotland was agitated by the prosecution of the
Glasgow cotton-spinners, whose fate recalled the immortal
Dorchester Labourers of '34:. In South Wales, where the
min ing districts presented an unequalled field for agitation,
the eloquence of Henry Vincent, backed by John Frost, a
tradesman of Newport and a J.P. to boot, had an enormous
efiect. Vincent explained to the ignorant and half-barbarous
miners how that they were despoiled of a large proportion of
the wages, which they earned at such risk to themselves, for the
purpose of supporting in idleness and luxury a degraded and
despotic aristocracy. This explanation of the long familiar
evils of truck and mining royalties naturally raised the Welsh-
men to an incredible pitch of indignation. It was the sole
burden of Vincent's oratory, but, as a well-known authority
has said,^ repetition of an assertion without attempt at proof
or demonstration is the one essential of mob-oratory, and
Vincent possessed a faculty of infinite variation upon one
theme. South Wales was also to have, in 1843, its own
peculiar form of rebelliousness in the curious " Rebecca riots,"
directed mainly against the payment of road tolls. Men,
dressed as women, obeying the orders of a mysterious " mother
Rebecca," smashed toll-bars and defied discovery. It was
alleged that a lawyer, Hugh Williams of Carmarthen, was the
instigator. He passed, like all other local agitators, into the
Chartist ranks.

The Charter was put forward in May, and the Petition in
August J838. The former was distributed throughout the
Working Men's Associations, and the latter was formally pub-
lished at the great Birmingham meeting of August 6.* From
this moment the excitement began to rise to fever heat. At
scores of meetings the Petition and Charter were adopted with
immense enthusiasm. This was especially the case in the
North. Everybody was carried away by the fire and fervour

1 Additional MSS. 27,820. p. 292. 2 Le Bon.

8 Its terms had already been made public two months before.

118 THE CHAETI8T MOVEMENT

of the movement. The speeches became more and more
inflammable and exulting. It is from this period that the
gems of Stephens and O'Connor are derived. Attwood was
in the seventh heaven, and even the less enthusiastic leaders
of the London Working Men's Association began to imagine
that the day of redemption was at last about to dawn. All the
leaders were, in fact, overjoyed at the amazing response to
their propaganda and allowed themselves the wUdest prophecies
as to future successes. Douglas's assurance that they woidd
achieve success in three years was regarded as insane caution.
Enthusiasm centred mainly in the election of the Convention
from which the most extravagant results were expected.

The spirit in which the Northerners approached the crisis
may be inferred from the speeches and events connected with
the series of mass meetings which began to be held during the
summer and autumn of 1838. The earlier meetings were
called to adopt some sort of organisation. Thus a Manchester
Political Union and a Great Northern Union at Leeds, com-
prising between them the country on both sides the Pennines,
came into existence. The Poor Law Amendment Act has
already sunk into the background. The Manchester Union
proclaimed its abhorrence of violent language and physical
force,' but its first great demonstration on Kersal Moor, on
September 24, was graced by the presence of Stephens, O'Connor,
and others who were advocates of violent courses. This de-
monstration was one of the most remarkable of all Chartist
meetings. The Leeds Times thought there were a quarter of a
million people present, which is scarcely credible. There was
an immense array of speakers, representing all parts of the
Chartist world. The dominant note was struck by Stephens,
who declared that the Charter was not a political question
but a knife and fork question : not a matter of ballot-boxes
but of bread and butter. This tone sounded throughout all
the subsequent babble about arming or not arming, about
natural rights and legal rights, which filled up the debates of
the Convention. For Chartism was in these manufacturing
areas a cry of distress, the shout of men, women, and children
drowning in deep waters, rather than the reasoned logical
creed of Lovett, or the fanatical money-mongering theories
of Attwood. Impatience, engendered by fireless grates and
breakfastless tables, was the driving force of much northern
Chartism.

The Manchester demonstration was one of a series arranged

THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT 119

to elect the delegates to the Convention. These delegates had
to be elected by public meeting and not by definite organisa-
tions. Otherwise the Convention would become in the eyes
of the law a political society with branches, which was illegal
under the infamous Acts of 1819. The day following the
Kersal Moor meeting, a similar demonstration took place
at Sheffield, Bbenezer Elhott being in the chair. Sheffield
definitely and Manchester largely ^ were not strongly ipoved
by the oratorical fireworks of Stephens and O'Connor. The
speeches at Sheffield were conspicuously mild. Elliott de-
clared that the objects the people had in view were, " Free
Trade, Universal Peace, Freedom in Religion, and Education
for all." Another speaker placed the Repeal of the Corn
Laws in the forefront of his programme, followed by " a
thoroughly efficient system of Education for all," " good diet
for the people and plenty of it," and " facilities for the forma-
tion of Co-operative Communities." A huge demonstration
at Bradford took place on October 18. Hartshead Moor was
like a fair, a hundred huts being erected for the sale of food
and drink. The Chartists declared that half a mUUon people
were present : a soberer estimate divides that number by ten.
It was a fiery meeting. Everybody talked about arms,
O'Connor upon the virtues of tyrannicide.

Similar meetings took place in practically every important
manufacturing town between Glasgow, London, and Bristol,
and the election of delegates proceeded rapidly. In October
meetings were held for the purpose of collecting the funds
destined for the support of the Convention. But the joy ex-
perienced at this rapid progress was clouded by apprehensions,
for which a terrifying change in the character of the northern
meetings was responsible. In October meetings began to be
held at night in the murky glare of hundreds of torches, in
various parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, on the pretext that
the factory-owners objected to meetings during working hours,
whereby much time was lost. The psychological efiects of large
crowds and excited speakers were emphasised by the eerie
surroundings ; it was but a short step from torchhght meetings
to factory burning. The authorities were pardonably anxious
and tried to put a stop to these meetings. But their action
only increased the temperature of the speeches, which became

1 Manchester Itself was not unlike London, possessing a strong middle
class, e.g. Cobden, and a class of superior artisans who shared uuddle-olass
Radical views. But Manchester itself was sometimes swamped by the
influx from the smaller towns, which were unanimously Chartist.

120 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

inflammatory beyond words. Such meetings were held at
Bolton, Bradford, Oldham, Rochdale, and Bury during October,
November, and December. The arrest of Stephens at the end
of December seems to have put a stop to them.

The increasing violence of the propaganda in Lancashire
and Yorkshire began to instil misgiving and terror into the
more moderate Chartists in London, Birmingham, and Scot-
land. Suggestive and inciting articles began to appear in the
Northern Sta/r. On September 8 a notice in capitals appeared :
" The National Guards of Paris have petitioned for an exten-
sion of the SufErage, and they have done it with arms in their
hands." ^ O'Brien was contributing inflammatory articles
also. At Preston, on November 5, O'Connor talked about
physical force without cease. He assured his hearers that the
Government would not use force against their force because
" they know that the wadding of the first discharge would set
fire to Preston." ^

Very soon the breach between the preachers of violence and
the preachers of peaceful agitation was already complete, and
a campaign of denunciation had begun. O'Connor scofied at
the " moral philosophers," * Stephens denounced the Birming-
ham leaders as " old women," whilst younger and more reck-
less leaders, like Harney, who was to represent Newcastle-on-
Tyne, loudly proclaimed their lack of confidence in such things
as Conventions.* The crisis came early in December. The
Edinburgh Chartists had passed a series of resolutions con-
demning violent language and repudiating physical force.
These " moral force " resolutions called forth a torrent of
denunciation from O'Connor, Harney, Dr. John Taylor, and
others. A furious controversy followed. Various Chartist
bodies threatened to go to pieces on the question. There were
fiery meetings in London and Newcastle to deal with the
matter, and controversy of a highly personal description fol-
lowed.* On January 8 O'Coimor went to Edinburgh to undo
the effect of the resolutions, and on the 9th he persuaded
a Glasgow meeting to rescind the resolutions, whereupon
Edinburgh denounced Glasgow as " impertinent." A furious
meeting at Renfrew, where John Taylor and a minister named
Brewster were opposed, lasted till three in the morning.*

1 The Padlham Chartists had a banner with the motto, " Sell thy gar-
ment and bny a sword" (Northern Star, October 27, 1838). [Much on this
page Is a repetition of p. 111.]

^ Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 287. a Ibid. 27,820, p. 292.

4 Tbid. 27, 821,p. 5. » Northern Idberator, January 19, 1839.

6 Additional MBS. 27,821, pp. 13-16.

THE PEOPLE'S PAELIAMENT 121

What Birmingham thought of all these proceedings on the
part of O'Connor had better be left to the imagination. The
excitement was raised still higher by the news that Stephens
had been arrested at Manchester on a charge of seditious
speaking and lodged in New Bailey gaol. The Ashton fol-
lowers of Stephens had long ago threatened with dire punish-
ment the men who should dare to lay hands on their hero/
but they for the present contented themselves with threats
and efiorts to procure arms. Stephens was released on bail
after a few days' confinement and was at Uberty for some
months. He was compelled to moderate his language for fear
of damaging his case. Meanwhile a subscription was opened
to conduct his defence.^ It raised over £1000. The conduct
of the northern agitation fell more completely into O'Connor's
hands.

In spite of the dissension, the excitement, and the confusion,
the organisation of the movement proceeded. The signing of
the Petition and the collection of the " Eent " (an idea bor-
rowed from O'Connell) went on merrily, and informal meetings
of delegates took place at Manchester, Birmingham, and
Bury with a view to clearing the way for the Convention.
The month of January passed in comparative harmony,
whether the result of Stephen's arrest following upon other
evidences of the Government's watchfulness, or the conse-
quence of suppressed excitement, is difficult to say. All
attention was concentrated upon the ith of February,
when the Convention was to meet. Doubt and desperation,
disquiet and uncertainty, struggled with hope and confidence
for the souls of thousands of working men during the first five
breathless weeks of the New Year. Was the New Year to
bring the hoped-for reform or the half -dreaded insurrection ?

The Convention met on February 4, 1839, at the British
Hotel, Cockspur Street, Charing Cross.* It consisted, nominally,
of some fifty-three members, but as several did not attend, its
eSective strength was less than the forty-nine required to
avoid the consequences of the Act of 1819, which placed certain
restrictions upon the holding of adjourned meetings. It turned

1 NoHhem Star, October 27, 1838.

2 Northern Liberator, January 19, 1839.

3 After two days its meetings were transferred to Bolt Court, Fleet
Street, " in the Hall of the Ancient and Honourable Lumber Troop " (Life
and Struggles,-^. 201 ; Gammage, p. 105). See the contemporary description
of it by the French fdministe. Flora Tristan, quoted in DolUana, i. 286-7.
Where not otherwise noted the authority for the debates in the first Con-
vention is the Charter newspaper.

122 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

out, however, that the Convention was a legal assembly and was
never in danger of prosecution under the Act mentioned.
London was represented by seven members of the Working
Men's Association, including Lovett, Cleave, Hetherington,
and O'Brien, and by one William Cardo, a shoemaker of
Marylebone. In addition the Association had " lent " Vincent
to Hull and Cheltenham, and William Carpenter to Bolton.
Similarly the London Democratic Association found places for
Harney and Neesom, its chiefs, at Newcastle and Bristol.
Thus London furnished a quarter of the whole assembly. >■
Birmingham sent five representatives out of the original
eight, including Collins, Douglas, Salt, and Hadley. From the
North of England came a score, including O'Connor, MacDouall,
who sat for Ashton-under-Lyne in place of Stephens, E. J.
Richardson, who represented Manchester, Ryder, Bussey,
Pitkeithly, who were the beginning of an O'Connorite " tail,"
and Richard Marsden, a handloom weaver from Preston.
Scotland had eight representatives. Wales had two, Jones
of Newtown in Montgomery and John Frost of Newport.
Three from the hosiery districts, including Dr. A. S. Wade,
Vicar of Warwick, and half a dozen from scattered towns like
Hull and Bristol made up the tale. Only one agricultural
area was represented, and that by courtesy only, and not by
virtue of Chartist zeal. It was Dorset, which sent George
Loveless, one of the famous labourers of '34. He never took
his seat.

Nearly one-half the assembly belonged to the non-artisan
classes. Some, like O'Connor and John Taylor, were sheer
demagogues; others, such as O'Brien and Carpenter, were
doctrinaire social revolutionaries. The Birmingham delegates,
except CoUins, were prosperous fellows who had drifted into
poUtical agitation. Hadley was an Alderman of Birming-
ham and a warden of St. Martin's Church in the Bull Ring.
Douglas was the editor of the Birmingham Journal, and Salt
was a lamp manufacturer on a considerable scale. Wade
was a kind of Christian Socialist, a predecessor of Charles
Kingsley. James Taylor was a Unitarian minister of Bolton,
probably moved by sympathy with sufiering to take part in
the movement. There were several medical men, inspired,
no doubt, by similar motives, several booksellers, a lawyer,^
and a publican or two.

1 It was a matter of £ s. d. Delegates who lived in London cost less
than those sent to London.

2 James P. Cobbett, son of the great William.

THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT 123

Many Chartists, seeking after tte event to explain the mis-
fortune which attended the career of this assembly, attributed
its failure to this large sprinkUng of middle-class folk, but it
must be said that the divisions and dissensions which ruined
the Convention cannot be traced to the class divisions which
prevailed. On the main points at issue the working men
were divided as well as the " middle-class men." Place
remarks that the class-war teaching was sufficient to frighten
off the middle class as a body from the movement, but not
sufficient to induce working men to elect leaders of their own
kind to conduct their afEairs.^ It was a sober, black-coated,
middle-aged body which met on February 4, 1839.^ Harney,
MacDouaU, Vincent, and John Taylor were the youngest, as
they were the most fiery, of the delegates. Neesom and
Eichards * were already in their sixties, and quite a number
were beyond fifty. Many of the delegates were married men
with families already grown up. Truly not a very revolution-
ary-looking assembly.

On the same day there also met the first great Anti-Corn Law
League Conference and the Imperial ParHament — three vastly
difierent poUtical assemblies almost within a stone's throw of
each other. It was the portentous beginning of a triangular
struggle which all but transformed the political and social
character of the United Kingdom. The gage of battle was
thrown by the successive rejection in Parliament of motions for
Parliamentary Reform and for the Repeal of the Corn Laws.
A ten years' war followed.

The first meetings of the Convention were purely formal.
R. K. Douglas of Birmingham, who had had in hand the
arrangements for the Convention, the Petition, and the
" National Rent," acted for the time as chairman. It was
decided to appoint a chairman daily in rotation. Lovett was
of course appointed secretary, though O'Brien objected on
the ground that he was " not in agreement with the men of the
North as to the methods by which the Charter was to be
obtained." The question as to the payment of delegates was
left to the " constituencies " and their representatives for
settlement. Douglas presented a report upon the Petition
and the amount of rent subscribed and then vacated the chair
in favour of Craig of Ayrshire, the first regular chairman.

Many signs testify to the enormous enthusiasm and extra-

1 Additional MSS. 27,822, p. 83. ,,.„,,.
a Northern Star, November 2, 1839. » Of the Potteries.

124 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

vagaat hopes which the Convention called into being. From
all parts of the country addresses flowed in.^ Some were read
to the delegates amid scenes of the greatest joy. Newspaper
articles dilated upon the great event.^ Petitions were addressed
to the Convention in legal form, as if to be presented to the
House of Commons,* whereby the delegates were immensely
flattered. Most signiflcant of all was the large amount of
National Rent which was subscribed. By March 7, £1350 had
been received — more than enough to cover all expenses.
Small and poverty-stricken districts subscribed incredibly
large sums, deeming no sacrifice too great for the purchase of
their own and their children's freedom. The hosiery village
of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, subscribed £20, whilst
Leeds, the home of the Northern Star, subscribed but five.*
This tremendous enthusiasm gave the delegates a very
exaggerated conception of their powers and abilities and
influenced their deliberations very unfavourably at times,
whilst their failure to rise to the heights demanded of
them transformed excessive optimism into the most dismal
disUlusionment.

The efiects of this exaggerated self-esteem were visible
when the vital question was raised — what was the purpose
and competence of the Convention ? It was brought forward
on Tuesday, February 5, by J. P. Cobbett, but was shelved for
the time being. The question was raised again on the 14th
and this time it came to a discussion. The question at issue
was. Is the Convention a petitioning and agitating body only,
or is it a working-class Parliament, with the same authority
over the working class as the Parliament at Westminster over
the whole nation 1 Is it entitled to defy the law or even to
use force to encompass its purposes ? Cobbett upheld the
first of these views and brought forward a series of resolutions
declaring that the Convention was called merely to superintend
the Petition, that it ought to sit no longer than was requisite
for that purpose, and that it was not competent to decide
upon any subsequent measures, especially anything that
involved law-breaking, and so to bind its constituents to defy
the law.* The majority was clearly opposed to this view. On
the previous day O'Connor had declared that the Convention

1 Letter-Book ot ConTeiitlon, Additional MSS. 34,215, A and B.

2 E.g. The Charter, February 10, 1839.

' Additional MSS. 34,245, pp. 27 and 103.

4 Ibid. 34,245, A, p. 84.

» Charter, February 10 and 17, 1839.

THE PEOPLE'S PAELIAMENT 125

would not be sitting if tte people thought they could do no
more than petition. This probably represents the view of the
majority, at any rate of the working-class delegates, who
regarded themselves as bound to make the Charter into law by
any means whatsoever. MacDouall declared that if the Con-
vention was not to proceed to ulterior measures, he would go
home at once. A few delegates, led away by the revolution-
ary atmosphere attaching to the name of Convention, even
dreamed of permanent sittings and Committees of Pubho
Safety. The resolutions were rejected by thirty-six votes
against six. Cobbett thereupon quitted the Convention.
This was the first of many defections.^

How exaggerated a notion some of the delegates had of their
own importance appears from the motion, passed on the 13th
on the proposition of O'Brien, that the House of Commons be
invited to meet the Convention at the Crown and Anchor Tavern
on the 27th of February to disabuse the minds of the members
of that House as to the character and intentions of the Con-
vention.2 Delegates wrote " M.C." after their names after
the fashion of " M.P." They imagined that they had sufficient
influence to meet the House of Commons on equal if not
superior terms. They repeatedly argued that they had been
elected by a much greater number of voters than those who
sent men to Westminster^ consequently they were entitled to
at least as great a share of power as Parliament.

There was for the time being considerable hesitation about
specifying the exact means to be adopted in the event of the
rejection of the Petition by the Commons, but as the Petition
was not yet presented there was no immediate need of a decision
on that point. Meanwhile a declaration of War upon the Anti-
Corn Law League and all its ways was proclaimed. This is
one of the few questions upon which complete unanimity was
displayed. O'Brien was the chief advocate of this policy, and
made a speech in his best and most virulent style.*

Following this the Convention busied itself with the dis-
cussion of its procedure and rules. A week was thus spent, at
the end of which a pamphlet was issued bearing the title
" Rules and Regulations of the General Convention of the
Industrious Classes, elected by the Radical Reformers of Great
Britain and Ireland in Public Meetings assembled, to watch

1 Charter, February 17, 1839.

2 Ibid. October 17, 1839. Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 33.

3 Charter, February 17, 1839.

126 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

over the National Petition and obtain by all legal and con-
stitutional means the Act to provide for the just representa-
tion of the People, entitled the ' People's Charter.' " The
detailed rules bear out the title. In this document the Con-
vention becomes a peaceful agitating body ; there is no
mention of anything else.

Despite this official avowal of law-abiding intentions, the
advocates of violent courses were becoming more and more
conspicuous. They were aided by doleful reports about the
Petition, which made success by peaceful agitation seem very
remote indeed. The Birmingham delegates had not attended
the Convention since the opening of the session, excusing
themselves on various pretexts. A letter from Salt, dated
February 17, relates that he has just heard with great concern
that there is no probability that the Petition wiU have more
than 600,000 signatures. " In this case we can no longer call
it a ' National Petition.' The assumption on which we have
proceeded proved false : our position is entirely changed, and
I have not yet any very definite idea of the measures it wiU
become our duty to adopt." ^ The Birmingham Journal fol-
lowed this with the suggestion that the Convention should
dissolve until the Petition became more largely signed.^ This
was ill news indeed and came as a great shock to the sanguine
spirits of the Convention. More serious still perhaps was the
obvious fact that the Birmingham delegates had lost their
nerve and were preparing to abandon the whole business.
The Convention, which had hoped to present the Petition
before the end of February, and so provoke an early decision
upon the question of further measures, was compelled to post-
pone the event for two months. Finally May 5 was fixed as the
day for the presentation of the Petition. The Convention was
thus required to nurse the excitement and enthusiasm of its
followers for nine weeks longer, without committing itself too
far. This was no easy task, but more difficult still was the
preservation of unanimity within the Convention itself.

Early in March dissension began to grow threatening. On
the 2nd the London Democratic Association, a violent and
reckless body, held a meeting at which Harney, Ryder, and
Marsden were the chief speakers. Inflammatory speeches were
the order of the day. The Convention was denounced for its
delays and its cowardice, and three resolutions were carried
and then communicated to the Convention itself.

1 Additional MSS. 34,215, A, pp. 41-2. 2 IMd. 27,821, p. 40.

THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT 127

That if the Convention did its duty, the Charter would be law
in less than a month : that there should be no delay in presenting
the Petition : and that all acts of injustice and oppression should
be met by resistance.

These resolutions caused an immense hubbub in the Conven-
tion, which spent three whole days in discussing the conduct of
its three traitorous delegates, who narrowly escaped expulsion.
It is significant that the three outspoken advocates of violence
found only three other supporters within the whole conven-
tion. One of these was Frost, the future rebel of Newport.^

Though the majority of the Convention was unwilling to
avow a policy of violence, individual members were not so timid
in the use of threats. The policy adopted by many of the
northern delegates, especially O'Connor and his followers, was
to adopt an official caution in the Convention and reserve their
violence for public meetings. Thus whilst on the 7th of March
Harney and his colleagues were officially condemned, never-
theless on the 16th several members of the majority on
that occasion joined Harney in a carnival of denunciation
which had as its scene a public meeting at the Crown and
Anchor Tavern. This meeting produced some significant
speeches. Sankey, a doctor from Edinburgh, moved a resolu-
tion declaring that the Convention had a right to adopt any
means whatsoever in order to carry the Charter, and that
every meeting had a right to censure or approve any act of the
Convention. Mere petitioning would not carry the Charter,
which would be rejected, however many signatures it had,
unless they were " the signatures of millions of fighting men
who wiU not allow any aristocracy, oligarchy, landlords, cotton
lords, money lords, or any lords to tyrannise over them longer."
Rogers, a mild-mannered tobacconist, spoke of signing the
Petition in red, but hoped they would achieve their object
without bloodshed. O'Connor spoke in the same sense as
Sankey. Millions of petitions would not dislodge a troop of
dragoons. He warned the delegates that they would have
a duty imposed upon them by the people after the Petition
was presented. There would be martyrs. If the Convention
should separate without doing something to secure the Charter,
the people would know how to deal with the Convention,
Harney wound up the evening by declaring that by the end of
the year they would have universal suffrage or death. ^

1 Charter, March 10, 1839.
8 Morning Chronicle, March 19, 1839 ; Charter, March 24, 1839.

128 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

If this meeting was intended to scare away from tte Con-
vention all tte moderates, it was not unsuccessful, as the
sequel showed. It was followed by a furious debate in the
Convention on the 18th, dealing with the Eural Police Bill then
before Parliament.^ A long series of tirades was brought to a
climax by Dr. Fletcher of Bury. " He would not recommend
the use of daggers against a Rural Police, but he would recom-
mend every man to have a loaded bludgeon as nearly like that
of the policeman's as possible ; and if any of these soldiers of
the Government, for soldiers they would really be, should
strike him, to strike again, and in a manner that a second blow
should not be required. ... If resistance was necessary to
oppose the Rural Police Bill, resistance there would be."

The next day, the 19th of March, the Morning Chronicle pub-
lished accounts both of the meeting of the 16th and of the
debate of the 18th. Fletcher was apparently horrified to realise
how terrific his speech looked in cold print, and denounced the
paper for having garbled it. The same paper printed a letter
from Wade, dissociating himself from the sentiments expressed
on the previous Saturday. Nevertheless from the Rural
Police the discussion drifted on to the question of arming. As
a justification, the Convention ordered the collection of certain
articles in the Morning Chronicle. After the Bristol Riots of
1831, that journal ^ advocated the arming of respectable house-
holders to defend life and property in such crises. Although
this measure was not without justification in the pre-con-
stabulary days, the Convention regarded it as on a par with
its own proposed resistance to the introduction of poUce.
When, however, the articles were collected, they were, on
O'Connor's suggestion, put on one side.'

So the weeks passed without any decisive event. The
Petition was not presented, and two months had gone. Con-
stituencies were paying their delegates * and were looking
anxiously for some return for their sacrifices. " Had we not
been buoyed up," wrote the poor folk of Sutton-in-Ashfield,
thinking of their £20, " by the hope that our sufierings would
ere long have been ameliorated by the adoption of the People's

1 The opposition to tMs Bill waa due largely to the belief that the police
were intended to enforce the New Poor Law as well as to provide additional
soldiery against a possible insnrreotion. The speakers mostly had the
example ot France before their eyes, the police being suspected of being
nothing but spies and informers.

2 November 1831. s charter, March 31, 1839. -
* E.g. Craig was paid £6 a week (Northern Star, September 7, 1839).

The two Manchester delegates were promised £5 a week each, but did not
get so much.

THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT 129

Charter, tte people would ere now have been driven to des-
peration." 1 We can well believe Place when he declares that '
the general tone of the Chartists during March showed a certain
loss of confidence, or at least reaction from over-sanguine
expectations.^ They had expected a much more rapid march
of events, but the Convention, partly through its own better
knowledge, partly through its disunion, and partly through
inexperience and lack of real leaders, had been induced to
postpone the crisis. Events over which the Convention had
no control produced further delays, and the Petition was only
laid before Parliament on June 14, while the discussion on it
did not take place until July 12. It was like postponing a
declaration of war for six months. The army began to lose
heart and the enemy grew stronger. This was just what
O'Connor had prophesied and Harney dreaded.

Nothing perhaps contributed more to damp the original
enthusiasm of the Convention than the revelation that, so far
from being a dominant majority in the nation. Chartists were
only a struggling party. This revelation was made by the
reports of some of the fifteen missionaries, sent out at the end
of February to agitate the districts not yet attacked by Chart-
ism. On March 8 Salt reports from Birmingham. He has
visited WillenhaU, Stourbridge, Bilston, and Kenilworth, the
three former in the heart of the Black Country, and has not
even been able to get together a meeting. Wolverhampton,
Darlaston, West Bromwich are little better. But Salt was not
a good missionary. He had an eye to his lamp factory all the
time. He notes that the middle-class folk are standing aloof,
and thinks that without the aid of a few middle-class men, who
have leisure to instruct, nothing can be done for a long period.*
This to a body which is full of bitter anti-middle-olass feeling !
When Salt and Hadley reported thus to the Birmingham
Union, they were but ill received.*

From the south-west came reports from Duncan, Lowery,
and Vincent. The two former were in Cornwall.

We find that to do good we will have to go over each place twice,
for the People have never heard of the agitation and know nothing
of poUtical principles ; it is all uphill work. Were we not going
to it neck or nothing, we should never get a meeting; the trades-
people are afraid to move and the working men want drilling before
entering the ranks.'

1 Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 84, March 1. ,,„._.

2 ma. 27,821, p. 58. ' Ibid. 34,245, A, p. 107.

* Ibid. 27,821, pp. 65-9. " ndd. 34,245, A, p. 120, ajso p. 148.

K

130 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Moir and Cardo had similar experiences in Devonshire.^
Vincent was nearly murdered by a mob at Devizes. This
was a specially severe blow, considering Vincent's hitherto
unbounded popularity and success as an agitator. At the
head of a procession Vincent had entered the ancient borough-
town and mounted a waggon in the market-place. According
to Vincent's account, Lancers, Yeomanry, and special poUce
were mobilised to do honour to the event. Hardly had he
mounted the waggon than a horn was blown and a volley of
stones hurled. Vincent was knocked clean out of the waggon
by a stone which struck him on the head. A body of bludgeon-
men stormed the waggon and in a moment the market-place
was a scene of riot. The Chartist banners were captured and
recaptured, and Vincent, with Roberts ^ and Carrier, was with
difficulty rescued by the special constables. An hour later a
mob assembled in front of their lodging and threatened to burn
them out. The High Sheriff intervened and had them escorted
out of the town by the constabulary and others. The mob
rushed the escort and seriously mauled the three unfortu-
nates, so that Vincent collapsed and had to be carried off in
agig.3

From Sheffield came a request that a delegate be sent to
rouse the workers there. Very little success, the communi-
cation adds, had followed attempts to further the Chartist
cause in Sheffield, but greater things were expected if the
Convention sent a delegate. It was emphatically stipu-
lated that a moral force man be sent.* It was reported
that Leeds had only just commenced to take part in the
agitation.^

One of these missionary reports deserves reproduction here ;
it is from old John Eichards, agitating in the Potteries, dated
March 22, 1839.

I arrived in the Potteries on Wednesday night. The Coimcill of
the Union were assembled and received me with hearty and Deafen-
ing Cheers as soon as order was Again restored. Thursday Night
was Appointed for me to Address A Meeting, and I Assure A more
Enthusiastic meeting never Assembled. I stated the object of
the Council of the pottery political Union in sending for me home
to be to Compleat the Agitation in the Potteries and to Extend it

1 Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 128, B, p. 33.
„f m^^ P- Roberts, later the ' miners' attorney -general." Webb, History
of Trade Untomsm, pp. 164-6.

3 Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 228.

* ma. 34,245, A, p. 188, April 2. 6 Ibid. p. 198, April 3.

THE PEOPLE'S PAELIAMENT 131

to the Neighbouring Towns. Attended the following places. Last
week Tunstal on Monday, Lane End on Tuesday, Burslem on
Wednesday, Stoke on Thursday, Congleton on Saturday, Sandbatch
on Monday.! Open-air meeting at one o'clock, Tuesday Night
Fenton; Wednesday night Leek. At Congleton Sandbatch and
Leek have formed political Unions formed Committees and Set
them to work to obtain Signatures and Collect National Rent
and I hope with a good prospect of Success ... As regards' the
Condition of the different towns I have visited, I can only say that
poverty destitution and Its accompanying feature Squalid Misery
form the principal feature. At Leek and Sandbatch I found the
Inhabitants fully Convinced that everything was wrong and yet
Ignorant of the Means to Cure the evils ... to these people I
pointed out that the root and cause of the privations of the Sons of
Labour lay in the want of the IVanchise. This was news to them. . . .
At Leek I found the workmen reduced to the Lowest degree possible
for Human nature to endure. Many were the Men who pubUckly
Stated that with fifteen hours Labour per Day the Utmost they
could earn was from 7 to 8 Shilhngs per Week. I do not wonder
that men thus Situate Should make use of Strong language. Rather
do I wonder that they keep in any bounds, but this I do Say that
If something be not Speedily done to give a greater Plenty to the
working Man, Something of A very fearful! Import must follow.
Nor will It be possible for me, let me do my Utmost, to keep that
Peace you know I so much long to be kept by the Operatives of
England. . . . Shall have to Visit those places ere I see you. Shall
Impress on them the Motto Peace Law Order, but I fear all will
be of no avail, this being the Language used in those places — Better
to die by the Sword than perish with Hunger.'

More powerfully than by the none too encouraging reports
of the missionaries was the Convention disturbed by a series
of resignations. On March. 28 Dr. Wade resigned. He was .
opposed to the continual talk about arms. A few days later
the Birmingham delegates all resigned. The meeting at the
Crown and Anchor was the immediate cause of their with-
drawalj as it showed that the Convention was ready to " peril
the success of Eadical Eeform on an appeal to the last and
worst weapon of the tyrant and oppressor." * The Conven-
tion spent some hours in denouncing the conduct of the
Birmingham people. The latter had indeed played an igno-
minious part in the movement. They had gone into it, hoping
to launch their currency scheme upon the rising popular tide.

1 A report of March 28 states that Richards had to cover all these
distEmcea on foot. Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 173.

2 Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 147. The punctnation of the original
has been slightly amended to make the meaning clear.

3 Clmrter, March 31, 1839 ; April 7, 1839.

132 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

They had expected rapid success. Instead, they found that
leadership had passed out of their hands and that success was
remote. They had talked vaguely about physical force, but
shrank from associating wit)i the men who were really deter-
mined to use it. They therefore pleaded business reasons for
not attending the Convention (which, it is true, was likely to
take up far more time than they could spare without deserting
their business altogether, as Cobden did) and at a favourable
opportunity withdrew altogether from a movement whose
course filled them with apprehension. Collins manfully de-
fended them against their enemies in the Convention, some of
whom iad apparently been stirring up opposition to Douglas,
Salt, and Hadley in Birmingham itself. The consequence
was that the Chartist cause in that city fell into the hands of a
reckless and unscrupulous crew, a fact which later turned out
very disastrously.^

On April 9 the Convention plunged into a discussion upon
the right of the people to possess arms. R. J. Richardson of
Manchester, who had a taste for antiquarian research, intro-
duced the question in an interminable oration loaded with
citations of every conceivable description. He moved for a
committee to inquire into the existing state of the law upon the
subject. The debate which followed reached the very climax
of futility, and exhibited a hopeless division amongst the
delegates. Sankey, who had distinguished himself at the
Crown and Anchor by his bold words, now betrayed a strong
disposition to eat them. Amid the fog of discussion the
practical good sense of the Scotsman, Halley, sounds strangely
welcome. What, he wanted to know, was the practical value
of the resolution ? Were they going to prepare for a cam-
paign ? Had they a large enough following in the country ?
To these questions no answer was vouchsafed, for none could
be given. Nobody knew why the discussion was opened, and
only half a dozen moderates Uke Halley, and two or three
firebrands like Harney, had courage to commit themselves to
any definite views at aU. This debate especially deserved the
censure passed by the London Dispatch that the Convention
was more concerned to show how clever it was than to further
the cause with good suggestions and sound measures.^ The
discussion ended in a declaration of the Convention's opinion
that it was lawful to possess arms. It had the effect of
encouraging the collection of arms in various parts of the

1 Charter, April 14, 1839. 2 May 19, 1839.

THE PEOPLE'S PAELIAMENT 133

country, a proceeding which did not escape the notice of the
Government.^

On April 18 Wood of Bolton resigned, having become a
Poor Law Guardian, to the great horror of his constituents.
Clearly the Anti-Poor Law excitement was subsiding. He
delivered a Parthian shot at the Convention by informing his
people that if they wanted a physical force revolution they
must elect a different Convention. On the 22nd, Matthew,
one of the Scottish delegates, resigned also.

A resolution was introduced by O'Connor on the 22nd,
suspending all missionary work and requiring the attendance
of all delegates till the Petition was presented. Place says
this was dictated by a fear that Government was preparing
to pounce upon the missionaries, ^ a view which Vincent's
arrest early in May serves to support, but it was also due in
part to the diminishing attendances of the remaining delegates.
O'Connor's speech was another example of indirect terrorism,
intended to scare away the remaining moderates. He de-
nounced those who had resigned as " deserters," and declared
that the lukewarmness of certain delegates would only cause
a greater impatience on the part of those who, being without
breakfasts and dinners, were anxious that the Convention
should show them how they were to be had. It was useless
for the Convention to sit there philosophising. The delegates
would have to act or their constituents would think they
were enjoying themselves on their salaries. When the Petition
was rejected, as it would be, they would have to declare a
permanent sitting ' and invite the country to address the Con-
vention in order that they might consider in what way they
could best carry out the objects of their just cause. Unless
the Convention brought itself morally into collision with other
authorities, it would do nothing to show its own importance.

He then proceeded to hint that the middle-class folk in the
Convention were the cause of its lukewarmness. He talked
vaguely of a general strike as an alternative to physical or
moral force. The operatives would " meet the cannon with
the shuttle and present the web to the musket." O'Connor
knew none but cotton and woollen weavers. He finally
denounced moral philosophers as the bane of their cause,

1 The Aberdeen Chartists wrote to Dr. Taylor, asking whether the con-
stitutional maxinis quoted in the debate applied also to Scotland, as they
had passed a resolution in favour of armfiig (Additional MSS. 34,245, A,
p. 260). " Ibid. 27,821, p. 93.

3 All improvement of an earlier passage in the speech in which O'Connor
suggested that they should sit till the funds were exhausted.

134 THE CHAKTIST MOVJiiVlJiJNT

and declared that the delegates who had deserted were paltry
cowards.

This speech indicates an important change of attitude of the
Convention on the vital question of " ulterior measures," i.e.
measures to be adopted after the Petition was rejected. May 5
was very near, and the Convention would have to have some
definite measures with which to face its followers in the country.
But some delegates were definitely opposed to any appeal to
arms ; others who had been valiant in speech were none top
pleased to find that they might have to vindicate their valour
in conflict with soldiers and police ; others who might be
perfectly willing to sacrifice themselves had scruples against
sacrificing others also ; yet others were anxious to make better
preparations before provoking an outbreak. Amidst this
clash of opinion, one course seemed to recommend itself to the
delegates — the least admirable course of all. Already it had
been decided to hold a series of mass meetings during Whit-
week. It was now decided to leave to the Chartists in mass
meeting assembled the decision which the Convention had not
will enough to take for itself. As Bussey, a reputed firebrand
from the West Kiding, remarked, it was dangerous for the Con-
vention to be ahead of the opinion of its constituents. This
was the result of the deliberations on the 22nd and 23rd.i The
following day was spent in excited recrimination between the
extremists on both sides, and no business was done.

On May 7 the Convention completed the first stage of its
work by handing over to Attwood and Fielden, who were to
present it, the great Petition. It contained 1,200,000 signa-
tures. It was rolled upon a huge bobbin-like structure and
placed upon a cart. The Convention marched two abreast as
escort, and delivered it at Attwood's house. This consum-
mation had not been accomplished without an eleventh-hour
hitch. Attwood and Fielden had demanded that the Con-
vention should pass a resolution condemning violent language
and physical force. This produced an excited debate in the
Convention, and the resolution was not passed. Apparently
the matter was compromised, but Attwood had still another
scruple. He objected to the Charter on the ground that it
would give two hundred representatives to Ireland out of six
hundred, which he considered too great a proportion. How-
ever, the Petition was deposited at his house and he was left
in charge, scruples and all.

1 ChaHer, AprU 28, 1839.

THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT 135

The Petition had long since ceased to be the focus of Chartist
thoughts and hopes. Very few delegates continued to express
the opinion that it might be seriously considered by the Com-
mons, and even they cherished the hope against their better
knowledge. The Convention devoted itself to the considera-
tion of " ulterior measures." Soon after the Petition was
handed over to Attwood, the Convention quitted London for
Birmingham after a session of three months. With the arrival
in Birmingham a new phase of the movement began, in which
the evils of dissension, recklessness, and lack of proper leader-
ship worked themselves out to a dismal and ignominious end.

It must be confessed that the Convention had not accom-
plished great things. Considering the exertions made, the
Petition had not been very extensively signed. Though
1,200,000 looks a respectable figure enough, yet it compares
unfavourably with the later Petition of 1842.'- Through the
missionaries the Convention had accomplished something.
In fact, this was the most hopeful and successful side of its
work, but it was not developed enough. The truth is that
the leadership of the movement was never thoroughly in the
hands of the Convention. The latter was being driven by the
excitement and impatience of its followers. The longer it
delayed, the greater grew the pressure from behind, until the
Convention was wrecked by forces which it could no longer
control.

1 Richard Caj-Iile in a pampMet preserved in Home Office Papers (40-
43), p. 8, aays that the Petition ol 1839 compared very badly with that
of 1817.

CHA;PT,EK VIII

THE GOVEENMENT PEEPAEES FOE ACTION
(1839)

Theoughout the manufacturing and mining districts an atmo-
sphere of excitement and terror was spreading during the early
months of 1839. Poverty and scarcity grew. A very bad
harvest in the previous year increased the price of bare neces-
saries of life to thousands who in time of good harvests were
scarce able to live, whilst the dislocation of trade reduced wages
and increased unemployment. The streets of many a Lanca-
shire town were Med with pale, gloomy, desperate, half-
famished weavers. The workhouses were besieged (for the
New Poor Law was yet in abeyance), though many a stubborn
operative preferred to starve in silence. " There is," wrote a
sympathetic observer ^ later in the year, " among the manu-
facturing poor, a stern look of discontent, of hatred to all who
are rich, a total absence of merry faces : a sallow tinge and
dirty skins teU of sufiering and brooding over change. Yet
often have I talked with scowling-visaged fellows till the ruffian
went from their faces, making them smile and at ease : this
tells me that their looks of sad and deep thought are not
natural. Poor fellows." ^ " It looks as if the falling of an
Empire were beginning," wrote the same noble soldier in the
early days of 1839.

In truth the aspect of Great Britain in these days was
sufficiently terrifying. From Bristol to Edinburgh and from
Glasgow to Hull rumours of arms, riots, conspiracies, and
insurrections grew with the passing of the weeks. Crowded
meetings applauded violent orations, threats and terrorism were

1 General Sir Charles Napier.

2 W. F. P. Napier, LASe and Opinions of Sir C. H. Navitr, 11. 77 (Sep-
tember 24, 1839).

136

THE GOVEENMENT PREPARES FOR ACTION 137

abroad. Magistrates trembled and peaceful citizens felt that
they were living on a social volcano. The frail bonds of social
sympathy were snapped, and class stood over against class as
if a civil war were impending.

The acquisition of arms by the more desperate of the manu-
facturing and mining folk must have begun before the meeting
of the Convention.^ A letter from the Loughborough magis-
trates, dated January 30, relates that the framework knitters,
under the influence of Stephens, are making enormous sacrifices
out of their terribly small wages for the purchase of arms and
for the support of their two representatives in the Convention.^
Stephens's arrest must have given a considerable impetus to the
collection of weapons of war. From this time onwards similar
reports were received almost daily by the Government from
magistrates, oflftcials, and private persons of all descriptions.
" Better to die by the sword than perish with hunger " was the
prevalent feeling. . The Mayor of Newcastle reports in February
that arms are being collected in that district.* In March it
was stated that the colliers and foundry-men in the Newport
and Merthyr districts were forming clubs, which organised the
purchase of arms through hawkers. Thomas Phillips, the Mayor
of Newport, who played a great part in the suppression of the
rising which took place later in the year, relates that meetings
are frequently held in the public-houses in the remote colliery
districts when neither civil nor military authority is available.

The missionaries attend at public-houses or beershops where a
party has been assembled. The missionary expounds to them the
grievances under which they labour, teUs them that half their
earnings is taken from them in taxes : that these taxes are spent in
supporting their rulers in idleness and profligacy : that their
employers are tyrants who acquire wealth by their labour : that
the great men around them possess property to which they are
not entitled.*

This sounds very much like a resume of Vincent's doctrines,*
as reported by the Crown witness at his trial. The manager of
the Pontypool Ironworks went about in fear of death, and had
once escaped a mauling only by putting on female costume.*

Prom Halifax in April came a report that much drilling and
collection of arms was going on amongst the handloom weavers,

^ Stephens said on November 4, 1838, at Hyde that the buriaj clubs were
purchasing arms ; at this meeting pistols were discharged.

2 Home Office, 40 (44), Leicester.

3 Ibid. (46), Newcastle-on-Tyne.
* Ibid. (43), Monmouth.

5 Ibid. (45), Monmouth. « IWd.

138 THE CHARtlST MOVEMENT

who were reduced to such desperation as to resolve to better
themsel-ves at the expense of the community.^ Bradford and
Barnsley magistrates reported in similar terms about the same
time.2 At Halifax a book about barricade and street fighting,
and the method of facing cavalry with the pike, written by an
Italian revolutionary named Macerone, was circulated.* Pikes,
manufactured out of old files stuck into a handle, or acquired
in some similarly inexpensive fashion, were the favourite
weapon, though not a few Chartists obtained muskets. These
martial preparations were carried on even in the remote dis-
tricts of Scotland, as far as Aberdeen, though the little weav-
ing towns, like Barrie's " Thrums," * were the chief centres of
excitement.

Frequent and tumultuous public meetings increased the ex-
citement. Delegates of the Convention, who there expressed
themselves cautiously and vaguely on the subject of arms and
physical force, were less reticent whilst addressing their friends
and followers in the country. Vincent set the whole of South
Wales ablaze, and when he was at last arrested early in May,
every one held his breath in terror of the inevitable insurrec-
tion. No work was done in Newport on the day the news
arrived. In Lancashire the various agitators and delegates
used the most extreme language. William Benbow was the
most outspoken of these advocates of armed revolution. He
was a cobbler of Manchester, now about sixty years old. He
had lived through the desperate days of Hampden Clubs and
the Six Acts. He had been a friend of Sam Bamford of Middle-
ton and William Cobbett.^ In 1816, if we are to trust Henry
Hunt, Benbow had been denounced by a Grovernment spy for
manufacturing pikes in view of a projected rising. He was
also the author of a pamphlet advocating the general strike as
a political weapon. A thoroughgoing, hardened revolutionary,
Benbow had in no wise been discouraged by the experiences
of his earlier days. We have seen him as a leader in the
Anti-Poor Law agitation,® and he came forward now with
greater enthusiasm than ever. He travelled all over Lanca-
shire preaching his doctrine of strikes and insurrection. At
a meeting in Manchester he spoke, we are told, " like a mad
thing." ' MacDouall, O'Brien, Richardson, and a host of

1 Home Ofloe, 40 (43), Manchester.

2 IbU. (51), Yorkshire. 3 Napier, 11. 16.

4 The I/ittte Minister, " Thrums " Is Kirriemuir In Forfarshire.

6 Northern Star, April 2, 1842.
s Compare aboTO, p. 91.

7 Manchester Times, April 27, 1839.

THE GOVEENMENT PREPAEES FOE ACTION 139

others spoke of nothing but arms. MacDouall urged his
hearers at Hyde to prepare themselves for the struggle, where-
upon some one in the crowd fired ofi a pistol.^ At other
meetings, too, pistol shots took the place of applause. What
was true of Lancashire and South Wales was true also of every
important manufacturing area, for everywhere the magistrates
were terror-struck. To what extent arming and drilling
were actually carried on it is of course di£B.cult to say. The
wildest tales were about. Three hundred thousand Lancashire
men would march at the signal of the Convention.^ The
arms in the Tower of London could easily be seized and dis-
tributed. Untold thousands of Welsh colliers were ready to
move. That these rumours were exaggerated goes without
saying. More significant, however, is the fact that the most
sanguine advocates of violent courses in the Convention
had themselves to confess that they had grossly overestimated
their following and their influence in the country.

These proceedings were not in the least hidden from the
Government. Perhaps the Chartists did not intend that they
should be, for with many it was an article of faith that moral
force backed by a display of physical force would accomplish
the surrender of the House of Commons. It was thus possible
for many delegates, in the Convention and elsewhere, to
advocate the possession of arms without being in the least
desirous of using them. Thus the drilling went on with no
great attempt at concealment. The Government was well
informed as to the state of afiairs. From magistrates, town
clerks, mayors, officials, and private persons hundreds of
reports were received, relating to all parts of the country.
With this information before him, Lord John Eussell, the
Home Secretary of the Melbourne Administration, was able
to act wisely and tactfully.

The wisest, and most tactful step was the appointment of
Major-General Sir Charles J. Napier to the command of the
Northern District in April 1839. Napier, the future conqueror
of Sind, was perhaps the most brOliant officer of the school of
Wellington, but apart from that he was a true gentleman, and
a wise and kindly ruler of men. His journal, which forms an
important source of our information for this troublous period,
reveals a man of the most admirable character. His soldierly
qualities were only exceeded by his sympathy with the un-

1 Manchester Chiardian, Jvme 12, 1839. Meeting on April 22,
2 Napier, U. 43.

140 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

fortunate men whose wild projects it was his duty to frustrate.
In politics he sympathised with the Liberals and with the Con-
servatives of the school of Lord Ashley, who was trying with
increasing success to voice the claims of the poorer classes upon
the attention of the State and of Society. No better choice
could have been made by Lord John Russell, who, though
steadfastly opposed to the claims of the Charter and the
National Petition, was scarcely less sympathetic and forbear-
ing in his conduct at this crisis than Napier himself, although
far more nervous.

The Government in fact handled this difficult situation in
an excellent fashion.^ On the one hand it was not unaware
of the nature of the insurrectionary movement, and it was
already taking steps to grapple scientifically with the problem
of social discontent. The manifold careful inquiries which
were made during this and the succeeding years * are sufficient
witness at least to a desire to do something for these less
fortunate members of society. On the other hand the insur-
rectionary movement was a fact, and Government was bound
to protect lives and property against threatening destruction.
The difficulty was that there was no police force to speak of
outside the London area, and the larger and smaller manufac-
turing towns were therefore compelled to rely upon military
protection in times of riot. Thus Bradford (Yorkshire) with
a population of 66,000 had a police force of about half a dozen.'
Neither Manchester nor Birmingham had a properly organised
force until the summer of 1839. Most of the smaller towns
had no civil force at aU. Under these circumstances the use
of military force was inevitable, but neither Napier nor the
Home Secretary was prepared to allow it to be used as reck-
lessly as at Peterloo. Much of their energy was in fact de-
voted to soothing terrified magistrates and manufacturers
who wanted to garrison every town and every factory like a
fortress, and to let loose the soldiery upon the slightest pro-
vocation.

Napier proceeded therefore very cautiously. He found
himself in command of between five and six thousand men and
eighteen guns. This was a far from sufficient force unless very
carefully used. It was scattered all over the northern counties,
sometimes in very small units, such as half companies and less.
At Halifax, for instance, forty-two soldiers were billeted in

> Russell had refuaed to put down Chartist meetings on the ground that
freedom of speech must be preserved (Hansard, 3rd ser., xlix. 455).

2 See above, especially Chapter II. s Home Office, 40 (51), Yorks.

THE GOVEENMENT PEEPARES FOE ACTION 141

as many houses. '^ Napier at once proceeded to concentrate Ms
forces at what lie held to be the decisive points. His head-
quarters were for the time being at Nottingham. Newcastle-
on-Tyne, Leeds, Hull, and Manchester were the strategic points.
In the Newcastle area he had 900 men ; in the Lancashire area,
2800 ; in Yorkshire, 1000.^ Manchester was regarded by
Napier as the centre of the insurrectionary movement, and
he kept one of his best officers, Colonel Wemyss, constantly
there, with a force which at one time must have amounted to
2000 men with some guns. This concentration, he notes with
relief, was completed by May 1. Napier exerted himself to
provide barracks of some sort in every town where the soldiers
were posted, as he was afraid that they would be cut oS or
tampered with if they were left in billets. The provision of
barracks was a constant stipulation whenever magistrates
applied to him.

In one other district where the Chartists were particularly
threatening, namely Monmouthshire, Lord John Eussell
ordered up troops. This was at the end of April. The troops
were to be sent from Sussex or Wiltshire.*

It was generally supposed that the day on which the peti-
tion was presented would be the day of the outbreak. . All the
preparations, therefore, were made against the 6th of May, the
date originally fixed. On May 3 the Government issued a
proclamation against persons who " have of late unlawfully
assembled together for the purpose of practising mihtary
exercise, movements, and evolutions," and against persons who
" have lately assembled and met together, many of them
armed with bludgeons or other ofEensive weapons, and have
by their exciting to breach of the peace, and by their riotous
proceedings, caused great alarm to our subjects." Magistrates
are to take all measures to suppress such unlawful assemblies.
This proclamation was followed by a letter from the Home
Secretary, authorising the formation of a civic force for the
protection of life and property where such was held to be in
danger. Government would supply arms to such bodies on
application through the proper channels.*

Whether this proposal to arm one body of inhabitants
against the others was wholly wise may well be doubted.
In many districts it would amount to the arming of the richer
against the poorer classes, and give the struggle the aspect of a

1 Napier, ii. 16. ^ Ibid. U. 19-22.

3 Home Office, 40 (45). Pencil note on back ol letter dated April 30.

* Northern Uberator, May 11 and 18, 1839.

W2 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

social war. That tie proposal was not only made but often
carried into practice shows already the degree of terror and
bitterness which had entered into social relationships. But
in the absence of a regular police force it was perhaps the best
course of action,unless a very free use were made of the soldiery,
which was perhaps still less advisable. The Government was
very cautious in supplying these volunteer bodies with arms.
Firearms were very seldom issued, cutlasses being supplied
instead.

Thus the two parties made their preparations, the Govern-
ment cautiously and tactfully, the Chartists noisily and per-
plexedly. Whether there would be an outbreak of civil war
depended largely upon the action of Napier and the Convention.
To the latter we must therefore turn again.

CHAPTER IX

THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM

(1839)

A STRANGE event upset the Chartist calculations early in May
1839. The Whig Government of Lord Melbourne had at no time
possessed a sound working majority. In a division upon the
question of suspending the constitution of Jamaica in conse-
quence of the evil treatment of the negro freedmen by the white
oligarchy, the Government majority dwindled to five, and on
the following day, May 7, Melbourne decided to resign. This
unlucky event put an end for the moment to all ideas of pre-
senting the National Petition, as there was no prospect of a
hearing for it. It made a bad impression, too, that the House
of Commons should apparently be so concerned with the
aSairs of Jamaica as to bring about a change of Government
at so critical a time. The Convention was compelled to face
the prospect of another long wait for the decisive moment at
which political agitation might pass into armed insurrection.
The delegates were of course far from unanimous either as to
the necessity or as to the precise moment for the employment
of force. Some were opposed to force altogether, others were
for waiting until the Petition was definitely rejected, and yet
others, convinced that the Petition was useless, were for an
immediate appeal to arms.

The Convention had not been unimpressed by the pre-
parations of the Government to resist any insurrectionary
movement. Without going as far as Place, who believed that
all the proceedings of the Convention about this time were
dictated by a cowardly fear of prison, the biggest braggarts
like O'Connor being the most arrant of cowards,^ we may well
agree that none of the delegates wanted to go out of their way

1 Additional MSS. 27.821, pp. 113-11.
143

144 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

to get themselves arrested. They wanted to keep their forces
together if there was to be an outbreak, and the seizure of the
delegates would either provoke a leaderless insurrection or put
a stop to the whole agitation, at least for the time being.
Neither of these alternatives was pleasant to contemplate.
The delegates, therefore, felt themselves unsafe in London,
almost under the eyes of Government and the already efficient
Metropolitan Police. The debates in the Convention had not
escaped the notice of the Home Secretary, who especially asked
for reports of the proceedings there. ^

In the Metropolis the Chartists had totally failed to get
together a real following. An effort to organise agitation in
London had been made by the Convention, but it did not
accomplish much. Long and loud were the complaints about
the apathy of the Londoners " because they had more wages
than the men of the North." * A meeting addressed by
Pitkeithly and Smart at Eotherhithe on March 28 drew only
fifty or sixty persons, and Pitkeithly complained that he had
only to call a meeting in the North and he would crowd a room
six times as large as the present one.* The notion that the
populace of London would play in a Chartist Eevolution the
part of the Paris folk in the French Revolution, if it were ever
entertained, was hopelessly impossible. In London the Con-
vention, in spite of its exertions, was never more than an
interesting phenomenon.

The thought was natural, therefore, to withdraw from
London to some place where there was a greater following and
a greater immunity from arrest. Birmingham was the town
selected. The delegates believed that the Convention could
combine preparation with propaganda, and Birmingham, the
half-way house to the North and to South Wales, was naturally
the first stopping-place for a movable People's Parliament.

Birmingham Chartism had undergone a change since the
collapse of the Attwood party. The moderate middle-class
element had seceded and left the leadership in the hands of
working men. Collins still preserved a tolerable following,*
but he was overshadowed by a noisier party led by Brown,
Powell, Donaldson, and Fussell. Brown, Powell, and Donald-
son were elected delegates in the place of Douglas, Hadley, and

1 Home OfiSee, 40 (44), Metropolis. Pencil note on back of letter, date
May 3 : " I wish to have account ot proceedings of the Convention itself."

2 Home Office, 40 (44), Metropolis. 3 ijyia.

* A strong protest was received by the Committee against the election
of Brown and his colleagues. Charter, April 28, 1839.

THE CONVENTION AT BIKMINGHAM 145

Saltj whilst Fussell stayed in Birmingham to agitate. Since the
end of March the behaviour of the Chartists had become more
and more provocative.^ The Bull Eing, a triangular space in
the centre of the town, and a gateway into the poorer quarters,
was crowded day after day with excited meetings, and the tone
of the speeches became more and more inflammatory. The
shopkeepers in the High Street were half ruined by the stop-
page of their business. The Mayor ^ professed to beUeve that
there was no danger of any serious disturbances, but the
manager of the Bank of England branch feared for his strong-
boxes.* A letter from Fussell to Brown, dated May 7, describes
the excitement in Birmingham. The Bull Ring is daily beset
by crowds " waiting to hear the result of the Petition." All
the week no work has been done, and Fussell has addressed the
crowds during the day-time "to preserve the peace." The
soldiers are all under arms and the Riot Act has been read " to
exasperate the people." " And Depend upon it no stone shall
be left unturned by Mee for the Purpose of keeping up the ex-
citement." " I shall continue my exertions though the Work-
house be My Doom." He urges Brown, who no doubt kept
him informed of the course of events in the Convention, to use
all his force to get the Convention to transfer its sittings to
Birmingham " as this was their battlefield and the men of
Birmingham their forces." * The next day, however, the
magistrates of the town forbade meetings in the Bull Ring and
also meetings of any sort where seditious and inflammatory
language was used. On the 9th MacDouall and a certain
James Duke, of Ashton-under-Lyne, were in Birmingham
ordering a score of muskets and bayonets to be sent to the
latter's home at Ashton, and promising an order for several
hundred more if these were approved.^

These indications suggest strongly that the " movement >
party," both in the Convention and in Birmingham, desired;
the removal to that town because they thought it a better
base of operations for the intended outbreak. The supposed'
weakness of the newly created municipal body, which included
a large sprinkling of the ex-leaders of Birmingham Chartism,
the supposed strength of the physical force Chartists, and the
existence of large stores of munitions of war, encouraged the

1 A speech of March 28, probably by Brown : " We know the use of
barricades. We know how to make use of the lanes and alleys. We know
the use of broken glass bottles. We know the use of aguafortis," etc.

2 William Scholefleld. ^ Home Office, 4,0 (id), Birmingham.

4 Additional MSS. 34,2i5, A, p. 414. , „.

5 Home Oflaoe, 40 (49). Sworn deposition of gunmaker at Birmmgham.

L

146 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

tope that a successful beginning might be made there. When,
on May 8, O'Connor for the second time moved the transference
of the Convention, a majority of three to one was in favour.
O'Connor said that the advent of a Tory Government would
make it dangerous to stay in London, whereas at Birming-
ham they would be safe. Lovett voted with the majority,
Hetherington, Cleave, Hartwell, Sankey, and Halley with the
minority. Cleave, Sankey, and Halley entered a very strong
protest against the removal, and had it recorded in the
minutes. Cleave and Halley said they would quit the Con-
vention altogether, but changed their minds, whilst Sankey
wobbled again and struck out his signature from the protest.^
George Rogers, another London delegate, withdrew also. He
was treasurer to the Convention. He wanted to know what
character the Convention would assume, now that the Petition
was disposed of, for he would sign no cheques, except for a
petitioning body. He wanted to know what the Whit-week
meetings were for. Anticipating no satisfactory answer, he
resigned. 2 Thus the moderate party was rapidly disappearing.

The sittings in London were terminated by proceedings
which showed how far the Government's measures had taken
efiect upon the delegates. On May 6 Lowery had moved an
" Address to the People " of a moderate character. This was
rejected and replaced by an Address compiled by O'Brien,
who said it was intended to urge the people to take arms
without saying so in as many words. The gist of the Address
was as follows : The first duty of the people was to obey the
law, for a premature violation of it would ruin the cause. Their
oppressors were trying to provoke such an outbreak through
spies and traitors ; they had already induced incautious persons
in Lancashire to practise training and drilling in contravention
of the Six Acts ; they were arming the rich against the poor.
The only way to avoid these schemes and plots was to be
rigidly law-abiding, to avoid spies and traitors, to keep their
arms bright at home, but not to attend meetings with them,
and to be prepared with those arms to resist attempts to sup-
press their peaceful agitation with physical violence.*

It is significant of the yravering attitude of some at least of
the delegates towards the use of force that, on Carpenter's
motion, the crucial words " with those arms " were deleted.
Place says that the debate was very excited. Burns and

1 Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 432.
2 IbU. 34,245, A, p. 410. s Charter, May 12, 1839.

THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM 147

Halley, the Scottish delegates, opposed the Address altogether.
Burns said that so far from being in a majority, they were
only a minority of the nation. (He was met with cries
of " We are ten to one.") He answered that he was glad
to hear it. They had only to show that they were in such
a majority and there would fee no need to talk of arms.^
Many of the delegates spoke very boastfully of the strength of
their following. With this ambiguous address, and the com-
pletion of the arrangements for the great Whit-week campaign,
the Convention quitted London.

It reached Birmingham on May 13. There was apparently
no great excitement and no meetings were held in the Bull
Ring. So far the Convention's injunctions regarding the strict
observation of the law were efiective. The delegates evidently
heaved a sigh of relief on quitting London, which O'Connor said
was " the most damnable of all places for bad air " ; the
members had come to Birmingham " to recruit their health." ^
The Convention was welcomed by an address from the Radicals
of Duddeston-cum-Nechells, a suburb of Birmingham. Its
authors " hail with heartfelt and boundless joy the auspicious
hour which has given to the millions of our brethren in
political bondage a mighty Congress, solemnly elected by the
people, to assert and win our natural and imprescriptable
[sic] rights and franchises," and invoke " upon your gigantic
labours the blessing of that Providence at whose breath every
oppressor shall be swept from ofE the land." *

Once arrived in Birmingham, the Convention took up a
vigorous line of action. It treated the preparations of the
Government as a signal for hostilities, and issued what may be
regarded as a declaration of war. This was the fiery docu-
ment styled " The Manifesto of the General Convention of
Industrious Classes," which ran as follows : —

CJountrymen and fellow-bondsmen ! The fiat of our privileged
oppressors has gone forth, that the millions must be kept in subjec-
tion ! The mask of CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY is thrown
for ever aside and the form of Despotism stands hideously before
us : for let it be no longer disguised, THE GOVERNMENT OE
ENGLAND IS A DESPOTISM AND HER INDUSTRIOUS
MILLIONS SLAVES.

Fellow-countrymen, our stalwart ancestors boasted of rights
which the simplicity of their laws made clear and their bravery
protected : but we their degenerate children have patiently yielded

1 Additional MSS. 27,821, pp. 126-8.
2 Ibid, 27,821, p. 170. ? iWd. 34,245, A, p. 442.

148 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

to one infringement after another till the last vestige of BIGHT
has been lost in the MYSTICISM of legislation, and the armed force
of the country transferred to soldiers and policemen.

Then follows an appeal to " rouse from your political
slumbers." The Convention would lead. The Petition would
be rejected and " we may now be prepared for the worst."

Men and women of Britain, will you tamely submit to the insult ?
Will you submit to incessant toil from birth till death, to give in
tax and plunder, out of every twelve hours' labour, the proceeds of
hours to support your idle and insolent oppressors ? Will you
much longer submit to see the greatest blessings of mechanical art
converted into the greatest curses of social Ufe ? to see children
forced to compete with their parents, wives with their husbands,
and the whole of society morally and physically degraded to support
the aristocracies of wealth and title ? Will you thus allow your
wives and daughters to be degraded ; your children to be nursed in
misery, stultified by toil, and become the victims of the vice our
corrupt institutions have engendered ? Will you permit the stroke
of aflUction, the misfortunes of poverty, or the infirmities of age to
be branded and punished as crimes, and give our selfish oppressors
an excuse for rending asunder man and wife, parent and child,
and continue passive observers tUl you and yours become the
victims ?

Unless freedom was attained, revolution must follow and
ruin and destruction would be the result. The middle class
had betrayed the people, Whigs and Tories alike were hostile.
Nevertheless the people must not be tempted to commence the
struggle which the Government was preparing to wage. " We
have resolved to obtain our rights peaceably if we may, forcibly
if we must."

Then followed a list of " ulterior measures " to be adopted
in the event of the rejection of the Petition. This list had been
drawn up by a committee from the multitude of suggestions
made from time to time by the delegates and others. Most of
them were expedients which had been proposed in the height
of the Reform BiU struggle eight years before. At every
Chartist meeting until July 1, the following questions were to
be submitted :

1. Whether Chartists will be prepared, AT THE REQUEST OF
THE CONVENTION, to withdraw aU sums of money they may
INDIVIDUALLY OR COLLECTIVELY have placed m savmgs
banks, etc., and whether at the same time they will be prepared
immediately to convert their paper money into gold and silver ?

2. Whether, IF THE CONVENTION SHALL DETERMINE

THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM 149

THAT A SACRED MONTH WILL BE NECESSARY to prepare
the millions to secure the Charter of their political salvation, they
will FIRMLY resolve to abstain from their labours during that
period, as well as from the use of all intoxicating drinks ?

3. Whether, if asked, they would refuse payment of rents, rates,
and taxes ?

4. Whether, according to their old constitutional rights, they
have prepared themselves with the arms of freemen to defend the
laws and constitutional privileges their ancestors bequeathed to
them ?

5. Whether they will support Chartist candidates at the General
Election ?

6. Whether they will deal exclusively with shopkeepers known
to be Chartists ?

7. Whether they will resist all counter and rival agitations ?

8. Whether they will refuse to read hostile newspapers ?

9. Whether they will OBEY ALL THE JUST AND CONSTI-
TUTIONAL REQUESTS OF THE MAJORITY OP THE CON-
VENTION ? 1

Ttese " suggestions " betray great perplexity on the part
of the Convention. Compared with the incisive character of
the prefatory address, they make an almost ridiculous impres-
sion. They rest largely upon the ill-founded assumption that
the Chartist enthusiasts were everywhere a majority amongst
the working people. They follow the tendency already noted,
to place the responsibility for extreme measures and their
consequences upon the shoulders of the rank and file instead
of the leaders. Behind all, there seems to lie a hope that these
suggestions, by bringing the more reckless and unthinking
Chartists face to face with stern realities, might have a sobering
efEect and put an end to the possibility of conflict altogether.
The appeal to arms now takes a secondary place and the
economic weapons, the general strike, a run on the banks, and
boycotting, are put into the first place.

The manifesto and the " ulterior measures " were not adopted
without great division of opinion. Lovett and Harney were
its chief defenders — a curious alliance. Lovett thought it was
the most honest and courageous step to take. The Convention
ought not to go on postponing the decision ; it ought to give
a lead to its followers even at the cost of some sacrifice.
Harney was sure it would precipitate the long-wished-for
conflict.^ There was strong opposition from Halley, Cleave,

1 Charter, May 19, 1839, p. 258. ^^. ,,.,,.,.

2 Place Bays Harney opposed the Address on this very ground (Additional
MSS. 27,821, p. 175), but I prefer my own reading of the matter.

150 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Whittlej and others. Most curious was tte attitude of
O'Connor and O'Brien. O'Connor spoke very doubtfully in
favour of the address^ whilst O'Brien thought the Convention
ought to make sure of its ground before publishing the mani-
festo. They ought to be certain of the unanimous support of all
Chartists before proceeding with it. Perhaps nothing reflects
more the wavering courage of the Convention than the request
(No. 9) that Chartists should obey the decisions of the majority.
They feared that the personal influence of minority delegates
would suf6.ce to tear away large bodies of Chartists and put an
end to unity. That O'Brien and O'Connor should be forsaking
the paths of violence and precipitancy was more significant
BtiU.

On the 16th it was decided, on the proposition of Marsden
and O'Connor, that any serious step on the part of the Govern-
ment to arrest the delegates should be the signal for the
adoption of the "ulterior measures." Yet Vincent had been
arrested the week before ! On the motion of O'Brien and
O'Connor solemn warnings were issued with regard to the
parading of arms in public, and to the avoidance of disorder
at public meetings. Chairmen were to dissolve meetings on
the first sign of tumult.^ Thus timorously and cautiously did
the Convention enter upon the great Whitsuntide campaign
which was to indicate whether they could safely proceed to
defy Government and society. After three days' sittings in
Birmingham, the Convention adjourned until July 1.

By this time the civil and military authorities had the
situation well in hand, though panic and terror were by no
means diminished. Everywhere special constables were being
sworn in — at Bradford, for instance, to the number of 1835 ^ —
and armed associations sprang up in threatened areas. The
Yeomanry was called up in the rural districts. Magistrates
were beginning to arrest individual Chartists, whenever they
felt safe in so doing. Many were so arrested in Lancashire.*
A dozen members of the London Democratic Association were
seized with arms in their hands.* There was a riot towards
the end of April at Llanidloes. Hetherington, who had visited
the district shortly before the outbreak, reported that Llanid-
loes and Newtown (Montgomery) were filled with armed
Chartists. As a result of the outbreak a number of Chartists
were arrested. At Derby, Strutt, the famous threadmaker,

1 Charter, May 19, 1839. » lUd. May 26, 1839.

3 Ibid. May 12, 1839. ■« London Dispatch, May 12, 1839.

THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM 151

fortified his mills with cannon and had a troop of horse in
readiness.^

It had been generally understood that May 6^ the day
originally intended for the presentation of the petition, would
be the critical day, the commencement of the insurrection.
In Lancashire, Monmouthshire, and elsewhere the excitement,
terror, and panic rose to a climax during the first week of May.
On the 4th, Colonel Wemyss, in command at Manchester,
reported : " Two Magistrates from Ashton-under-Ljoie came
into Manchester this forenoon seemingly in great alarm, and
made a requisition for troops. I immediately put a squadron,
a gun, and four companies of the 20th Regiment in march
on the Ashton Road." It turned out that the magistrates
had arrested four Chartists, but the mob had prevented them
from sending their prisoners to Manchester.^ The sending of
a force of all three arms in such a case shows how great the
tension seems to have been. The Manchester magistrates
were not so alarmed as their neighbours in the smaller towns,
owing to the presence of Wemyss and his garrison, but they
sent in disquieting reports as to the accumulation of arms and
the prevalence of drilling. There was a second outbreak at
Llanidloes on May 7. One of the delegates for Birmingham,
Powell, was arrested.* At Monmouth a riot was barely avoided
on the arrival of Vincent and Edwards, who had been arrested
on the 7th. The Convention sent down Frost to provide legal
assistance, and it was probably his personal influence alone
which prevented a premature outbreak.*

May 6, however, passed without serioas events, and atten-
tion was concentrated on the Whitsuntide campaign. Napier,
in his headquarters at Nottingham, was keeping the situation
well in hand, though alarming reports reached him from aU
quarters. It seems clear from his reports that many of the
Chartist rank and file were under the impression that the great
Whitsuntide demonstrations were to be of a much more
business-hke character than the mere discussion of possible
" idterior measures." A fragment of a torn letter was pat into
his hands, which suggested that ideas of barricades and street
warfare were about, and that Whit Monday was the day
appointed to begin. At Stone, in Stafiordshire, barricades were
actually erected.^ A handbill circulated in Manchester runs
thus :

1 Charter. April 28, 1839. ^ Home Office, 40 (43), Manchester.

> Charter, May 12, 1839. ^ Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 133.

6 Napier, u. 12, 27.

152 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Dear brothers ! Now are the times to try men's souls ! Are
your arms ready ? Have you plenty of powder and shot ? Have
you screwed up your courage to the sticking place ? Do you
intend to be freemen or slaves ? Are you inclined to hope for a
fair day's wages for a fair day's work ? Ask yourselves these
questions and remember that your safety depends on your own
right arms. How long are you going to allow your mothers, your
wives, your sweethearts, and your children to be for ever toiling
for other people's benefit 1 Nothing can convince tyrants of their
folly but gunpowder and steel, so put yottr tbtjst in god, my
BOYS, AND KEEP YOTJE powDEB DBY ... Be ready then to nourish
the tree of Uberty with the BLOOD OF TYRANTS. . . . Now or
never is your time : be sure you do not neglect your arms, and when
you do strike do not let it be with sticks or stones, but let the
BLOOD OF AUi YOU susPECT^moistcn the sou of your native land.

Let England's sons then prime her guns

And save each good man's daughter.
In tyrants' blood baptize your sons
And every villain slaughter.
By pike and sword your freedom strive to gain
Or make one bloody Moscow of old England's plain.'

As WMtsuntide drew near, Napier became more and more
confident that the Chartists would not accomplish much in the
way of carrying out their threats. On May 15 he wrote :

The Chartists hardly know what they are at. The people want
food and think O'Connor will get it for them : and O'Connor wants
to keep the agitation alive because he sells weekly 60,000 copies of
the Northern Whig [sic]. While this lasts he will try to prevent
an outbreak. No premeditated outbreak will oooiu', I think,
whilst our imposing force furnishes an excuse for delay : and delay
will injure their cause because the deputies are paid and the people
are growing weary of the physical-force men.

The second part of this statement shows a better apprecia-
tion of the situation than the first. Later on, Napier writes
that the orders of the Convention to avoid parading arms at
public meetings was due to " funk."

They [the leaders] saw they would be obliged to lead their pike-
men in the field, and knowing Demosthenes did not like fighting,
they as orators think it not derogatory to follow his example.'

The Whitsun demonstrations were carried through peace-
fully and quietly, but the panic amongst the magistracy and
propertied folk was as great as ever. The chief demonstra-
tions were at Huddersfield and Manchester, and meetings of
some importance took place at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Mon-

1 Napier, u. 29. 2 Ibid. U. 27, 38, 34.

THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM 153

mouth, Bolton, and Sheffield. At Huddersfield O'Connor
was the chief attraction, but the magistrates there said the
afiair was poor compared with the previous demonstrations.
At Manchester, on May 25, a crowd, whose number varies from
twenty thousand, according to the Times, to half a million,
according to the Chartist papers, marched to Kersal Moor to
hear O'Connor, Dr. Fletcher, Dr. Taylor, and some local
orators. The meeting was wholly peaceable.

Napier was apparently very much afraid of an outbreak in
Manchester and took very peculiar precautions. He heard that
the Chartists had five brass cannon, and purposed desperate
things under the lead of Taylor, who had come down from
Glasgow. He thereupon gave a private artillery exhibition to
a few Chartist leaders with whom he was acquainted.'^ He
also sent a message to the responsible persons to tell them
" how impossible it would be to feed and move 300,000 men ;
that, armed, starving, and interspersed with villains, they must
commit horrid excesses ; that I would never allow them to
charge me with their pikes, or even march ten miles, without
mauling them with cannon and musketry and charging them
with cavalry, when they dispersed to seek food ; finally, that
the country would rise on them and they would be destroyed
in three days." ^

These measures doubtless damped much of the warlike
ardour of the Chartist leaders. Napier and Wemyss went in
person to the Kersal Moor demonstration. His troops had
been strengthened by the 10th Regiment from Liverpool, and
he had promised the magistrates to arrest any one who preached
treason after the meeting had dispersed. Napier's estimate
that the meeting was thirty or thirty-five thousand strong, we
may take to be fairly correct, but he says that not five hundred
of this crowd were seriously bent on mischief.

Wemyss addressed a few of the people in high Tory oratory and
argued with a drunken old pensioner, fiercely radical and devilish
sharp : in ten minutes one-eighth of the whole crowd collected round
Wemyss and cheered him.'

The speeches, delivered by the official Chartist orators at this
meeting, consisted largely of eulogies of Henry Hunt and the
Peterloo martyrs. Resolutions condemning the delegates
who resigned from the Convention were passed, as well as
resolutions approving the programme of " ulterior measures."

1 Napier, u. 40. ^ ibid. il. 43. 3 Ibid. U. 39-43.

154 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

At Newoastle-on-Tyne, howeveij wtere Harney, Dr. Taylor,
and otier advocates of extreme measures were the speakers,
the speeches were censored by the chairman. James Craig
spoke of agitating the bricks and mortar, Harney of marching
on London, Taylor and Lowery of the advantages of a general
strike of colliers.^ Generally speaking, however, the Whitsun-
tide campaign gave the authorities little real ground for un-
easiness, though the panic, generated by the frequent assemblies
of Chartists and the wild rumours which were abroad, was in
no way abated.

The campaign was continued throughout June 1839, but
there was increasing evidence of disaSection in the Chartist
ranks. On May 15 James Craig of Ayr quitted the Con-
vention with leave of absence. He had been regarded as a
stalwart and promising leader, but apparently he had lost
his nerve. He fell into a sordid squabble with his former
constituents about his salary as delegate, and the Chartist
body in that neighbourhood was split into fragments.^ E. J.
Richardson resigned towards the end of May because his
Manchester supporters were either unable or unwilling to pay
him the five pounds weekly which had been promised as his
salary. Apparently a rival, Christopher Dean by name, had
been preferred to him.' Halley, the Scottish delegate, who
had always been so powerful an advocate of sober measures,
took advantage of the adjournment of the Convention to sever
his connection with it, for which, curiously enough, he was
denounced in person by Richardson himself.* Not only
resignations but arrests thinned the ranks of the Convention.
About the beginning of June Carrier of Trowbridge was
arrested, and on the 8th MacDouaU. The latter was committed
on the charge of attending a seditious meeting at Hyde towards
the end of April, when he had advised his audience to make
use of arms if soldiers were called out, sentiments which were
greeted with pistol-shots. MacDouaU thereupon squabbled
with his Ashton constituents, seemingly because he was sus-
pected of desiring that part of the fund raised for Stephens's

1 Northern liberator. May 25, 1839.

2 Northern Star, September 7, 1839. Additional MBS. 34,245, A, p. 447 :
B, pp. 36, 58.

' Dean's credentials : " Stephens Sqnair (i.e. Stevenson Square, Man-
cheater). We the men of Manchester in PubUo assembled have Duly
elected Cristipher Dean, Operative stone Mason, as a fltt and proper person
to Represent us in the People's Convention. Sign in be halte of the
meating. William Rushton, CSiairmon." Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 201,
April 4. * London IHspatch, July 7, 1839.

THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM 155

trial should be applied to his own defence. ^ He also quitted
the Convention.

The efiect of these resignations ought not to be exagger-
ated. They did not imply entire withdrawal from the move-
ment, for Richardson, Ryder, and MacDouall continued to
be very active leaders. In fact the two latter probably re-
signed because they felt that they could be of much more use
in the country than in the Convention. On the other hand, the
constant local dissensions, of which more and more is heard
from this time onward, could not but have a bad effect upon
the unity which was requisite for any efiective action. It was
frequently reported that the more timid were openly with-
drawing from the movement. In the Convention the steady
shrinkage had a depressing efiect, and the wavering which
characterised its earlier proceedings was emphasised in the
later. It was finally left to accident and the restlessness of
the remaining members to precipitate a crisis.

The Convention met again on July 1 at Birmingham. The
next day it was decided to migrate, on July 10, once more to
London,* a very curious move which is excused, though not at
all explained, by the fact that Attwood's motion upon the
prayer of the Petition was down for the 12th. On July 3 and
4 the party of violence, led by Dr. Taylor and MacDouall
(whose resignation does not seem to have taken efiect), began
to advocate an early decision upon the adoption of ulterior
measures, basing their arguments upon the evidence of readi-
ness supplied by the meetings during the past six weeks.
Craig alone seriously questioned the preparedness of their
followers, and finally abandoned the Convention. After some
very irresolute proceedings, it was decided to put into force the
milder of the " ulterior measures," the run on banks, exclusive
dealing, the newspaper boycott, and so on, at an early date.-
The question of a general strike was held over until the fate
of the Petition was known. In the minds of the movement
party the strike was synonymous with insurrection, for they
refused to listen to Lovett's argument* that a strike fund
should be formed, preferring Benbow's vague but unmistak-
able reference to the " cattle upon a thousand hills " * as the
most suitable strike fund.

1 Charter, June 16, 1839 ; July 7, 1839. See also cvirious account in
Manchester Ouardian, June 29, 1839. ^ . . ,

2 Moir proposed this : said they ought to be at hand to take eyery
advantage of the embarrassments of the Government and of the Bank of
England! * Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 283.

1 See his Grand National Ifoliday, 1831.

156 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Tte action about which the Convention was debating
was precipitated by events which took place in Birmingham
on July 4. The return of the Convention had raised the ex-
citement in that town to fever heat. The magistrates had for-
bidden meetings in the Bull Ring since the beginning of May/
and the Chartists had been meeting at HoUoway Head, not
many minutes' walk away. With the increasing excitement
the Bull Ring was again invaded, despite the prohibition. The
magistrates therefore sent for a detachment of the Metro-
politan Police. The Mayor, William Scholefield, with two
other magistrates, proceeded to London and brought back
sixty constables.^ This was on July 4. On arriving at Bir-
mingham about eight o'clock in the evening, they found a
meeting in full swing in the Bull Ring. As if to make the
earliest use of their new weapon, the magistrates ordered the
police to disperse the meeting, which was perhaps a thousand
strong. The struggle which ensued was bloody and indecisive
untU soldiers were brought up. Many of the crowd were
armed in various ways, and ten policemen were seriously
wounded and taken to hospital. Some dozen armed and
unarmed Chartists were arrested on the spot. The magis-
trates wrote ofi at once for a further draft of Metropolitan
Police, and forty were sent next day. Meanwhile the crowd
had reassembled in the Bull Ring, and towards midnight, in
spite of the efiorts of Dr. Taylor and MacDouaU (whose pres-
ence was not likely to suggest peaceful behaviour) to dissuade
them, the infuriated body began to pull down the wall sur-
rounding St. Martin's Church, which stands at the lower end
of the Bull Ring, to use the stones as missiles or for a barricade.
The police came up again and arrested the two delegates with
seventeen other Chartists. The next morning, Friday, the
magistrates mobilised some hundreds of tradesmen as special
constables, but nevertheless excited crowds continued to
assemble, especially round the Golden Lion Hotel, where the
Convention was sitting. The magistrates released MacDouaU
upon examination, but not Taylor.*

1 Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 112. 2 Hansard, 3rd ser. xlix. 86.

3 The meeting was undoubtedly illegal. First, because it had been for-
bidden to hold meetings in the Bull King, which was a narrow and confined
space, bounded by rows of shops. Meetings there, unless small, were very
detrimental to business in the shops. Second, because the meeting was
attended by armed men. But there is no doubt that the magistrates acted
very hurriedly and recklessly. They did not read the Riot Act or give
any warning before attempting to disperse the meeting, Scholefield, the
Mayor, said he had always been received with groans on passing the Bull
King, and he was probably angry and timorous. There were only twenty

THE CONVENTION AT BIEMINGHAM 157

Ttese events produced a situation in whict Lovett was
supreme. Where personal sacrifice was required, Lovett's
courage was beyond question. In the excited and half-terrified
Convention he brought forward a series of strong resolutions
condemning tbe magistrates of Birmingham.

That this Convention is of opinion that a wanton, flagrant, and
unjust outrage has been made upon the people of Birmingham,
by a bloodthirsty and unconstitutional force from London, acting
under the authority of men who,"^ when out of office, sanctioned
and took part in the meetings of the people, and now, when they
share in the pubho plimder, seek to keep the people in social and
political degradation. That the people of Birmingham are the
best judges of their own right to meet in the Bull Ring or elsewhere,
have their own feelings to consult respecting the outrage given, and
are the best judges of their own power and resources to obtain
justice. That the summary and despotic arrest of Dr. Taylor, our
respected colleague, affords another convincing proof of the absence
of all justice in England and clearly shows that there is no security
for life, liberty or property till the people have some control over
the laws they are called upon to obey.

These resolutions were carried without opposition, and it was
further decided to have five hundred copies of them placarded
th.rough.out the town. Characteristically enough, Lovett in-
sisted that his own signature alone should be attached, so that
the Convention should run no risk. Characteristically enough,
the Convention was quite willing to sacrifice him.' Lovett and
Collins, who had acted as chairman at this momentous sitting,
took the draft to the printer. The placards appeared on
Saturday morning, the 6th. Lovett and Collins were arrested
the same day for publishing a seditious libel, hurried before
the magistrates, whom Lovett upbraided as traitors to the
Chartist cause, and were committed to Warwick Gaol, where
they were forthwith lodged.

This was Lovett's hour. He knew perfectly well that the
publication of his resolutions was a serious ofEence, but he
wanted to break the law. Against a wholesale insurrection,
which might involve the sacrifice of innocent lives, the de-
struction of property, and the poisoning of social and political
feeling, he had always raised his voice in protest. To break
a bad law by his own personal act, to vindicate the justice of
his cause by his eloquence before the judges and before the
world outside, and by suffering with fortitude the punishment

street-keepers, and six or seven constables In Birmingham Itself before the
new police force was organised. See also Charter, Jiuy J. lp^9-, ,
3 The reference is, of course, to the Attwood-Mimtz-Soholefield body.

158 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

which his action involved, to do all this Was Lovett's moral force.
Thus had he resisted the ballot for the Militia in 1831 ; thus had
the Newspaper Taxes been defied and successfully defied ; thus
would Lovett win the Charter. He would be the advocate of
the disfranchised before the bar of public opinion and speak
where his advocacy would be most efiective. It was a noble
ideal, but it was the ideal of a martyr, not of a leader of would-
be insurgents. Yet it is not questionable that Lovett accom-
plished more by this sacrifice for the cause of Chartism and the
advance of democracy in England than all those who sneered
at his moral philosophy and brandished their arms when the
enemy was absent. In the history of the first Chartist Con-
vention there is but one cheering episode, and Lovett is its
hero.

The news of the events at Birmingham produced intense
feeling throughout the Chartist world. Lancashire was as
usual the focus of the excitement. On July 2, Wemyss, at
Manchester, reported that one Timothy Higgins of Ashton-
under-Lyne had been found in possession of twenty-seven
rifles and muskets of various descriptions and three pistols.
A. placard was posted at Ashton Parish Church :

Men of Ashton, Universal Bread or Universal Blood, prepare your
Dagger Torch and Guns, your Pikes and oongreve matches and
all march on for Bread or blood, for life or death. Remember the
cry for bread of 1,280,000 was called a ridiculous piece of machinery.*
O ye tyrants, think you that your Mills will stand ? '

On July 10 the Manchester Chartists issued a placard caUing
a meeting to protest against the introduction into Manchester
of a DAMNABLE FOREIGN POLICE SYSTEM and to
denounce the BLOODY DOINGS of the police at Birming-
ham. The placard is headed in leaded type TYRANNY !
TYRANNY ! ! WORKING MEN OF MANCHESTER.

The Convention added to the excitement by rushing through
various strong resolutions regarding the immediate resort to
ulterior measures. The National Holiday or General Strike
was still kept in reserve. These resolutions were published in

1 A reference to the huge bobbin on which the National Petition was
wound.

2 Napier reports (11. 62) In the House of Commons that at Wigton the
magistrates were horrified to discover that the persons they had appointed
as special constables had arms and " would soon settle your forty soldiers,
if they are saucy." Of this period he relates thus : " Alarm ! Trumpets I
Magistrates In a fuse 1 Troops ! Troops 1 Troops I North, South, East,
West ! I screech at these applications like a gate, swinging on rusty
hinges, and swear I Lord, how they make me swear 1 "

THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM 159

the form of placards. On July 10 tlie Convention, now back
again in London, passed a resolution of censure upon the
Government for allowing the police to be used for suppress-
ing public meetings.

This Convention is of opinion that wherever and whenever
persons, ASSEMBLED EOR JUST AND LEGAL PURPOSES and
conducting themselves without riot or tumult, are so assailed by the
police and others, they are justified upon every principle of law and
of seH-preservation in MEETING FORCE BY FORCE, EVEN
TO THE SLAYING of the persons guilty of such atrocious and
ferocious assaults upon their rights and persons.'

The manifesto of the Convention, embodying the resolution
to resort immediately to ulterior measures, appeared in Man-
chester, on July 12, in the shape of a placard summoning a
meeting for the next day " to support the People's Parliament,
and to recommend [sic] her MAJESTY to dismiss her Present
Base, Brutal, and Bloody, Advisers." The placard contains
the list of ulterior measures, signed by twenty-seven of the
delegates. In heavy print are the recommendations to with-
draw money from the savings banks, to run for gold, and to
abstain from excisable articles. In smaller and smaller type
are the recommendations to boycott and to obtain arms,
whilst a reference to the Sacred Month is scarcely legible.

A manifesto against the paper money system was issued
by the Convention about the same time.

The corrupt system of Bankuig, speculating and defrauding the
industrious, had its origin, has been perpetuated, and stiU form [sic]
the greatest support of despotism, in the fraudulent bits of paper
our state tricksters dignity with the name of money. Through
its instrumentahty our rulers destroy freedom abroad and at home.
Our whole system has been tainted by its pestilential breath. . . .
It has created one set of idlers after another to prey upon the vitals
of the industrious. ... It has raised up a host of defenders (who)
have induced thousands to assist in upholding their corrupt system,
while they are being robbed by that system of three-fourths of
their labour.

This was the O'Brien-O'Connor counterblast to Attwood's
currency theories. Within a day or two of the publication
of this outburst, Attwood was using the National Petition to
float his currency notions, and Lord John Russell was refutmg
him out of the mouths of his own petitioners.

1 Placard at Bolton, Home Office, 40, ii.

CHAPTEE X

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS : END OF THE CONVENTION

(1839)

On July 12, 1839, Attwood brought forward in Parliament
a motion for a committee of the wtole House to take
into consideration the National Petition. Thus for the first
time did the claims of the Chartists receive anything hke
a reasonable amount of attention from the House of Com-
mons, and the Chartist world waited breathless to hear the
result. Attwood's speech was restrained. A good speech
it certainly was not. It was the utterance of a crank, who
was trying with admirable self-control not to intrude his
peculiar ideas into a subject which ofiered an enormous
temptation to do so. He described the origin of the
Petition and the rise of the Birmingham Union, the great
distress of the operatives and the even greater distress, hidden
under a mask of pride, of the manufacturer. He suggested
rather than declared outright that this distress was due " to
the cruel and murderous operation which had pressed for
twenty years together on the industry and honour and security
of the country." This was practically his only reference to
the currency scheme. He defended the various demands of the
Charter as part of the ancient constitution of England, and
warned the House against disregarding the prayer of a million
operatives. He urged the Commons to grant even part of the
Petition — Household, if not Universal Suffrage, Triennial
if not Annual Parliaments, to repeal the Poor Law, the Corn
Law, and the Money Law. He was convinced that the five
points of the Petition must be granted, but, he added in a
despondent tone, " he only wished he were equally sure they
would produce the fruits that were expected from them," a

160

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS 161

remark which, if it meant anything at all, meant that from the
currency scheme alone was salvation to be expected. It was
a speech which the Chartists themselves repudiated. It was a
middle-class Birmingham Union speech, not a Chartist speech.

Fielden briefly seconded the motion. Both he and Attwood
were guilty of confusing the issues. Both had enlarged rather
upon the necessity of relieving misery than upon the question
of granting civil and political rights. Each ofiered his own
panacea for the prevalent distress, and so turned the discussion
on to side issues. Apart from the manifest absurdity of ex-
pecting to cure the many-rooted evils of society by a single
remedy, this was a bad error in tactics. The Government
spokesman was Lord John Russell, and he seized the advantage
thus ofEered. He attacked not the Petition and not even !
Attwood's speech, but the views which Attwood was known |
to hold. It was an unfair attack in a way, for Attwood had
scarcely mentioned his favourite theme, and his speech does
not contain the word " currency " at all. RusseU spoke as one
who was enjoying the opportunity of suppressing a bore,
which Attwood undoubtedly was. He turned Attwood's
theories upside down — a feat which required little skill — and
finally produced, to give the unfortunate man his quietus, the
recently published manifesto of the Convention on the Bank-
ing and Paper Money Systems. Attwood saw in the expansion
of the Paper Currency a remedy for all social ills. Not so the
Convention, which, led by O'Brien, pronounced that " amongst
the number of measures by which you have been enslaved,
there is not one more oppressive than the corrupting influence
of paper money." Lord John proceeded to demonstrate the
impossibility of improving the lot of the labouring classes by
legislation, and consequently by universal sufirage. He hinted
that the granting of the rights demanded by the Petition would
bring about the demolition of the Monarchy, of the House of
Lords, and of the institutions of the country in general.

Benjamin Disraeli followed. His speech was the most
interesting contribution to the debate. It was an attack upon
the reformed constitution, not in the Chartist sense but in
the sense of an idealised Toryism. " The origin of this move-
ment in favour of the Charter dated from about the same
time that they had passed their Reform Bill. He was not
going to entrap the House into any discussion on the merits
of the constitution they had destroyed and that which had
replaced it. He had always said that he believed its char-

M

162 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

acter was not understood by those wlio assailed it, and perhaps
not fully by those who defended it. All would admit this :
the old constitution had an intelligible principle, which the
present one had not. The former invested a small portion of
the nation with political rights. Those rights were entrusted
to that small class on certain conditions — ^that they should
guard the civil rights of the great multitude. It was not even
left to them as a matter of honour ; society was so constituted
that they were entrusted with duties which they were obliged
to fulfil. They had transferred a great part of that political
power to a new class whom they had not invested with those
great public duties. Great duties could alone confer great
station, and the new class, which had been invested with
political station, had not been bound up with the great mass
of the people by the exercise of social duties." Disraeli's in-
sight was not at fault. There is no doubt that the Chartist
Movement does reflect a certain decline or change in social
sympathies which the economic revolutions of the two genera-
tions previous had brought about. To this extent DisraeU
was right in declaring that the Chartist Movement arose neither
out of purely economic causes nor out of political causes, but
out of something between the two, that is, to a lack of the
lively interest taken by each class in the welfare of others, which
Disraeli supposed to be the peculiar merit of pre-1832 society.
As a matter of fact, that clever orator might have been embar-
rassed to declare at what exact period his ideal society had
existed, for the aristocracy had taken its fuU share in breaking
down the old social bonds. " The real cause," said Disraeh,
" of this, as of aU real popular movements, not stimulated by
the aristocracy . . . was an apprehension on the part of the
people that their civil rights were invaded. Civil rights par-
took in some degree of an economical and in some degree
certainly of a political character. They conduced to the
comfort, the security, and the happiness of the subject, and at
the same time were invested with a degree of sentiment which
mere economical considerations did not involve." To Disraeh,
therefore, civil rights consisted in the claims of the less fortunate
upon the more fortunate classes of society. These claims had
been ignored, for insta,nce, by the introduction of the New
Poor Law, which, though not the cause of, was yet closely
connected with, the Chartist Movement. In the passing of
that measure both sides of the House were culpable : they had
" outraged the whole social duties of the State, the mainstay,

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS 163

the living source of the robustness of the commonwealth."
" He believed that the Tory party would yet rue the day
when they did so, for they had acted contrary to principle —
the principle of opposing everything like central government
and favouring in every possible degree the distribution of
power." In short, Disraeli was preaching a feudal ideal, with
patriarchal benevolence as the basis of social relations. But
such an ideal was impossible in those days, when an industrial
working class and an industrial middle class had come into
existence. This middle class, Disraeli maintained, was the
basis of the new constitution. It had received political station
" without making simultaneous advances in the exercises of
the great social duties " — a charge by no means devoid of
truth. Hence it was detested by the working classes. The
trial of Chartist leaders before the Birmingham magistrates
had demonstrated that. " He was not ashamed to say, how-
ever much he disapproved of the Charter, he sympathised
with the Chartists. They formed a great body of his country-
men : nobody could doubt they laboured under great griev-
ances, and it would indeed have been a matter of surprise,
and little to the credit of that House, if Parliament had been
prorogued without any notice being taken of what must
always be considered a very remarkable social movement."
Disraeli concluded with a characteristically scathing denuncia-
tion of the Ministry, and gave place to the honest but prosy
Hume. His speech is well worthy of study. Had he been
possessed of constructive genius equal to his insight, Disraeli
would have been a statesman indeed. But there was in his
speech too great an air of detachment ; it was too objective,
regarding Chartism as an interesting phenomenon of which
he alone had grasped the true meaning, and not as a tremen-
dous human convulsion involving the welfare of a million
struggling and despairing beings ; an afiair of flesh and blood,
of bread and butter, not an afiair of party politics or Tory
Democracy.

Hume made a brave speech in favour of the Charter, but
O'Connell declared that the Chartists had ruined the Kadical
cause by their insane and foolish violence, whereby they had
alienated all the middle class. Several other speakers followed,
but, apart from Eussell and Disraeli, scarcely any who voted
against the motion took part in the discussion. Summer
days are scarcely suitable for serious debate, and members
were not interested. The ignominious fall and still more

164 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

ignominious restoration of the Government had scotched poli-
tical interest generally. Hume and Attwood led 46 followers
into the lobby, but five times as many — ^to be exact, 235 —
mustered against them. The Petition was dead, slain by the
violence of its supporters, the tactlessness of its chief advocates,
the inertia of conservatism, and its own inner contradictions.'-

The Petition was dead, but Chartism was yet alive. The
rejection of the Petition had long been foreseen, but its actual
demise left the way clear for the decision on Ulterior Measures
about which the Convention had boggled so long. The dele-
gates had now to make up their minds, and that quickly. The
excitement throughout the country was higher than ever.
The approaching trials of various leaders — Stephens, Lovett,
Vincent — the constantly increasing niunber of arrests, both of
leaders and rank and file, all helped to make the tension greater.
On the other hand, the gradual shrinkage in the Convention
and the undoubted secession of moderates in the country
required that some heroic decision should be taken at once,
before the repute and prestige of the Convention were whoUy
destroyed.

Immediately after the rejection of the motion of the 12th,
;Fielden and Attwood suggested that the Convention should
organise another petition, which suggestion the Convention
rejected forthwith, thereby breaking finally away from the
Birmingham leaders — and in fact from the Anti-Poor Law
leaders too. Instead, the Convention now drew from its
armoury its most potent weapon — that of the General Strike,
the " National Holiday " or " Sacred Month."

The question was brought forward on July 15, a day already
fixed for the discussion. Thirty delegates were present.
O'Brien, O'Connor, and Dr. Taylor were absent, a fact upon
which Carpenter commented bitterly, for it was these men who
had made the largest promises to their followers and the
strongest threats to the Government. Marsden opened the
debate in favour of the strike. Marsden was a desperately
poor weaver, who had horrified his audiences with his descrip-
tion of the sufEerings of his feUow- weavers. A strike was
nothing to him, to whom both work and play alike were syn-
onymous with starvation. His passionate demand for action
was answered by James Taylor, a Unitarian minister of Old-
ham, and Carpenter, who showed with absolute clearness how
little their followers were prepared for a strike. Their argu-

1 Hansard, 3rd sei. zUx. 220-78.

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS 165

ments -were not answered. Most of the delegates supported
the strike because they did not know what else to do. Having
raised such expectations in the minds of their followers, they
felt that they must do something to justify themselves. They
could not bear the thought that they had deceived themselves
as well as their constituents, and so let themselves drift into a
general strike without knowing in the least how it was to be
conducted. Of preparations involving funds, food, stores,
they would not hear ; they would live on the country like an
invading army. To them a strike was one thing, a general
strike quite another thing. Yet for a general strike of this
insurrectionary description they discussed no preparations,
though the complicated arrangements of an ordinary strike
were simple in comparison with those requisite for such a
desperate venture. In fact, one is driven to the conclusion
that the Convention delegates decided to recommend a general
strike, partly because they had to decide on something and
partly because they knew that it was impossible. \

After two days' discussion it was resolved by thirteen against
six votes (five abstentions) to recommend the commencement j
of the National Holiday on August 12. Thus the weightiest ,
decision of the Convention was carried by one quarter of its ^
original strength. The next day a Committee was appointed
to promulgate the decree. Trade Unions were to be asked to
co-operate. Eight delegates, sitting in London, were given a
month in which to organise a national stoppage of industry in
a land where industry was stopping of its own accord, in a land
where only a strike of agricultural labourers coidd have had
much efEect, in a land where men, women, and children were
begging to be allowed to work even for a pittance. As if to
show, how topsy-turvy its ideas had become, the Convention
adopted an address urging the middle class to co-operate in
this measure.

Whilst the Convention was thus engaged, the Chartist cause
received irreparable injury through a riot which took place
on the 15th of July, again at Birmingham, where the presence
of the London police was a source of extreme exasperation, not
merely to the Chartists and the numerous enemies of the newly
formed Corporation, '^ but to the majority of the Council itself.

1 In some newly incorporated towns, like Bolton, Mancliester, Birming-
ham, there was a strong conservative faction which had opposed incorpora-
tion, and thwarted the new nmnicipal bodies to the utmost of its power.
The Chartists received much conntenanoe from this factions body, especially
in the matter of opposing the introduction of a police force. These facts
help to explain the weakness of the borough councils at times like this.

166 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

In the early evening crowds began to assemble in the vicinity
of the Warwick Eoad in the hope of greeting Lovett and
Collins ,on their release on bail from Warwick Gaol. The two
heroes, however, avoided the ovation, and the disappointed
crowd rushed into the Bull Ring, where the police were stationed
in the Public Office. The Public Office was attacked, and the
police, having apparently learned caution, refused to retaUate
without express orders. For more than an hour the rioters
were undisturbed. They smashed the street lamps, and tore
down the iron railings of the Nelson Monument which stands
at the lower end of the Bull Ring. With the weapons so
obtained they began to force their way into the shops. A tea-
warehouse and an upholsterer's shop were sacked and a bonfire
made of their contents ; other shops shared the like fate.
There was no looting ; destruction, not plunder, was the order
of the day. At a quarter to ten the London police began to act.
Their chief, assuming that the Mayor alone could authorise
action, had spent over an hour in bringing him and other
magistrates on to the scene of the riot. The police, reinforced
by infantry and cavalry in considerable numbers, then suc-
ceeded in dispersing the crowd, after which their energies were
employed in extinguishing the fires which the rioters had
started. The two shops first attacked burned tiU past midnight.
What with their careless haste on Jidy 4 and their stupidity
on the 15th, the newly appointed Birmingham magistrates
had made a very inauspicious start in their oificial careers.^

Such ebullitions as these could hardly be viewed with com-
posure by the Convention. To control such reckless forces
was a task which a Convention of Napoleons would have
attempted with misgivings, and the Chartist Convention was
rapidly losing its nerve. For some time it must have been
aware of a gradual secession of the moderate party amongst
its followers from those who followed counsels of violence, and
this schism was widened by the decision to adopt the general
strike. Hitherto this secession had been viewed in the light
of a beneficial purge, the moderates being regarded (probably
with no good reason) as a minority, but gradually the con-
viction grew that the division which existed was one which
was likely to rend the whole Chartist body in pieces. A curious
example of this loss of nerve is afEorded by a letter dated
July 21, addressed by R. J. Richardson to the Convention.^
This man, the verbose, pedantic retailer of bad law, the one-

1 Hansard, 3rd eer. xllx. 447. 2 Additional MSS. 34,245, B, p. 53.

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS 167

time terror of moderates, and the enthusiastic advocate of
arming, now regrets that he is no longer a member of the
Convention, as there never was a time when prudence and
caution were more requisite in its debates. He will offer
advice. He considers the decision to hold the National
Holiday undigested and ill-timed. The Convention had not
even reviewed their resources, but had relied upon false and
exaggerated reports. In the South of England there was no
following. Even in Manchester, the faithful stronghold, the
Chartists could not make an efiective strike ; the hands were
on half-time ; many have petitioned to be allowed to work
longer. The employers were praying for the Convention to
order a strike so as to be relieved of the necessity of locking
their workpeople out altogether. Liverpool is still less hope-
ful. Neither Yorkshire nor Scotland was much better. The
National Holiday is hopeless, and would only " bring irre-
trievable ruin upon thousands of poor people, while the rich
would not sufEer in comparison." Thus did Eichardson find
wisdom.

The Convention found wisdom also. On Monday, July 22,
the Convention met to hear O'Brien's views upon the National
Holiday. He had been absent the previous week, and now
moved that the decision then taken be rescinded. In his speech
he made the best of a bad job. He had been one of the stalwarts
of the physical force revolutionaries. Now he was compelled to
recognise that all the assumptions on which his former views
rested were false, and it required no little courage on his part
to make his confession that both he and the majority of the
Convention had been deceivers and deceived. Whilst stiU
retaining a belief in the general strike as the ideal political
weapon, O'Brien declared that the Convention was incom-
petent to wield it. They were not unanimous or at full strength.
Their followers in the country were not unanimous, and there-
fore the strike would be a ghastly failure. The Convention,
therefore, ought not to advise so dangerous a proceeding, but
leave the matter to the people, "who were the best judges
after all, whether they would be able to meet the exigencies of a
strike, and he would prefer that the Convention should leave the
holiday to the people themselves, and at the same time tell the
people that nothing but a general suspension of labour could
convince their oppressors of the necessity of conceding to them
their rights." Surely a miserable exhibition of leadership!
Phrases like " pregnant with such dreadful consequences for

168 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

which the Convention would be morally, if not legally, respons-
ible " do not sound well in the mouth of one who had long been
damning the consequences. Nor was the solicitude for the
followers, but for the delegates themselves, to whom prison
and Botany Bay were becoming dreadful realities.

On this the Convention proceeded to an orgy of recrimina-
tion. One fact was clear : the delegates had grossly exaggerated
their following and influence. Now they sought to blame
each other for it. Neesom and MacDouaU especially came in
for abuse. O'Connor spoke both for and against the motion
in a speech of which Fletcher said he could not make head or
tail. Fletcher said that the Convention would now listen to
his advice, to win the middle class to their side. Poor Fletcher
had had enough of Chartism. He was an Anti-Poor Law man
who had got into troubled waters. Duncan said those who
voted for the Holiday ought to carry it through. Skevington
and MacDouaU protested against the motion as cowardly, but
the former voted for it and the latter abstained. Half a dozen
delegates alone had the courage to vote against the motion,
twelve voted for it, and seven were too perplexed to vote at all.
The formal result was the appointment of a Committee to take
the sense of the people upon the question of a general strike ;
the real residt was the suicide of the Convention and the
temporary collapse of the whole movement.^

The Committee which was thus appointed obtained a
number of repKes, which are preserved in the letter-book.
J. B. Smith writes from Leamington in fierce reproach. If the
holiday is begun, wUl the Convention be ready to control the
idle workmen ? Will the strikers not assume that they have
the Convention's permission to pillage and plunder ? Why
had the Convention never talked of saving money for Ulterior
Measures instead of talking so much about arms and force ?
From Sheffield came a better report, but not encouraging.
Coventry was decidedly against the strike. Colne reported
that " the principal obstacle in the way of the holiday arises
from those operatives and trades who are receiving remunerating
wages for their labour, and whose apathy and indifference
arise more from ignorance of their real position than an indis-
position to benefit their fellow-men." At Preston, a supposed
physical force stronghold, the Chartists could do nothing to
further the strike as the trade societies refused to help.
Neither Rochdale nor Middleton was decidedly favourable

1 London Dispatch, July 28, 1839 ; Charter, July 28, 1839.

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS 169

to a strike. Tlie Convention, and especially O'Connor, has
forfeited all respect, and the people know not whom to trust,
reports James Taylor.^ Eichards from the Potteries sends no
encouragement; Knox from Sunderland none. Hyde, a
regular Chartist arsenal, requests Deegan to withdraw his vote
for the strike. Some places which favoured a strike wanted
others to give the lead. Huddersfield and Bath protested
against the abandonment, but these were isolated instances.^

Two communications from the North exhibit the local
divergence of views which perhaps existed in nearly every
important Chartist locality towards the end of July. On the
21st the Northern Political Union addressed a threatening
manifesto to the middle classes, urging them to join the work-
ing people against the boroughmongers and aristocracy. If
the middle class allow the aristocracy to put down Chartism,
the working people " would disperse in a million of incen-
diaries," and warehouses and homes would be swallowed up
in one black ruin ! This address, which was probably the
work of O'Brien, landed most of its signatories in gaol. On
the 20th Robert Knox, the delegate for Durham, published an
address to the middle classes in exactly opposite terms, com-
paring Capital and Labour to the two halves of a bank-note,
each useless without the other. Knox said that the possession
of political power by the middle class has hitherto tended to
obscuie this fact of mutual dependence. These addresses were
both communicated to the Government by local authorities.*
When leaders were so divided, it is no wonder that followers
were perplexed.

The failure of the strike policy throws an interesting light
upon the status of the Chartist rank and file. It is clear that
the trade societies as a whole stood outside the Chartist move-
ment, though many trade unionists were no doubt Chartists
too. The societies could not be induced to imperil their funds
and existence at the orders of the Chartist Convention, and
without the organised bodies of workmen the general strike
was bound to be a fiasco. The workmen who could be relied
on to participate in the strike were precisely those whose
economic weight was least effective — handloom weavers,
stockingers, already imemployed workmen of all sorts. The
colliers, it is true, labouring under special grievances, might

1 O'Connor had written an article in tlie Northern Star, July 27, dis-
suading Chartists from the strike policy.

2 Additional MSS. 34,245, B, pp. 38, 110, 119, 123, 125, etc.

3 Home Office, 40 (61) and (46).

170 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

have made a very efiective striMng body, but they were pre-
cisely the people who preferred armed insurrection. In fact,
those Chartist leaders who advocated insurrection had at least
logic and consistency on their side. Their policy was likely to
be at least as successful as a strike, and they did make prepara-
tions for it. In fact, it is hard to escape the impression that
the apparent indifierence, displayed towards the doings of the
Convention about this time by certain of the former advocates
of insurrection, was due to the fact that they were busy
organising a revolt, and that the appeal of the Convention was
only to a middle party amongst their followers, which had
neither the wisdom to be moderate nor the courage to be rebel.
The same procedure was now adopted as in the previous
instance, when the Convention shirked a decision upon Ulterior
Measures. It pubUshed an address in which it congratulated
itself that it had discovered the error of proposing a general
strike, announced nevertheless that the project was not aban-
doned, and then adjourned for a month to give the delegates
time and opportunity to direct the movement and complete
the preparations. There was no further iueeting till the end
of August.

/ In this interval the great movement died away. The local
/authorities, backed up by Government, made wholesale arrests
I of Chartists for Ulegal possession of arms, for attending unlawful
' meetings, for sedition, and for many other offences, reaching, in
the case of three who were arrested at Birmingham for partici-
pation in the fight with the Metropolitan Police, to high treason,
for which they were condemned to death, the sentence being
commuted to transportation. No less than a score of members
of the Convention were arrested during the summer months
of 1839, and a vast number of the rank and file. Among
these were Benbow,^ the fiery old advocate of the National
Holiday ; Timothy Higgins of Ashton-under-Lyne, who had a
regular arsenal in his cottage ; and the whole of the leaders of
the Manchester Pohtical Union ^ and the Northern Pohtical
Union of Newcastle.* There were several abortive attempts,
especially in Lancashire, to put into force the National Holiday
in spite of the official abandonment of that measure, and they
led to more arrests.* Wholesale trials followed. At Liverpool
some seventy or eighty Chartists were brought up together ; at

1 Northern Liberator, Aiigust 17, 1839.

2 Manchester Quar&ian, August 3.

3 Ncyrfhem Uberator, August 3, 1839.

* Manchester Chiardvan, August 14, 1839.

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS 171

Lancaster, thirty-five;^ at Devizes, twelve. At Welshpool
thirty-one Llanidloes rioters were tried, the sentences ranging
froni fifteen years' transportation to merely binding over to
keep the peace.^ At Chester Higgins, MacDouall, and Eichard-
son were brought before the Grand Jury, which returned
true biUs for various charges. Only occasionally did the
Chartists make any attempts to put a stop to the course of
prosecution. A policeman who was to be a witness against
Stephens was half -murdered in Ashton,* whilst the Lough-
borough magistrates were compelled to release two prominent
Chartists because their followers terrorised all likely witnesses.*
Generally speaking, the prosecutions went on unhindered.
The Convention busied itself with a Defence Fund, and local
subscriptions were set on foot for the purpose of procuring
legal aid. This appeal met with no great response. The
enthusiasts still preferred to devote their savings to the pur-
chase of arms, whilst the others were unwilhng to spend theirs
on such worthless rogues as, for example. Brown, the Birming-
ham delegate, who, before his arrest was conspicuous for his
absurd violence, and afterwards begged and prayed the Con-
vention " not to let him be sacrificed." ^

Two trials at this time provoked more than ordinary interest :
those of Stephens at Chester, and Lovett and Collins at War-
wick. Stephens defended himself in a speech lasting five
hours. It was a very bad defence. In spite of the fact that
he had been arrested for attending an exceedingly riotous
Chartist meeting, he devoted his speech to a long denunciation
of Carhle, Paine, Bentham, and Eadicalism generally. He
denounced the prosecuting counsel, the Attorney-General, in
set terms, and declared that he had been a victim of perse-
cution. Stephens cut a really bad figure, and with his trial
and imprisonment he disappeared from the Chartist world,
except for one brief reappearance in opposition to his former
colleagues, at Nottingham in 1842. He was sentenced to
eighteen months' imprisonment in Knutsford Gaol, but was
transferred to Chester Castle, where he was handsomely
treated.

Very different was Lovett's defence. He was charged with
publishing a false, fscandalous, and inflammatory libel.
Lovett admitted the libel and the publication, but pleaded

1 Northern Idberator, November 16, 1839.
2 Charter, July 21, p. 415. » Manchester Ovurdian, July 10, 1839.

i Home Office, 40 (44), July 25.
5 Additional MSS. 34,245, B, pp. 61-2, 68.

172 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

justification. He made no real defence, but made use of the
opportunity to vindicate the principles for which he was
willing to sufEer imprisonment. He had evidently prepared hia
speech with great care. It was a very good speech indeed, and
drew forth unstinted praise from the prosecuting counsel, who
refused to believe that Lovett was a working man. Lovett
appealed to a greater tribunal than that before which he was
brought to trial. " Public opinion," he said, " is the great
tribunal of justice to which the poor and the oppressed appeal
when wealth and power have denied them justice, and, my
lord, it is for directing public attention to a flagrant and unjust
attack upon public liberty that I am brought as a criminal
before you." ^ Collins was defended by Serjeant Goulburn.
Both received the same sentence, twelve months' imprison-
ment. They spent their time partly in agitating against the
harshness of the prison rule, in which they achieved some
success, and partly in writing their famous pamphlet on
Chartism. The spirit in which Lovett endured his imprison-
ment may be divined from the following passage, written to his
wife on October 1, 1839 :

In your letter before last you intimated that Mr. Place was still
making some exertions on our behalf. Now, my dear girl, while I
have no great partiality for being in a prison, I have no incliaation
to get out of it by anything that can in any way be construed into
a compromise of my principles.'

He might have been released on giving a pledge to keep out
of politics.

These prosecutions had a very depressing eSect upon the
Chartist cause, and the reputation of the Convention sank
lower and lower. It had scarcely accomplished anything, and
the great expectations with which it had commenced had come
to nothing. The arrest and imprisonment of so many leaders
produced a feeling of helplessness which damped all enthusi-
asm. From all parts of the country came reports of hope-
lessness, disappointment, and dissension, and when the Con-
vention met for its last sittings at the end of August, it met
merely to dissolve in ignominy.* Dr. Taylor proposed the
dissolution of the Convention. He had already denounced
many of his colleagues as a pack of cowards, and he now pro-

1 Trial, published by Hetherington. (Manchester Free Library, H. 16i.)
" Place Coll., Hendon, vol. Iv. p. 72.

3 Lowery on September 5 reported his mission to Ireland, which was a
total failure, ascribed to O'Connell's influence.

THE PETITION IN THE COMMONS 173

posed to exclude them all from re-election by a self-denying
ordinance. The debate resolved itself into a fierce altercation
between Dr. Taylor and Harney on the one side and O'Connor
and his " tail " on the other. The recriminations show how
dieep the local dissensions had gone. Finally the motion to
dissolve was carried. The Convention then plunged into a
sordid and squaUd squabble about money matters. It appears
that O'Connor had been using his wealth, derived of course
from the enormously increased sales of the Northern Star,''- to
buy up a following in the Convention, and even to subject the
whole body to his influence by ofiering himself as security for
various objects. This policy he pursued until he became the
absolute ruler of the Chartist world. The accounts seem to
have been kept with gross carelessness, and money voted with
great laxity. In this atmosphere of recrimination, squabble,^
and intrigue the great Chartist Convention disappeared. It
left two Committees, one, of which O'Connor and Pitkeithly
were the chief, to dispense the sum of £429, available for the
Defence Fund, and another to draw up the valedictory address.
The latter produced three addresses : one fiery, dictated by Dr.
Taylor; one mild, composed by O'Brien; and one compromising.
None of them was published ; the Convention was to the last
incapable of any decision.

1 1838 : average sales per week, 10,900 ; February-May 1839 : average,
48,000 — a fact wMoh gives colour to belief that O'Connor deliberately pro-
longed the Convention so as to keep up circulation. O'Connor proposed
(.Northern Star, September 21, 1839) to pay lor another Convention out of
his own pocket.

2 A curious feature of these squabbles was that Fletcher, an Anti-Poor
Law stalwart, declared that the Charter had been put forward by the sup-
porters of the hated Act to capture the Anti-Poor Law agitation iNorthem
Star, October 19, 1839). He even hinted at Government agency.

CHAPTER XI

SEDITION, PRIVY CONSPIRACY; AND REBELLION
(1839-1840)

It is hard to resist the notion that the Chartist Convention had
already ceased, long before its dissolution, to be the focus of
interest, at least on the part of the more thoroughgoing
Charbists.^ Even those who believed in constitutional methods
were tired of the succession of resolutions which were not
carried out, and of debates which left things much as they were
before. Since the Whitsuntide campaign and the Birming-
ham riots, there seems to have been a notable decline in
Chartist oratory and public meetings. The moderates were
tending to desert, whilst the extremists were adopting quite
difierent methods. Secret meetings on a considerable scale were
now heard of in various places — ^meetings of small groups in
private houses. There had been also notable withdrawals
from the Convention of leading advocates of violence. Eider,
Harney, and Frost had long ceased to take active part in its
deliberations, though it was known that they were busy in
various districts. A strong propaganda of violence was being
carried on, but less openly. Cardo, Hartwell, and Dr. Taylor
were conspicuous in this. Harney was not less active. The
nervousness, not to say panic, exhibited in the latter debates
of the Convention, suggests that there was some knowledge and
no little apprehension of the existence of secret forces working
towards violent extremes. Wemyss at Manchester reported in
July 1839 that the ostensible leaders were being pushed on
from behind by others who might precipitate an outbreak in

1 Tlie Scottish Chartists had wholly withdrawn from the English move-
ment as early as August, when a Scottish delegate assembly drew up the
plan of a separate organisation. Chartist Oiroular, preface.

174

SEDITION, CONSPIRACY, AND REBELLION 175

spite of tte obvious impreparedness of the nominal leaders.^
This has special reference to the preparations for the National
Holiday, but it no doubt indicates a state of afiairs which
was becoming more and more general. John Frost, the un-
fortunate Newport rebel, is alleged to have declared that he
was compelled against his will to undertake the leadership.

The Newport Rising was the climax of this secret prepara-
tion. On the early morning of November 4 a body of some
three thousand colliers^ under the leadership of John Frost
marched in a single column upon Newport (Monmouthshire).
In the centre of the town the head of the column was unex-
pectedly brought up by a small body of soldiers in the Westgate
Hotel, covering the line of advance. A few Chartists were killed
and wounded, and the remainder dispersed without coming
into action.

Round this event stories and rumours of every description
gathered. On the Chartist side no reUable account has ever
been published. The matter became a subject of violent re-
crimination amongst the Chartists in later years, and the
truth, known in the first instance to very few, was obscured by
charges and counter-charges until the task of estimating the
true significance of the event becomes well-nigh impossible.

One non-Chartist account may be given fijst. It comes
from David Urquhart,* who had been in the British Diplomatic
Service in Constantinople, and had thereby become a furious
anti-Russia fanatic, and saw in the Chartist insurrection of
1839 one more sample of Russian intrigue. He claimed to
have derived his information from authentic Chartist sources.
In this there is truth, but his information is so coloured by his
peculiar notions that the story appears quite fantastic.

Urquhart begins with an account of the origin of the
Chartist movement. It was set on foot as a result of a com-
pact between Hume and Place, in order to counteract the Anti-
Poor Law agitation. The movement quickly attracted ad-
vocates of violence, amongst whom Dr. Taylor, Harney, and
one unnamed (probably Vincent) were the chief. These, how-
ever, were not the real leaders of the conspiracy, which was
organised by men of genius. It was so marvellously designed
that it betrayed the hand of past-masters in the art of secret
revolution. So excellent was the plot that no Englishman

1 Home Office, 40 (43); Manchester Chmrdian, JiUy 30.

2 Batimates of the number vary extraordinarily. The affair, it must
be remembered, took place In the dark.

3 Diplomatic Review, July 1873.

176 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

could have excogitated it. It was of foreign origin. It was,
in fact, modelled on the Greek Hetairia, and Eussian agents
were at the back of it. The chief of these agents was Beni-
owski, an alleged Polish refugee, who, however, was a former
member of the Hetairia. A secret insurrectionary committee
of five was appointed to direct the organisation. Cardo,
Warden, Westrapp, and another, who was a high police
official, were also members. Cardo and Warden were men
of the highest genius, the one a Socrates and the other a
Shakespeare.

A general rising was planned for the end of the year. One
hundred and twenty-two thousand armed and partially trained
men were ready, and a Eussian, fleet would provide munitions.
Beniowski was to command in Wales, where apparently the
main rising was to take place. Urquhart, however, got wind
of the plot in time to put a stop to it. He convinced Cardo,
Warden, and Dr. Taylor (who was to have some part in the
plot) that they were the victims of a Eussian agent provocateur,
and persuaded them to abandon it. Frost, however, he did
not reach in time, and so could not save him.

Feargus O'Connor was not involved in the afEair at all, as he
was regarded as too cowardly and unreliable. He was only con-
cerned with the circulation of the Northern Star. This on the
information of a member of the Convention of 1839 — perhaps
Cardo.

So much for Urquhart's story. It forms the source of the
very unsatisfactory narrative of Thomas Frost,^ a Croydon
man who came into the Chartist movement in its last stage,
eight years or so after the events at Newport. Frost appears
to give much credence to Urquhart's story, but adds nothing
to it. The narrative of Gammage ^ is more circumstantial
even than Urquhart's. Gammage came into the movement
about 1842, and later developed into a thoroughgoing opponent
to O'Connor? His account is published with a view to blacken-
ing O'Connor, and is based upon the revelations of one WiUiam
Ashton of Barnsley. These latter were made public in 1845 *
in the midst of fierce attacks upon O'Connor, then Chartist
dictator, and purported to be damning evidence of O'Connor's
treachery in connection with the afiair. There is a further
account by Lovett,* but it is of no great value. Lovett was in

I Forty Years' RecoUecUons, London, 1880, pp. 102 et seq.
^ History of theXChartist Movement, 1854, pp. 282 et seg.
3 NorVierrCStar, May 3, 184S.
* Life arullStruggles, pp. 239-40.

SEDITION, CONSPIEACY, AND EEBBLLION 177

prison at the time of the rising, and his account was not
published till 1876.

All these not altogether trustworthy accounts have one
thing in common, that a general rising of some kind was
projected, and that the outbreak in Wales was to be the signal.
There was a committee in Birmingham and another with its
headquarters at Dewsbury in Yorkshire. The head committee
was no doubt in London. Dr. Taylor, Frost, Bussey, and
Beniowski are mentioned as the chiefs of the afiair. Taylor
was to take the lead in the North, Bussey in Yorkshire, Frost
and Beniowski in Wales. It should be noted, however, that
if we take into consideration all the accounts of this projected
rising, practically no prominent and unimprisoned Chartist's
name would be omitted from the list of the reputed leaders
of the alleged rising.

Of the activities of these men and of the local committees
we have little or no information previous to the Newport afiair.
Beniowski was a Polish refugee, and followed the not unusual
career of revolutionary intrigue. He was a fine, tall, aris-
tocratic-looking man of considerable talent and energy. He
appears to have been a prominent member of the London
Democratic Association, which was saturated with the senti-
ments of French revolutionaries. He was in receipt of a
pension of £3 a month from the British Government as trustee
for a fund for the support of Polish refugees. In May Lord
John Russell ordered this to be stopped, on information regard-
ing Beniowski's behaviour.^ Evidently the Government had
been keeping him under surveillance. All accounts assign to
Beniowski one of the chief places in the plot. Of his doings
nothing is known definitely until after the Newport afiair,
though it is probable that he was actively engaged in the
military preparations.

Frost had been sent back into the district early in May,
when the news of Vincent's arrest was known. He was a
Newport man and the leader of the local Chartists, and had
been town councillor, mayor, and justice of the peace. But
early in 1839 Lord John Russell had removed him from the
Commission of the Peace by reason of his seditious language
at meetings. This mild martyrdom had greatly increased
his local popularity. After the collapse of the Convention
he threw all his energies into organising violent proceedings
in Newport and the neighbouring coal -mining valleys of

1 Home OfiSoe, 40 (44), Metropolis.

N

178 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Monmouthshire. The result was the most formidable mani-
festation of physical force that Chartism ever set on foot.

The idea of a rising had been mooted early in the year, but
the lack of preparation, which had scotched the general
strike, had brought about a postponement. When Vincent
had been lodged in Monmouth Gaol the notion of rescuing him
by force seems to have been entertained, but the evidence given
at the trial suggests rather that the immediate purpose of the
local rising was to give the signal to the other confederates,
the rescue project remaining in the background. One story,
that the non-arrival at Birmingham of the mail-coach, which
passed through Newport, was to be the signal for action in the
Midlands, may well be true, for there was a committee at work
in Birmingham, of which Brown, the ex-delegate, one Parkes,
Smallwood, and Fussell were apparently, the chiefs. They
held secret meetings, which, however, were not unknown to
the police, whose agents tried in vain to obtain admission.
The Birmingham magistrates had already issued an order that
all makers of munitions must deposit their stocks in the
barracks. Drilling and training were carried on, and com-
munication was kept up in a kind of cipher. Whenever
any suspicious persons entered the meetings, a semi-rehgious
character was imparted to the gathering. The Chartists at
Birmingham seem to have had a friend at court in one of the
magistrates, who gave them warning of police activity, but
they suffered greatly from the attentions of spies employed
by the new police commissioner in the city. Fussell and
Harney himself remain under grave suspicion in this connec-
tion, ^ and a serious attempt was made to corrupt Parkes.

Beyond this there is little information as to the preparations
for the rising of which Frost's was to be the beginning. The
Newport affair was planned and carried out with great secrecy.
The conditions were favourable. In the scattered and lonely
colliery villages amongst the hills the hand of authority was
almost unknown, and it was easy to preserve secrecy. It was
known that the available military force was small. There
was a tiny detachment at Newport, a larger body, two com-
panies, at Abergavenny, about eighteen miles — a day's march
— away, and a stiU larger force at Newtown in Montgomery-
shire, which, by reason of its remoteness, was quite out of

1 There is In the Home Office papers a letter from the Birmingham
police commissioner which throws much suspicion on Harney. When
Harney was charged at Birmingham with sedition, no evidence was offered,
and he was discharged! (Northern lAberator, April 11, 1840).

SEDITION, CONSPIRACY, AND REBELLION 179

relation to tte Soutt Welsh movement. Armed associations
had been formed at Newport under the suggestion of Lord
John Russell. All things considered, the military and civil force
was not such as could have offered much resistance to a care-
fully planned attack. The affair was planned with a certain
modicum of military technique. Reconnaissance of a sort
was made, and outposts were stationed to arrest strangers
and prevent news from reaching the town. So good were the
preparations that no precise information appears to have
filtered through until the Chartists were actually assembling
for the march, on the evening of November 3. The chief
rendezvous was the mining village of Risca, on the Ebbw,
six miles north-west of Newport. It was intended to
occupy the town during the night, hold up the mails, thus
giving the signal to the other districts, and then to march on
Monmouth to release Vincent. The force which is said to
have assembled was much larger than the authorities expected.
One part was apparently told ofi to block all exits from
the town and to hold off reinforcements and relief, whilst the
other smaller body, variously estimated at one to ten thousand
strong, marched into the town. Thomas Phillips, the energetic
Mayor of Newport, who took a prominent part in the fighting,
says the Chartists were organised in sections of ten under a
section commander, and the marching column occupied a mile
of road — ^perhaps 3000 men, as untrained troops would straggle
in marching. Perhaps the Morning Chronicle's estimate of a
thousand is the best. Such a force would be ample to over-
power what was then a small town with a garrison of twenty-
eight soldiers.

Night operations are naturally the most difficult of mihtary
undertakings, and even with trained forces the utmost care is
required to avoid loss of direction, delays, noise which wiU
betray, and to ensure the exact co-ordination of the various
parts of the scheme. This aSair was naturally bungled. A
brewer named Brough relates his experiences. He was seized
by a patrol on the Pontypool road at half-past nine on Sunday
evening, November 3, and marched about for eight hours
until Frost ordered his release. There was much marching
and counter-marching ; some detachments had marched all
night ; and a great deal of time was wasted. Instead of
reaching Newport at 2 a.m., it was nine o'clock and broad day-
light when the column attained its objective. The authorities
had been warned of the assembling of armed bodies in the hills

180 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

by the arrival in th.e town of terrified refugees who escaped the
Chartist sentries. It was the same at Abergavenny, where
there was no little panic. At Newport the troops had been
lodged in the Westgate Hotel, fronting the main street and
covering the Chartist advance. As the insurgents debouched
opposite the hotel there was a fierce burst of musketry. The
colliers made a stand, but were at a disadvantage against troops
under cover. Some managed even to enter the hotel by a
passage way, but after a short engagement the Chartists fled,
leaving fourteen dead and some fifty wounded, of whom ten
died shortly after. One hundred and twenty-five persons were
arrested, including Frost, Zephaniah Williams, and William
Jones, the chief leaders. Twenty-nine of these were committed
for trial, all but eight on a charge of high treason. A Special
Commission was issued to try them, and the trial com-
menced on December 10 at Monmouth. No question of the
law's delays here.

So ended the Newport Rising, and with it collapsed, for
the time being, all the other preparations for insurrection.
The attention of the Chartist world was now concentrated
upon the probable fate of Frost and his feUow-prisoners.
Feargus O'Connor exerted himself to procure funds for the
defence, and engaged Sir Frederick PoUock and Fitzroy Kelly,
both men of considerable eminence, on behalf of Frost. He
gave a week's profits of his paper to the fund, and swore to
save the life of his colleague at all hazards. On the other
hand, it appears that the idea of rescuing Frost and the others
by an armed insurrection was quickly taken up, and prepara-
tions on an even wider scale were set on foot. A great revival
of Chartist activity followed. Everywhere meetings were
held, either to protest against the prosecution of the Newport
rioters on the ground that the rising was the work of agents
provocateurs, or to collect funds, or to concert plans of rescue.
A kind of Convention met to organise the Frost rescue move-
ment, but it accomplished nothing. The secret organisations
flourished and grew apace.

From various evidence it seems that O'Connor was, perhaps
on the strength of his promise to save Frost's life, regarded as
the leader of this second insurrectionary movement. He was
at least expected to provide funds. But O'Connor's conduct
at this juncture was, to say the least, very unsatisfactory. It
may safely be said that O'Connor was never at any time pre-
pared to imperil either his life or his reputation by engaging in

SEDITION, CONSPIRACY, AND REBELLION 181

any armed enterprise. By great dexterity, and by means of a
month's visit to Ireland paid at this exceptionally dangerous
moment, he managed to be the last of the earlier Chartist
leaders to come under the ban of the law. There is every
reason to believe he was suspected by the physical force ex-
tremists before the Newport afEair,^ and it is very probable
that he was deliberately prevented from taking an active part
in it. He afterwards denied aU knowledge of it, which is
absurd on the face of it, as Gammage argues.^ Lovett declares
that O'Connor put a stop to the afiair except in Newport, and
this is confirmed by WiUiam Ashton, who says that O'Connor
could have stopped Frost's rising too, but preferred to sacrifice
him out of jealousy.' This is scarcely to be believed, though
O'Connor was not incapable of unscrupulous methods of
eliminating rivals.

At any rate, O'Connor took this opportunity of quitting
the country. He was engaged to lecture and agitate in
Lancashire from October 7 to 12, but on October 2 he Wrote
to cancel this engagement on the ground that he was going to
found Radical Associations in Ireland, and to array the people
of Cork against the aristocracy in view of the next General
Election.* He arrived in Dublin on October 6,^ and was back
in Leeds on November 6, two days after the events at Newport.
On a later occasion he said that he went to Ireland to raise
money on his property there.* Both versions appear equally
unsatisfactory, and even if O'Connor was not really implicated
in the plot, he must remain imder the gravest suspicion of
having run away and allowed his friends to engage in a futile
and dangerous enterprise which a word from him could have
stopped.'

Meanwhile preparations were going on for a second rising
to take place in the event of Frost's condemnation. The
Newport authorities were on the alert. About ten days after
the rising, the presence of Beniowski, Cardo, and Taylor in the
district was known or suspected. Cardo was actually arrested
outside the Westgate Hotel on November 15, and his papers
searched. He declared that " he did not believe that Mr.
Frost headed the mob, and attributed the outbreak to Russian

' Parkea at Birmingham expressed Us suspicions on October 30
(Home Office, 40 (49), Bimungliam). „ „ ^^ „. ,t ^ -c...
2 History, ed. 1854, p. 282 et seq. 3 Northern Star, May 3, 1845.

■< Ibid. October 5, 1839.

6 IMd. November 9, 1839 : account of his trip.
6 7&M. May 3, 1845. , ,„,,

1 Of. Lowery's statement in Qammage, ed. 1854, p. 287.

182 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

agency." So reports the Mayor — a curious corroboration of
part of Urquhart's story from an apparently independent
source, although. Cardo may have picked up the idea from
hearing Urquhart lecture in the course of a strenuous tour in
the -winter of 1839-40. When sending Cardo away by the
mail on the 16th, the Mayor observed a stranger who was said
to be Dr. John Taylor. The Mayor requested the Govern-
ment to send down somebody who knew Beniowski by sight.
He received an anonymous letter alleging that Beniowski
had been sent with 138 lbs. of ball cartridge from London via
Bristol. Three men were arrested on suspicion, but apparently
no further proceedings were taken.'^

About the same time the Bradford magistrates report secret
proceedings. They managed to corrupt a Chartist, and ob-
tained information of the intended rising. On December 17
they received a long report, probably through this channel.
The rising was to take place on the 27th. A secret Convention
would meet in London on the 19th and give the signal. There
had been a meeting in Manchester the previous week, in which
Taylor was the leading spirit. The soldiery were to be harassed
by systematic incendiarism, and an attempt was to be made to
assassinate the judges on their way to the trials at Monmouth.^

The Birmingham secret meetings continued, and there, too,
there was talk of organising incendiarism. A memorandum
describing the organisation is amongst the Home Office papers.
The Chartist body there numbers some three or four hundred
organised in lodges. The members are carefully selected.
Bach lodge is headed by a captain, who is a member of the
General Committee. This body meets at private houses — a
different one in each case. A password is given, and all pre-
cautions against surprise by the police are taken. It was
intended to have a general rising in case of Frost's conviction.
Some Chartists talked of proclaiming a republic,* whilst others
declared that, if Frost were not released, the Queen's marriage
would not take place.*

Similar reports of secret organisations of Chartists emanate
from Loughborough and the hosiery villages in the neighbour-
hood. There the organisation in sections of ten, which seems
to have been the general model, was in full swing. The project
of a general rising was entertained, and the Newport men were
blamed for being so hasty and premature. A similar organisa-

1 Home Office, 40 (45), Monmouth. November 16, 17, 18, 19.

2 Ibid. 40 (51), Yorks. 3 Ibid. 40 (49), Birmingham.
* Trial of Ayre (Northern lAberator, January 31, 1840).

SEDITION, CONSPIRACY, AND REBELLION 183

tion existed in London. If PhiUips's report on the Monmouth-
shire Chartists is to be believed, this organisation in sections
was for both military and administrative purposes.

In London the Chartist preparations were reported assidu-
ously by spies and informants of various descriptions. One
Robert T. Edwards, who was in the employ of Hetherington
at 126 Strand, and, therefore, had opportunity of seeing and
hearing what was going on, furnished information calculated
to implicate all the Chartist leaders in the Newport afEair, and
warned the Government to keep an eye on the Bradford
Chartists, and especially Pitkeithly. Ttis, by the way, is
almost the sole mention of Pitkeithly in this connection.^ An
anonymous informant made considerable revelations about
the middle of November. He speaks of a council of three as
directing the plot (a Bradford report speaks also of a couneU
of three in London), and says, " Their Ame is to fire property,
the shiping in the River and Docks, to kidnap the principal
men of the State." " They have several thousands of fire
arms to the account of Feargus O'Connor : the democratic
association meet nightly at Mr. Williams (Baker) Brick Lane
Spitalfields where they receive daily communications from
Wales. Major Beniwisk (sic) went down to survey the country."
The informer attended a meeting of over 300 " delegates "
at the Trades Hall, Abbey Street, Spitalfields, where Cardo,
Neesom, Beniowski, Williams the baker, and others addressed
the audience with " very inspireing and highly dangerous
language." This letter is dated the same day that saw Cardo
hustled out of Newport by the Mayor, and must refer to some
date considerably earlier, if it is true at all. This meeting
appointed a Committee to raise funds which were to be handed
over to the " Council of War." £500 was promised by Feargus
O'Connor. A rising on the day previous to that fi^ed for
Frost's execution was planned for London, Manchester, and
Newcastle. A further report speaks of secret meetings at
which members of the Convention are expected to be present.
The Chartists (in London ?) are 18,000 strong.^

A report, dated November 12, was received by Wemyss at
Manchester from Halifax.^ The magistrates there say that
the Chartists are continuing to meet, but in private houses.
At one of these meetings a well-known leader was ordered to
communicate with the local leaders as to the best means of

1 Home Office, 40 (44), Metropolis. , ^ Hid.

3 Ibid. 40 (43), Manchester.

184 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

" going to work, and to do it in better fashion than it had been
done in Wales, where they consider it to have been badly
mismanaged." Bradford is the objective of the would-be
insurgents. Wemyss further reports meetings of similar
character at Bolton, Todmorden, Manchester, Ashton-under-
Lyne, Burnley, and Bury. The Ashton Chartists are known
to have been in touch with the Newport leaders. He also
relates that Feargus O'Connor was in Manchester at the time
of the Newport rising,^ and this is not impossible, as he may
have stopped there on his way from Ireland to Leeds, which he
reached, as we have seen, two days after the Newport failure.
On December 22 Wemyss declares that there were very
persistent rumours of a projected rising on the Lancashire-
Yorkshire border for the end of the month. So serious was the
news from Bradford that Napier went there in person. Bury
is another centre specially mentioned in this connection, and
another letter from Wemyss suggests that Fielden's Tnill at
Todmorden was an important place of meeting. In spite of
all these rumours, however, Wemyss reports that the general
impression was that nothing would happen.^

And this is in fact the general impression made by aU the
secret reports, papers, and informations. Without going into
the question as to how far these doings were prompted by
agents provocateurs, it may be safely said that there was some
real intention of doing something desperate in connection with
the trial of Frost, but that the lukewarmness generated by the
failure at Newport, the suspicions which were abroad as to
the trustworthiness of the leaders, the presence of spies, and
the wariness of the authorities, combined to cause the whole
business to peter out in a rather ridiculous fashion ! In the
controversy which raged between O'Connor and his detractors
in 1845, neither side denied the existence of a plot of some sort.
O'Connor even mentioned that Dr. Taylor fitted out a vessel
to waylay the convict-ship conveying Frost to Australia.
Another story, related by Lovett, attributes the collapse of the
plot to the cowardice of Bussey, who shortly afterwards fled
to America. There was a plot and it came to nothing.

Two rather curious reports of Chartist doings in Manchester
may be cited.* A Chartist committee of eight met on
December 16, a police agent being concealed in the vicinity.
They were discussing the collection of subscriptions for

1 Home Office, 40 (43), ManoheBter. Isitpossiblethat the Irish visit waa
merely a blind !

2 Ibid. 40 (43), Manchester. a jftf^.

SEDITION, CONSPIRACY, AND EEBBLLION 185

Frost, and tte whole tenour of the proceedings was one
of depression and distrust. The balance sheet was read to
the accompaniment of quarrelsome discussion, for scarcely
anything had been collected. Another report relates that one
member of the Manchester Chartist Council declared that not
one in twenty of those who attended the meeting addressed
by O'Connor and Cardo to raise funds for Frost, would be
sorry if Frost were hanged. At Birmingham the Chartists
coidd scarcely raise a penny for this purpose. One report
shows that expenses of £2 : 17 : 4^ had been incurred to raise
a subscription! of £2:16: 9, so that, as a speaker put it, Frost
owed them 7|d. There was a quarrel with Cardo on December
31.^ Cardo was accused of being in the pay of foreign and
Tory agents, a charge to which he refused to reply. This
charge, at least as regards Tory agency, was true. Cardo
was apparently not a man of good character. Place thought
him dishonest.^ Cardo, Warden, Richards, Lowery, and others
appear during 1840 as the paid agents of an anti-Russian,
anti-Palmerston committee of which Attwood's brother and
David Urquhart were the chiefs, facts which give still more
colour to the latter's narrative of the Chartist plottings.* At
Carlisle Cardo repeated his assertion that Frost was betrayed
by Russian agents. As regards the rest of Urquhart's story,
it may be admitted that he was correctly informed as to the
nature of the plot which came partially to a head at Newport,
and probably, too, the fantastic designs* which he describes
may actually have been entertained. Apparently, too, he did
win over Cardo and Warden and even others to his peculiar
views, Cardo in fact within a short time of the rising. But
whether the rising was so marvellously planned, and whether
Cardo and Warden had the important roles which he described,
may well be doubted. These details were probably thrown
in to justify Urquhart, who was a bit of a megalomaniac, in
assuming the title of " the tamer of the English Democracy." ^
MeanwhUe the trial of Frost and his companions began.
On December 14 the Grand Jury found a true biU for high
treason, and the trial was fixed for the 31st. Geach, a relative
of Frost and a solicitor, prepared the case for the defending
counsel. Geach was a man of dishonest character, and does

1 Home OfBoe, 40 (49), Birmingham.

2 Northern lAber'ator, February 21, 1840.

* Ibid. October 31, 1840. This paper gives most information about
Urquhart's campaign.

* Except the Russian fleet I

5 Diplcmiatic Bemew, July 1873.

186 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

not seem to have managed the case too well. He was in con-
stant touch with O'Connor, who was supplying funds, and was
even mentioned in connection with the proposed attempt to
rescue Frost.

The unfortunate prisoners in Monmouth Gaol had no
illusions as to their fate. Frost made over all his property
to his wife (they had started inn-keeping) to avoid the con-
fiscation which follows condemnation for high treason. On
December 21 Geach transmitted a very pathetic petition from
the prisoners, afl&rming that they " never entertained any
feehng or spirit of hostility against your Majesty's sacred
person, rights, or immunities, nor against the Constitution of
your Majesty's realms as by law established." They beg for
pecuniary assistance to enable them to employ counsel.
There are twenty-two signatures, and sixteen sign with a cross.
Frost's name is the last ; the hand of Zephaniah Williams is
that of an educated man. The petition was refused, hke
some hundreds of others to the same purpose.^ On January 16
sentence of death by drawing, hanging, and quartering was
passed on the three chiefs, Frost, Williams, and Jones. A
technical objection caused an appeal to the Court of Ex-
chequer Chamber, which quashed it on the 28th. Four days
later the sentence was commuted to transportation for Hfe to
Botany Bay, and by the end of February the hapless rebels
were on their way to exile.

There were, after all, one or two small outbreaks in the
interval between Frost's condemnation and the passing of the
sentence. On the night of January 11 a number of Chartists
attacked the police at Sheffield, and a large quantity of arms,
ammunition, hand-grenades, fire-balls were seized from them.
At Dewsbury on the same night the Chartists assembled and
made signals by means of shots and fire-balloons. These were
answered from Birstall and Heckmondwike, but nothing
further took place. A similar aSair occurred at Bradford, and
in London preparations were made against extensive incendi-
arism. At Sheffield a number of Chartists were arrested and
arraigned on a charge of high treason. It was stated that they
intended to seize and hold the Town Hall, and that a similar
attempt was to be made at Nottingham.^ On January 16 a
meeting of Chartists in Bethnal Green was rounded up by the
police, and Neesom, Williams the baker, and others were

1 Home Office, 40 (45), Monmouth.
2 Northern lAberator, January 18, 1840 ; Jeinuary 24, 1840.

SEDITION, CONSPIEACY, AND REBELLION 187

arrested. Beniowski escaped. TMs meeting was an armed
assembly, and Askton afterwards declared that it was part of
the intended rising in London.^

After this came another period of trials and imprisonments.^
In March 1840 Richardson, O'Brien, W. V. Jackson, and others
were tried at Liverpool and sentenced to imprisonment —
O'Brien and Jackson to eighteen months, and Richardson to
nine months. At Monmouth Vincent was condemned to a
second imprisonment of a year. Holberry and the Sheffield
Chartists were tried at York for conspiracy (not for high
treason) and condemned to various terms of imprisonment.
At York, too, Feargus O'Connor was tried for a newspaper
libel. He called, or proposed to call, fifty witnesses to prove
that he had never advocated physical force, though it does not
appear that this point was at all material to the question. He
was condemned to eighteen months' imprisonment, but actu-
ally served only ten, being released on account of bad health.
From the gaol he contrived to smuggle out letters to the
Northern Star, and his account of his sufferings there brought
him unbounded sympathy. W. P. Roberts and Carrier were
sentenced at Devizes in May to two years' imprisonment, and
in July the two Sunderland leaders, Williams and Binns, were
sentenced to six months' imprisonment at Durham Assizes.
Many of the important leaders were thus accounted for. Frost,
O'Connor, O'Brien, Lovett, Collins, Stephens, Richardson,
Benbow, Roberts, Vincent were all in durance. Dr. Taylor
was still at large, but was hurrying himself by his excesses to
the grave, which received him in 1841. Bussey and Deegan
fled overseas. Cardo and Warden were lost to the cause.
Lowery ceased to take a very prominent part in the movement.
Marsden, Harney, Rider, MacDouall — all prominent advocates
of armed revollr— were stiU at large and lived to fight, or talk of
fighting, another day. The Scottish Chartists in general took
no part in these later proceedings, and pledged themselves at a
Conference, held at Edinburgh in September 1839, to pursue
the agitation only by peaceable and constitutional methods.'
They never again entered into a thoroughgoing co-operation
with the English Chartists. Nor did Wales play a prominent
part in the movement after the fearful day of Newport. In
fact. Chartism never again attained the extent and dimensions
it possessed in 1839. It degenerated into sects and factions,

1 Gammage, 1854, pp. 186 et sea- ; Northern Star, May 3, 1845.

2 lUd. 1854, pp. 186 et seq.

3 Northern £Aberator, September 21, 1839.

188 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

deriving their importance from sources -whicli were not within
themselves.

SuflB.cient, it is hoped, has been said in the course of the
narrative as to the causes which brought the first phase of
Chartism from so promising a beginning to so futile an end.
In spite of the appearance of unity which the movement
exhibited at the beginning of the year 1839, Chartism was
then far less of a homogeneous thing than at any time in its
career. It never again included such heterogeneous elements.
The movement in 1839 was a tumultuous upheaval of a com-
posite and whoUy unorganised mass. It was a disease of the
body politic rather than the growth of a new member of it.
The various sections of Chartism had been brought together
upon the common but negative basis of protest against things
as they were, but the positive fundamentals of unity were
lacking. The protest against the Poor Law Amendment Act,
the protest against the existing currency theory, and the
vaguer but much more violent protest against poverty and
economic oppression, had all been swallowed up in the general
but doctrinaire protest against political exclusion and mono-
poly, and it was under the last standard that the Chartist
legions marched. But the fundamental difEerences of outlook
remained. One section, and that the largest, had been brought
up on a strong diet of unreasoning sentimentalism by Stephens
and Oastler, and hungry and starving men had long been
inured to insurrectionary suggestion by Vincent, O'Connor,
O'Brien, and other demagogues. The rude, half-barbarian
ignorance of the miners and colliers in the North of England
and in South Wales, and the faniishing desperation of the poor
weavers and stockingers, made these men very susceptible to
such inflammatory teaching. They fell nominally under the
leadership of intellectuals like Lovett and his friends, and of
impractical fanatics like Attwood. Both Lovett and Attwood
had come forward to build up organised parties, but Lovett
had a permanent and Attwood only a temporary purpose. Both
ideals came to grief through the dog-like attachment of the
great mass of their nominal followers to their own local leaders
— Harney, Bussey, Frost, Fletcher, MacDouall, O'Connor, and
the rest. This destroyed all real organisation, for the organisa-
tion was concentrated in the persons of the leaders.^ This
was the '' leadership " which Lovett so strongly condemned.

1 This ia shown by the complete collapse of the movement in 1840 when
the leaders were in prison.

SEDITION, CONSPIEACY, AND REBELLION 189

The fidelity of tte rank and file was at once the strength and
weakness of the movement. It was given to good and bad
leaders with equal indiscriminateness, and produced an unpre-
cedented amount of self-deception, which later so cruelly
avenged itself.

These diversities of aims and outlook made efiective
co-operation in revolutionary action impossible. They
were, in fact, the same fundamental divergencies of policy
which had been, as we have seen, reflected in the Con-
vention, which swayed constantly between the two extremes
of French revolutionary ^ and English middle-class concep-
tions of political agitation. One section was for armed insur-
rection, and looked upon the Convention as a provisional
government — a Committee of Public Safety in posse ; another
conceived it as a great agitating body, hke the Anti-Corn Law
League conferences ; another, of which O'Connor was typical,
was content to use the threats of the one and the methods of the
other. To Lovett the Convention must have been a great
tragedy — ^a long torture which his imprisonment brought to a
welcome end. The futile boastings of would-be Marats and self-
styled Robespierres, and the cowardly shufflings of irresolute
babblers, who feared imprisonment more than they respected
their own principles, must have thoroughly sickened him. It is
not to be supposed that the delegates were generally cowards
and rogues. The majority were quite sincere men, who in good
faith had thoroughly deceived themselves and their followers,
but who had not the moral courage to face the real facts, when
they were finally undeceived, nor the mental dexterity of
O'Brien and O'Connor to withdraw themselves from a false
position without loss of prestige. On every material point
the would-be insurrectionary leaders were wrong : they under-
estimated the strength of the Government and the influence of
the middle classes, strengthened as these were by the upper
strata of working people ; they underrated the military forces
opposed to them ; but most of aU, they attributed to English
people that thoroughgoing lawlessness which had been incul-
cated in the French by generations of arbitrary government.
For even Stephens thought it wrong to overturn a Government
by arms, though it was right to oppose a bad law. Accord-
ing to O'Brien it was right to knock a policeman on the head,
but wrong to destroy property.

1 This without prejudice to the question whether these methods were
not largely the invention of the middle class.

190 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Thus in most of the delegates excitement and a new-found
popularity amongst unreasoning followers produced exagger-
ated expectations and unbounded self-esteem ; experience
brought disillusionment and shifty shufflings which robbed
the Convention of its following long before it dissolved. Aban-
doning their leaders, the more desperate followers embarked
upon projects of futile violence, ending in the imprisonment,
transportation, and death of nearly 500 men.^

1 LoTett, lAfe and Struggles, p. 238 : 443 persons were in prison aJone
tor political offences in 1837-40. According to Rosenblatt's useful tables
in his Social and Econcymic Aspects of the Chartist Movement, pp. 205-6
(Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, vol.
Ixxiii. 2, 1916), there were 543 individual convictions between January 1,
1839 and June 1840. The distribution of these, emphasised in Mr. Rosen-
blatt's table, is Interesting.

CHAPTEE XII

THE CHARTIST EEVIVAL
(1840-1841)

Foe six months after the trial of Frost Chartism slept. The
chief leaders were imprisoned and there was no organisation to
keep alive the agitation. A few of the former leaders were still
active. Harney was engaged in Scotland, apparently as a
paid lecturer, in the employ of the Scottish Chartists. Some
activity was called forth by the organisation of petitions on
behalf of Frost. There was a delegates' meeting at Birmingham
in September 1839, but there is no information as to its doings
except that it discussed plans for organising the movement.^
Three " Conventions " assembled at London, Manchester, and
Nottingham in January, March, and April 1840. They were
all concerned with Frost's case. The first was apparently con-
nected with the futile outbreaks at SheflB.eld and elsewhere.
The other two were of a milder character, though there was
some bickering between the delegates, those representing the
hosiery districts being still eager for violent courses.^ The
advocates of petitioning as a means of releasing Frost were able
to carry the day, James Taylor taking a leading part in the
discussions.^ Petitions began to be extensively signed. In
fact, more signatures were obtained on behalf of the three
Newport victims than for the National Petition itself. Dr.
Wade attended a levee on February 19, dressed in full canon-
icals, as etiquette required, and presented seven petitions on
Frost's behalf.*

During the spring of 1840, however, the Chartist world was

1 Northern Liberator, October 6, 1839. „ .„,„ „ ^

2 Northern Star, January 10, 1840 ; February 8, 1840 ; February 15,
1840 ; Marcb 14, 1840 ; March 21, 1840.

3 Southern Star, February 23, 1840.

191

192 THE CHAETI8T MOVEMENT

deluged with suggestions for a reorganisation, or rather an
organisation of the movement, for hitherto there had been
singularly little machinery, except the Convention, for keep-
ing together the rank and file and educating them in the prin-
ciples and aims of the reformers. From this time onward
the agitation took on a much sounder and more educational
character. The Scots were the pioneers, though the original
inspiration was due no doubt to the methods of the Anti-Corn
Law League, and in a lesser degree to the London Working
Men's Association.

The origin of the Scottish organisation is thus described by
one of its authors : " In the autumn of 1839, when the cause
of Liberty was suffering severely in England from the in-
judicious conduct of a number of its supporters and the perse-
cution waged against it by an unprincipled Whig Government,
who by spies and emissaries were endeavouring to excite the
people to violence in order that every aspiration of freedom
might be the more easily suppressed, the people of Scotland
deemed it expedient to hold a great national delegate meeting
for the purpose of devising a system of enlightened organisation
and of suggesting such measures as might be considered neces-
sary to promote sound and constitutional agitation in that
critical period of the great rnovement." This meeting took
place on August 15, 1839, at the Universalist Church, Glasgow.
It was attended by seventy delegates, who represented fifty
towns and populous places. It was recognised that the real
line of advance lay in convincing pubUc opinion, and two
measures were decided upon to further this object. Firstly,
paid lecturers — " missionaries " — were to be sent out to agitate
in a more thorough fashion than hitherto ; and secondly, a
series of small tracts, or pamphlets, was to be published to give
a proper view of their grievances and demands. These tracts
were to form " a complete body of sound political information,
embracing in its scope the cause, nature, and extent of our
wrongs, the rights which civihsed society owes to us, and which
we inherit from our Creator ; as also the appalling details
of legislative misrule, the enormities which a reckless aris-
tocracy have (sic) perpetrated on those over whom they have
tyrannised, and the power which an organised nation would
have in redressing its own grievances, so as to induce the people,
by imbuing their minds with this knowledge, to concentrate
their energies on the acquisition of their liberty." This was
the origin of an excellent little publication which ran fr©m

THE CHAETIST EEVIVAL 193

September 1839 to October 1841, under the name of the
Chartist Cvrcular. An elective Committee of fifteen members
was constituted, with the title, " Universal Suffrage Central
Committee for Scotland," and so the organisation got under
weigh. Harney seems to have been one of its paid lecturers,
having temporarily shelved his physical force ideas. In March
1840 he was recommending English Charbists to follow suit,^
in a letter to the Northern Liberator.

Harney's letter is one of many which were communicated
to the Chartist press about this time, all with the same object
— organise, organise ! They show how far the reaction from
the exaggerated confidence of the previous year had gone, and
suggest that there is some dim realisation of the necessity for
hard spade work before the foundations of success can be
laid. Harney relates how the failure of the late Convention
had ruined the Chartist cause in the Border counties. He
suggests a programme of organisation and systematic petition-
ing. He touches on a question which was to exercise many
Chartist minds in the next few years — namely, the Free Trade
agitation. He declares unremitting war upon it, and urges
Chartists to attend Anti-Corn Law meetings in force to procure
the rejection of all resolutions proposed there. His scheme
of organisation includes a permanent paid central committee
which shall sit at Manchester. There shall be local county
leaders who will act as teachers of Chartism and as enemies
of the people's enemies, especially of the priests. These men
will in fact stand between people and patricians like the
tribunes of the people at Rome.^

R. J. Richardson from his cell at Liverpool made public a
scheme of organisation — a high-falutin affair culled from the
Constitution of the United States, Freemasonry, Rousseau,
archaeology, and R. J. Richardson.* It had all the essentials
of a bad constitution. The Dumfries Chartists submitted
another constitution in which an elective Convention played a
part " to focus attention upon horrifying wrongs and oppres-
sions."* Robert Lowery had another scheme in which the
contesting of Parliamentary seats was the chief feature. Sig-
nificantly enough, Lowery wiU hear no more of Conventions.^
" Republican " wrote a series of articles in the Northern Star
in support of a " permanent, secret, and irresponsible"
dbectory, which would control the movement. He, too, will

1 Northern lAberator, March 21, 1840.

2 Jbid. March 21, 1840. 3 ^^°.'?*^ ^?'i«i^®wV?fi iRin
* IMd. AprU 25, 1840. » Hid. May 2, 1840 ; May 16, 1840.

O

194 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

hear no more of Conventions. The old Convention was too
large and heterogeneous. The members had not the necessary-
knowledge or integrity. All they did was to produce " puerile
manifestos " and " the still more ridiculous National HoUday."
Their imbecility had ruined the cause. He recommends a
local organisation in small sections or classes with a county
corresponding secretary and a " Great Central and Secret
Directory " of seven to rule the whole. This scheme, strongly
insurrectionary in aspect, " Republican " defended sturdily
in the pages of the Star, complaining on one occasion that the
attention of Chartists is too easily diverted from their main
purpose to such things as Frost's trial and O'Connor's im-
prisonment.^

A very characteristic scheme was recommended by
O'Connor. Nothing could exhibit more clearly the inferior
calibre of O'Connor's mind than this effusion. He was perhaps
the only leading Chartist who was devoid alike of idealism and
of statesmanship. The first essential was the foundation of a
daUy newspaper. Just as he later transformed Chartism into
a land gamble, so now he would transform it into a newspaper
syndicate, flourishing on those profits which O'Brien so heartily
detested. O'Connor wants 20,000 men to subscribe 6d. a
week for forty weeks. ^ £6500 will be raised in subscrip-
tions from readers, and £3500 he will provide himself. The
paper will pay ten per cent upon the £20,000 share capital.
For the first year, however, the profits wiU be devoted to
other purposes. Twenty delegates were to sit in London
from April 15 for eight weeks, receiving each £5 a week. As
many lecturers would lecture, also for eight weeks, at the same
rate of pay. Five prizes of £20 were to be given for essays
on subjects selected by the Convention. £200 would
be left in the hands of the proprietor for a defence fund,
and the rest of the £2000 woidd be applied to miscellaneous
purposes. The delegates and lecturers would be elected by
show of hands and would be under the control of a " committee
of review." The Convention would have a permanent Chair-
man and a Council of five to prepare all business for it. After
a digression to show that he has spent £1140 in the people's
cause, out of the profits of the Northern Star (which he later
denied to exist), O'Connor concludes by showing how compact

1 Northern Star, May 9, 1840 ; May 30, 1840 ; June 20, 1840.

2 It is significant of the incoherence of O'Connor's mind that he allots
only £8000 of capital to these weekly subscribers at a later stage of his
article.

THE CHARTIST EEVIVAL 195

his macliinery will be. The Convention will be the representa-
tive body of Chartism, the council its digestive organ, the
lecturers its arteries, the people the heart, the Morning Star
(the paper to be) its tongue, the committee of review its
eyes, £2000 a year its food, and Universal Suffrage its only
task.

That this scheme was put forward in all seriousness is in-
dicated both by the general tenour of O'Connor's career and
by the fact that it was published in the Northern Star,^ a few
days before the great delegate meeting at Manchester which
was convened for the purpose of establishing a permanent
organisation of the Chartist forces. It was apparently brought
under review by that meeting. O'Connor's scheme would
have established more efiectively that quasi-Tammany organ-
isation which he succeeded in establishing to a lesser degree
through the Northern Star. As proprietor of the two papers
O'Connor would have turned the Chartist movement in.to an
extensive machine for booming his publications. He would
have had lectures, delegates, council, and committee in his
pocket. He would have debased the pure currency of Lovett,
O'Brien, and Benbow by this scheme, just as he did by the
Land Scheme later on.

Along with these various plans of reorganisation came the
revival of local bodies which had been put out of action by the
debacle of 1839. We read in April of the formation of a Metro-
politan Charter Union of which Hetherington was the leading
figure. 2 It proposes the union of all Eadical, Charter and
similar associations into one great body, and hopes to proceed
by the circulation of tracts and a penny weekly publication, by
founding co-operative stores, cofEee-houses, and reading-rooms.
Its objects were " to keep the principles of the People's
Charter prominently before the public, by means of lectures,
discussions and the distribution of tracts on sound political
principles, or by any other legal means which may be deemed
advisable. To promote peace, union and concord amongst
all the classes of people." ..." To avoid all private and
secret proceedings, to deprecate all violent and inflammatory-
language and all concealment of the views and objects of this
Association." This last suggestion was a very significant
comment upon the recent events. Most of the names of the
Committee of this society are new. It decided, perhaps for

1 July 18, 1840. O'Connor actually ajipolnted persons to collect sub-
scriptions for the paper. " NoriXem lAberator, May 2, 1840.

196 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

lack of funds, not to send a delegate to the Manctester
Conference in July, but did actually send Spurr, one of the
old Democratic Association.'-

In April, too, the Northern Political Union of Newcastle
was reorganised for " the attainment of Universal Suffrage by
every moral and lawful means, such as petitioning Parliament,
procuring the return of members to Parliament who will vote
for Universal Suffrage, publishing tracts, establishing reading
rooms." Weekly lectures were also delivered, Lowery being
the first speaker.^ The Leeds Radical Association was re-estab-
lished on the same lines.^ In Lancashire there was no little
activity, and the system of lecturers was in fuU swing in June.
In June also the West Riding Chartists were meeting by
delegates in preparation for the Manchester Conference in
the following month.* The Carlisle Radical Association rose
again.* AH things considered, this revival in the spring of 1840
was a remarkable tribute to the vitality of Chartism. The
movement was much more localised than in 1839, but within
its narrower bounds it was stronger and healthier.

On July 20 twenty-three delegates met at the " Griffin,"
Great Ancoats Street, Manchester, to restart the Chartist move-
ment. Lancashire and Cheshire districts were represented by
eleven of the delegates ; Yorkshire had two, Wales one, Scotland
one, London, Nottingham, Leicester, Loughboro', Sunderland,
Carlisle, and one or two other places being also represented.
Of ex-Conventionals only James Taylor, Deegan, and Smart
were present. One or two names destined to be of some repute
appear here for the first time. One was that of James Leach,
a Manchester operative, whose forte was opposition to the
Anti-Corn-Law agitation. Another was that of R. K. Philp
of Bath, a man somewhat of the type of Lovett.

The first task of the delegates was to review the many
plans of reorganisation and agitation which had been submitted
to the Chartist public. O'Connor, Lowery, O'Brien, Richard-
son, Philp (who submitted a Press scheme, drawn up by W. G.
Burns, intended to combat O'Connor's), Benbow (who sent
a scheme too long to read), the West Riding delegates, and
several anonymous individuals, including " Republican," had
set forth their ideas in various schemes. Some were for no
Convention, others were for annual Conventions, but nearly

1 Northern Star, June 20, 1840 ; August 29, 1840.

2 Northern Liberator, April 11, 1840.

1 IMa. May 2, 1840. ' * Northern Star, June 27, 1840.

5 Northern lAberator, April 4, 1840.]^,

THE CHARTIST REVIVAL 197

all recognised the importance of regular subscriptions and of
tte machinery to collect and administer the funds so obtained.
Pamphlets, tracts, lectures, and the organisation in small ;
local bodies were also generally agreed on, and these were ■
embodied in the final scheme of the National Charter Associa- ■
tion, which, with the same title, but with varying purpose, held 4
the field for a dozen years.

The object of the National Charter Association was " to
obtain a full and faithful representation of the entire people
in the House of Commons, on the principles of the ^People's
Charter." None but peaceable and constitutional means, such
as petitions and public meetings, were to be adopted. Members
were to be admitted on signing a declaration of adhesion to the
principles of the Charter, on paying twopence for a card of
membership and a weekly subscription of one penny. All
members were to be registered by the Executive. The local
organisation was to be in " classes " of ten, a system which had
been in use since 1830 amongst London Radicals, and which
was'based originally on the Methodist class organisation. The
class leader was to collect subscriptions. These classes were
to be combined into " wards " each with a ward-coUector, and
the wards again into a larger unit for each town. Each large
town would have a Council with Secretary and Treasurer, and
each county a similar Council. The whole was to be governed
by an Executive of five with Secretary and Treasurer, to be
elected on January 1 each year on the nomination of the
counties. The executive members were to be paid 30s. a week,
and the Secretary £2.

The measures recommended to the attention of Chartists
were, first, the attending of pohtical {i.e. Anti-Corn Law) meet-
ings to move amendments in favour of the Charter ; second,
sobriety ; and third, the adoption of O'Brien's election plan.
This plan, which was a revival of the "legislative attorney"
scheme which came to grief at Peterloo, consisted in proposing
Chartist candidates at every Parliamentary election, regardless
of the lack of qualification and other disabilities which afflicted
poor men. These were to be elected by show of hands at the
meetings, and afterwards, though they would not go to -the
poll, be regarded by all Chartists as their true representatives.
It is difficult to say what O'Brien really intended by this
scheme, though an article by him on the subject ^ suggests
that an attempt might be made to constitute a rival Parlia-

1 Southern Star, February 23, 1840.

198 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

ment to that at St. Stephen's, and even to uphold it by force.
The Chartists later made considerable use of the opportunity
which these bogus nominations ofEered to air their views at
election times, and Harney appears to have made a very
effective attack upon Palmerston at Tiverton by these
means.

The Manchester Scheme was afterwards drastically revised
so as to evade the vague and dangerous scope of the laws on
Corresponding Societies and Conspiracy. The publishers of
the Northern Star applied to Place for advice. Place certainly
regarded the scheme as illegal. " The people in the North,
some of them are organising on the Manchester Delegate
Assembly plan, by which every man of them makes himself
liable to transportation." ^ Place had written a pamphlet
on the law respecting political bodies of this description in
1831, and the Northern Star people evidently desired a copy
of it. Very likely as a result of Place's advice, various changes
were made. The election of local officials by their own
localities was dropped, as each district thereby assumed the
character of a branch, and the arrangement was therefore
illegal. Instead, the Chartists in any town where Chartists
reside should elect two or more members of a great General
Council, out of which local secretaries and treasurers would be
selected, as well as the Executive Committee. The General
Council would elect these various officers. Thus nominally
the suggestion of districts or branches was eliminated, and the
National Charter Association assumed the character of a single
undivided body with a Council of several hundred members.
As aU declarations not required by law were illegal, the volun-
tary declaration of adhesion to the principles of the Charter
had to be omitted.^ These details will suffice to illustrate the
difficulties which harassed political agitation in these times.
It is a tribute both to the shrewdness of the Chartists in evading
and to the scruples of the Government Lq administering bad laws
that no prosecution under the Acts 39 Geo. III. c. 79 and 57
Geo. III. c. 19 was instituted during the Chartist agitation.
The revised constitution of the Association was much more
cumbrous than the original, andforvarious reasons did not work
very well. Nevertheless even a bad constitution will help to
produce results if energetically worked, and the Chartists were
at least men of energy. The National Charter Association

1 Place Collection, Heudon, vol. 56, p. 710.
» Northern Star, February 27, 1841 ; March 6, 1841.

THE CHARTIST REVIVAL 199

proved an ef&cient agitating body and succeeded for many
years in recruiting new men of zeal and ability, like Thomas
Cooper, Ernest Jones, George Jacob Holyoake, and William
James Linton.

Tbe new organisation got under way rather slowly.
James Leach and WiUiam Tillman, both of the Manchester dis-
trict, acted as chiefs of a provisional Executive Committee.
In August 1840 they issued an appeal for the prompt payment
of subscriptions. Local Chartist organisations were dissolved
and absorbed into the new Association, but owing to the belief
that the Association was illegal, this went on very slowly. By
February 1841 there were only eighty " localities " registered."^
Another cause was operating to discourage recruiting, namely
the provision that members' names should be registered.
This was apparently necessary on account of the mysterious
Acts of 1799 and 1817, but it aroused one Chartist to call the
Association " the Attorney-General's Registration Office for
Political OfEenders." ^ This was no doubt the original inten-
tion of the clause in the Acts, and it apparently aroused no
little doubts in the minds of many Chartists. In the spring of
1841 the revised constitution was promulgated, and a more
rapid growth followed. By December 1841 there were 282
locahties,' with apparently some 13,000 members. The
membership is stated in April 1842 as 50,000. In the spring
of 1841 the provisional Executive gave place to a regular
elected Committee, consisting of MacDouall, Leach, Morgan
Williams, John Campbell, George Binns, and R. K. Philp.
Campbell, a Manchester man of no great ability or importance,
also acted as Secretary.* Abel Heywood, the well-known
bookseller, of Oldham Street, Manchester, acted as Treasurer
until the removal of Campbell to London in 1842 caused that
office to pass to Cleave, since it was convenient for both
Secretary and Treasurer to live in the same place. But the
treasurership of so impecunious a body was little more than
a sinecure. The growing preponderance of Manchester in
the movement is a noteworthy matter and indicates a further
stage of localisation.

The Scottish and the Manchester reorganisations were by no
means the only result of the Chartist revival, but they were

1 Northern Star, December 4, 1841.

2 Northern lAberator, NoTember 28, 1840.

3 Northern Star. December 11, 1841. ^ , ^

4 Ibid June 7, 1841, gives the number oi rotes recorded lor eacb,
ranging from 3795 to MacDouall to 1130 for PhUp.

200 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

tie two most important. Nothing is, in fact, more surprising
than the variety of enterprises which sprang up during this
phase of the movement, and nothing illustrates more clearly
the great moral revival which Chartism engendered than the
remarkable character of some of these movements. It is
worth while to consider those which are associated with the
names of Arthur O'Neill of Scotland and Birmingham, William
Lovett of London, and Thomas Cooper of Leicester.

On the one side the moral force Chartists rehed for their
beliefs upon that faith in the omnipotence of human reason
which was characteristic of the earher phases of the French
Revolution, and is conspicuous in the writings of Godwin and
Shelley. Reason was to them an irresistible moral force.
" How," asks Lovett, " can a corrupt Government withstand
an enlightened people ? " This was the principle on which
Lovett would have based the Chartist agitation. It is the
text of his pamphlet on Education and of his later book called
Chartism. Lovett, however, had come to divorce his moral
life from the teachings of Christianity. Arthur O'Neill, on
the other hand, a young enthusiast in his early twenties, made
no such distinction. The result was with Lovett, Educational
Chartism; with O'Neill, "Christian Chartism" — two move-
ments which ran on in close kinship.

The Christian Chartist movement was in some measure a
protest against the exclusiveness and the Toryism of the
EstabUshed Church, and against the repellent narrowness of
some of the Dissenting bodies, notably of the Wesleyan
Methodists.^ It was also partly due to a desire to base demo-
cratic principles upon the strong rock of Christian doctrine, and
partly to a genuine missionary zeal, a desire to brighten the
lives and minds of the poor, the ignorant, and the neglected.
Christian Chartism was always accompanied by educational
effort. The Church at Birmingham, the best-known and the
most famous of the Chartist churches, was run on purely volun-
tary lines by Arthur O'Neill and John CoUins, with occasional
visits from Henry Vincent and others. It consisted of a
political association which studied democratic thought as laid
down in the works of Cobbett, Hunt, Paine, and Cartwright,
and a Church whose purpose was to further temperance,
morality, and knowledge. It had schools for children and
for young men, and a sick club.^ O'Neill seems to have had no

1 For Christian Chartism see H. U. Faullmer, Chartism and the Churches
in Columbia VniversUy Studies in History, Bconomics, and Public Law, vol.
Ixxiil. 3, 1916. 2 Northern Star, August 28, 1841.

THE CHARTIST REVIVAL 201

little success in the Birmingham area. He was on good terms
with the working people and even with their employers. An
iron-master in the district allowed him the use of a large room
' which was crowded to sufEocation every Sabbath afternoon
froni half-past two till a quarter past four." A Wesleyan
minister, who was no friend to Chartism, describes O'Neill's
methods thus :

O'Neill called himself a Christian Chartist and always began
his discourse with a text, after the manner of a sermon ; and some
of our people went to hear him just to observe the proceedings and
were shocked beyond .description : there was xmmeasured abuse
of Her Majesty and the Constitution, about the pubUc expenditure
and complete radical doctrines of all kinds. They have a hymn-
book of their own and affect to be a denomination of Christians.
This is the way they gained converts here, by the name. There
were very few political chartists here, but Christian Chartist was a
name that took. It is almost blasphemy to prostitute the name
of Christian to such purposes.*

A Government Commissioner sent to inquire into the causes
of the strike which engulfed Chartism in the Black Country in
1842, actually attended a " Christian Chartist Tea Party " at
Birmingham, where O'Neill was the chief speaker. He thus
reports O'Neill's sermon :

The necessity of their new Church was evident, for the true
Church of Christ ought not to be spUt up into opposing sects : all
men ought to be united in one Universal Church. Christianity
should prevail in everyday hfe, commerce should be conducted on
Christian principles and not on those of Mammon, and every other
institution ought to be based on the doctrines of Christianity.
Hence the Chartist Church felt it their duty to go out and move
amongst the masses of the people to guide and direct them by the
principles of Christianity. They felt it incumbent upon them to
go out into the world, to be the hght of the world and the salt of the
earth. The true Christian Church could not remain aloof but must
enter into the struggles of the people and guide them. The charac-
teristic of members of a real Church was on the first day of the week
to worship at their altar, on the next to go out and m in gle with the
masses, on the third to stand at the bar of judgment, and on the
fourth perhaps to be in a dungeon. This was the case in the primi-
tive Church and so it ought to be now."

If this sermon is the worst which the Commissioner in spite
of the " pain " which his attendance caused him can report,
we may safely assume that the Wesleyan minister's account is

1 Parliamentary Papers, 1843, xlil. p. oxxxii. ^ p. cxxxiii.

202 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

not witliout bias. O'Neill was an opponent of insurrection-
ary metiods, so tliat the Bible did not in his hands become the
explosive force wMcL. Stephens had made it. He was, how-
ever, prominent in all local industrial movements ; in the
strike of colliers in 1842 he was one of the men's spokesmen,
thus carrying out his own precepts even to the dungeon itself.
O'Neill was not the only Christian Chartist preacher. There
was a similar church at Bath where Heiuy Vincent was a
regular preacher. Vincent had forsworn his earlier insur-
rectionary views and was now a devoted preacher of temper-
ance. In fact " temperance Chartism " was in the way of
becoming a regular cult until, along with Christian Chartism
and " Knowledge Chartism," it came under the ban of O'Connor,
to whom knowledge and temperance were alike alien. Scot-
land was also the seat of Christian Chartism ; Paisley and
Partick were flourishing centres of it. But the strength of
Christian Chartism at Paisley rested not so much on the
Chartist Church itself as on the ardent partisanship of one of
the parish ministers of the Abbey Church. Patrick Brewster,
a strenuous opponent of O'Connor and a member of the Anti-
Corn-Law League, held his charge at Paisley from 1818 to
1859, and to the horror both of the Presbytery of Glasgow
and of the heritors, who had appointed him, preached
Chartist sermons of astonishing vehemence. Here is a para-
phrase of Ecclesiastes iv. 1 :

There is then one master grievance, one all-reaching, all-blast-
ing evil : one enormous, atrocious, monstrous iniquity : one soul,
blighting, heart-breaking, man - destroying, heaven - defjring sin,
which fills the earth with bondage and with blood, which aids the
powerful and strikes the helpless, which punishes the innocent and
rewards the guilty, which aggrandises the rich and robs the poor,
which exalts the proud and beats down the humble, which decries
truth and pleads for falsehood, which honours infamy and defames
virtue, which pampers idleness and famishes industry : one
GIGANTIC VILLAINY, the root and cause, the parent and pro-
tector of a thousand crimes . . . committing wrong and miscalling
it right, committing robbery and caUing it LAW, nay, in the sight
of heaven, committing foul murder and calling it JUSTICE.*

Many men felt like Brewster in those days. Think of the
poor religious stockinger's " Let us be patient a little longer,

1 p. Brewster, TTie Seven Chartist and Other MiMary Discourses libelled
by the Marquis of Abercorn and Other Heritors of the Jhbey Parish, Sermon
I. (Paisley, 1842.) Brewster was a Tounger brother of Sir David
Brewster, the famous physicist.

THE CHARTIST EEVIVAL 203

lads. Surely God Almiglity will help us soon," and the re-
joinder, " Talk no more about tliy Goddle Mighty ; there isn't
one. If there was, he wouldn't let us sufier as we do ! " ^

The Partick Chartists ran an evening school five nights a
week,2 whilst at Deptford there was established a " Working
Men's Church," whose members were said to study the New
Testament in Greek ! * AU these institutions were run on
thoroughly democratic lines. The articles of the Paisley
Church provided for belief in the Scriptures, in Christ, and the
Atonement ; for the election of all officers, by universal
sufirage and by the ballot ; for the repudiation of pew-rents,
and for voluntary contributions only.

This Christian Chartist movement does not seem to have
struck a deep root. It was but a protest in the name of de-
mocratic Christianity against the " oppressions that are done
under the sun " on behalf of those " who had no comforter,"
and it died away with the approach of better times. Neverthe-
less the efiorts of Vincent, O'Neill, Collins, and the like, who
leavened the mass of Chartist doctrine with some moral ideals,
ought not to be neglected by the student of the movement.
It is the tragedy of Chartism that it came to be controlled by
one whose influence was fatal to ideals.

The movement initiated by Lovett was of a somewhat
difEerent character, and needs perhaps more notice. In the
latter months of their imprisonment Lovett and Collins had
been allowed, as a result of strenuous efforts on the part of
their friends and themselves, better diet and the use of pens,
ink, and paper. Lovett kept up a brisk correspondence*
with Place, defending his own conduct, and that of the Chartists
generally, against the criticisms of the veteran politician.

Some of these letters are interesting enough to quote. On
May 10, 1840, Place recommended the reinvigoration of the
Working Men's Association, which he considered " was beyond
all comparison a more important Association than any previous
society of working men had ever been." It ought to be revived
and extended into all parts, " but," says Place, " it may be
objected that the plan of working-men's associations will be
difficult — will move slowly — true, this is unfortunate, but
moving a nation is a great work, it can go but slowly, it
cannot be hurried." Place suggested that it was stupid not

1 The lAte of Thomas Cooper, p. 173. „„.,„,, on io>i

2 Northein Star, September 26, 1840. » Ibvi. October 30 1841.

■* See volume 65 ol Place Collection at Hendon, pp. 348, 538, 648,
660, etc.

204 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

to accept less than the Charter ; for partial schemes, such as
the repeal of the Corn Laws, might in the long run carry them
further than the measure of justice embodied even in the
Charter. Lovett replied on the 19th that he had no hopes
of a repeal until a thorough reform of Parliament was accom-
plished :

And when I remember that the agitation for the alteration of
the Com Laws did not commence till after the people were actively
engaged in contending for the suffrage, and when I know that a
vast number of those who talk of giving the people cheap bread,
spurn the idea of giving them the suffrage, I very much doubt the
sincerity of their professions. . . . But after the great body of
the Radicals in different parts of the country have resolved to
give up their various hobbies of anti-poor-laws, factory bills, wages
protection laws, and various others, for the purpose of conjointly
contending for the Charter, I think I should be guilty of bad faith
not to follow up the great object we began with.

Lovett, curiously enough, did not agree with Place as to the
value of the working-men's associations. They were too poor
to be efiective. They excluded all but working men and were
more literary than political in character. They were seldom
able to get up public meetings or to attempt anything involv-
ing expense. They had no organ. The working-men's
associations were but small knots of men and inadequate to
carry through a great movement.^ Consequently Lovett came
to the conclusion that he must appeal to the middle class as
Well as to working people, if anything was to be accomplished.
In spite of this the whole correspondence turns on the question
whether the middle-class Radicals ought to come out for the
Charter or the Chartists for Free Trade. Lovett was obdurate
for the former, and Place for the latter.

It was in this state of mind that Place received from Lovett,
some time in March 1840, a parcel containing a letter and a
manuscript. The former was dated March 18, and related
that both had been smuggled out of Warwick Gaol by way
of a friend, as Lovett feared that the manuscript would be
confiscated if despatched through the usual channels. The
manuscript was a little book called Chartism, and had been
written in the gaol by Lovett and Collins. In all probabihty
Lovett wrote practically the whole of it. Lovett asked for
Place's opinion on it. It was to be corrected according to his
criticisms and amendments and published on the day of their

J Letter of May 19, 1840.

THE CHAETIST REVIVAL 205

liberation. Lovett adds : " I tave now resolved to write a
memoir of my own life ; pertaps you will think ttis a little bit
of vanity." This resolve was not carried out till 1876. Place,
however, was very unfavourable towards the book written in
prison, and succeeded, consciously or otherwise, in delaying
the publication till some time after the release of the two
Chartists.^

The little work was an expansion of the tract on Education,
published by the London Working Men's Association some four
years before. It commences with a defence of democratic
principles and an attack on the " exclusive " system then in
vogue. This part is written with equal vehemence and ability.
It gives vent to that throbbing and vibrating sense of injustice
which is throughout characteristic of Lovett.

The black catalogue of recorded crimes which all history develops,
joined to the glaring and oppressive acts of every day's experience,
must convince every reflective mind that irresponsible power, vested
in one man or in a class of men, is the fruitful source of every crime.
For men so circumstanced, having no curb to the desires which
power and dominion occasion, pursue an intoxicating and expensive
career, regardless of the toiling beings who, under the forms of law,
are robbed to support their insatiable extravagance. The objects
of their cruelty may lift up their voices in vain against their op-
pressors, for their moral faculties having lost the wholesome check
of pubho opinion ; they become callous to the supplications of their
victims.'

Incidentally Lovett gives his views upon the resort to force.

We maintain that the people have the same right to employ
similar means to regain their liberties, as have been used to enslave
them. . . . And, however we may regret, we are not disposed to
condemn the confident reUance many of our brethren placed on
their physical resources, nor complain of the strong feelings they
manifested against us and all who difiered in opinion from them.
We are now satisfied that many of them experience more acute
sufferings, and daily witness more scenes of wretchedness than
sudden death can possibly inflict, or battle strife disclose to them.'

Lovett now proceeded to outline his scheme for a " new
organisation of the people," which is what he conceives
Chartism to be. This organisation is contained in the " Pro-
posed Plan, Rules, and Regulations of an Association to be
entitled ' The National Association of the United Kingdom
for Promoting the Political and Social Improvement of the

1 LoTett, Life and StruggUa, p^ 236. » ChaHism, 18iO, p. i.

206 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

People.' " The objects of the Association were tenfold.
First, " to unite in one general body persons of all CREEDS,
CLASSES, and OPINIONS who are desirous to promote the
political and social improvement of the people " ; second, " to
create and extend an enlightened public opinion in favour of the
People's Charter and by every just means to secure its enact-
ment so that the industrious classes may be placed in possession
of the franchise, the most important step to aU political and
social reformation." The third object was to erect PubUc
Halls and Schools for the people wherever necessary. There
were to be Infant, Preparatory, and High Schools ; the halls
were to be used also for Public Lectures, Readings, Discussions,
Musical Evenings, and Dancing. Each school was to have
playgrounds for both sexes, gardens, baths, a museum, and a
laboratory. The establishment of Normal Schools, of Agri-
cultural Schools, the creation of travelling libraries, the
publication of tracts and pamphlets, the presentation of
prizes for essays on education, the employment of mission-
aries, and the discovery of legal means whereby the mernbers may
he able to control the Association in a democratic fashion are
the remaining objects of this Association.^ A vast system
of education on a purely voluntary basis was the object of
Lovett's speculations.

The funds for the scheme were to be raised by voluntary
contributions. Suppose, says Lovett, that everybody who
signed the National Petition would subscribe one penny a
week. This would give an income of £256,600 a year, devoted
to the following purposes :

Building of 80 schools or halls at £3000 each
710 travelling libraries at £20 each .
20,000 tracts per week at 15s. per 1000
4 missionaries at £200 per year
Printing, postage, salaries, etc.
Surplus

£240,000
14,200
780
800
700
120

£256,600

No provision is made for the upkeep and staffing of the
schools.

Lovett now proceeds to explain the advantages of the
scheme. A people so organised " would not use its energies
in meeting and petitioning : it would not year after year be
only engaged in the task of inducing corruption to purify

1 Pp. 24 et aeq.

THE CHARTIST REVIVAL 207

itself : but it would be gradually accumulating means of
instruction and amusementj and in devising sources of refined
enjoyment to whicb tbe millions are strangers : it would be
industriously employed in politically, intellectually and morally
training fathers, mothers and children to know their rights
and perform their duties : and with a people so trained, ex-
clusive power, corruption and injustice would soon cease to have
an existence." ^ He repudiates the notion that he agrees with
those who say the people are too ignorant to be entrusted with
the franchise. The franchise, in fact, would be the best means
of education. Nevertheless an unenlightened electorate would
never realise the full social consequences of its enfranchise-
ment without education, which is, therefore, necessary to ensure
complete freedom.^ Lovett's thesis is this : the people ought
to share completely in making the laws by which they are
governed. They have even the right to use force to recover
the liberties of which they have been deprived by force, but
unless they are educated they will never realise the benefits
which they seek to extort by their valour. By education and
organisation they will become possessed of a moral force which
no exclusive governing body can resist, and by their enlighten-
ment they will use to the fullest extent and to the best efEect the
liberties they have won.

After a short dissertation upon the enfranchisement of
women, a doctrine of which Lovett and some of his followers
remained convinced champions,' Lovett plunges with evident
satisfaction (for he was a born pedagogue) into a description
of the kind of education he will have in his schools. It is
crammed with knowledge and ideas. Lovett read nearly all
the important English books on education and such of the
German writers as were accessible in translations ; Combe,
Pestalozzi, Wilderspin, Hodgskin, Dr. Southwood Smith all
appear in the footnotes. Every aspect of education is treated,
and much emphasis is laid upon the importance of hygiene,
physical training, playgrounds, and gardens, as might be
expected in the days of the Public Health Agitation. This
httle book may well be recommended to all students of English
education. Hatred of State control of education, belief in
the Lancasterian organisation, and thoroughgoing secularism
are other features of the scheme.*

Such was the scheme on which Place's opinion was

1 p 47 a Pp. 55-60.

a Pp. 61-2. * PP- 63 «' «««•

208 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

requested. Place had outlived much of the enthusiasm which
characterised his earlier attachm.ent to the cause of education,
for he was already in his seventieth year. He criticised the
scheme as impracticable. He preferred the scheme outhned
in the Address on Education published in 1837. The chief
difierence between the two schemes was that the former pre-
supposed a grant from Government for the building of schools,
whilst the second was entirely voluntary. Lovett replied
that he was convinced that the people had a greater disposition
to support the scheme than Place believed, and if it were once
started the country would rally round it. Place, however,
returned to the charge and called the scheme a " Chartist
popedom " ; he said it was " sectarian " as it was purely
Chartist — which was of course exactly what it was intended to
be. The Charter, says Place, would not be obtained within
a quarter of a century, and so he returns to his old thesis,
• urging Lovett to support the agitation for the Repeal of the
Corn Laws, which was more immediately necessary and
practicable. Place can find no language strong enough to
describe his contempt for the Convention of 1839 and for the
" Big O's " of the North, in fact for the whole movement since
May 8, 1838. The whole correspondence between the class-
conscious and very sensitive enthusiast and the wire-pulling
old politician is very instructive. The upshot was that Lovett
published the work in spite of Place and felt some bitterness at
the delay which the latter had caused.

Lovett was released on July 25, 1840. A great ovation was
arranged for the two prisoners at Birmingham, and the plan of
the National Charter Association was to be made pubhc on
this occasion. Lovett, however, declined to attend on the
plea of ill -health, and Colhns received the honour alone.
James Leach spoke as temporary chairman of the new
Association, and voiced the enthusiasm with which the new
organisation had been conceived. Lovett went to Cornwall,'
but attended a dinner in his honour at the White Conduit
House in London on August 3. After refusing the ofier by
Samuel Smiles of a good appointment on the stafi of the
Leeds Times, he settled down in London, where he started
a book shop in Tottenham Court Road, and floated his
National Association Scheme. The National Association was
inaugurated in the spring of 1841, when an address was pub-
lished and circulated throughout the country as in the case of
the London Working Men's Association. A large number of

THE CHARTIST REVIVAL 209

Chartists expressed their approval by signing the address — a
step which caused them many pangs. The first meeting took
place in November when a London branch of the National
Association was started ; Hetherington became Secretary ;
Vincent, Cleave, Watson, Mitchell, and Moore rallied round
their old leaders. C. H. Neesom and R. Spurr, old opponents
of Lovett and former advocates of insurrection, now joined
hands with him. J. H. Parry, a barrister (afterwards Serjeant
Parry) and a great advocate of women's enfranchisement, joined
also, as did W. J. Linton, the artist and poet, who left interesting
reminiscences of Lovett, Watson, and others. The National
Association repudiated entirely the O'Brienite attitude towards
the middle class, and the Chartist policy of spoiling Anti-Corn
Law meetings. In 1842 it acquired a disused chapel in Hol-
born, renovated it at a cost of £1000, and so opened the first
hall of Lovett's dreams. It was unfortunately the only one,
and lasted but seven years. For reasons which will be given
later, this movement obtained no root in the Chartist soil, and
Lovett gradually drifted into that educational work in which
his heart was, and so found a rest from political excitement.

The life of Thomas Cooper of Leicester, called "the
Chartist " ^ (1805-1892), was in every way remarkable. The
son of poor parents, robbed early of his father, Cooper passed
rapidly through the varied roles of shoemaker, teacher,
musician, Wesleyan local preacher, newspaper reporter, Char-
tist lecturer and leader. Chartist prisoner, outcast and poet,
teacher of morals and politics (a more educated though less
forceful Cobbett), secularist, convert, anti-secularist, dying at
the great age of eighty-seven. The mere recital gives a clue
to the character of Cooper — an impidsive man but intensely
loyal where his convictions or sympathies were enlisted — a
hero-worshipper apt to turn iconoclast.

Cooper's career is an extremely interesting example of
how Chartists were made. He was an entirely self -taught
man. He acquired an incredible amount of learning under the
most disadvantageous circumstances. Latin, French, Greek,
Mathematics, Music, English Literature (especially that
stand-by of the humble reader, The Pilgrim's Progress) — all
came alike to him. Radical notions he acquired from some
trade unionists of his acquaintance, though such ideas were
beyond doubt the common possession of all the reflecting
members of the working classes. Like most self-taught

1 The I/ife of Thomas Cooper, 18^2.

P

210 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

people, Cooper lacked that balance of judgment whicli comes
largely by contact with other minds, and he was apt to act
hastily upon half-truths. He also had no little opinion of
himself, as a glance at his autobiography will show. A brilliant
but impulsive intellect. Cooper flared up suddenly in the
Chartist world, and as suddenly disappeared. But in the
years 1841-42 there was no- leader so successful as he.

Whilst acting as reporter for a Leicester paper, Cooper was
requested near the beginning of 1841 to report a Chartist
meeting in the town. It was to be addressed by John Mason,
a shoemaker of Birmingham. It is remarkable how many
shoemakers failed to stick to their lasts in those days ; CoUins,
Benbow, Cooper, Mason, Cardo are all cases in point. Cooper
found some twenty ragged men in the room when he arrived,
but the place quickly filled up with men and women, all
equally poor and ragged. The speeches were sensible and
temperate, and they told Cooper nothing new. On leaving
the meeting, however, his attention was drawn to the clatter of
the knitting-frames — and that at an hour approaching mid-
night. Inquiries revealed to him the fearful poverty which
drove starving men and women to toil at such a time for such
wages — ^less than a penny an hour. The crying injustice of
the frame-rent system completed his conversion.'- From that
day he was a Chartist, and his Chartism grew more vehement
daily. In our days revelations of this sort would at once
produce an agitation for the reform of the frame-rent system,
and it is very significant of the passionate and unpractical
temper of those times that Cooper seems never to have thought
of any such thing. The opposition which such a campaign
woidd have to meet, and the poverty and recklessness of the
poor employees themselves would have rendered its successful
conduct all but hopeless. To men so situated as these stock-
ingers (who had proved their own helplessness in many a futile
strike) the Charter had become a kind of charm or fetish,
through which every evil would be exorcised, and every social
wrong be avenged. In the year 1841 every poor man with a
real grievance tended to become a Chartist. Chartism was
the grand, all-containing Cave of Adullam for men who were
too poor to build up their own barriers against economic
oppression.

So Cooper became a Chartist. His conversion was quickly
followed by the loss of his situation, and he thenceforward

1 TAe Life of Thomas Cooper, p. 179.

THE CHARTIST REVIVAL 211

devoted himself wholly to the cause of the stockingers. He
ran several newspapers in succession, conducted innumerable
meetings, and rapidly acquired an immense following which
he proceeded to organise. He took a large hall of meeting,
and christened his flock the " Shaksperean Association of
Leicester Chartists." By the summer of 1842 he claimed 2500
members.! He divided them up into classes, which went
under such names as the "Andrew Marvell," "Algernon
Sydney," " John Hampden " class. He devised a kind of
uniform, gave to his adherents a pseudo-military organisation,
and proudly bore the title of " Shaksperean General." Is it
too far a cry to assume that Cooper was the originator of ideas
afterwards developed by WiUiam Booth at Nottingham ? By
these means — the magic of uniform and badges — Cooper de-
veloped a really ferocious esfrit de corps amongst his foUowers,
who idolised him. But he was not content with demonstra-
tions. He took pains to give his disciples education in an
adult school, and amusement of the right sort. Cooper has
preserved for us some Chartist hymns and songs of no little
merit which were composed by himself and some of his
Shakespereans. Through the comparatively prosperous days
of 1841 (there was a temporary revival of trade) Cooper kept
his following in hand. He kept their minds occupied, pre-
vented them from brooding, interested them in recreative
pursuits. A by-election provided excitement; visits from
various noted Chartists afiorded variety, and in general
Cooper succeeded in brightening and cheering the lives of many
who would otherwise have fallen victims to despair. He
believed and taught his followers to believe in the vague and
vain promises of O'Connor that the Charter would yet be
carried.^ Even this hope did not, however, remove the feeling
of desperation which began to grow during the terrible months
of 1842, when starvation knocked at every stockinger's door
with greater insistence than ever. The poor folk gradually
got out of hand ; Cooper was equally carried away by the scenes
of terror and suffering, and was hurried into the catastrophe
which in August ruined Chartism for the second time.^

Thus the great movement got once more under weigh.
With new men and new methods. Chartism made great progress
during 1840 and 1841. The new organisation tended towards
much greater efficiency. It separated the wheatfrom the chaff,

1 Northern Star, July 23, 1842.
2 The lAfe of Thomas Cooper, p. 179. ^ Pp. 173 et scg.

212 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

those who applauded at meetings from those who worked
and subscribed for the cause. One sign of this greater effi-
ciency is the fact that a petition on behalf of Frost, handed in
in May 1841, received over two mUlion signatures, far more
than the National Petition of 1839. Lecturers were hard at
work. Local newspapers again sprang up — such as those
published by Cooper in Leicester, by Philp at Bath, by Beesley
for North Lancashire, by Cleave in London, and by the Scottish
Chartists. Physical force was for the time being abandoned ;
efforts Were concentrated upon gaining steady adherents, and
upon preventing the spread of the Anti-Corn Law campaign.
In August 1841 O'Connor was released from York Gaol, six
weeks before his time, and a process of disruption at once began,
and did not cease until it had reduced the Chartist body to a
fanatical sect of unreasoning O'Connor-worshippers.

CHAPTER XIII

CHARTISM VERSUS FREE TRADE
(1842-1844)

Revived Chartism found itself competing^ both for the atten-
tion of the public and the allegiance of working people, with a
very powerful rival. This was the Anti-Corn Law League,
whose agitation began almost simultaneously with the publica-
tion of the Charter and ran alongside it until 1846. The
Chartists early discerned the danger to their cause which was
threatened by the Free Trade agitation, and took up a definitely
hostile attitude to it. But the earlier years of the Anti-
Corn Law movement gave little promise that it would become
a very serious rival to the Chartist propaganda. Its petitions
and motions in the House of Commons were rejected with
little ceremony, and the Chartists only saw in these non-suc-
cesses further proofs of their behef that without political
reform no important social improvement could be achieved.
During 1839 the working classes were preponderatingly on the
side of the Charter, but the ignominious collapse of Chartism,
the imprisonment of the leaders, and the temporary abandon-
ment of agitation, gave the Anti-Corn Law League an ojipor-
tunity which it did not let slip. With large funds, able and
eloquent leaders, and unswerving purpose, the Free Traders
made great headway. The solid mass of the middle^class was
behind them, and this was the class which had the preponder-
ating influence in the majority of the electorates which returned
the reformed House of Commons. Moreover, it probably
required no great persuasion to bring over all the better-paid
and more educated artisans and operatives, who were begin-
ning more ai^d more to share the political and economic ideas
of the Radical middle class. The extent of the Free Trade

213

214 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

forces in 1842 may be gauged from the fact that in tke Parlia-
mentary Session of that year 2881 petitions, signed by 1,570,000
persons, were presented ; and this was repeated year after year.

When the revival came the Chartists took up with vigour
the task of counteracting the Free Trade Campaign. By
debates, polemics, and the smashing of meetings they carried
on for three years the hopeless struggle, until in August 1844 a
personal meeting between O'Connor and Cobden destroyed the
Chartist case and ended the feud.^ The Chartist arguments
against the rival agitation were derived largely from James
O'Brien. It was detested as a middle-class movement, started
to suit the interests of the manufacturers — a charge to which
Cobden pleaded guilty. /The repeal of the Corn Laws would
simply hand over the wfcrking class to the manufacturers and
money-lords. The ruin of agriculture, which was inevitable if
the laws were repealed, would drive thousands of agricultural
labourers to the towns, there to compete and reduce wages.
High prices meant high wages, they argued ; therefore, if the
manufacturers cried " cheap bread " they meant " cheap
labour." Furthermore, if prices were so reduced, the chief
benefit would go to those who lived upon fixed incomes —
the " tax-eaters," fund-holders, clergy, and sinecurists. The
reduction in prices would be equivalent to an enormous
increase in the National Debt, and thus benefit the public
creditor at the expense of the labourer who has to pay the
taxes. Unless, therefore, a&-€H-Brien argued, there were some
readjustment of the currency and of contracts for debt,
the result of the repeal of the Corn Laws would be disastrous
to the industrious classes. X

These were the theoretical grounds of opposition. ) There
were other reasons, too, which appealed to Chartists. Some
few, like James Leach and West of Macclesfield, were con-
vinced Protectionists, and tried to answer the Free Traders with
arguments in kind. Other Chartists regarded the Anti-Corn
Law League as an insidious middle-class attack upon their own
agitation, as a movement deliberately devised to turn attention

1 They debated at Northampton on August 5, 1844. O'Connor's case
was so feebly stated aa to set rumours circulating among his own loUowers
to the effect that he had been bribed to allow Cobden to enjoy a stage
victory. O'Connor's own account in the Northern Star, August 10, has the
merit of including a generous testimony to Cobden's ability. " He is
decidedly a man of genius, of reflection, of talent, and of tact. . . . He has a
most happy facility of turning the most trivial passing occurrence to the
most important pittpose. I am not astonished that a wUy party should
have selected so apt and cunning a leader." Gammage, History of the
Chartist Movement, p. 255, says that the debate was the greatest victory
ever won by the League over the Charter.

CHARTISM VERSUS FREE TRADE 215

from the Factory and Poor Law questions, on both of which
Cobden took an unpopular -view. The Free Trade agitation
wa,s claimed by the Chartists as originally a working-man's
agitation. It certainly figured largely in the agitation con-
nected with the name of Hunb, and " No Corn Laws " was a
cry at Peterloo. The middle classes, it was argued, had
refused to aid in the agitation then, but were now ready to take
it up in opposition to another propaganda, which threatened
their own newly acquired political dominion. Unfortunately
for Chartist solidarity, however, there was no complete unan-
imity in the opposition to the Anti-Corn Law League. Not
every Chartist was opposed to the League, and not every
Chartist was hostile to Free Trade. Some were quite pre-
pared to leave the League alone to press the one question while
they agitated for the Charter ; others were afraid that the
League would swallow up their own movement. Some be-
lieved that the Corn Laws were an atrocity which ought to be
removed ; others were Protectionists, like Feargus O'Connor.
Some believed that the League was wasting its time, since Free
Trade would never be attained without the Charter, and were
therefore anxious to gain middje-class support for a joint
programme of Charter and Free Trade. In fact every variety
and combination of views existed amongst the Chartists upon
this question. If there was a defi.nite line of demarcation
amongst them, it was between the agriculturists and the in-
dustrialists. Many Chartists, whose views are represented by
O'Connor and O'Brien, regarded the industrial system as a
whole as something unnatural, and they therefore harked
back to a purely agricultural society, which O'Brien visualised
as communistic and O'Connor as individualistic. Others
accepted the industrial system and tended to be Free Traders.
From other evidence, of which more will be said later, it
appears likely that the most ardent followers of O'Connor's
later " back-to-the-land " cry were the unfortunate industrial-
ists who had been crushed by the competition of steam — the
handloom weavers and stocMngers. These men had long been
crying for Protection — ^protection of wages and protection for
their handicraft. Free Trade and Competition had no attrac-
tions for them.

A few samples of Chartist argumentation may here be cited.
The Free Traders at Sunderland had called upon the Chartists
there to aid in their agitation. Williams and Binns were the
Chartist leaders ; they were sensible and moderate men who

216 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

agreed that the Corn Laws were an intolerable evil, but they
replied that they conld not agree to co-operate merely upon the
merits of the question. " What," they ask, " is our present
relation to you as a section of the middle class ? It is one of
violent opposition. You are the holders of power, participation
in which you refuse us ; for demanding which you persecute us
with a malignity paralleled only by the ruffian Tories. We are
therefore surprised that you should ask us to co-operate with
you." They proceed to describe how the middle class press had
denounced them as low adventurers, and their schemes as
impracticable ; how it had ignored their proceedings except to
pour contempt and ridicule upon them. The middle class had
urged the prosecutions for treason and sedition, had hounded
on the police and imprisoned the people's leaders. The people
cannot co-operate with them, for their failings will not permit
them to do so. Nor will their principles, for Chartism aims
at something higher than the repeal of a tax. It aims at
the stoppage of tyranny and slavery at their source.'- So the
attitude of the local magistrates, mill-owners, and gentry in
the summer of 1839 was resulting in its natural consequences.
The " asking-for-troops " face, which Napier so graphically
describes, gave place to the prosecution-for-sedition face. The
terror of July and August was avenged with a carnival of
arrests, trials, and imprisonments which only embittered the
relations of Chartists and the higher classes. The whole odium
was thrown on to the middle class, and we cannot be surprised
if leaders like Williams and Binns, smarting under imprison-
ment, vented their feelings in bitter denunciations of the whole
body which they vaguely felt to be the cause of their failures
and misfortunes.

The arguments of James Leach speak for themselves. In a
debate with a Free Trader at Manchester he laid down seven
propositions. First, that the workers had been duped by the
middle class over the Eeform BUI, and might therefore be
duped over the Eepeal of the Corn Laws. Second, that the
evils of which the workers complained were due not to agri-
cultural protection and the consequent depression in trade,
but to machinery. Third, that the increase of trade which
the League promised as a result of repeal would not be of any
benefit to the labourer, for as the cotton trade had increased
the wages of the handloom weavers had decreased. The
argument here is, more trade more machinery, more machinery

» Northern Star, May 23, 1840.

CHARTISM VERSUS FREE TRADE 217

less wages. Fourth, that England ■would not be able to com-
pete with foreign countries through the export of manufactures,
partly because the foreign countries would raise protective
tarifis and partly because wages were very low in foreign
countries, and we should have to reduce wages accordingly.
Fifth, that the reduction of wages was the real object of the
masters who took part in the agitation. Sixth, that no good
could be done until the profit-mongers were deprived of their
monopoly of political power. Seventh, that the real solution
of the problems of unemployment and surplus population was
the land. It may be said that, even allowing for garbled
reporting, the Free Trader's arguments were hardly good
enough to convince a less prejudiced opponent than Leach. "^

The Northern Star of course took a prominent part in the
controversy. In January 1842 it produced the following
argument to prove that the extension of foreign trade, so
ardently desired by the Manchester men, was no matter for
which the working classes should show enthusiasm. It gives
the following statistics of foreign trade :

Official value of j^^^j ^^j^^ Taxation,

exports.

1798 . . £19,000,000 £33,000,000 £16,000,000

1841 . . £103,000,000 £51,500,000 £53,000,000

Thus the extension of foreign trade meant that we had to give
five times as much labour and raw materials to produce one
and a half times as much goods in 1841 as in 1798. The
labourer had to give five times as much labour for one and a half
times as much wages. In addition to this he had to pay
over three times as much in taxation. Arithmetically con-
sidered, the labourer was paying proportionately ten times as
much taxation in 1841 as in 1798.

Suppose now, the argument proceeds, we abohshed all our
foreign trade, what then ? We should lose fifty-one and a half
millions a year. But we could easily reduce taxation by forty-
eight millions, and our loss would only be three and a half
millions. On the other hand, we should gain all the vast
stores of food and clothing which are now annually exported ;
these would be divided out at home instead.^

Truly political economy was no mystery to the leader-writer
of the Northern Star. .

A very terse analysis is given by T. J. Dunnmg. Ihe
National Income as a whole is divided into Wages, Profit,

1 Northern Star, October 3, 1840. ^ im. January 29, 1842.

218 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Rent, Taxatioiij falling respectively to the Labourer, Capitalist,
Landlord, and Tax-receiver (fund-holders, clergy, pensioners,
civil servants, sinecurists, army, navy, etc.). The prices at
which goods are sold must be sufficient to allow each of these
his share. In order that corn may yield this price a duty is
imposed upon cheaper foreign corn ; the repeal of these duties
wiU lower the price of corn, which reduction wiE have to be
borne by some or all of the above classes.

I apprehend it cannot affect the labourer for he is already ruined,
nor the farmers, unless the cultivation of com is to be stopped, for
they are said to be on the brink of ruin : it must therefore fall upon
the landlord or the tax-receiver or both : but these have the malong
and repealing of the laws. It is highly probable, therefore, that
unless these men are in perfect ignorance of the matter, which by
the way is not unlikely, these laws will stiU be unrepealed.^

In this controversy, therefore, the Chartists were hopelessly
out-argued by Cobden, Bright, W. J. Fox, and the rest.
Both in theory and methods the League was far superior.
Nevertheless those who follow Place in condemning as futile
and foolish the opposition of the Chartists to the League forget
that the opposition was one of passion and sentiment rather
than of dialectics. The Chartists feared that the cause for
which they had struggled and suffered would be smothered in the
dust of a conflict between two factions which they considered
to be equally inimical to it. They hoped, through their new
organisation, to win to their side the large body of the in-
dustrious classes, and they hated the Leaguers for queering
their pitch. When the two agitations began, there was no
reason to suppose that the one would be any more successful
than the other. No one described Chartism as " the wildest
and maddest scheme that had ever entered into the imagination
of man to conceive," as Melbourne described the repeal of the
Corn Laws. The Chartists, therefore, had as much right to
expect co-operation from the middle class in the Charter
campaign as the middle class from the Chartists in the Free
Trade campaign. The opposition was perfectly natural. It
was indeed futile and foolish. By the system of upsetting
League meetings the Chartists accomplished little, and they
only brought themselves into bad odour. When they debated,
they often had to beat a ridiculous retreat. But poor, un-
educated men, stirred by passion and resentment, are poor
debaters in any case, and the disturbance of opposition meet-

1 Clmrter, January 27, 1839.

CHARTISM VERSUS FREE TRADE 219

ings was as much a sjanptom of helplessness as of anything
else. It was a counsel of despair, and it is unfortunate that
the Northern Star writers, who ought to have known better,
should have encouraged this vain and absurd practice by de-
claiming in big headlines about " triumphant victories " over
the League, " the Plague " as they were pleased to call it, and
by assuming to believe that such " victories " were rendering
service to their cause.

CHAPTBE XIV

O'CONNOEISM
(1841-1842)

On August 30, 1841, FearguB O'Connor was released from York
Gaol, six weeks before the period of his imprisonment was com-
plete. With this event the Chartist Movement commences
another phase. It is the period of the development of the
absolute personal supremacy of O'Connor. It is interesting
to see how this supremacy was attained. There are several
factors in the process, the personal gifts of O'Connor himself,
the Northern Star, which ruthlessly manufactured and ex-
ploited opinion, the ignorance of his followers, and the fact
that leaders inclined to independence of opinion were at work
in separate organisations, and so left the National Charter
Association at the mercy of O'Connor.

Of O'Connor's personality something has already been said.
A jovial, tactful, obliging person, to whom no exertions were
wasted which procured one more adherent, a boon-companion
of a highly entertaining character, suiting his conduct exactly
to the standards of his company, a racy and not too intellectual
speaker, a master-hand at flattery and unction, a poseur of
talent and resource, O'Connor was well equipped to gain the
affections of uneducated men to whom sympathy with their
hard lot was more than dissertations upon democratic free-
dom and exhortations to self-ciilture. Social antipathy, not
political bondage, was at the bottom of Chartism, and the
immense exertions of O'Connor, a member of the favoured
classes, in the cause of the poor, vain, futile, and self-glorifying
, as those exertions were, were nevertheless a passport to the
fidelity and afiection of many thousands of followers. :-:.;
There is a repulsive aspect to this relationship in the manner
220

O'CONNORISM 221

in which O'Connor exploited this intense loyalty. That this
exploitation did not exhaust the sources of afiection is a witness
alike to the intensity of the feeling and the blind ignorance of
the followers. O'Connor had that rare commercial instinct
which enabled him to derive profit from the most unlikely
sources. Nothing escaped his notice — the Northern Sfa/r, his
imprisonment in York Gaol (though only remotely connected
with Chartism), and the bad memories of his followers, were
alike sources of profit and power. A few samples may be
given.

On the eve of his commitment to York Castle O'Connor
penned an article of Napoleonic arrogance ^ to his followers.
It is a farewell message :

Before we part, let us commune fairly together. See how I
met you, what I found you, how I part from you, and what I leave
you. I found you a weak and unconnected party, having no
character except when tied to the chariot wheel of Whiggery to
grace the triumphs of the Whigs. I found you weak as the mountain
heather bending before the gentle breeze. I am leaving you strong
as the oak that stands the raging storms. I found you knowing
your country but on the map. I leave you with its position engraven
upon your hearts. I found you spUt up into local sections. I have
levelled all those pigmy fences and thrown you into an imperial
union. ...

Early in 1841 he produced a long recital of his political
career and addressed it to the English People.'' It culminates
in the amazing assertion :

Now attend to me while I state simple facts. From September
1835 to February 18S9 I led you single-handed and alone.

In this way O'Connor, in true Napoleonic fashion, succeeded
in throwing a haze of legendary magnificence about the early
dubious venturings of his post-Parliamentary career. The
last statement was a master-stroke. When he wrote, February
1839 was but two years past and memories reached back to it ;
it was not safe to allegorise the career of the Convention. Nor
was it expedient, for by giving up his leadership at that
moment, O'Connor divested himself of responsibility for the
futilities which followed. He followed up this bold step a
week later by presenting a version of his career as a Conven-
tional. He had always opposed physical force. In fact, in the
Convention he had alone opposed the idea of a Sacred Month,
and had succeeded in putting a stop to it. He had always

1 NoHhem Star, AprU 26, 1840. » HM. January 16, 1841.

222 THE CHAKTIST MOVEMENT

opposed the talk about arms, not as illegal, but as inadvisable.^
The truth was, that having steadfastly shouted with the
larger crowd, O'Connor could safely claim to have supported
and opposed every policy -which the Convention discussed.

Along with this process of self-glorification, O'Connor en-
deavoured successfiily to enlist sympathy for his sufEerings
in gaol.^ From the first week of his imprisonment O'Connor
was able to publish in the Northern Star long accounts of his
evil plight, his ill-health, the despondent verdicts of the doctors,
the ruthless tyranny of governor and Government. These
accounts were followed by multitudinous meetings of protest.
A fortnight after his commitment to gaol the reports of these
meetings occupy six closely printed columns on the front page.
On July II, 1840, O'Connor's article upon the subject occupied
eight columns. These whinings, which aroused the contempt
of Lovett and others, were not the sentimental drivelling of
cowardice, but the mancBuvres of a diplomat who knew what
he was about. He was establishing a claim to Chartist martyr-
dom. His imprisonment was for a serious libel upon the
Warminster Guardians, and was therefore not a Chartist afiair,

1 Northern Star, January 23, 1840.

2 No more exteaordiaary example of self-glorifloation cem surely be
found than the stanzas written by O'Connor In York Gaol and intended
to be recited by Lovett and Collins at the reception in Birmingham.
There are tliirty-one in all.

1. From Bast to West, from North to South,
Let US proclaim the Charter I
We'll send all tyrants right about
Who dare oppose the Charter.

3. In England's name her own King John
Once tried to sell her Charter.
But England's sons now dead and gone
All rose for England's Charter.

5. Will LoTett, Collins, and the rest
Who suffered for the Charter,
In old St. Stephen's shall be placed
To rule us by the Charter.

7. O'Connor is our chosen chief.
He's champion of the Charter :
Our Saviour suffered like a thi^
Because Jie preached the Charter.

As the poem progresses the quality declines, but stanzas 24 and 25 are
Interesting :

24. The sons of men must have their field
Protected hj the Charter.

The earth will then profusion yield.
Made fertile by the Charter.

25. The gaols are full ; the Whigs did bribe
To damn the People's Charter.

But for their wives we will subscribe
In honour of the Charter.

O'CONNORISM 223

except in so far as te had later become a Chartist. But he
aftected to believe that the case had only been pressed to get him
out of the wajj just as his release was supposed to be dictated
by craft and fear.i So the O'Connor legend grew. The mere
fact that O'Connor was able, nearly every week, to write long
articles to his paper, does not encourage belief in his sufierings.
Nor does the remarkable energy which he displayed from the
moment of his release support such belief. That the confine-
ment did cause some discomfort is beyond doubt, but whether,
as a result, O'Connor could, like John Collins, stick his hard
felt hat inside the waistband of his trousers ^ may be doubted.

From the gaol, too, O'Connor was able to take no little part
in the conduct of the National Charter Association. His plan
for the reorganisation of the movement had already received
attention. In the early part of 1841 a project was on foot
for a second Petition, combining the requests of the National
Petition with one for the release of various prisoners, especially
Frost, Williams, and Jones. O'Connor proposed that a Con-
vention of ten should be elected to supervise the Petition. He
suggested a list of twenty persons who might be elected.
When the election was complete nine out of ten of his nominees
were elected. The tenth was Collins, who raised a great storm
in the Convention.* The proceedings of this body show that
even careful selection of delegates was not an antidote to dis-
union. O'Connor followed up this manoeuvre with another of
the same kind. He drew up a list of eighty-seven individuals
whom he described as Chartists who may be trusted. All
the Lovett men are omitted, as well as Collins and the Christian
Chartists. It was a purely partisan selection. Thomas
Cooper, for the time a blind follower of O'Connor, is described
as a host in himself. O'Brien and Benbow find places, but
Rider and Harney do not, being on the stafi^ of the Star, and
therefore not available for organising and delegate work. The
obvious intention was to ensure the selection of these men in
the choice of officials and representatives. The list was joy-
fully accepted and resolutions of confidence passed in the
" old list " and " the 87." *

In this development of O'Connorism, in which personal
loyalty to O'Connor was at least as requisite as sound Chartism,
the Northern Star played a great and decisive part. It was

1 Northern Star, August 28, 1841, Leading Article,

s See the account in Lovett's lyife and Sirugglea.

s Northern Star. May 8, 15, 22, 29, 1841.

* Ibid. April 24, 1841 ; May 1, 1841.

224 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

tlie only really prosperous Ciartist paper, and stood tead and
sioulders above its struggling contemporaries. The great
coUapse of 1839 dragged down many rival newspapers, and
tkose which took their places were Chartist pamphlets rather
than newspapers, for they were unable to publish "news,"
being unstamped.^ The Chartist body was unable to support
more than one journal of any size, and so the Northern Star
shone alone in the firmament. It was almost the sole source of
Chartist news, and it was the chief channel of communication.
Its able and unscrupulous editor, William HiU, employed it
exclusively to further the despotism of its proprietor. He
suppressed news and garbled it. He allowed attacks upon
suspected individuals and prevented replies. He made and
unmade reputations in his columns. Through the Star the
policy of Chartism was made and directed. Not that the rank
and file were unable to obtain a hearing in its columns, far
from it ; but preference was given to particular persons, and
opinion was overriden by the ipse dixi of editor or proprietor.
Not merely on the journalistic side was this newspaper a
potent O'Connorising instrument, but its commercial side was
exploited, too, for the same purpose. A newspaper must have
agents, distributors, reporters, and so on, and O'Connor and
his stafE had built up an efficient body of news-coUeotors and
news-distributors. Naturally none but Charbists were ehgible
for this purpose. O'Connor, however, was not content with
this perfectly legitimate employment of Chartists ; he strove
deliberately to turn his employees, reporters, and agents into
instruments for furthering his personal supremacy. We have
seen how he ofEered to pay a Convention, and how lie offered to
turn Chartism as a whole into a newspaper syndicate under
his control. These projects came to naught, but he attained
part of their purpose by the use of the Star. He turned
Chartist leaders into paid reporters," and paid reporters into
Chartist leaders, and he used them, as in the case of Philp at
Bath, to eliminate from the movement men of independence.*
He ruthlessly exploited financial obligations, as in the case of
O'Brien.* He allowed his newspaper agents to fall into debt
if he thought he could keep a hold on them thereby.* So

1 A liat of eleven Chartist papers in the Northern Star, October 23, 1841.
Few were of importance as compared with the Star itself.

2 George White, Harney, Rider, Griffin, Cooper, Lowery, and others were
connected in tlila way with the Star. '

■i Northern Star,Msaohl2, 1842; March 19, 1842.

* See below, pp. 236-7.

» Case of R. Lowery, Northern Star, February 13, 1841,

O'CONNORISM 225

great became the power of the newspaper that a new species
of Use majeste became possible. Deegan was solemnly tried
at Sunderland on the charge of speaking evil against the
Northern Star ; he was mercifully acquitted. ^ Cases of Anti-
Northern-Starism became possible and not infrequent. Thus,
as Place relates : " O'Connor obtained supremacy by means of
his volubility, his recklessness of truth, his newspaper, his un-
paralleled impudence, and by means of a body of mischievous
people whom he attached to himself by mercenary bonds." ^

There is, however, another side to the matter. Says
Thomas Cooper :

Feargus O'Connor, by his speeches in various parts of the country
and by his letters in the Northam Star, chiefly helped to keep up
these expectations (i.e. that the Charter would soon be obtained).
The immense majority of Chartists in Leicester, as well as in many
other towns, regarded him as the only reaUy disinterested and ia-
corruptible leader. I adopted this beUef because it was the beUef
of the people : and I opposed James Bronterre O'Brien and Henry
Viacent and all who opposed O'Connor or refused to act with him.'

Nothing shows more clearly the strength of O'Connor's in-
fluence than that a leader of Cooper's calibre should unhesitat-
ingly follow the crowd of which he was supposed to be leader,
in its blind adoration of that famous demagogue. It would
be idle to suppose that O'Connor in no wise deserved this
fidelity ; men do not gain such homage without cause or merit.
But O'Connor's character was such that no man of independ-
ence, talents, and integrity could long co-operate with him.
O'Brien, Cooper, William Hill, Gammage, Harney, Jones, and
a crowd of others served him with zeal and quitted him with
contumely. Yet there was something gained by the suprem-
acy of O'Connor. The disunion which had been so disastrous in
1839 was avoided, and the National Charter Association stood
as a very enthusiastic and very hopeful compact body. The
ruthless and unsparing ostracism of the anti-0'Connorite
leaders is a tribute to the desire for solidarity in the rank and
file as well as to the jealousy and power of O'Connor. But
within the association movement was restricted, criticism was
gagged, and initiative discouraged. Chartism became the
faith of a sect rather than the passionate cry of half a nation.

On his release from prison O'Connor at once jumped into the
saddle. He was greeted with tremendous ovations. The

1 Northern Star, February 13, 1841.
2 Additional MSS. 27.820, p. 3. ' irfe, p. 179.

226 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

great Huddersfield demonstration deserves special mention.
The following is a list of the banners and mottoes :

1. Pull-length portrait of O'Connor.

2. Banner setting forth the points of the Charter.

3. " We demand Universal Suffrage."

4. Justice holding the scales with Equal Bights balanced against

the People's Charter.

5. " The Charter our Right."

6. " Equality of All before the Law."

" Taxation without Representation is Tyranny and
ought to be resisted."

7. " The Right of every Man to Liberty is from God, from Natme,

from Birth, and from Reason."

" The whole of the principles contained in the People's
Charter we demand."

8. " God save the Queen, for we fear no one else will."

" The Glorious Republic of America, and soon may
England imitate that country : its people happy and
contented."

9. " England expects every man to do his duty."

" God helps those who help themselves."

10. " The Land, the Land, the right of every Uving man."

" The Rights of Labour, soon may they be acknowledged
throughout the world."

11. " Every man his own Landlord."

" Down with the accursed factory system, the school of
immorality, profaneness, wickedness, and vice of every
description."

12. " England, Home, and Liberty."

" No Bastilles : the Right of every man to live upon his
native land."

13. " Equal Representation.

" No distinction before the Law."

14. " Honesty is the best policy : No Humbug : No Com Law

Fallacies : the full rights of all we ask, no more we demand,
this we will have."

" God gave the earth for man's inheritance : a faction
have taken it to themselves. Justice, Justice, Justice ! "

15. " Universal Suffrage."

Then came :

Operatives sixteen abreast

The Carriage

drawn by four greys ; postillions, scarlet jackets, black

velvet caps and silver tassels ; containiag the People's

Champion

Fbabgus O'Connok, Esqitiee,

O'CONNORISM 227

along with Messrs. Edward Clayton, Robert Peel, and other
friends.

Transparent lamps on each side.

Green silk flags on each side of the carriage.

Operatives sixteen abreast.^

Apart from their variety, which embraces everything from
opposition to the League to overthrowing the monarchy, the
aspirations blazoned on the banners are remarkable for the
significance already attached to the land as a factor in national
regeneration. O'Brien, Leach, O'Connor, Hobson (publisher
of the Northern Star), and many other leaders were in various
ways agitating the question, and a movement was already on
foot which was destined to swallow up the Chartist movemenb
itself.

Another example of O'Connor worship may be quoted :

Working Men of Huddersfield and vicinity Arouse, Arouse ! and
join the ranks of Freedom. Shake off the chains of servile bondage.
Be Men, Men determined no longer to be serfs, or wear the gallmg
mark of Slavery. Up then in your wonted might, and show to
your oppressors, you know how to estimate such men as O'Connob,
who will be in Holmfirth at Noon on Saturday, December 4, 1841.'

As a matter of fact the arrangements for O'Connor's re-
ception fell far short of what was intended, on account of his
unexpected release. Special demonstration committees were
set on foot in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and demonstrations
were arranged for York, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Colne,
Keighley, Halifax, Bradford, Todmorden, Bolton, Stockport,
Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Barnsley, Rochdale, Middleton, and
Blackburn.* These demonstrations were of course intended to
be a great recruiting tour, but unfortunately the fates decided
against them. O'Connor showed himself, however, perfectly
indefatigable. Early in November he made a successful tour
throughout Scotland where, in spite of his declarations against
physical force, he took pleasure in attacking Brewster and his
Chartist " Synod " at Glasgow. His report on this journey is
written in a style strongly suggestive of megalomania.* A few
days later he was quitting London for a tour in Lancashire and
Yorkshire, visiting Stockport, Ashton, Oldham, Rochdale,
Heywood, and Bolton in five days. At Stockport there was so
large a crowd that the floor collapsed.^ He then visited Dews-

1 Northern star, BecemheT 11, lUl. , r^,-^ i„„,„t oi isii

2 Ibid. November 27, 1841. l I^- ^"^tf l-.l?!!-,

i Ibid. November 13, 1841. * Ib^- December 4, 1841.

228 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

bury, Bradford, and Halifax. If O'Connor attained supremacy
wittin the National Charter Association, it was partly because
he Worked for it, for none of his followers. Cooper perhaps
excepted, could compare with him in activity. He rejoiced
in the work ; he enjoyed the excitement and the applause.
Controversy he almost welcomed, as if politics were a great
Donnybrook. Year after year his herculean frame enabled
him to continue, but the malady which was slowly unseating
his reason caused his feats of endurance to be less and less
controlled as the years went on. Chronic incoherence char-
acterised his later activities. But in these earlier years
O'Connor's ubiquity and superhuman energy were invaluable
to the cause. He brought in recruits wherever he went. He
kept the agitation alive through good report and evil report.
So far as Chartism spurred on governments and pubhc
opinion to a more sjTnpathetic treatment of the poor and the
industrious classes, O'Connor must not be denied some of the
praise for the good which indirectly ensued from his immense
activities.

From the moment of O'Coimor's release the policy of the
National Charter Association took on a firmer shape. Much
had been done since the Manchester Delegate Assembly of
July 1840. A lively agitation was organised ; a Convention
had been held, and a petition, very successful in point of signa-
tures at least, had been presented in May 1841 by T. S. Dun-
combe to the House of Commons, praying for the release of the
Chartist convicts. Duncombe's motion that the Queen be re-
quested to reconsider the cases of all pohtical prisoners was lost
only on the casting vote of the Speaker, who declared that the
motion was an interference with the Eoyal Prerogative.^ On
the occasion of an O'Connor demonstration at Birmingham in
the September following, MacDouall, as one of the Executive,
put forward a programme of agitation which included another
National Petition and Convention.^ All efEorts were to be
concentrated upon these objects and the Petition was to be
presented in 1842. The organisation was strung up to a
higher degree of activity. Delegate meetings, representative
of large areas, were called to supervise the arrangements.* In
October 1841 the Executive published the programme outUned
by MacDouall. The Convention was to meet on February 4,

1 Northern Star, June 6, 1841. For, 58 ; against, 68.

2 Ibid. September 25, 1841.

3 See the oaees of Bath (.Nortliem Star, October 16, 1841), and Birming-
ham (Ibid. November 6, 1841).

O'CONNORISM 229

1842, and to sit for four weeks. The Petition was to be pre-
sented wittout any delay such as occurred in 1839. The
Convention was to consist of twenty-four delegates, for each of
whom a sum of £15, exclusive of travelling expenses, must be
furnished by the constituents. The representatives would be
nominated by ballot and elected in public meetings. The
Executive would stand for election and the " parliamentary
candidates " would have a prior claim to the suffrages of the
Chartist body.^ Thus the intention was to bring the renewed
agitation to a climax early in 1842. Nothing was specified as
to the subsequent proceedings, and there was no foolish talk
about ulterior measures. But before the Convention met or the
Petition was presented, much water flowed under the bridge,
and in it many Chartist hopes foundered.

1 Ncnihem Star, October 9, 1841.

CHAPTER XV

FALSE DOCTRINE, HEEESY, AND SCHISM

(1841-1842)

(1) O'Connor's Breach with Lovett (1841)

Whilst striving, with energy and success, to establish his
supremacy over the National Charter Association, O'Connor
was carrying on a vigorous campaign against aU rival and
parallel organisations within the Chartist world. In this
warfare he had the enthusiastic and unquestioning support of
the great mass of the members of the Association, who were
anxious above aH to avoid the schisms and disunion which
had been so devastating in 1839. Even allies were not toler-
ated if they aspired to independence ; there must be one army
and one leader. Thus the personal desires of O'Connor and
the intolerant notions of his followers worked together for the
same ends.

The first rival scheme to come under O'Connor's ban was
the National Association for Promoting the Improvement of
the People, which, as we have seen, was being inaugurated
by Lovett and CoUins. The opposition between Lovett and
O'Connor was the opposition of two completely different
personalities. Lovett was a thin, delicate, nervous, retiring,
serious, and ascetic man to whom life was a tragedy, made
bearable only by self-abnegation and devotion to the welfare
of others. O'Connor was a great, burly, bouncing, hail-fellow-
well-met, to whom the essence of life was political agita-
tion, involving crowds, excitement, applause, and authority,
the end and purpose of the agitation being but secondary.
The two were totally incompatible. Lovett lacked the
saving grace of a sense of humour, and O'Connor jarred on

230

O'CONNOE'S BREACH WITH LOVETT 231

him, whilst to O'Connor the intellectual and moral purposes
of Lovett were foreign and unintelligible. All these things
were against any hearty co-operation from the very beginning.
Lovett detested the personal ascendancy of O'Connor ; it was
against his principles. He also suspected O'Connor's sincerity
in the people's cause. O'Connor no doubt returned these
feelings with interest. He took no further notice of Lovett
and Collins when they were incarcerated, and their appeals for
better treatment in prison were totally ignored by the Northern
Star,''- which found space for many columns of O'Connor's
whinings. Lovett fell into an intense detestation of the great
Northern demagogue, and from the moment of his release
nothing could induce him to bury his resentment and co-operate
with the National Charter Association. Lovett carried with
him many sincere and able men, but they were officers with-
out companies. The rank and file marched with the Irish-
man, whose controversial methods may be gauged from the
following.

Even before Lovett's new Association had been launched
these incompatibilities were threatening Chartism with a new
schism. Lovett was designing his National Association to
supplement rather than to supersede the National Charter
Association. But as the latter fell more and more under
O'Connor's control, Lovett's refusal to work with it had the
inevitable consequence of suggesting that he was dividing
the Chartist forces at a moment when unity was especially
necessary. O'Connor took full advantage of his enemy's
mistake and attacked him and his friends with unrestrained
violence. The onslaught began with an article, written by
O'Connor, in July 1840, denouncing the refusal of the
London Radicals; to take part in the Manchester delegate
meeting, a refusal, dictated partly by lack of funds, which
was afterwards rescinded. The worst enemies of the suffer-
ing multitudes, says O'Connor, are the better-paid members
of their own order. " Of all parts of the kingdom the masses
have least to expect from the leaders of popular opinion
in the Metropolis. The fustian jackets, the unshorn chins,
and the bhstered hands are as good there as here, but the
mouthpieces which undertake to represent them appertain,
generally speaking, to an altogether difEerent class." ^ A
week later O'Connor tersely declared that " London is rotten."

1 Place CoUeotion, Hendon, vol. 65, p. 580.
2 Northern Star, July 4, 1840.

232 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

This particular article contains one of tlie earliest references
to tke Land Scheme of the future, a scheme which was more
ahen than ever to Lovett's Chartism. In this fashion was
O'Connor leading Chartism away from the original ideas of its
founders, among whom he could in no wise claim to be. Not
content with O'Brien's denunciation of the middle class, he
still further narrowed the appeal of Chartism by his denuncia-
tion of the higher ranks of the working class. The great
working-class party which Lovett conceived of, and still more
the possible co-operation of the more liberal of the middle
classes, became more and more impossible of realisation. The
truth was that for really intelligent working men O'Connor
had no appeal. Hence his dislike of London and his preference
for the factory and handloom-weaving areas.

These attacks upon Lovett provoked a reply from W. C
Burns, who averred with some asperity that " so long as
Feargus O'Connor connects himself with any agitation, the
object of which is to benefit the masses, that benefit wiU never
be enjoyed, and he does not wish they should enjoy it." ^

Soon afterwards Lovett's book Chartism appeared, and was
very loudly praised by the more sympathetic London press.
The Northern Star contented itself with sarcastic comments.*
When, however, in March 1841 the " Address of the National
Association to the PoUtical and Social Reformers of the United
Kingdom " was published, the storm of obloquy broke. This
Address was circulated throughout the Chartist world. It set
forth the objects of the National Association, as already
described in Chartism, and it was accompanied by a disserta-
tion in the true Lovett style.

In addressing you as fellow-labourers in the great cause of human
liberty, we would wish to rivet this great truth upon your mind :
you must become your own social and political regenerators or you
■will never enjoy freedom. For true liberty cannot be conferred by
Acts of Parliament or by decrees of princes, but must spring up
from the knowledge, morality, and pubUo virtue of our population.
... If therefore you woiild escape your present social and political
bondage and benefit your race, you must bestir yourselves and make
every sacrifice to build up the sacred temple of your own liberties, . . .

Tracing most of our social grievances to class legislation, we have
proposed a poUtioal reform upon the principles of the People's
Charter. . . . BeUeving it to have truth for its basis and the happiness
of all for its end, we conceive that it needs not the violence of passion,
the bitterness of party spirit, nor the arms of aggressive warfare

1 Northern Star, Jialy 18, 1840. « Ibid. October 3, 1840.

O'CONNOR'S BREACH WITH LOVETT 233

for its support : its principles need only to be unfolded to be
appreciated and being appreciated by the majority will be estab-
lished in peace.

But while we would implore you to direct your undivided
attention to the attainment of that just poUtical measure, we
would urge you to make your agitation in favour of it more ef&oient
and productive of social benefit than it has been hitherto. We
have wasted glorious means of usefulness in fooUsh displays and
gaudy trappings, seeking to captivate the sense rather than inform
the mind, and apeing the proceedings of a tinselled and corrupt
aristocracy rather than aspiring to the mental and moral dignity
of a pure democracy. Our public meetings have on too many
occasions been arenas of passionate invective, party spirit, and
personal idolatry . . . rather than schools for the advancement
of our glorious cause by the dissemination of facts and the inculca-
tion of principles.*

TMs last paragraph is in every way worthy of attention. It
is a splendid utterance of an idealist of democracy. Nor is its
praise of " the mental and moral dignity of a pure democracy
more remarkable than the attitude Lovett betrays towards
agitation. It is the agitation itself, not the attainment of the
Charter, which will bring freedom. But this agitation must
be far difierent from that which has hitherto been conducted ;
it must be based upon education, self-sacrifice, self-activity,
not upon wild talk of insurrection, arms, and violence, leading
to cowardly desertions and imprisonments. In Lovett's mind
the Charter has ceased to be a bill to be introduced into
Parliament, but has become a democratic ideal which will
realise itself through the strivings of the people for self-
culture. Chartism is the organisation of an enlightened
people ; with class-war, land schemes, conventions, petitions,
and Parliaments it has simply nothing to do. It is in the
hearts and minds of the people, which, when they are properly
attuned one to the other, will produce the mighty song of
freedom.

On April 17 there appeared the Northern Star's reply to
this address. It took umbrage at the references to " gaudy
trappings," and made the inevitable reply "as to personal
idolatry, we shall only add in addition to what has already been
said ' sour grapes.' " It denounced the notion of forming a
separate association. Were the " six " who were responsible
for the new Association more entitled to public confidence
than the Executive of the National Charter Association 1

1 Place ColleotioB, Hendon, vol. 55, pages following 710 not Indexed.

234 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Was tlie London move not in fact a scheme of O'Connell, Roe-
buck, and Hume to split the Chartist body and gain over a
part to Household Suffrage ? Had not Roebuck pronounced
the National Charter Association illegal ?

O'Connor through his deputy, Hill,^ now proceeded to pour
scorn upon Lovett's educational scheme.

Will some good fellow furnish ua next week with an appropriate
dialogue between one of the architects laying the foundation stone
of the first HaU — ^the new Temple of Liberty — and a handloom
weaver with nine children awaiting its completion as a means of
relief ?

How would O'Connor use the quarter of a million annually
raised under the scheme ? He would subsidise a hundred
" independent " members of Parliament at £1500 a year each ;
a Parliamentary committee at £1750 a year ; one hundred mis-
sionaries at one hundred pounds a year each ; and a balance
of £74,730 would still be available for other purposes.

Now what would our friends think of such an appropriation
clause, the enactment of which would, we fancy, put us in leas than
two years in joint possession of aU the Town Halls, Science HaUa,
Union HaUa, Normal and Industrial Schools, Libraries, Parka
Pleasure Grounda, PubUc Baths, Buildings and Places of Amuse-
ment in the kingdom, ready built, fumiahed, stocked, and raised
to our handa ?

The writer of the article alleged that it would be perfectly
easy to buy dozens of members of Parliament at the price
offered. This from an enemy of " corrupt " legislation !

HiQ wrote the article, he teUs us, with great pain. It was
evident that those who had signed their names to the docu-
ment had been deceived, and he adjured these misguided friends
to confess their error and " manfully to ask pardon." " But
should it be otherwise and should the sword be drawn, why
then, we throw away the scabbard." ^

This is a fair sample of this journal's controversial style.
The generally low tone, allegations of treachery, sowing of sus-
picion, bludgeon-hke satire, and the mixture of cozening and
threats are thoroughly typical. It was unfortunately all too
effective. The very next week a number of letters and resolu-
tions appeared in the Northern Star from various persons and
societies begging pardon, or echoing the Sta/r's denunciations.
Lovett had certainly not erred on the side of tact in his method

1 The Trowbridge Chartists attributed this to Hill.
2 Northern Star, April ir, 1841.

O'CONNOE'S BREACH WITH LOVETT 235

of propagating his new scheme. He sent copies of his address
to various Chartist leaders in person, selecting of course those
likely to be favourable or those whom he knew. They were
requested to sign if they approved and return it to Lovett,
who thereupon published the address with their signatures
under the title of the National Association. Thus many
members of the National Charter Association found them-
selves approving of another body which was now pronounced
to be a secret Whig-Eadical dodge to smash the Chartist body.
But even though Lovett had been a little sharp in his dealings,
the tone of some of the recantations was sufficiently disgusting.
They were collectively described by the Star as " rats escaping
from the trap," and the National Association became the
" new move." The " new move " was described as " the
selfish and humbugging scheme of Lovett and Co." who were
" a Malthusian clique," " milk-and-water patriots " into whose
eyes gold-dust had been thrown. One resolution spoke of the
" base, cowardly, and unjustifiable conduct of the unprincipled
leaders of the new move in their continued efforts to heap
odium and discredit upon that tried man of principle and un-
ceasing advocate of the people's rights, Feargus O'Connor,
Esq." Leach at Manchester solemnly burned a presentation
portrait of Collins. In towns where one single Chartist had
signed the document the whole body of Chartists there hastened
to dissociate themselves from him and it, as if from a fatal
contagion. Some who recanted explained that they had never
read the document but took the signatures as a sufficient
guarantee. M'Crae, Craig's successor in Ayrshire, begged his
country to forgive him for signing. George Rogers, the bold
tobacconist of 1839, actually alleged that his signature was
used without his consent, and the Northern Sta/r hinted that
there might be others similarly deceived. A very curious
sample of recantation is furnished by the Trowbridge Chartists,
once the favourite henchmen of Vincent and his physical force
notions. After sending to the paper a very temperate renion-
strance on the subject of its invective and mischief-making,
they nullified this by sending a letter immediately afterwards,
in which they withdrew all their charges and roundly de-
nounced Lovett's scheme as a Whig plot. It would be interest-
ing to know what wires were pulled to produce these contra-
dictory results.! Week after week the campaign went on.
The more the respectable newspapers praised Lovett's address,

1 Northern Star, May 1, 1841.

236 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

the more the Northern Star denounced it. It was " a new
mode of canvassing for support for Mechanics' Institutes, and
the Brougham system of making one portion of the working
classes disgusted with all below them." ^ Lovett rephed to
these attacks, but in the nature of things his arguments could
have little efiect.^ Not all those who signed the address were
cowardly enough to desert. Vincent and Philp claimed to be
at once members of the National Association and of the
National Charter Association. They were powerful in the
Bath area, and special measures had to be taken by O'Connor
and his followers to ehminate them. Vincent boldly defended
his position, while Cleave, Hetherington, and Neesom engaged
in fierce controversy with O'Connor and Rider.* It must
be confessed, however, that the victory rested with the large
battalions. Lovett found no general support amongst the
Chartist ranks. He was compelled more and more to seek
middle-class support, and outside London he gained few ad-
herents.* His Association became a society of political and
educational virtuosi. It was among other things an avowed
supporter of the enfranchisement of women, a pohcy which
alone sufficed to put it out of the pale of practical pohtics.
So the leaven of ideahsm was ejected from the Chartist mass.

(2) The Elimination of O'Beien (1841-1842)

O'Brien was also to be eUminated. For years he had been
regarded as the friend and mentor of Feargus O'Connor, who
had bestowed upon him the title by which he became honour-
ably remembered, " the Chartist Schoolmaster." His articles
in the Northern Sta/r during 1838 had done not a little both for
Chartist theory and for the reputation of that journal. In
the Convention of 1839 O'Brien and O'Connor were generally
faithful allies, but it is probable that the seeds of disagreement
were already sown. O'Brien seems to have been as devoid
of business acumen as O'Connor was rich in it. None of his
independent journalistic ventures were successes. His personal
habits seem to have been very irregular. He was a somewhat
cranky, uncertain-tempered individual, impatient of restraint —
in short, a man whose intellectual genius was crippled by im-

1 NoHhem Star, April 24, 1841. « Ibtd. May 1, 1841.

8 IMd. May 1, 1841 ; May 8, 1841. Neeeom loat all Ma bookeelllng
business on accovmt ol his support of Lovett.

* The Christian Ghartlsts were on his side, but they did not count for
much. O'Neill and Lowery signed the Address.

THE ELIMINATION OF O'BEIEN 237

favourable ciicumstances, and whose temper was fretted by
troubles which ensued from instability of wiU and conduct. He
was reckless always, especially in money-afiairs, inclined to fits
of moroseness, occasionally gloomy and splenetic, a difficult
character indeed. Financial difficulties seem to have put him
into O'Connor's hands,^ a situation which O'Brien's temper
could iU brook. O'Brien further conceived that O'Connor had
behaved treacherously to him on the occasion of his trial in
April 1840.2 j^qj. eighteen months O'Brien was incarcerated
at Lancaster. Towards the end of his imprisonment he was
able to contribute to the pages of the Star, so that the breach
was by no means complete. The newspaper had every reason
to desire a continuation of the connection with so able a writer,
and one upon whose authority its anti-middle-class teaching
was largely based. In April 1841 an article appeared which
showed that O'Brien's views on this point were undergoing
a significant change.* He put forward the thesis that the
enormous political power of the middle class is as nothing
compared with their social power. In fact political power is a
consequence of the social power, which is derived from wealth,
position, and social functions. Clearly O'Brien was turning
his former teaching upside down.* He had hitherto taught
that the power of legislation was the basis of social power, and
the instrument of social improvement.

This reversal was too sudden for O'Brien himself, and he
began to hedge a Httle. He succeeded after all in coming to
the conclusion that the middle class was stiU the most implac-
able enemy of the working class, but he was clearly wobbling.
The statement that the Reform Act of 1832 was a consequence
of the social influence of the middle class, paved the way for the
co-operation with part of that class, a policy which O'Brien
advocated in 1842, as a means of gaining another and greater
Eeform Act.

Thus O'Brien, like Lovett, was drifting from the old Chart-
ist moorings now occupied by the National Charter Association.
In the summer of 1841 came the General Election which re-
turned Peel to power and began the great financial revolution
which ended in the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The Chartists
were much agitated by the question as to what pohcy they
ought to pursue in the party conflict. Some time previously

1 Nofihem Star, May 30, 1840, case of Mrs. O'Brien and the SoutJiem Star,

2 Gammage, 1854, p. 270. * Northern Star, April 17, 1841.

* O'Brien recanted somewhat of this argument later in the same year
(Northern Star, November 20, 1841) at Whiteohapel.

238 THE CHAETI8T MOVEMENT

tiey had endorsed the suggestion of O'Brien that Chartists
should help neither party, but that Chartist candidates should
be put forward at each nomination and carried at the hustings
on the show of hands. But on May 29 and June 19, 1841,
O'Connor came along with the advice to Chartists to support
the Tories rather than the Whigs in the actual polling. On
this O'Brien joined issue with his wonted vehemence. Unless,
he said, fifty real Chartists are elected to the House of Commons
or two or three hundred, elected by show of hands, are sum-
moned to a great national council, there would be a bloody
revolution. Such a council would be a means of rescuing the,
people from desperate courses. How, it is not clear. O'Brien
denounced O'Connor's advice to vote Tory as madness. It
would mean the annihilation of Chartism if the Tories were
returned. '^ He further objected to O'Connor's habit of assum-
ing to speak for the whole Chartist body, and of regarding his
(O'Brien's) views as those of an individual.^ He said that
O'Connor's paper ought to have been moving in the election
campaign three months before, instead of coming with its
Chartist-Toryism at the last moment. O'Connor replied that
he was advocating election plans as early as 1835 and referred
to an article of September 1839 on the subject. He defended
his advice. If, he said, the Whigs were re-elected they would
have another seven years in which to exercise their callousness.
The Tories were bound to be weaker than the Whigs, so that
the latter would not be badly defeated, but adversity would
tame them into accepting the alliance of the Chartists in
future. O'Brien replied that O'Connor had favoured Mm with
eight columns, when half a column would have said enough
to show him that O'Connor would never convince him that it
was right for Chartists to vote Tory.' In controversy O'Brien
was more than a match for his opponent.

In the ensuing election, neither O'Connor nor O'Brien seems
to have carried the day with the Chartists. Certainly the
Tories won, and it is possible that Anti-Poor Law f eeUng, which
was at the bottom of a good deal of Chartism, induced many
Chartists to go with the Tories. It certainly was so at Leicester,
as Cooper relates. So far O'Connor's advice was the feeling
of a great part of the Chartists. The Salford Chartists on the
other hand, after careful consideration, decided to support
Brotherton, a prominent Anti-Corn Law man,* who, perhaps

1 Northern Star, June 19, 1841. ^ Ibid. June 26, 1841.

3 IMd. July 3, 1841. « Ibid. July 10, 1841.

THE ELIMINATION OF O'BRIEN 239

ttrougli their support, secured his election. It is clear that
cross-currents of opinion were already influencing Chartist
policy. At Northampton the intervention of MacDouall,
who went to the poll, actually prevented the return of a Tory.^

O'Brien himself stood for Newcastle-on-Tyne. His election
address is perhaps the first ever written in a prison. It is
worth quoting. The candidate calls himself a " Conservative
Radical Reformer in the just and obvious meaning of the
words." He advocates unqualified obedience to the laws even
where they are bad and vicious, so long as the people have an
opportunity of altering them in accordance with the will of the
majority. He stands for the inviolability of aU property, both
public and private, but amongst public property he includes
church rates, public endowments, and unappropriated colonial
lands which the aristocracy are appropriating just as they
seized the land of this country. He also considers that the
State has a right to interfere with private property where the
pubhc weal is at stake, but compensation ought to be given
in just measure. He will oppose all monopolies, whether of
wealth, power, or knowledge. He will therefore oppose the
Bank of England monopoly and take away from the other
banks the right to issue notes. A really National Bank under
public control would be substituted if he had his way. He
will equally oppose all restrictions upon trade, commerce, and
industry, especially the Corn Laws, which, with the concen-
tration of landed property through enclosure, are the chief
causes of the present distress. He will vote for total and
immediate repeal^ provided that there is an equitable readjust-
ment of public and private obligations in accordance with the
increased purchasing power of money. He will demand the
abolition of all further restrictions upon the Press, the disestab-
lishment and disendowment of the Church of England, the
adoption of a system of direct taxation of property, the
reduction of indirect taxation, and the exclusion of placemen
of every description from the House of Commons.^

With the exception of a few words this address might have
been written by Cobbett. It was a good and sensible docu-
ment, but it was scarcely a distinctively Chartist pronounce-
ment at all. It only had one reference to the Charter, for
O'Brien no doubt wanted to appeal to a wider public than the
Chartists of Newcastle. Not many election addresses, issued

1 FiBures were : Whig, 981 ; WUg, 970 ; Tory, 884 : MaoDouaU, 170
(Northern Star, Jvdy 3, 1841). ' Northern Star, July 10, 1841.

240 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

in that election, one ventures to think, contained as much
good sense as the one composed in Lancaster Gaol. It shows,
however, how much O'Brien was drifting from the somewhat
Ishmaelite standpoint of O'Connorite Chartism.

The Newcastle Election gave rise to a curious legal point.
O'Brien and two other candidates stood for two seats. Though
absent, O'Brien carried the day on the show of hands ; he did
not go to the poU, and the other two were declared elected.
O'Brien's committee decided to petition on the ground that
the two had been elected neither by show of hands nor by
the poU. Counsel actually thought O'Brien was the person
elected, though, of course, he had not the requisite financial
quaUfication. The cost of petitioning was, however, prohibitive
and no further steps were taken.^ It stirs the imagination to
think of O'Brien in the Corn Law debates. How he would
have laid about him I

O'Brien was to be released in October 1841. His popularity
was stiU great in the Chartist world, and a movement was at
once set on foot to give him a great ovation, and to raise a
fund to enable him to start a newspaper.^ He refused the
demonstrations ; they would cost money ; working men
would lose employment and wages by attending. Let Chart-
ists give O'Connor an expensive ovation if they Hked.* The
" press fund," however, went on with the result that O'Brien
became part owner and editor of the British Statesman,* a
Eadical weekly which started in March 1842. The Statesman
was at first largely an Anti-Corn Law journal, but O'Brien
gave it a somewhat different complexion. It was never a
Chartist paper in the O'Connorite sense. Like all the rest of
O'Brien's ventures, it died an untimely death. In the latter
months of 1841 O'Brien was still very active as lecturer and
agitator, but in the early part of 1842 events occurred which
brought to a head the various enmities and rivalries which
the policy or person of O'Connor had aroused.

(3) The Complete Suffrage Movement (1842)

In 1842 the focus of Chartist interest once more shifted to
Birmingham, which, since the riots of July 1839 had not
figured very prominently in Chartist afEairs. The Chartists of
that town were divided in allegiance between Arthur O'Neill

1 Northern Star, July 31, 1841 ; August 14, 1841 ; Augrust 7, 1841.

2 Ibid. October 9, 1841 ; October 16, 1841.

3 Ibid. August 14, 1841. * Ibid. July 16, 1842.

THE COMPLETE SXIFFEAGE MOVEMENT 241

and the official leaders, like George White, a Northern Sta/r
reporter, and John Mason, whose eloquence had helped to
convert Cooper at Leicester. The old Birmingham Political
Union was of course dead and buried in obUvion. A " Bir-
mingham Association for Promoting the General Welfare,"
with T. C. Salt for a chairman, was in existence in October
1841, but no more seems to be known about it than the notice
recorded by Place.^ In 1842, however, Birmingham was the
centre of a movemept which at first bade fair to carry Chartist
or Eadical principles into regions which O'Connor never
knew, a movement in fact which carried no less a person than
Herbert Spencer in its train.

This was the Complete Sufirage Movement. It was a kind
of middle-class Chartism. There are two distinct aspects to
Chartism as generally conceived down to 1840, and as conceived
after that date by the National Charter Association. On the
one hand, it is an agitation for the traditional Eadical Pro-
gramme ; on the other, it is a violent and vehement protest
from men, rendered desperate by poverty and brutalised by
excessive labour, ignorance, and foul surroundings, against
the situation in life in which they found themselves placed.
This protesting attitude had been brought, by the teachings
of leaders and the prosecutions of authority, to a pitch
of bitterness hardly now conceivable. In this_second aspect
alone was Chartism an exclusively working-class affair, and
in this respect alone could there be no middle-class Chart-
ism, for such a thing would be a contradiction in terms. At
the same time there was nothing to prevent middle-class
people from supporting the principles of the Charter (which
had successively been favoured by every social class from the
Duke of Eichmond to Eichard Pilling, cotton operative), or
to prevent them from sympathising, in the name of humanity,
with the sufierings of the working folk. Such middle-class
sympathisers, however, found it difficult, in the year of grace
1842, to give their opinions practical expression. They found
the field of political and social reform agitations more than
comfortably occupied. On the radical side there were the Anti-
Corn Law League and the various Chartist organisations ;
on the conservative side Factory Legislation and Eepeal of
the Poor Law of 1834 were still the stand-by of social reformers.
For Eadicals the claims of the League or of Chartism were
naturally paramount, but between the two there was a great

1 Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 315

B

242 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

gulf fixed. However mucli they sympathised with Chartism,
middle-class leaders could scarcely hope to find any great
following amongst their own class for the Chartist programme.
Preoccupation with Free Trade, the class-war teachings of
some Chartists, and the futile excuses of others, prevented
that. Nor could middle-class leaders find a place within the
National Charter Association. The predomifiance of O'Connor
prevented that, except they were prepared to occupy a very
subordinate position.

The Complete Suffrage Movement was a well-meant, ill-
conceived, but not whoUy unsuccessful attempt to solve this
difficulty. Its author was Joseph Sturge (1793-1859), a
Quaker corn-miller and alderman of Birminghamj a zealous and
prominent anti-slavery advocate, and now an adherent of the
Free Trade Movement. Sturge was a typical Quaker, honest,
upright, and benevolent. Prosperity in business had not
blinded his eyes to the distress and poverty of thousands of his
f eUow-citizens, and it was this which moved him along the path
of political agitation.^ Sturge was hardly a deep-thinking
man and, being a little pig-headed and hasty-tempered, had
few special gifts for dealing with men more addicted than he
to disputations and contentions. Eectitude and sympathy
were his qualifications for leadership, and though they carried
him far, it was not far enough.

Sturge, like many other Quakers and Radicals, had taken a
part in the work of the Anti-Corn Law League, but he had
apparently come to the conclusion that the Eepeal of the Corn
Laws could never be attained, " except by first securing to the
people, a full, fair, and free representation in the British House
of Commons." ^ He had also, as a true Quaker, been much
disturbed by the growing alienation between the middle and
the working classes, which he traced, hke the Chartists, to the
evils of class legislation. !!t)uring 1841 he published in the
Nonconformist, which periodical became the organ of the
Complete Suffrage Movement, a series of articles afterwards
reissued under the title " Reconciliation between the Middle
and Working Classes." This reconciliation was to be accom-
plished by a combined agitation for " fuU, fair, and free "
representation of the people in Parliament. In recommend-
ing the " Reconciliation " to his readers Sturge writes :' " The

1 Sturge visited the West Indies and America In the cause ol Abolition
(Brief Sketches of the Birmingham Conference, published by Cleave, 1842).

2 Letter to Chairman of A.C.L. Conference, Sun, July 28, 1842.

THE COMPLETE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT 243

Patriot and tie Christian fail in the discharge of their duty,
if they do not by all peaceable and legitimate means strive to
remove the enormous evil of class legislation. ... I earnestly
recommend these conclusions to the candid and impartial
consideration of those who wish to be guided in their political
as well as religious conduct by the precepts of the Gospel." ^
Sturge's political ideas were, therefore; very much Uke the
Christian Chartism which flourished at Birmingham. He
entirely adopted the Chartist point of view with regard to the
Free Trade agitation. Though many other middle-class people
adopted the class-legislation theory, they did not apply it in
the same way as Sturge did.

The Complete Suffrage Movement originated at an Anti-
Corn Law Convention, held in Manchester on November 17,
1841. The delegates had met and the main business of the
Convention was over, when Sturge commenced an informal
talk about the " essentially unsound condition of our present
parliamentary representation." The other delegates expressed
their agreement with these sentiments, and requested Sturge
and Sharman Crawford, M.P., to draw up some sort of a
manifesto on the subject. This was done, and a number of the
delegates, including a majority of the Manchester Council of
the Anti-Corn Law League, put their signatures to the docu-
ment, which became widely known as the " Sturge Declara-
tion." In December the Declaration was printed and cir-
culated, mainly amongst middle-class Radicals, and in January
1842 a number of the Birmingham signatories united under
the name of the Birmingham Complete Suffrage Union. This
body, following the lines laid down by Sturge in the " Recon-
ciliation," decided to appeal to the industrious classes. This
was done by circulating the Declaration and inviting signa-
tures from those who approved. The Declaration reads thus :

Deeply impressed with the conviction of the evils arising from
class legislation and of the sufferings thereby inflicted upon our
industrious fellow subjects, the undersigned affirm that a large
majority of the people of this country are unjustly excluded from
that fuU, fair and free exercise of the elective franchise to which
they are entitled by the great principle of Christian equity and also
by the British Constitution, for no subject of England can be
constrained to pay any aids or taxes, even for the defence of the
realm or the support of the Government, but such as are imposed
by his own consent or that of his representatives in Parliament." ^

1 BeameUiatum, Introduction. ^ Quotation fromlBlaokatone.

244: THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Signatories were also asked to express their approval of a
motion upon tte subject to be introduced into the House of
Commons by Sbarman Crawford. Approval of the Declaration
carried the right to be invited, either in person or by delegacy to
a Conference at Birmingham where the question of future
proceedings was to be discussed.'-

Such was the origin of the Complete Sufirage Movement.
It progressed rapidly for it had very influential support,
especiaUy from philanthropicaUy disposed men like Sturge
himself. Benevolence and peace-making were in fact the
chief motives which drove Sturge into the agitation, and the
character which he gave to the movement attracted ministers
of rehgion, especially those of the Dissenting Churches. The
newly founded Nonconformist,^ ably edited by Edward Miall,
became the organ of the movement. Josiah Child of Bungay,
a clerical rebel of some note, Scottish theologians hke John
Eitchie and James Adam, Unitarian ministers like James
Mills of Oldham, Quakers like John Bright and others, betray
the Radical Nonconformity which was at the bottom of a
great deal of English poHtical agitation. Even the Anghcan
clergy who sympathised with the movement, such as the Rev.
Thomas Spencer, incumbent of Hinton Charterhouse, near
Bath, uncle of Herbert Spencer, the Synthetic Philosopher,*
and the advanced Radical, Dr. Wade, vicar of Warwick, with
whom we have made acquaintance already, had very much of
the Nonconformist in them. Complete Sufirage Unions were
rapidly started in every important town, and by the end of
March 1842 some fifty or sixty Were in course of formation ;
places as far apart as Aberdeen and Plymouth being included
in the list.*

What the connection between the Free Traders and the
Complete SuSrage Movement exactly was, is difficult to say.
Certainly between the League and the Sturge unions there was
no connection of an official kind. Nor was the Sturge move-
ment an outgrowth of the Free Trade agitation ; it had an
independent origin in the mixture of philanthropy and Radical
theory which was not uncommon in those days. Sturge himself
was of opinion that the Free Trade movement was likely to be

1 For all preceding see Btpart of Proceedings of the Middle and Working
Classes at Birmingham, April 5, 1842, and Following Days, London, 1842,
pp. lil. et seq. ^ Sturge was one of the founders.

1 Herbert Spencer, then a youth of twenty -two, who had been taught
by his uncle at Hinton Charterhouse, took some part in the Complete
Suffrage agitation, being honorary secretary of the Derby branch. See also
later, p. 264. * Report of Proceedings, etc., p. 6.

THE COMPLETE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT 245

futile in view of tke existing state of Parliamentary representa-
tion, but there is little or no evidence ttat Ms middle-class
followers shared this view. The Complete Sufirage Movement
did receive the support of large numbers of Corn Law Repealers,
and even of men actively engaged in the work of the League —
men like John Bright, Charles Cobden,^ Archibald Prentice,
ex-Chartist and later historian of the League, and Francis
Place, who placed his vast stores of political wisdom at the
disposal of Free Traders and Sturgeites alike. These men were
aU Radicals and supported Sturge because they were Radicals,
though it is not too much to suppose that many of the rank
and file of the Free Traders were not sorry to have a kind of
second string in the Radical movement initiated by Sturge.
The Complete Sufirage leaders acted totally independently of
the Free Trade movement, and if they sought support, they
sought it on the common basis of radical befiefs. When they
began to recruit working-class support, it was on the same
basis. In short, the Complete Sufirage Movement was an
honest attempt to organise a single Radical body without
distinction of class or interest. The suspicions of the Chart-
ists that it was a dodge of the League to draw off support
from Chartism were quite unfounded.

The appeal of the Complete Sufirage Union to the working
classes was answered almost exclusively by those Chartists
who, for various reasons, were at loggerheads with O'Connor
and his friends. Lovett saw in the Declaration an oppor-
tunity for that co-operation of all classes which he so much
desired, and he no doubt looked forward to a revival of the
agitation for the Charter upon the ideaUstic lines laid down
in Chartism. O'Brien also began to sympathise with the
Sturge movement, but his motives are less easy to discover ;
pique and a growing personal dislike for O'Coimor were prob-
ably the chief. O'Brien could not stand the patronage of one
so inferior to himself. He found allies in the Bath Chartists,
and their exceptionally able leaders, R. K. Philp, Henry
Vincent, and W. P. Roberts, aU of whom were rapidly falling
away from their allegiance to the National Charter Association,
no doubt for the same reason which made it impossible for any
man of independence and spirit to tolerate for long the yoke
of O'Connor. The Christian Chartists, to whom Sturge and
his pietist ways appealed strongly, rallied round the new
movement. Arthur O'Neill, John Collins, Robert Lowery,
1 Brother of Richard.

246 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

R. J. Ricliardson, and Patrick Brewster, a bitter opponent of
O'Connor, fell into line with Lovett, Vincent, O'Brien, and
Collins. Thus the Sturge movement was rapidly becoming a
rallying-ground for aU the ablest anti-O'Connorite Chartists.
A goodly proportion of the moral force leaders of the 1839
Convention were now arrayed under the_banner of " Reconcilia-
tion." The forthcoming Conference was likely much more
to resemble a great Chartist Convention than any of the
assemblies which the National Charter Association could
muster.

This was a prospect which O'Connor and his followers coidd
hardly face with equanimity, and a strenuous counter-campaign
was at once organised. The first steps were taken against those
members of the National Charter Association who were sus-
pected of sympathising with the rival movement. Of these
R. K. Philp and James Williams of Sunderland were the chief.
Philp was actually a member of the Executive and WiQiams
was a very able and influential leader in his district. The
attack on Philp was carried on with imparalleled virulence.
His speeches were falsified, resolutions garbled, letters of de-
nunciation were printed, and letters of defence suppressed,
in the pages of the Northern Star. No efiort was spared to
make Philp appear a traitor and a schismatic, and all the
arrangements which a well-devised Tammany system could
invent were put into operation, with a view to securing his rejec-
tion at the next election of the Executive.^ Philp, however,
was scarcely happy in his defence. He said he had only signed
the Declaration so as to have an opportunity of persuading
the Complete Su&age leaders to accept the Charter — an
explanation which was scarcely satisfactory to either side.
The excommunication of Philp brought about a great schism
in the Bath district, and the Chartists of Wootton-under-Edge
actually elected O'Brien to sit in the coming Conference at
Birmingham. In Sunderland Williams showed fight and dis-
regarded O'Connor's threats. He declared that he had signed
the Declaration because he approved of its vindication of the
people's right to the franchise. If O'Connor wanted to de-
nounce him, Williams was ready to take up his chaUenge.**

The next step was to attack the Sturge movement in set
terms. It was a dodge of the Anti-Corn Law League, and the
Chartist cause was doomed to be lost if it was in any manner

1 R. K. PMp, Vindication of his Political Conduct, 1842. I am boimd
to say that I believe Philp with some little reBerration.

2 Northern Star, April 9, 1842. PhUp, Vindication, etc

THE COMPLETE SUFPKAGE MOVEMENT 247

mixed up with that of the League.^ Complete Sufirage was
denounced because it apparently did not involve the other
five "points" of the Eadical Programme,^ and a comparison
was drawn between the " Charter Sufirage " and Complete
Sufirage.

The Charter Suffrage would not rob any man while it would
protect and enrich all: while Complete Suffrage would merely
tantalise you with the possession of a thing you could not use,
and would entirely prostrate labour to capital and speculation.
The Charter Suffrage would, firstly, more than treble our production
now locked up, restricted, and narrowed, while it would cause a
more equitable distribution of the increased production. Complete
Suffrage would not increase the production wmle it would monopoUse
all that was produced. Repeal of the Com Laws without the
Charter would make one great hell of England, and would only
benefit steam producers, merchants, and bankers without giving
the slightest impetus to any trade, save the trade of slavery, while
it would from the consequent improvement and multipUcation of
machinery,' break every shopkeeper and starve one half of our
population. On the other hand the Charter would in hss than
six months from the date of its enactment, call forth all the industry,
energy, and power of every class in the State.*

This was followed by an article from O'Connor who de-
nounced Complete Sufirage as " Complete Humbug," and said
that Sturge, being a banker and corn-merchant, was striving,
for interested reasons, to draw Chartists into the Anti-Corn
Law Movement.^ Nothing could have been more unjust or
untrue than this charge.

Meanwhile the plans for the Conference at Birmingham
were being elaborated, and it was fixed for April 5 and the
following days. O'Connor thereupon ordered a meeting of
delegates and others at the same place and on the same days.
Every delegate was to bring with him as much money as his
constituents could coUect.* The delegates were apparently to
sit as long as the money lasted.

Thus on April 5, 1842, two rival conferences met at Birming-
ham. The Complete Sufirage Conference consisted of 103
members. The majority of these were representatives of the
middle-class supporters of the movement, but the workers were
represented by Vincent, Lovett, O'Brien, Neesom, John ColUns,

1 Northern Star, March 12, 1842. j ^ a.« .,oi„™

2 These suspicions were not at first unfounded. See Delow.

3 For trade wMch is not improving 1

4 Northern Star, March 26, 1842.

6 jj^. * TInd. April 2, 1842.

248 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

James Mills, Robert Lowery, E. J. Eichardson, and Dr. Wade,
all ex-members of the 1839 Convention. Besides Vincent,
the Bath Chartists had a champion in the Eev. Thomas
Spencer. MiaU, Bright, and Prentice were present. The
National Association was represented also by J. H. Parry, a
barrister of great ability and a pungent controversialist.

The proceedings commenced with the usual formalities.
Sturge was elected to the Chair. A committee was appointed
to examine the credentials of delegates. Parry and Vincent
were on this committee, which rejected the credentials of
several adherents of O'Connor who tried to obtain admission.^
Five avowed, but apparently not extremist, members of the
National Charter Association were actually admitted. How
they came to escape the censure and earn the adulation of
O'Connor is a mystery, but such was the fact. Various other
formalities were despatched, and the real proceedings coifi-
menced with the presentation of the report of the Birmingham
Complete Sufirage Union.

The important proceedings took a rather significant course.
Down to the Conference, no specific statement of the nature of
the political programme involved in Complete Sufirage had
ever been issued. It is very probable, judging from the dis-
cussions in the Conference, that the originators of the move-
ment were not prepared to adopt as complete a scheme as the
Chartists. Some " modified Charter " was probably what
they had in view. The Chartists present had evidently come
with the express intention of moving the adoption of the
Charter in toto, and they placed a motion to that effect, in
Lovett's name, upon the order paper. So far Philp's declara-
tion was supported by fact. The result was surprising. One
after another the six points of Chartism were carried. All
attempts to cut away anything from the abstract completeness
of the Eadical Programme failed. The original resolution,
making representation coextensive with taxation, was aban-
doned in favour of one basing the franchise on natural, original,
or inherent right. A resolution in favour of freedom of elec-
tions was displaced in favour of an explicit demand for the
ballot. Bright's preference for Triennial Parhaments was
shared by a small minority only of the delegates. There was
an inordinate passion for unanimity until the delegates found
themselves committed to the Charter in all except name and
associations. Sturge was by no means pleased with the result

1 Northern Star, April 16, 1842.

THE COMPLETE SUPFEAGE MOVEMENT 249

of the discussions. He thought the first four points carried
ought to be sufficient/ but he hoped for the best. He dis-
liked the Charter because of its association with violence and
terrorism. Nevertheless Lovett brought forward his motion
in favour of the adoption of the Charter. It merely pledged
the Complete Suffrage leaders to call a second Conference, in
which there would be more working-class delegates, at which
the Charter would at least be taken into consideration. He
made a good speech, urging that the adoption of the Charter
would be a guarantee of sincerity, and would enlist on their
side the support of the millions. Edward MiaU seconded the
motion, though he spoke very strongly against the unwisdom
of the Chartists in pressing their claims so far. O'Brien
violently declared himself on the side of Lovett, and the debate
was long and excited. During the evening session Lovett and
his Chartist colleagues agreed to abandon the exclusive claims
of the Charter, and merely insisted that it should be considered
along with other similar documents. It is clear that much
feeling was aroused by the victory of the extremists, and very
great distaste was expressed of the Charter and its associa-
tions. Many delegates thought that, having conceded the
contents, they might reasonably refuse the name; the Chartists,
on the other hand, thought it silly to strain at that gnat after
having swallowed the camel. However, the amended resolu-
tion was carried unanimously.

The conflict was thus put ofi tiU a future date. The
Chartists truly had reason on their side. They were men
who had done honour to the Chartist creed, and who had
Uttle or no part in the evil associations attached to the name.
They were proud of their exertions in the cause, and their
sacrifices had brought them honour and influence amongst
their fellow-workmen. To surrender, the name, because
some had made it a by-word, was to them unthinkable,
for their purpose was to cleanse Chartism from its evil as-
sociations, a purpose which might be accomplished if their
middle-class friends would adopt the name. These, on the
other hand, had to consider whether they would achieve
more by making a fresh appeal to the Radicals of all classes,
or by adopting an older cry which was still potent. In short,
the problem was whether they would lose more middle-class
support than they would gain of working-class support, if they
adopted the Chartist programme. This conflict of sentiment

1 Omitting Annual Parliaments and payment of M.P.'s.

250 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

and policy was left to be decided later. Meanwiile the Chartist
were no doubt satisfied with their gains ; their principles had
been adopted and their Charter not rejected. With the people
of Birmingham they were still popular, for at the great public
meeting with which the Conference closed, Lovett, O'Brien,
Vincent, Mills, Richardson, Neesom, and Lowery were the
speakers. It was a Chartist meeting with Sturge in the chair,*
but all the speakers, O'Brien included, spoke in favour of union
with the middle classes in the great cause of political and social
regeneration.

Following the Conference the Complete Sufirage Petition
was drawn up. It was dated in good Quaker fashion on the
5th of the fourth month, and contained all the " six points "
now so famihar. But the struggle between the old Chartists
and the Complete Sufiragists had resulted in a final spUt
between them, and the O'Connorites pursued their independent
action for the whole Charter, regardless of the rival movement.
When the Suffrage Petition came before the House of Commons,
Sharman Crawford, member for Rochdale, moved on April
21 that the House should discuss in Committee the question
of the reform of the representative system. His motion was
of course rejected, the figures being 67 for and 226 against.
AU the Radicals and Free Traders voted for it.*

So matters stood in the Chartist world in the spring of 1842.
The National Charter Association, active and virulent, was still
organising its Petition and, like certain celestial bodies we read
of, giving off in its convulsions a,n ever-increasing ring of de-
tached fragments. The other Chartists were endeavouring
to gain a new support in the Complete Sufirage Movement.
Popular Radicalism was organised into three distinct sections
under O'Connor, Lovett, and Sturge, and the outcome of the
triangular struggle was doubtful.

1 British Statesman, April 16, 1842. For the best report of the Con-
ference see Report of Proceedings, etc., above cited.
^ British Statesman, AprU 24, 1842.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NATIONAL PETITION OF 1842

In spite of tte diversions caused by Sturge, Lovett, O'Brien,
and its various other rivals, the National Charter Association
continued to push on its preparations for a great demonstra-
tion. What the strength of the Association exactly was is
diflB.cult to say. Duncombe, in presenting its Petition to the
House of Commons in May 184:2, said it had 100,000 members
who paid a penny a week to carry on the agitation.'^ Had this
been so, the National Charter Association would have been a
more powerful body than the Anti-Corn Law League itself, even
in its best days. No official of the Association claimed more than
half that number of members, and judging from the balance
sheets, published by the Executive, ordy a small percentage even
of the smaller number paid its pence with any regularity. So
low were the funds that the Executive could not find the
wherewithal to finance the Conference which was called to
counteract the Sturge Conference at Birmingham.^ Out of
401 " localities " 176 paid nothing to the central funds during
the quarter April-July 1842. Manchester was one of these.
The faUing-ofE of trade may account for this decline of the
finances, but carelessness and laxity were also complained of
by the Executive. In spite of this manifest disadvantage
(which drove MacDouall into the quack medicine trade ^) the
Association did not abate one jot of its activities. Lecturers
were hard at work ; new tracts, pamphlets, and small peri-
odicals saw the light. Cooper's Illuminator, Rushlight, and
Extinguisher, and Beesley's North Lancashire and Teetotal
Letter Bag,^ were some of the results of this newspaper
enterprise. Much of this activity was carried on with small

1 Hansard, 3rd ser. vol. Ixiii. p. 13.
2 Northern Star, April 11, 1842. 3 Hid. April 2, 1842.

■> Ibid. January 1, 1842.

251

252 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

resources, fickle support, and astonishing self-sacrifice, for,
as tie year 1842 wore on to the summer, the growth of
distress made propagandist work terribly difficult and trying.
It was so hard to restrain passion and preach patience in those
days. Lecturers had to go without their pay ; journals cir-
culated at a loss, but enthusiasm and hope were not yet ex-
tinguished. Strenuous were the efforts made to enlist the
support of the organised trades whose sympathies were Chartist,
but whose policy was more cautious. The decline of employ-
ment made these efiorts more hopeful as the weeks passed by.
MacDouaU was especially active in this branch of agitation,^
and Leach was endeavouring to persuade Manchester trade
unionists that Trade Unionism was a failure.^ O'Connor was
as energetic and ubiquitous as usual. He was bent on making
the Petition a great success : 4,000,000 signatures would be
hurled at the House of Commons, and make a way thither for
the people's true and democratic representatives.*

It had originally been intended that the Convention should
meet and the Petition be presented as early as possible after
Parliament reassembled in February 1842, but various causes
intervened to postpone these events for over two months. The
chief of these was the fact that the Scottish Chartists refused
to support the National Petition because it included a demand
for the Kepeal of the Union, and of the Poor Law Amendment
Act of 1834.* Later on they added a demand for the Repeal
of the Corn Laws, which was not included in the Petition.*
In January 1842 a Scottish delegate assembly decided, on the
casting vote of its chairman, to reject the Petition on these
grounds. O'Connor was present at the discussion and went
out of his way to praise the conduct of the delegates, who
decided to draw up a new petition. A week later his journal
poured scorn on the " morbid sensitiveness of a few thin-
skinned individuals" who had caused the rejection of the
Petition, regardless of the fact that they were the majority.
MacDouall followed with a more concifiatory remonstrance,
and finally O'Connor boxed the compass by a vigorous denun-
ciation of the majority which voted the National Petition down.*
Negotiations were opened up with the Scots, ^vho seem to
have come to terms, for they sent delegates to the Convention
which met on April 12, 1842, in London. Owing to lack of
fimds, it was only to sit for three weeks.

I Northern Star, May 14 and 21, 18i2. ^ Hyid. March 26, 1842.

s Itnd. November 13, 1841. « Ibid. November 27, 1841.

B Ibid. January 8, 1842. « Ibid. January 8, 15, 22, 1842.

THE NATIONAL PETITION OF 1842 253

Tke Convention met on the date appointed, but no business
was done until the 15th. It consisted of twenty-four members,
including Philp, O'Brien, W. P. Roberts, R. Lowery (now a
Scottish leader), all more or less under suspicion of being rebels
against O'Connor, and sympathisers with Sturge. Lowery,
Thomason, A. Duncan, M'Pherson, and Moir represented the
Scots. All the Executive members were present. O'Connor
was of course a delegate, and had a goodly " tail," including
George White, Pitkeithly, Bartlett, and others.

The first business was to arrange for the presentation of
the National Petition. Thomas S. Duncombe, member for
Finsbury, agreed to present it early in May, and Sharman
Crawford was therefore requested to put ofi his Complete
Suffrage motion, which was down for April 21, until a later
date. Crawford refused, and we have already heard how
summarily it was rejected. O'Connor took the opportunity
of this debate to say a few uncomplimentary words upon the
Sturge movement as a whole. The delegates, with a few note-
worthy exceptions, gave glowing accounts of the prosperity
of the cause in their several districts. The proceedings were
enlivened by somewhat lively exchanges between Philp and
Roberts on the one side and O'Connor and his friends on the
other. A few delegates, like Beesley and John Mason, gave
support to the rebels, and the bickering proceeded to such a
point that a formal discussion was opened by Thomason as to
the best means of allaying such discussions. A farcical recon-
ciliation took place between O'Brien and O'Connor, and the
fact was sealed by a motion, proposed by O'Connor and seconded
by O'Brien, urging all Chartists to abstain from private slander
and schism. Two whole days were thus occupied. The fact was
that the Convention had nothing to do, and it amused itself
by proposing resolutions about co-operation, teetotalism, and
various other more or less irrelevant matters, and then post-
poning them. One resolution which met this fate deserved it :

" To take into consideration the best means for protecting labour
against the influence of those employers who apply it to artificial
production, and for insuring to the working classes a supply of aU
the necessaries of life independent of foreign countries or mercantile
speculations."

Its author was O'Connor and its secret small holdings and
spade-husbandry.'- *

1 For aoooimts of these disouBSlons, Northern Star, April 23 and 30,
1842. British Statesman, April 24, 1842, May 1, 1842.

254 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

An Address of the old kind was drawn up and published by
the Convention. The usual resolution not to petition any
more was placed in the forefront, but it had lost its quondam
character of an ultimatum. It was interpreted to mean that
the existing House of Commons would not be petitioned again :
instead memorials and remonstrances would be employed.
A clause expressing sympathy and friendly feeHng towards
Unions and Associations professing similar opinions was
actually carried by the efiorts of the Scottish delegates, Philp's
friends, and one or two more orthodox O'Connorites, a fact
which indicates that O'Connor was not even now able to com-
mand the allegiance of all Chartists. O'Connor himself was
not present at the debate.

Meanwhile May was drawing near. The Petition itself
contained fourteen classes. It recited the usual theory of
democracy ; it described the various well-known anomahes of
representation, complained of bribery " which exists to an ex-
tent best known by your honourable house " ; it described the
grievous burdens of debt and taxes and the rigours of the Poor
Law ; it spoke feelingly of the great inequahty of riches
between those who produce and those " whose comparative
usefulness ought to be qliestioned," such as the Queen, the
Prince Consort, the KingW Hanover, and the Archbishop of
Canterbury. The quasi-anohtion of the right of public meet-
ing, the police force, the stajnding army, the state of the factory
and agricultural labourers, and the Church Establishment aU
found places in the catalogue of grievances. Then came the'
praises of the Charter, and the final demand " that your
Honourable House ... do immediately, without alteration,
deduction, or addition, pass into law the dociunent entitled
the People's Charter." It was indeed a tremendous and
comprehensive document.^

The arrival of the Petition at the House of Commons was in
keeping with its tremendous import. It had 3,317,702 signa-
tures, said the Northern Star. It was to be delivered at the
House of Commons on May 2. At very early hours of that
morning detachments of Chartists assembled in various parts of
London, and marched to the rendezvous in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
At noon the Petition arrived, mounted on a huge wooden frame,
on the front of which were painted the figures " 3,317,702 "
; above the legend " The Charter." At the back appeared the
same figures and " Liberty." On the sides were set forth the

1 Northern Star, October 16, 1841.

THE NATIONAL PETITION OF 1842 255

" six points " of the Charter. The Petition was just over sixf
miles long. The great bobbin-like frame was mounted on'
poles for the thirty bearers. The journey to the House began.
MacDouall and EufEy Eidley, a London Chartist worthy,
headed a procession on horseback. Then came the Petition,
next the Convention, headed by O'Connor himself, and fol-
lowed by a band. Delegates from various towns, and Chart-
ist rank and file brought up the rear of what, if the Northern
Star is to be credited, was an uncommonly long column. It
took a devious route, and the head reached the House when
the rear was at Oxford Circus, a length of nearly two miles.
When the Petition reached the Houses of Parhament, the huge
framework was found much too large to enter, and it had to be
broken up. The Petition was carried in in lumps and bundles
and strewed all over the floor of the House. It looked as if it
had been snowing paper. Nevertheless the Petition made a
very impressive show.^

Next day, May 3, Buncombe brought forward his motion,
that the petitioners should be heard at the bar of the House
by themselves, their counsel or agents. He spoke of the great
authority such a petition must possess. He traced the Charter
to its aristocratic origin in order to vindicate its respectabihty.
The Chartists were but the Radicals of former days, and, hke
the Whigs themselves, were the inheritors of the tradition of
the Duke of Richmond, Major Cartwright^ and the other early
advocates of Radical Reform. He described, in language
borrowed largely from Chartist sources, the great distress in the
manufacturing districts, distress which was due partly at least
to the fact that the interests of the industrious classes were not
represented in Parliament. Leader, Bowring, and Fielden
supported the motion. Sir James Graham opposed. Then
arose Macaulay to make one of the last great Whig utterances
ever deUvered in Parliament. Macaulay's chief objection was
to universal sufirage. " I believe that universal sufirage would
be fatal to all purposes for which Government exists, and for
which aristocracies and all other things exist, and that it is
utterly incompatible with the very existence of civilisation. I

conceive that civilisation rests upon the security of property

I will assert that while property is insecure, it is not in the
power of the finest soil, or of the moral or intellectual consti-
tution of any country, to prevent the country sinking into
barbarism." A government elected by persons who had no

1 Northern Star, May 7, 1842.

256 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

property would of coiirse give no guarantee for the security
of those who had. The petition was a clear indication of this.
National Bankruptcy and the expropriation of landed pro-
perty would foUow inevitably if the petitioners were enfran-
chised. Macaulay quite believed that unparalleled distress
had driven them to adopt such disastrous remedies. Educa-
tion would perhaps teach them better, but tiU then it would be
madness to give the petitioners power to enforce their legisla-
tive infatuations. The result of enfranchising such persons
would be one huge spoliation. Distress, famine, and pestilence
would ensue, and the resultant confusion would lead agaia to
military despotism. England would fall from her high place
among the nations, her glory and prosperity would depart,
leaving her an object of contempt. Of her it would be written
that " England had her institutions, imperfect though they
were, but which yet contained within themselves the means
of remedying all imperfections. Those institutions were
wantonly thrown away for no purpose whatever, but because
she was asked to do so by persons who sought her ruin. Her
ruin was the consequence, and she deserves it."
; Not less extraordinary was the outburst of Roebuck who
spoke nominally in favour of the Petition. Government, said
he, was constituted to counteract the natural desire of every
man to live upon the labour of others. Therefore, to exclude
a majority of citizens from the control of public afiairs was in
efiect to allow the minority to oppress the majority. Roebuck
denied that the petitioners were hostile to property, which was
as essential to their welfare as it was to its owners'. They were
not so infatuated as to destroy their own Uvehhood.

Roebuck said he was not concerned with the Petition, or with
its trashy doctrine, which was drawn up by a malignant and
cowardly demagogue. The great fact was that three miUions
had petitioned, and he beUeved they ought to be admitted
within the pale of the Constitution. It would be the best
guarantee for the security of property, and it would give to
every man the proceeds of his own labour, subject only to the
payment of his just share of the public burthens. This was one
of the chief of the people's grievances, that, because they were
unrepresented, they were unfairly taxed. A change in the
representation would remedy this injustice. It would not
dethrone wealth and eminence altogether, but would cut off
their over-great preponderance.

Roebuck's reference to O'Connor did tremendous damage.

THE NATIONAL PETITION OF 1842 257

In spite of Ms thorouglily Chartist sentiments te had ruined
the whole case. Let us hear Lord John Russell. Lord John
had as great a respect for the petition as abhorrence of its
demands. Even to discuss such demands would bring into
question the ancient and venerable institutions of the country.
It would drive capital out of the country by throwing doubts
upon the rights of property and of the public creditor. The
fund out of which the working people are supported would be
reduced and much distress would follow.

If, as the member for Bath had told them, the Petition
was drawn up by a malignant and cowardly demagogue, was
that not a serious reflection upon the petitioners ? Might
they not, if the Petition were granted, elect the said demagogue
to Parliament ? That being so, were measures of spoliation
totally out of the question ? Electors would require more
circumspection than that. Property, intelligence, and know-
ledge were the qualifications for a constituency. Citizens,
moreover, had no natural and inherent right to the franchise,
for the franchise was granted by the laws and institutions of the
country in so far as the grant was considered conducive to
better government. The grant of universal suffrage was not
so conducive. Though the petitioners were not actuated by
motives of destruction and spoHation, yet in the present
state of education there was great danger that elections under
universal sufirage would give cause for much " ferment."
Revolutionary-minded persons might be elected, and such a
thing could not be beneficial, considering how dehcate and
complex the institutions and society of the country were.
There were very old institutions, such as the Church and the
Aristocracy, which hold property. These might be ofiered as
prizes to a people in distress, yet to touch these institutions,
which held society together, would be disastrous.

Peel spoke much in the same strain. What was the ques-
tion before the House ? Was it that the petitioners should be
heard at the bar ? Now the whole constitution was impeached
by the petition, and could the impeachment be despatched by
a few speeches at the bar ? And who would speak at the bar
but the fooHsh, malignant, and cowardly demagogue who
drew up the trashy petition, and who was not the real leader
of the people ? As to the granting of the Charter, he believed
that it was incompatible with that mixed monarchy under
which they lived and which had secured one hundred and fifty
years of greater liberty and happiness than had been enjoyed

s

258 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

by any other country, not excepting the United States of
America.

There was little more to be said. The " malignant and
cowardly demagogue" haunted the debate. Forty-nine
members voted with Buncombe, and 287 against him.
Macaulay and Eoebuck had slain the great Petition.^

1 Anmiuil Register, 1842, pp. [162-]160, summarises the debate; the full
report is in Hansard's Debaiea, 3rd series, Ixiii. 13-91.

CHAPTEE XVII

THE DECLINE OP CHAETISM
(1842-1863)

(1) The Plug Plot and its Consequences (1842-1843)

Chartism stood helpless when the combination of Whigs and
Tories had thrown out of Parliament the National Petition
of 1842. The autocrat of Chartism had staked everything on a
false move. Once more " moral force " had failed to convince
the representatives of the middle -class electorate. Once
more there only remained the trial of " physical force." But,
however much he might bluster, O'Connor was neither willing
nor able to faU back upon the alternative policy of the hot-
bloods whom he had so often denounced. And O'Connor
still dominated the movement to such an extent that a course
of action of which he disapproved was condemned to futility.
Hence the tameness with which organised Chartism bore the
destruction of its hopes. Hence the weakness and incoher-
ence of the measures by which the stalwarts of the party
strove to maintain the Chartist cause after the failure of
the Petition. Hence, too, their eagerness to adopt as their
own any passing wave of discontent and claim the storm as
the result of their own agitation.

The collapse of the Petition was followed by a few protests,
much violent language in the Northern Star, and a few public
meetings, notably in Lancashire, where the speaking was even
more unrestrained than were the leading articles of the Chartist
organ. A notable instance of these assemblies was the great
gathering held on Enfield Moor, near Blackburn, on Sunday,
June 5. Its business was " to consider the next steps to be
taken to obtain the People's Charter." Marsden of Bolton
put before the crowd the fatuous proposal that the people

269

260 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

should collect arms and marci in their thousands on Bucking-
ham Palace. " If the Queen refuses our just demands, we
shall know what to do with our weapons." ^ But nothing
came of this or any other similar manifestations of Chartist
statesmanship. It looked as if the leaders could no longer
carry on an effective agitation.

The outbreak of a widespread strike in August added a
real element of seriousness to the situation in the North.
Here again Lancashire was the storm-centre, but the strike
movement broke out simultaneously in other districts, ranging
from Glasgow and Tyneside to the Midlands, where the colEers
in the Potteries and in the South StafEordshire coal-field went
out. It is very doubtful whether the strike had much directly
to do with Chartism. Its immediate cause was a threatened
reduction of wages, which was answered by the workmen in
the Lancashire nulls drawing the plugs so as to make work
impossible.^ For this reason the operatives' resistance to the
employers' action was called in Lancashire the Plug Plot.

Whatever the origin of the strike, the Chartist leaders
eagerly made capital out of it. They attributed the proposed
reduction to the mahce of the Anti-Corn Law manufacturers,
anxious to drive the people to desperation, and thus foment
disturbances that would paralyse the action of the Protec-
tionist Government.* In a few days the country was ablaze
from the Ribble to the confines of Birmingham. At a great
meeting of the Lancashire and Cheshire strikers on Mottram
Moor on August 7 it was resolved that " all labour should cease
until the People's Charter became the law of the land."
A similar resolution was passed at Manchester * and in nearly

1 Anmual Begieter, Ixxxlv. 11. 102.

2 TIte l4fe of Thomas Cooper, pp. 190-91. Compare T. E. Ashworth,
The Plug Plot at Todmorden, p. 16. " The 'turn-outs' vlBited every mill
In the Todmorden vaJleTi first raking out the fires from beneath the Doilers
and then knocMng the iDoiler-plugs out."

3 This Is Cooper's Tiew, Life, pp. 190-91. That it was widely spread
is clear from the Manohe^ir Courier, August 13, 1842, and still more from
The League Threshed and Winnowed, League Hypocrisy, The Treachery of
the League, and other contemporary pamphlets, coUeoted In Manchester
Free Reference Library (P. 2507). A foolish speech of Cobden in the House
of Commons on July 8, threatening outbreaks, is often quoted as a proof.
Doll^ans' Chartisme, ii. 210-25, elaborately discusses the origin of the strike
and Inclines towards connecting both Chartists and Anti-Corn Law League
with it. But it would be safer to assume that the League, like the ChartistB,
made what capital it could out of the situation. The MachlaTellian policy
attributed to it Is hardly credible. But none of these Interrelated move-
ments worked independently of the other. Their isolation only exists in
the narratives of their historians. It is remarkable, however, how both
the political and the free trade writers Ignore the very existence of Chartism.
Even Morley's I4fe of Cobden is not exempt from this reproach.

J Manchester Guardian, August 13, 1842, gives its terms.

THE PLUG PLOT 261

all tte great towns of Lancashire. On August 15 tie same
resolution was passed at a meeting on Crown Bank at Hanley,
at which Thomas Cooper presided.^ Despite his exhortations
to observe peace and order, serious rioting broke out.

The Chartists' leaders now gathered together at Manchester,
where the Executive Council of the National Charter Associa-
tion was joined by delegates from the Manchester and West
Riding areas. It first assembled on August 12, but members
came in by slow degrees. It met in Schofield's chapel and
was dignified by the Northern Star with the name of a confer-
ence. ^ In this MacDouall took the lead, and was not displaced
from it even when O'Connor, Campbell the Secretary, and
Thomas Cooper, hot from his stormy experiences in the
Potteries, joined the gathering. Cooper has left a vivid
account of his escape from Hanley by night, and of his vacil-
lation between his desire to stay with his comrades in the
Potteries and his wish to be in Manchester, where he rightly
felt the real control of the movement lay. He trudged along
the dark roads from Hanley to Crewe, a prey to various
tumultuous and conflicting thoughts. But he was sustained
by the noble confidence that O'Connor would be at Manchester
and would tell everybody what to do. At Crewe he took
the train and found Campbell the Secretary in it. Campbell,
now resident in London, was anxious to be back in his old home
and see how things were going there. As soon as " the city of
long chimneys " came in sight and every chimney was beheld
smokeless, Campbell's face changed, and with an oath he said,
" Not a single miE at work ! Something must come out of
this and something serious too I " '

The conference speedily resolved that the strikers should
be exhorted to remain out until the Charter became law. To
procure this end, MacDouall issued on behalf of the Executive
a fierce manifesto appealing to the God of battles and declaring
in favour of a general strike as the best weapon for winning
the Charter.* But divided counsels now once more rent
asunder the party and made all decisive action hopeless. Even
in the delegates' meeting it had been necessary to negative
an amendment denying any connection between the existing
strike and Chartism. At Ashton-under-Lyne the strikers de-
clared that they had no concern with any pohtical questions.^

i I4fe of TTwmas Cooper, vp. lSl-9. . ,.^ ^^, ^ _ ono

2 NoHhem Star, August 20, 1842. ' lAfe of Thomas Cooper, p. 206.

* Ibid. pp. 210-11. The Times, August 19.
5 The Times, August 15.

262 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

The fatal blow came from O'Connor, to whom simple men
like Thomas Cooper had gone as to an oracle for guidance.
Even in the Convention his puppets had supported dilatory
tactics. In a few days O'Connor fiercely attacked MacDouaU
in the Northern Star, for " breathing a wild strain of reckless-
ness most dangerous to tbe cause." ^ Good Chartists were
advised to retire from a hopeless contest, reserving their
energies for some later season when their organisation should
have been perfected. The strike, far from being a weapon of
Chartism, was a crafty device of the miU-owners of the Anti-
Corn Law League to reduce wages and divert men's minds
from the Charter. ^

Riots and disturbances further complicated the situation.
Cooper had fled from the burning houses of Hanley and the
fusillade of soldiers shooting men dead in the streets. Now
the trouble spread northwards into Lancashire and the West
Riding. Shops were looted, gas-works attacked, trains were
stopped, two pohcemen were killed in the streets of Man-
chester. Troops were rapidly poured into the disaffected
districts. There were over two thousand soldiers with six
pieces of artillery in Manchester alone.' At Preston and
Blackburn the soldiers fired on the crowd ; * Halifax was
attacked by a mob from Todmorden. Widespread alarm
was created, but there is little evidence that the disorders were
really dangerous. O'Connor strongly urged peaceable methods
in a public letter. " Let us," he said, " set an example to
the world of what moral power is capable of efiecting." His
violent pacifism was largely attributed to lack of personal
courage.

The vigorous action of the Government soon re-established
order. Then came the turn of the leaders to pay the penalty.
The panic-stricken authorities put into gaol both those who
had advocated rebellion and those who had spoken strongly
for peaceful methods. O'Connor himself was apprehended
in London, whUe William HiU, the editor of the Northern
Star, was taken into custody at Leeds. Cooper was arrested
soon after his return home to Leicester. But there was
long delay before the trials were concluded, and many were
released on bail, among them Cooper and O'Connor. The
most guilty of all, MacDouaU, evaded, by escape to France, the
consequences of his firebrand manifesto.^ In the course of

1 Northern Star, August 27. ^ J6i(j. August 20.

3 Times, August 17. ■* Ibid.

s Northern Star, January 25, 1845.

THE PLUG PLOT 263

September the strike wore itself out. The workmen went
back to the mills and coal-mines without any assurances as
to their future wages. The economic situation was as black
as was the course of politics. With a falling market, with
employers at their wits' end how to sell their products, there
was no chance of a successful strike. The appeal from the
Commons to the people had proved a sorry failure. Once
niore the Chartists had mismanaged their opportunities through
divided counsels and conflicting ideals.

The discomfited remnant that was still free fiercely quarrelled
over the apportionment of the blame for the recent failure.
There was a strong outcry against the old Executive. It was
denounced for insolence, despotism, slackness, wastefulness, and
malversation. A warm welcome was given to a proposal of
Cooper's that the Association should receive a new constitution
which dispensed with a paid Executive .^ As a result of an
investigation at a delegates' meeting towards the end of the
year, the Executive either resigned or was suspended.^

MacDouaU was made the scapegoat of the failure. He it
was who had given the worst shock to the credit of Chartism.^
How many tracts might have been published and distributed
with the money lavished upon MacDouall.* In great disgust
the exile renounced his membership of the Association.* How-
ever, he came back to England in 1844, and at once made a
bid for restitution. His first plan was to drive home the old
attack on O'Connor by an attempt to set up a separate Chartist
organisation for Scotland independent of the English society.*
At the same time he denounced O'Connor for his ungenerous
exploitation of his pecuniary obligations to him in the hope
of binding him to him and gagging him.' It was O'Connor,
too, who had advised him to run away in 1842 in order to throw
upon him the whole responsibility for the Plug Riots. Both
accusations are only too credible, but no trust can be given to
MacDouall's statements. His veracity and good faith are
more than disputable, and his constant change of poUcy was
at least as much due to self-interest as to instability. He
was one of the least attractive as well as most violent of the
Chartist champions.* It is startling after all this to find that

1 Northern Star, December 10, 1842. But compare ibid. December 3.

2 iZmi. Jajiuary 7, 1843. 3 J6«. December 10.

* Ibid. December 17, 1844. ' British StatesAum, December 17.

6 Northern Star, February 17, 1844. Compare ibid. Norember 23 and
December 28. ' Ibid. February 15, 1842.

8 For a very frank view of the morality and motives of MacDouaU,
" the doctor," as he caUs him, see Alexander SomervUIe's Autobiography

264 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

in 1844 O'Connor was welcoming MacDouall back to the
orthodox fold and that the Glasgow Chartists raised the chief
difficulties in the way of the ostentatiously repentant sinner.^
There was no finality in the loves and hates of men of the
caUbre of O'Connor and MacDouaU.

Though its prospects were increasingly unhopeful the
Complete Sufirage agitation was not yet dead. At Sturge's
suggestion a new attempt was made to bridge over the gulf
between Suffragists and Chartists, which Was found impossible
to traverse at the Birmingham Conference. With this object
a second Conference met on December 27, 1842, also at Bir-
mingham. Sturge once more presided over a gathering which
included representatives of both parties. The Sufiragists
were now witling to accept the Chartist programme, but they
were as inveterate as ever against the use of the Chartist name.
To the old Chartists the Charter was a sacred thing which it
was a point of honour to maintain. Harney thus puts their
attitude :

Give up the Charter ! The Charter for which O'Connor and
hundreds of brave men were dungeoned iu felons' cells, the Charter
for which John Frost was doomed to a life of heart-withering woe !
. . . What, to suit the whim, to please the caprice, or to serve the
selfish ends of mouthing priests," pohtical traffickers, Bugar-weighing,
tape-measuring shopoorats. Never ! By the memories of the
illustrious dead, by the sufferings of widows and the tears of orphans
he would adjure them to stand by the Charter.'

The Conference was carefully packed by the O'Connorites,
but there was more than O'Connorism behind the pious
enthusiasm that clung to the party tradition. Nor can the
Sturgeites be acquitted of recourse to astute tactics to outwit
their opponents. Knowing that they were Ukely to be in a
minority, they got two lawyers in London to draft a new BUI
of Rights which they laid before the conference in such a way

0/ a Working Man (1848), pp. 474-8. It is only fair to say tliat Somer-
TlUe was bitterly prejudiced against MacDouaU as a violent and cowardly
apostle of physical force. In the time of the 1839 riots Somerville had
written his dissuMive Warnings to the People on Street Warfare. He was
now quite out of sympathy with Chartism and a strong critic of O'Connor's
Land Scheme. Cohden in 1849 suggested him to Bright as the best man
to write a " temperal!e and truthful" history of Chartism, " reyiewing with
advantage the bombastic sayings and doings of Feargos and his lieutenants."
" It would be certain to eUclt a howl from the knaves who were subjected
to the ordeal of the pUlory " (Morley's lAfe of Cobden, ii. S4).

1 Northern Star, August 1 and 8, 1846.

2 An allusion to Thomas Spencer, Herbert Spencer's uncle. Herbert
Spencer himself was a " Sturgeite " delegate for Derby at the Conference.
Ibid. December 24, 1842.

s Ibid. January 14, 1843. Harney was a representative of Sheflleld
at the Conference along with three like-minded colleagues.

THE PLUG PLOT 265

that they burked all discussion of the Charter in its old form.
The New Bill of Rights embodied all the " six points " of the
Charter, but the old Chartists bitterly resented the tactics
which gave priority to this new-fangled scheme. Lovett came
out of his retirement to move that the Charter and not the Bill
of Rights should be the basis of the movement. He sternly
reproached the Sturgeites for their lack of faith. O'Connor
himself seconded Lovett's proposal and strove, though with
little efEect, to conciliate with his blandishments the stubborn
spirit of his old adversary. But even their momentary
agreement on a common policy united for the time the old
Chartist forces. In the hot debate that followed, the doctrin-
aire tactlessness of the Sturgeite leaders added fuel to the
flames of Chartist wrath.^ " We will espouse your principles,
but we will not have your leaders," said Lawrence Heyworth,
the most ofiensive of the Sturgeite orators. Years afterwards
Thomas Cooper voiced the general Chartist feeling when he
declared " there was no attempt to bring about a union — no
efiort for conciliation — no generous offer of the right hand of
fellowship. We soon found that it was determined to keep
the poor Chartists at arm's length." ^

In the end Lovett's resolution was carried by more than two
to one. Thereupon Sturge and his friends retired, and the
Conference broke up into two antagonistic sections, neither of
which could accomplish anything that mattered. The failure
practically put an end to the Complete Suffrage Movement,
which was soon submerged in the general current of Radical-
ism. No doubt the dispute in the form in which it arose was
one of words rather than things, but it was no mere question
of words that brought Chartists of all sorts into a momentary
forgetfulness of their ancient feuds to resist the attempt to
wipe out the history of their sect. The split of the Conference
arose from the essential incompatibility of the smug ideals
of the respectable middle-class Radical, and the vague aspira-
tions of the angry hot-headed workman, bitterly resenting the
sufferings of his grievous lot and especially intolerant of the
employing class from which Sturge and his friends came. The
deep gulf between the Complete Suffragist and the Chartist is
symboUsed in the extreme contrast between the journahsm of
the Nonconformist and that of the Northern Star.

1 Nonccmfmmist, December 31, 1842. This paper gives good aocoimta
of the proceedings from the Sturgeite pomt of view. It shoiHd be com-
pared -srtth the opposite standpoint expressed in the Z/i/c of Thomas Cooper.

2 Ibid. pp. 222-44.

266 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

The Birmingliam failure was another triumph for O'Connor.
He had dragged even Lovett into his wake and could now
pose more than ever as the one practical leader of Chartism.
It was to httle purpose that Lovett, shocked at the result of his
momentary reappearance on the same platform as his enemy,
withdrew, with his friend Parry, from the O'Connorite Con-
ference. The remnant went to a smaller room and finished
up their business to their own liking. If Chartism henceforth
meant O'Connorism, it was because O'Connor, with all his
faults, could upon occasion give a lead, and still more because,
lead or no lead, it was O'Connor only whom the average
Chartist woidd follow.

The failure of this last eSort at concihation was the more
tragic since it was quickly followed by the conclusion of the
long-drawn-out trials of the Chartists, accused of comphcity
in the abortive revolt of the summer of 1842. Some of the
accused persons, notably Cooper and O'Connor, were still on
bail at the Conference and went back to meet their fate.
Their cases were dealt with by special commissions which
had most to do in StafEordshire and Lancashire. The Staf-
fordshire commission had got to work as early as October,
and had in all 274 cases brought before it. Thomas Cooper
was the most conspicuous of the prisoners it dealt with.
Acquitted on one count, he was released on bail before being
arraigned on another charge. He finally received a sentence
of two years' imprisonment, which he spent in Stafford Gaol.
In prison he wrote his Purgatory of Suicides, a poetical ideal-
isation of the Chartist programme, which won for him
substantial literary recognition.^ Most of the Stafiordshire
sentences were much more severe than that of Cooper, fifty-
four being condemned to long periods of transportation.^ In
Lancashire and Cheshire the special commission was pre-
sided over by Lord Abinger, Chief Baron of the Exchequer,
whose indiscreet language gave occasion for a futile attack on
him by the Radicals in Parliament.^ But the actual trials do
not seem to have been unfairly conducted, and the victims
were much less numerous than in Stafiordshire. O'Connor
was found guilty, but his conviction, with that of others, was
overruled on technical grounds. His good fortune in escaping

1 See, for Instance, the testimony ol Thomas Carlyle In Life of Thomas
Cooper, pp. 282-3.

2 The statlstios are In Armual Beffister, IxxxiT. ii. 163.

» A vote of censure was moved on February 21, 1843, by T. Buncombe
and lost by 228 to 73. Most of the free traders, including Cobden and
VlUiers, voted with the majority (Northern Star, February 25, 1843).

O'CONNOR'S LAND SCHEME 267

scot-free, while other Chartist leaders languished in gaol or in
exile, still further increased his hold over the party. It was
another reason why O'Connorism henceforth meant Chartism.

(2) O'Connor's Land Scheme and the Chartist
Revival (1843-1847)

We have now seen the process by which O'Connor was
established as the autocrat of Chartism. But the desperate
struggle for supremacy had not only eliminated O'Connor's
enemies ; it had almost destroyed the Chartist movement
itself. It was not only that the Complete Suffragists had been
ejected from the movement, that Lovett was permanently
alienated and O'Brien brutally silenced ; that Cooper and
scores of the rank and file were in prison and MacDouaU in
dishonourable exile. Even within the depleted ranks of the
Chartist remnant there was now a deplorable lack of interest
and activity.

The sluggishness, which sapped the prosperity of the whole
movement, extended even to the inner circle of agitators and
organisers who stood round O'Connor's solitary throne. It
is best evidenced in the postponement of the Chartist Con-
vention, which, first summoned for April 1843, did not assemble
until September 5, when it met at Birmingham. The list of
delegates present contained but few of the famous names of
earlier Chartist history, but O'Connor himself represented the
London Society, while of the rest Harney was perhaps the best-
known of the delegates.^ During the months of waiting,
O'Connor had been thinking out plans of reorganisation which,
while professing to give a much-needed stimulus to the decay-
ing cause, aimed grossly and obviously at the promotion of
the interests of the autocrat. Accordingly the object of the
Convention was pompously given out as " to consider and de-
vise a plan for the organisation of a society to enforce upon
public attention the principles of the People's Charter and to
devise means for their practical accomplishment." ^ With this
motive two schemes were laid before the assembly. One was'
a device for the stifEening up and centralisation of the existing
machinery of the National Charter Association. The other
was the enunciation of a new policy of Land Reform with
which all the future history of Chartism is closely bound up. _

1 See the Ust of delegates present in Northern Star, September 9, 1843.
O'Connor was the only London representative.

2 Ibid. August 26.

268 THE CHAETI8T MOVEMENT

A new Executive had to be chosen for the Association. Up
to now O'Connor had proudly stood aloof from it, preferring
to control the machine from the outside. He was now so
anxious to get everything under his own direct control that
he condescended to accept office. He announced his acqui-
escence in characteristically grandiose terms :

I am now about to enter into a reacknowledgement of a Solemn
League and Covenant with the working classes during that period
for which they have imposed upon me duties and a responsibility
which nothmg but their own good conduct would have induced me
to undertake.^

Humbly accepting the patronage of the descendant of Irish
kings, his meek followers promptly elected O'Connor as their
Treasurer, hoping, no doubt, that the rents of his mythical
Irish estates and the more certain profits of the Northern Star
would fill up the emptiness of their cofEers. As Secretary of
the Executive the defaulting John Campbell was replaced by
T. M. Wheeler, a member of the stafi of the Northern Star,
and a dependent of O'Connor. The efiect was to put the
Executive in the hollow of the autocrat's hands. O'Connor,
in fact, was responsible for the whole scheme ; he had set it
forth in the Northern Star so far back as the previous April.^
It involved much more than mere changes of personnel, for
the crowning new proposal now was to estabhsh the head-
quarters of the organisation in London.

The change was easily agreed upon, but its motives and
results deserve some consideration. There were obvious
motives of convenience in favour of estabhshing the Chartist
machine in the pohtical centre. London had in the days of
the Working Men's Association been the birthplace of the
movement, and it was only gradually that its centre of gravity
had shifted towards the industrial North. Meanwhile the
current of London Radicalism had begun to drift into very
difierent channels, and there were few representative leaders
in the South save those with whom O'Coimor had quarrelled.
Harney voiced the higher argument for the change when
he declared that transference to London was necessary to
" regenerate " the capital. But for O'Connor himself the chief
motive was that he himself now lived in London and his simple
wish was to exercise control with a minimum of trouble to
himself. Perhaps one object was to get away from the Anti-

1 Northern Star, September 16. 2 j;,^. April 1.

O'CONNOE'S LAND SCHEME 269

Corn Law League, wtose offices were in Manchester. But how-
ever these things may be, the result was to cut ofi O'Connor
and his following from the fierce democracy of the West Riding
and Lancashire, which had hitherto been his whole-hearted
support. It left the field free for the Anti-Corn Law agi-
tators, and left them in triumphant possession. It did Httle
to open up new areas of propaganda. But for the rest of
Chartist history the centre of interest becomes once again
the South, and the South was so little converted that the net
result could only be regarded as loss.

Rather more than a year after the removal of the Executive
to London, the southward trend was further emphasised by
the transference to the capital of the Northern Star, the one
supremely successful journalistic venture of the Chartist
movement. Even the Northern Star had sufiered from the
lethargy which in 1843 and 1844 had fallen upon every aspect
of Chartism. It lost its editor when HiU quarrelled with
O'Connor and threw up his post in disgust. It fell ofi seriously
both in circulation and influence. In the palmy days between
1839 and 1842 the Star had been not only the oracle of northern
industrial discontent, but a veritable gold-mine to its pro-
prietor, and the source of the lavish subventions with which
he sustained the tottering finances of the cause. But the
greatest prosperity of the Star had been in the early days
of its identification with Chartism. Founded in 1837 before
the Charter had been devised, it was not before 1839 that it
had grown into the position of the leading Chartist organ. It
was in the great year 1839 that the Star had attained the
highest point of its prosperity. But after the great year 1839
the sales of the Star had steadily declined. Even in 1840 it
had only half the circulation of the previous year: each
succeeding year was marked by a further drop, and by the
summer of 1843 the state of afiairs was becoming critical.^
It was the logical consequence of the establishment of the
Executive in London in 1843 that the organ of the party should
foUow on the same road. Accordingly in the autumn of 1844
the office of the paper was transferred from Leeds to London.
Specious reasons for the change were given. The Star was not

1 In 1839 It was said that the Star sold 35,559 copies a week. But
comnSe above, p7l73, note 1, tor an even more extravagant estimate
?«J^Ki;? of thnt veai- The returns of the stamps issued show that its
averlle weeurciro^tton to IsXs^as 18,780 in 1841, 13 580, a
\lsM (ParUanS^V Papers, 1843, xxx. 544). In 1843 the circulation
iom Jiily to S^pteSber averaged 9700, and from October to December
9000 a week (Itnd., 1844, xxxli. 419).

270 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

a local but a national paper ; news came later to Leeds than
to London ; O'Connor's residence in London interposed con-
stant difficulties in the way of publication in Leeds ; London
was the centre of Government and faction, and the Star must
be there in order to fight the enemy on the spot.^ But if the
step had been undertaken in the hope of reviving its sales, the
result finally was the completion of its ruin. The Star, which
first came forth from its London office on November 30, 1844,
was something very difEerent from the old Yorkshire news-
paper. It was now called the Northern Star and the National
Trades Jowrnal, and a desperate efEort was made to win new
readers by appeals to the Trades Union element which in
earlier days had seemed of little account. Before long it
almost ceased to be a Chartist paper at all. The methods
and spirit of the old Star had been nurtured in the fierce and
democratic atmosphere of the West Riding and Lancashire,
and the transplanted organ retained enough of its traditions
to fail in making a strong appeal to the south-covintry readers
on whose support it was henceforth mainly dependent. And
it was a bad day for O'Connor's influence upon the most
blindly devoted of his adherents when he removed from their
midst their favourite organ. Even eighty years ago north-
country opinion was incliaed to resent the dictation of
" metropolitan " journahsm.

We must now return to the Birmingham Convention of
1843. There the crowning triumph of O'Connor was the
somewhat reluctant acceptance by its obsequious members
of the grandiose schemes of land reform which were now
taking a superficially definite shape in the brain of the agitator,
and to which he Was to devote his main energies for aU that
remained of his tempestuous hfe. How these plans originated
in his mind will demand an even further retrospect.

Despite incoherencies and insincerities O'Connor remained
possessed by certain fundamental principles or prejudices
during the whole of his pubKc hfe. His hatreds were as sin-
cere as they were fierce, and chief among them was his deep-
rooted hostility to modern industriahsm and all its works. His
abhorrence of machinery, the factory system, the smoke and
squalor of the factory town, the close-fisted and selfish employers
with their eagerness for cheap labour, sprang not only from
his real sympathy with the down-trodden weavers and coDiers

I NorOiem Star, October 19, 1844, the date of the public announoemeiit
of the impending chajige. The last number published at Leeds was issued
on November 23.

O'CONNOE'S LAND SCHEME 271

wtose cause he voiced, but also from tke country gentleman's
enthusiasm for agriculture and the land, and the Irish landlord's
appreciation of the advantages of small spade cultivation.
His remedy for the evUs of the factory system, as shown in the
northern towns, had persistently been to bring the people back
to the land. Against the horrors of Manchester and Leeds,
as he knew them, he set up the ideal of the Irish land system,^
not as it was, but as it might be, if the huge rents drawn from
the toiHng colhers were to be diverted to the benefit of the
cultivating class and to buying up fresh estates to be divided
into small farms. So early as 1841 he had beguiled his im-
prisonment in York Castle by writing a series of Letters to
Irish Landlords, which must have afiorded strange reading to
the operatives who devoured the Northern Star.''- In them he
ingenuously exposed to the men of his own class his anxiety
to preserve the estates of the landlords from the grasp of the
manufacturers, who would soon, he was convinced, use the
poUtical monopoly, conferred on them by the Reform Act of
1832, to lay hands upon the landed property of the country
gentry. He advised the Irish landlords to provide against
this danger by abandoning the system of large farming and
high rents, and by allocating a su£B.cient portion of their estates
to peasant holdings. To get the peasant to work zealously at
the intensive cultivation of his little plot, he must have security
and freedom ; but so great are the virtues of the system that
the prosperous and active cottier can not only earn a good
Uving but pay a high rent, provided that this rent is yielded in
corn actually grown, and not in fixed money payments. If
this system is good for Ireland, it is equally good for Britain.
Within twenty years of its general adoption twenty million
landholding peasants, entrenched on the soil and Hving in
contentment and comfort^ tempered only by the idyllic sim-
plicity of happy village life, will be an army which wiU save
Ireland and Britain &om the domination of cotton-spinners
and iron-masters, and give the land and the gentry their true
place in controlling the destinies of a free nation. It is a
strange phase of a novel New Englandism ; a new physiocracy
wherein the land yields its produit net for the benefit of the
community.

Between 1841 and 1843 the same note is repeatedly struck
with the difEerence in tone required for an audience of opera-

1 They appeared in the Northern Star between July 10 (No. 1) and
August 7 (No. 5), 1841.

272 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

tives rather than for one of landlords. The workmen them-
selves must unite and by subscribing small sums allow some
happy members of their order to make a start. Three or four
acres are enough. Cultivated by the spade, and producing
crops of potatoes, roots, and cabbages, these little plots will
yield such profits, over and above the farmers' support, that
they will form a fund which will enable other comrades to
forsake the mill and the mine for the invigorating labours of
the field. 1 The result wiU be that the greedy nuU-owners
and colliery proprietors wiU find their looms and mill s deprived
of labour. Then their only way to carry on their trade will
be to bribe their hands not to remove to the land by wages
so ample that town and country alike will enjoy the blessings
of opulence. The security for all this to the poor man wUl
of course be the People's Charter. When the Charter is won,
his vote wiU secure him the permanent possession of his pro-
sperity.^ Even before the Charter is secured, and that will not
be a long time, the champions of the good cause can organise
the resources which will enable a beginning to be made in this
most beneficent social revolution.

We now see what O'Connor meant by declaring at Birming-
ham that something practical must be adopted to save the
declining Chartist cause, and how in his megalomania he buUt
up his new Tammany Hall in London, where as chief boss
he could pull the wires that were to win the Charter, restore
the golden age, make unnecessary the new Poor Law, and
turn the artisan classes from there misguided faith in Bright,
Cobden, and Free Trade. On the incoherencies of the system,
as O'Connor expounded it, it is needless to dwell. They are
written large in every detail of the scheme. But there is no
need to doubt the sincerity of the strange mind which could
convince itself and others of the practicability of such a plan.
After all there were sound elements in O'Connor's principles
which have appealed, and wiU continue to appeal, to social
reformers of many types and ages. But the fantastic details
were as vivid to the agitator as was the honest repugnance to
the black sides of industrialism on which his weird calculations

1 See, for Instance, O'Connor's extraordinary aigument In Northern
Star, May 15, 1843, that a man with four acres under potatoes, cabbages,
and turnips could clear £100 a year at a moderate estimate by spade
cultivation. O'Connor's figures worked out to £305, and he allowed only
£100 surplus to show his moderation. The Leeds Mercury replied that at
this rate aJl landlords would raise their rents twentyfold.

2 See O'Connor's answer to the Leeds Mercury in Northern Star, June 3,
1843. It is simply that the Mercury leaves the magic eflects of the Charter
out of the question.

O'CONNOR'S LAND SCHEME 273

were based. His cry was now, " The Charter and the Land " ;
and he extoUed the " Real Chartism which is the Land as a
tree market for labour, and the Vote to protect it." i From
the moment he had made the Land Scheme his own, he could
talk of nothing else.

Despite the enthusiasm of O'Connor, both the Chartist
cause and the Land Scheme still languished. Even in the Bir-
mingham Convention the warning note was feebly sounded.
In the Manchester Convention of 1844, held, unhke that of
1843, at its proper time in April, the final touches were given
to the reorganisation scheme. The organisation was hence-
forth to be the " National Charter Association of Great
Britain," and its object was " to secure the enactment of the
People's Charter by peaceful legal and constitutional means."
Membership was proved by possession of a card, which cost
3d. and was to be renewed annually. There was also a sub-
scription of a penny a week to the General Fund. There was
an Executive Committee of five, elected by the annual Con-
vention, and a General Council, chosen by the Executive.
The old officers were renewed, and O'Connor was unani-
mously re-elected by the grateful Convention.^ But the
resolution of the Convention, not to proceed with the
Land Scheme on account of the difiiculty involved in en-
rolment,* must have brought him face to face with the
insecurity of his position. Most of the delegates declared in
favour of separating the Land Scheme from the agitation for
the Charter.

The apathy, discernible in 1844, was somewhat lessened
in 1845. At the National Convention, held on April 21 at
London, there was more feeling in favour of the Land Scheme,
though there were still good Chartists who were afraid lest it
should swallow up Chartism. A committee drew up a scheme
for a " Chartist Land Co-operative Society," whose shares of
£2 : 10s. each could be purchased in weekly instalments of
3d. and upwards, and whose design was to " show the work-
ing classes the value of land as a means of making them
independent of the grinding capitalist," and " the necessity
of securing the speedy enactment of the People's Charter,
which would do for them nationally what this society proposes
to do for them sectionally " * But up to the end of the year
the net subscriptions available for the purchase of land

1 Northern Star, September 16, 1843. ^ ii,ia. April 27, 1844.

» Ibid. April 20. * Ibid. April 26 and May 5, 1845.

T

274 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

amounted to less than £2700.^ It seemed then that, however
much O'Connor might flog the twin steeds of the Charter and
the Land, their pace remained terribly slow, and even at that
pace they could not keep step with each other.

The real sincerity of Chartism had always been its cry of
want, its expression of deep-felt but inarticulate economic
and social distress. Chartism was the creed of hard times, and
it was unlucky for O'Connor and his plans that between 1842
and 1845 there was a wave of comparative prosperity that
made those who profited by it forget the distress that had
been so widespread between 1836 and 1842. It was only in
Ireland that misery still grew apace until its culmination in
the potato famine, and in Ireland there never had been any
Chartism to speak of. But in England and Scotland it was
becoming clear that better times were at hand. The harvests
were good, though bread remained dear ; there was a great
impetus in railway construction ; the textile trades, notably
the cotton industry, were rapidly increasing. The Chartists
themselves recognised the improved outlook, and they were
hardly convincing when they warned their following that
prosperity would not last long without the Charter.^ The
gross fact remained that the return of economic progress was
cutting away the very foundations of the Chartist movement.

The ebb and flow of prosperity and misery largely depend
on causes deeper seated than the operations of Governments.
Yet the unheroic but efiective administration of Sir Robert
Peel had aheady begun to teach the ordinary man that sub-
stantial benefits might accrue even from an upper-class Ministry,
kept in power by a middle-class House of Commons, This was
notably the case with their factory legislation, their successive
readjustments of the national . finances, and their legal and
administrative mitigations of the doctrinaire harshness of
the New Poor Law, as carried out by convinced Benthamites.
The result was that men, who, a few years earlier, had been ready
converts to Chartism, found more immediate and practical
ways of working out their salvation. Unemployment was
becoming less common ; wages were tending towards the up
grade ; many of the worst scandals of the factory system were
being grappled with. A moderately prosperous artisan
discovered a new outlet for his energies in aiding in the great
development of trades unionism that was now beginning.

1 NortJiem Star, December 13 and 20, 1815. Report ot Land Conference
at Manchester. s Ibid. May 3, 1845.

O'CONNOE'S LAND SCHEME 275

Emigration to rich and undeveloped lands beyond the ocean
began to afford a more hopeful outlook to surplus population ;
than the doubtful experiments of O'Connor's Land Scheme. "
For those who still clung to panaceas there were rival Land
Schemes which seemed as attractive, and were as unsound, as
that of O'Connor himself.^ And there were still orthodox
adherents of the old Chartist political programme who com-
plained that O'Connor's Land Scheme was but a device
to divert the attention of the people from the vital " six
points." 2 To this O'Connor's only answer was that he brought
in the land question, before they won the Charter, to show to
what purpose the Charter was to be applied when obtained.*

The return of prosperity was neither general nor deep-
seated, but it had the more profound effects in diminishing
Chartist zeal, since the constant dissensions and jealousies,
that had repeatedly rent asunder the party, had spread among
the rank and file a widespread distrust of the leaders which
often amounted to complete disillusionment. Not only was
the failure of Chartism due to the decrease of misery ; it was
also brought about by the decrease of hopefulness.*

The results of O'Connor's unscrupulous treatment of his foes
within the party now came home to roost. Nowhere was there
fiercer opposition to the Land Scheme than from the malcon-
tents whom the dictator had drummed out of the Chartist army.
O'Brien bitterly denounced the Land Scheme from the point
of view of doctrinaire Jacobinism. If the Land Scheme suc-
ceeded, he declared, it would set up a stolidly conservative
mass of peasant holders who would make all radical change
impossible. " Every man," said the National Reformer,
" who joins these land societies is practically enlisting himself
on the side of the Government against his own order." *

• See, for Instance, the rival scheme of Carpenter In Lloyd's Weekly
Newspaper for 1845, and O'Connor's answer to it in Northern Star, Jnne
21 and 28, 1845. Compare the Land Scheme, mooted at a conference at
Exeter, 1845, in oonjiinotion with a project for a general union of trades

2 Northern Star, May 20 and Jime 24, 1843, Letter of Thomas Smith
of Liverpool : " Accordtig to this new, light of Mr. O'Connor all our efforts
to obtain what we have called onr rights, all negotiation on behalf of the
Charter, now prove to have been but superfluous and mlschievouB rm-

s Ibid July 15, 1843. Speech of O'Connor at Manchester on July 8.

■> See the valuable suggestions on the relative value of material and
moral forces in the falling away of Chartism, and generally the whole of
the chapter in Doll6ans, ii. 317. Compare Slosson, The Daihne of the
ChaHist Movement, pp. 115-38, ch. iv., "The Improvement in the Con-
dition of the Working Classes alter 1842. ^ ^^ ,^ ,.^ ,,

5 National Reformer, quoted In Slosson, PeciiJie of the CJiarttst Move-
ment, p. 88. It was O'Brien's own organ.

276 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

As time went on, even O'Connor felt the need of trimming
his sails to meet tie new breezes of opinion. He began to
hedge in his attitude to the Corn Law question, and hence-
forth generally spoke of Cobden with some measure of respect.
In a Chartist Convention held on December 22, 1845)^ at
Manchester the party abandoned its opposition to the repeal
of the Corn Laws on account of the threatened scarcity.'-
O'Connor now sang the praises of Peel. Under his administra-
tion Toryism had become progressive.^ A Chartist meeting
at Ashton, presided over by O'Connor, unanimously declared
in favour of Peel as against Eussell. O'Connor was more than
wavering in his ancient opposition to Trades Unionism. The
Star, now removed to London, gradually posed as a trades
union organ. Yet a few months earher it had spoken con-
temptuously of " the pompous trades and proud mechanics
who are now willing forgers of their own fetters."* But
O'Connor still sought out any new source of discontent, hoping
to bring new recruits to his cause by adopting their principles.
Thus a proposal of the Government to reorganise themihtia
resulted in another new departure. This was a Chartist
" National Anti-MUitia Association," which was announced
as " estabhshed for the protection of those who have a con-
scientious objection to the service and who will not pay others
to dofor them what they object to themselves.* " No vote !
No musket ! " now became a Chartist cry.^ Their sensitive
consciences revolted against the not very martial obligation
of taking their turn in the militia ballot, or of paying a sub-
stitute in the event of the lot being adverse.

It was another sign of O'Connor's conciliatory temper
that he attempted to re-establish friendly relations with
Thomas Cooper, who was released from StafEord Gaol on May
4, 1845.® Cooper was more anxious at the moment to secure
the early pubHcation of the Purgatory of Suicides than to take
up his old propaganda. He was, however, clearly flattered
when O'Connor sought out his society, hstened with interest
to the poet's readings from the Purgatory, and ofiered to bear
the expense of printing the work at the office from which the
Star was issued. His acceptance at once opened the way to
renewed friendship, but O'Connor soon dropped poetry for

• Northern Star, December 27, 1845.

'' Ibid. December 20. •'' Ibid. November 1, 18i5.

■» Ibid. February 7, 1846. ^ Ibid. January 17, 1846.

8 lAfe of Thomas Cooper, p. 258. Compare ibid, chapters xxlv. and
XXV. for Cooper's subsequent relations with O'Connor.

O'CONNOR'S LAND SCHEME 277

politics. " Occasionally," wrote Cooper, " I caUed on O'Connor
and conversed with him; and he invariably expounded his
Land Scheme to me and wished me to become one of its
advocates. But I told him that I could not, and I begged him
to give the Scheme up, for I felt sure it would bring ruin and
disappomtment upon himself and all who entered into it." ^
At first the patrician kept his temper at the workman's pre-
sumption ; but he soon grew haughty, and denied Cooper his
door. Thus the ill-assorted pair drifted back into coolness,
and from coolness to the "real and fierce quarrel" which
finally ended Cooper's relations to O'Connor and Chartism.^

The Land Scheme still required further advertisement if
it were to hold its own against the bitter hostihty and the
widespread indifierence which it encountered. The Land
Society underwent a further reconstitution ; it was "pro-
visionally registered " in October 1846, and early in 1847
reached its final status as the National Land Company. Its
capital was to be £130,000 in 100,000 shares. Branches were
to be set up all over the country, and a Land Bank was to be
started_to facihtate its operations. But O'Connor was to be the
Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Land Company
with absolute control over its operations. Its object was to
buy estates in the open market and divide them up into small
holdings. All persons anxious to become landed proprietors
were to buy as many shares in the Company as they could afiord.
To encourage the poorest not to despair of owning his plot of
ground, a low minimum of weekly subscription for shares was
fi^xed, and a single share could be purchased for 26s. The
proprietor of two shares might hope to receive a house, two
acres of land, and an advance of £15 to stock it. The holder
of one share had a claim on one acre and an advance of £7 : 10s.
The order in which the share-holder was to participate in
these benefits was to be determined by ballot. As soon as
the fortune of the lottery gave the lucky investor Ms chance,
it was the Company's business to find the land, prepare it for
cultivation, erect a suitable cottage, and advance the loans
which would start the new proprietor in his enterprise. In
return the tenant had simply to pay to the Company a rent
of 5 per cent per aimum. With this rent the Company was
to go on buying and equipping more land, until every sub-
scriber to its capital was happily estabUshed on his httle farm.

1 lAfe of Thomas Cooper, pp. 213-i. ^ . ^ , „■ ,

2 Ibid. pp. 277-8. Cooper himself refers to Gammage s History of the
Chartist Movement for details of tlie final rupture.

278 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

The impossibility of carrying out such a scheme need hardly
be indicated. How could the " surplus hands," the outcasts
of the factory system, find the money to buy even one share in
O'Connor's Company ? How could the town-bred artisan
cultivate his little holding without knowledge, capital, equip-
ment, or direction 1 Could such tiny plots, unskUfuUy tilled by
amateur farmers, be made capable of supporting even the most
industrious and capable of the new owners ? How could such
ill-equipped amateurs compete successfully against the capitalist
farmer, skilled in his trade and provided with all the machinery
and tools required for modern farming ? If this were impossible,
how was the Company to get back its " rent " without which it
could not extend its operations ? How could a sufficient supply
of land be procured in a country where great capitaHst land-
holders looked with jealousy upon an independent and self-
sufficing peasantry ? Moreover, the cotton lords and the
railway kings, the successful heads of the professions, the
thrifty landholders with a traditional title were all eager to
become purchasers of any land ofiered for sale, and were able
and willing to pay a price far beyond the economic value of
the land, on account of the social and political prestige still
associated with a proprietary estate. Even had this not been
the case, the inevitable result of the operations of a great
land - purchasing compa,ny was bound to speedily raise the
already inflated price of land, to the extent of making com-
mercial investments in estates extremely difficult. And so
small a sum as £130,000 would do little towards setting up a
peasant proprietary in the teeth of a thousand obstacles.

The difficulties of the new enterprise were complicated by
O'Connor's extraordinary indifEerence and ignorance in all
matters of business. His own finances were a mystery. At
one time he boasted of his estates and capital, and posed as
running the movement and financing the Sia/r out of his own
pocket. At others he appeared in his truer colours as a reck-
less and extravagant spendthrift, unable to find funds for the
most necessary purposes. Under his later management the
Star, once a mine of wealth, had become less and less prosperous.
He kept no accounts ; he could not make the simplest cal-
culations ; he destroyed balance-sheets ; he took no trouble
to give his Company a legal position ; he gave himself the airs
of a prince. Moreover, his incapacity to transact business was
no longer a mere matter of temperament. Reckless living, a
constant whirl of excitement, heroic but futile exertions had

O'CONNOR'S LAND SCHEME 279

undermined his constitution and sapped Ms faculties. The
seeds of insanity were already sown, and the Chartist autocrat
was rapidly ceasing to be responsible for his actions.

If a shocking man of afiairs, O'Connor had stiU enough wit
left to be an ideal Company promoter. His plausibiUty, his
sanguine temperament, his driving force, his rare command
over words, his power over his followers, his magnifioent
assurance, his reckless unscrupulousness, his extraordinary and
ubiquitous energy were still adequate to give his Company a
good start. The greater part of the capital asked for was
subscribed ; six smaU estates were purchased in the open
market and broken up into small allotments. The first of
these, an estate of about one hundred acres near Watford, was
rechristened O'Connorville, and eager artisans set to work to
prepare it for its tenants. No device of advertisement was
neglected. There was a cricket match on Chorley-wood Com-
mon, where O'Connor captained a team of bricklayers against
an eleven of carpenters and sawyers, employed in getting
O'Connorville ready for the Chartist settlement. In this the
bricklayers won by twenty-eight runs. " The workmen,"
says the enthusiastic Star reporter, " having proclaimed a half-
holiday, appeared as respectable and much more healthy than
the Oxford and Marylebone boys." ^ A Chartist cow, named
Eebecca in compliment to the South Welsh destroyers of
turnpikes, supplied milk for the needs of the workmen.^
There was later a ceremonial inauguration of O'Connorville on
August 17, for which Ernest Jones, O'Connor's latest recruit,
wrote a rather commonplace poem :

See there the cottage, labour's own abode,
The pleasant doorway on the cheerful road,
The airy floor, the roof from storms secure,
The merry fireside and the shelter sure,
And, dearest charm of all, the grateful soil,
That bears its produce for the hands that toil.'

The settlers soon flocked in, proud to be the pioneers of a
great social experiment. One of the allottees was a hand-
loom weaver from Ashton-under-Lyne, who brought his loom
with him and employed the time not required for oultivatmg
his allotment in weaving ginghams from yarn supphed from
Manchester.* Nor did the Hertfordshire settlement stand
alone. Within less than two years four other estates were

280 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

purcliased, each covering a wider acreage and commanding a
higher price than O'Connorville. There were two sites near
Gloucester, one at Minster Lovel near Witney, and another
at Dodford near Bromsgrove. A fifth purchase near Glou-
cester was never completed. It is characteristic of the change
that came over Chartism that all these sites were in the South
and West Midlands. But the shareholders came largely from
the North, and in one week it was boasted that a quarter of
the subscription contributed was drawn from Lancashire.^

O'Connor found a capable and energetic lieutenant for
carrying out his Land Schemes in Ernest Charles Jones (1819-
1869). Like O'Connor, Jones was a man of family, education, and
good social position. His father, Major Jones, a hussar of Welsh
descent, had fought bravely in the Peninsula and at Waterloo,
and became equerry to the most hated of George III.'s sons,
Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, after 1837 King of Hanover.
The godson and namesake of the unpopular duke, Ernest Jones
was born at Berhn, brought up on his parents' estate in
Holstein, and educated with scions of Hanoverian nobihty
at Luneburg. He came to England with his family in 1838,
but his upbringing was shown not only in his literary tastes
and wide Continental connections, but by his very German
handwriting and the constant use of German in the more
intimate and emotional entries in his manuscript diaries.^
He entered English life as a man of fashion, moving in good
society, assiduous at court, where a duke presented him to
Queen Victoria, marrying a lady " descended from the Planta-
genets " at a "dashing wedding" in St. George's, Hanover
Square. He was gradually weaned from frivolity by ardent

1 Northern Star, November 21, 1846. In one week Lancashire con-
tributed £292 : 17 : 8 out ol a total subscription of £1331 : 4 : 9i. There
was much rejoicing over these large totals.

2 For instance, the long entries in his diary under September 2, 1839,
and more shortly in the remark under September 10. " Bought a pair of
boots. Mein Herz bricM I " Jones's manuscript diary is preserved with
much other material for his biography in the Manchester Free Reference
Library [MSS. 312 A. 17, 18]. Its two volumes range from July 3, 1839,
to May 9, 1847. For other diaries and note-books of Jones, see later,note 1
on page 299. The diary has been used to some extent by David P. Davies
in his lAfe and Ldbmirs of Ernest Jones (Liverpool, 1897). Among the
numerous Jones tracts in the Manchester Library is a curious pamplilet,
Ernest Jones. Who is He ? What lias He Done I It was an attempt to
justify his career when he stood for Manchester in 1868, and is not unskil-
fully done, though in too apologetic a strain. Some statements are demon-
strably false, notably that he never had any connection with O'Connor's
Land Campaign. The pamphlet excited critical rejoinders, such as Mr.
Ernest Jones and his Candidature by G. W. Mason, which accuses Jones of
having written Who is He ? Mmself. However this may be, it was clearly
drawn up imder his inspiration. Both pamphlets are merely electioneering.
No one can read his diary without being convinced of Jones's fundamental
sincerity despite many weaknesses and aAectations.

O'CONNOE'S LAND SCHEME 281

literary ambitions, but was soon terribly discouraged when
publishers refused to publish, or the public to buy, his verses,
novels, songs, and dances.^ In 1844 he was called to the Bar,
but hardly took his profession seriously. Domestic and
financial troubles soon followed. His father and mother died
and his speculations failed. In 1845 there was an execution
in his house ; he was compelled to hide from his creditors
and pass through the bankruptcy court. He had now to seek
some sort of employment, but apparently failed to find any-
thing congenial to his mystic, dreamy, enthusiastic tempera-
ment.^ He does not seem to have been destitute, but he hved
in a fever of excitement and alternating hope and depression.
He felt cut away from his bearings, hving without motives,
principles, or ambitions, until he began to find a new inspiration
in attending Chartist meetings.* He was soon so fuUy a
convert that, when his first brief came from the solicitors, it
gave him far less satisfaction than the applause with which
his Chartist audiences received his vigorous recitation of his
poems, and the honour of dining four or five days running with
O'Connor. Yet many years later he could inspire the boast that
he had " abandoned a promising, professional career and the
allurements of fashionable Hf e in order to devote himself to the
cause of the people." * He assiduously attended committees
and rushed all over the country to make speeches at meetings.
He ofiered himself as a candidate for the next Convention
because he wished to see " a liberal democracy instead of a
tyrannical oligarchy." ® He reveals his sensitive soul in his
diary.

I aim pouring the tide of my songs over England, forming the
tone of the mighty mind of the people. Wonderful ! Vicissitudes
of life — ^rebuffs and countless disappointments in literature — dry toil
of business — ^press of legal and social struggles — dreadful domestic
catastrophes — domestic bickerings — almost destitution — hunger —

1 A few entries from the diary iUustrate tMa. " I played a wcdzer of my
own composition ; " "I have now three songs being set to mnsie hy
Benedict : " "I went to the Queen's grand birthday drawmg-room ;

" married to Jane [Atherley], June 16, 1841, dashing wedding ; offered
a poem to thirty-two different publishers." Under November 3, 1842, he
records that five plays of his and one novel, besides numberless mmor
pieces, had been refused by publishers. 4. ti, t „ t, „_ j

2 On September 20, 1845, he was appomted secretary to the Leek and
Mansfield (Macclesfield !) Railway at a salary of four gmneas a week, and
bega^workatonce.^^ bankrupt in January 30. 1846 (ion<Jom Gazelle,
January 30 aSd February 2, 1846). His first recorded attendance at a
Chartist meeting was on January 28 of that year, where he spoke over
the Chartist organisation." , ,t ji cj im „ o iq^c

4 Ernest Jones. Who is He? » Northern Star, May 9, 1846.

282 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

labour in mind and body — have left me through the wonderful
Providence of God as enthusiastic of mind, as ardent of temper, as
fresh of heart and as strong a frame as ever ! Thank God !

I am prepared to rush fresh and strong into the strife or struggle
of a nation, to ride the torrent or to guide the rill, it Grod permits." ^

Jones was altogether composed of finer clay ttan O'Connor.
His real sincerity and enthusiasm for Ms cause were quite
foreign to the temperament of his chief. But there were
certain obvious similarities between these two very difierent
types of the " Celtic temperament." Not only in sympathetic
desire to find remedies for evil things, but in deftness in playing
upon a popular audience, in violence of speech, incoherence of
thought, and lack of measure, Jones stood very near O'Connor
himself. Henceforth he was second only to O'Connor among
the Chartist leaders. For the two years in which he found it
easy to work with his chief, Jones's loyal and ardent service
did much to redeem the mediocrity of O'Connor's lead. In his
political songs he set forth, always with fluency and feeling,
sometimes with real lyrical power, the saving merits of the
Land Scheme. Nor was he less efiective as a journalist and
as a platform orator. Not content with the pubhcity of the
Northern Star, whose twinkle was already somewhat dimmed,
O'Connor set up in 1847 a monthly magazine called The
Labourer, devoted to furthering the work of the Land Com-
pany. In this new venture Jones was O'Connor's right-hand
man. And both in prose and verse no perception of humour
dimmed the fervour of his periods :

Has freedom whispered in his wistful ear,
" Courage, poor slave ! Deliverance is near ? "
Oh ! She has breathed a summons sweeter still,
" Come ! Take your guerdon at O'ConnorvUle."

A modest but undoubted Chartist revival flowed from all
-this strenuous efiort. O'Connor now sought a place in ParHa-
ment, and in 1846 ofiered himself for election in Edinburgh
against Macaulay, who had vacated his seat on taking office
in Lord John Russell's new ministry. His address is note-
worthy for throwing over one of the " six points " of the
Charter. Vote by ballot, hitherto a Chartist panacea, was
rejected because it " put a mask on an honest face." *
O'Connor did not, however, go to the poll, transferring hia

1 MS. Diary, October 8, 1846. ^ Northern Star, March 7, 1846,

O'CONNOR'S LAND SCHEME 283

electoral efforts to Nottingham, where he was beaten in the
poll by Sir John Cam Hobhouse, the sometime Radical
friend of Byron and Francis Place, but now shut up in the
straitest school of Whiggery as one of the tamest of Cabinet
ministers of the Russell Government.

The Chartist cause fared better at the general election of
1847. It was one of the surprises of that election that O'Connor
was chosen member for Nottingham while Hobhouse was put
at the bottom of the poU.^ There were a good many other
Chartist candidatures, but most of them were not persevered
in beyond the public nomination at the hustings, and the incon-
clusive verdict of the popular show of hands. But the few
Chartists who went to the poll did not share the leader's good
fortune. Ernest Jones was badly beaten at Halifax,^ and the
nearest approach to a second Chartist victory Was at Norwich,
where J. H. Parry nearly defeated the Marquis of Douro, the
eldest son of the great Duke of Wellington.* It was, however,
a new thing to have even one Chartist able to voice the party's
point of view in the House of Commons, the more so since its
representative was the vigorous personality who stood for the
cause in the public mind. Even in the heyday of Char-
tism, it had only been through the benevolence of some
sympathetic Radicals, like Thompson and Crawford, that
the Chartist standpoint could be indirectly expounded in
Parliament.

O'Coimor did not make much of his position in Parliament.
He talked of bringing in a biU to legalise his Land Company,
which the experts had already pronounced to be illegal. But
he was as much an Irish Nationalist as he was a Chartist, and
the House of Commons after O'ConneU's death ofiered an
irresistible temptation to him to revert to the first role he had
ever played in politics. His chief work in Parliament was
now in obstructing and denouncing the Whig ministers' Irish
Coercion Bill. It almost looks as if he had ambitions to oust
John O'Connell from his uneasy succession to his father as
the Irish leader.* But his eccentricities were now verging
towards insanity, and his language had become extraordinarily

1 The numbers were Walter (of the Times) 1830 ; O'Connor, 1340, eleoted;
GlBborne, 1089 ; Hobhouse, 974, not elected (Northern Star, July 31, 1847).

2 Jones only got 279 votes, while the lowest Buccessful candidate

°H*The n?^bers were Peto, 2414 ; Douro, 1723, elected ; Parry, 1648,

"°* ^if^ft^e™ Star, December 4, 1847, caJled J. O'ConneU " a lick-spittle
spaniel only fit to be kicked." His crime was wishing to keep on terms
with the Whig ministry.

284 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

violent.^ His methods went down on Chartist platforms, but
he never gained the ear of the House of Commons.

(3) Chabtism and the Eevolution of 1848

In 1848 a new impetus was given to the Chartist movement
by the revolutionary disturbances which broke out in nearly
every country of western Europe. The example of the foreign
proletariat in revolt, and particularly the expulsion of the
monarchy of July in favour of a French Eepublic with a social
policy of national workshops, stirred up British malcontents
to imitate the glorious doings of the Parisian revolutionaries.

Up to this point Chartism has presented itself to us mainly
as a particularly British manifestation of specifically British
grievances. But the problem of misery and its remedies had
its universal as well as its insular aspect, and from the early
days of the Working Men's Association, torn which Chartism
sprang, the cosmopolitan side of the common cause had
not been lost sight of. The Chartist pioneer, Lovett, made
it the pride of the Working Men's Association that, as early
as 1836, it had introduced to Europe the mode of international
addresses between working men of different countries. ^ For
a decade the workers of the West, wrestling with legitimism,
and the fruits of the Holy Alliance, and finding no salvation
in the bourgeois rule which seemed the only alternative
to traditional class domination, had looked for guidance from
the comparative freedom of English political and social de-
velopment. While Chartism stood in revolt against the middle-
class ascendancy, established by the Reform BUI, the French
Eevolution of 1848 marked the triumph of the opposition to
the similar principles of bourgeois ascendancy which had come
in with the citizen king of the French. Thus the Continental
democratic leaders hoped for assistance from the Chartist
pioneers of proletarian revolt, while the Chartists themselves
rejoiced to find brethren and allies among the workers beyond
seas.

1 Thus he addreesed the Weekly Despatch : " You unmitigated ass !
You sainted fool I You canonised ape I There Is not a working man in
England who has not more oonfldence In me than in any banker in the
world, and so he ought, you nincompoop I " (Northern Star, September 25,
1847).

2 Lovett's Dife and Struggles, pp. 98-100. In that year the W.M.A.
sent an address to Belgian workers and received an answer Irom them.
In 1844 Lovett joined in forming a society of the " Democratic Friends of
all Nations," largely composed of refugees, which aimed at promoting
international brotherhood by pacific addresses.

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 285

One link between Chartism and the Continent had always
existed in the family connections of Feargus O'Connor. His
uncle, Arthur O'Connor, a priest-hating aristocrat, who had
taken a leading part among the United Irishmen, had done
his best to mduce Lazare Hoche to efiect the Uberation of
Ireland by bringing a Jacobin army across the Channel. On
his release from prison in 1803, Arthur O'Connor had settled
down in the land of Eevolution, had been made a general by
Napoleon, had become a French citizen, and had married a
daughter of the philosopher Condorcet. He was still living in
a country house that had once belonged to Mirabeau, and,
though over eighty years of age, remained active enough to
send home furious attacks on O'Connell and his clerical follow-
ing. Thus the French Revolutionary tradition had almost
as much to do in moulding O'Connor's policy as had his Irish
nationalist antecedents. Lesser apostles of Chartism had
drunk deeply in the French Revolutionary spring. James
O'Brien had glorified the Jacobinism of Robespierre and the
Communism of Babeuf in writings which had been widely
read in Chartist circles. If O'Brien were now virtually lost
to the party, Harney's Jacobinical sentiments, MacDouall's
exUe in France, and Ernest Jones's German upbringing and
relations with German revolutionaries, had all multiplied the
dealings between the Chartist leaders and the Continent.
There was now in England a considerable band of foreign
exiles, chief among whom was Giuseppe Mazzini. Thus it
was that the revolutionary movements on the Continent were
closely followed in Chartist circles, whUe Continental rebels
repaid the compliment by studying the methods of Chartism
in England. The Chartist outlook Was no longer merely local.

In 1845 Feargus O'Connor made a tour in Belgium and

came home full of a desire to emulate the Flemish methods of

small intensive farming, which he held up for admiration to

those who wished to participate in his Land Scheme. Were

England cultivated like Flanders and Brabant, it would, he

declared, be able to maintain a population of three hundred

millions.! But O'Connor did not simply go to Belgium to

study its agriculture. At Brussels he had treaty with a band

of German democratic communists then in exile in the Belgian

capital. This body welcomed him with a congratulatory

address, signed among others by Karl Marx and Friedrich

I Northern Star, September 20, 1845. With oharaoteristio incoherence
O'Connor wrote in the Star ol September 27 that the Belgian peasants were
in terrible tribulation through a failure o( the harvest.

286 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Engels.^ These men, young and little known at the time, had
just begun that long association which was to be of such signi-
ficance in the later history of socialistic theory and practice.
Engels had already become during his earlier residence in
England the chief link that bound to English Chartism the
extremists of the German revolt against the social order.

Eriedrich Engels (1820-1895), the son of a well-to-do
cotton-spinner at Barmen, was brought to Manchester in 1842
in the interests of a branch of his father's firm, established in
the cotton area of south-east Lancashire. His residence in
this country between 1842 and 1844 bore as its chief fruit an
elaborate study of the condition of the English working
classes at that period, which was first published in 1845.^ It
also resulted in Engels being brought into relation with English
Chartists and Socialists, from whom he learnt a more concrete
method of dealing with economic problems than had prevailed
among his German teachers. He wrote for the Northern Star,
and became friendly with O'Connor and Jones. On leaving
England for Paris, Engels began there his intimacy with
Karl Marx (1818-1883), a young doctor from Trier, whose
Jewish origin and Radical views made an academical career
impossible for him in Prussia. Marx was now, under Engels's
guidance, sitting at the feet of the French social reformers. He
gladly widened his reading to include the pioneers of English
socialism and profited much by it, learning, for instance, from
Hodgskin some of the characteristic doctrine which he set forth
to the world twenty years later in Das Kapital. ExjieUed from
Paris at the request of the Prussian Government, Engels and
Marx next took up their quarters at Brussels, where O'Connor
found them. At Brussels they were free to think and write as
they chose, while awaiting the upheaval which they foresaw^to
be imminent in their native country. When even orthodox
Radicalism denied Marx a hearing, he was sure of publicity for
his views in the friendly pages of the Northern Star. Thus,
when he was forbidden to denounce Free Trade in a con-
ference at Brussels, O'Connor printed his written speech for
him in that organ.' A " League of the Just," reorganised
by Marx and Engels as a " League of Communists," took up
under their guidance an open educational propaganda. With

1 Northern Star, Jtdy 25, 1847.

2 F. Engels, Die Lage der arbeiienden Klasaen in England (Leipzig,
1845), translated by F. K. Wlsohnewetzky as The Condition of the Working
Classes in England in 1844 (London, 1892).

8 Northern Star, October 9, 1847. The conference was on September
17-19.

THE EEVOLUTION OF 1848 287

branches in London, Paris, and Brussels, it became a powerful
body.

London, as the chief haven of refuge for the exiled revolu-
tionary, furnished more abundant opportunities than even
Brussels for fraternal relations between the Chartists and their
foreign allies. Thus Harney and Jones attended, on July 14,
1846, the celebration of the anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille by a Democratic Society of French exiles. At this
gathering Jones made a terrific speech on behalf of the frater-
nity of nations, while Harney drove home his moral by urging
the French to forget Pontenoy and the English to forget
Waterloo.! Moreover Harney and Jones were both members
of an international society of German origin called the Deutsche
Bildungsgesellschaft fur Arbeiter. Jones was an active member
of a committee for the regeneration of Poland, and Harney
energetically got up meetings in favour of the Poles. ^

There was a danger lest absorption in international schemes
of revolution might not limit the directness of the Chartist
appeal to the British proletariat. In the early months of
1848 the conflict between the older and newer Chartist ideals
was already making itself felt. There was the natural impulse
to profit by the recrudescence of interest in the movement to
carry on an agitation on the good old lines that had so often
been tried and found wanting. A new National Petition had
already been arranged for, aip,d it was another proof of the
ascendency of O'Connor that his aristocratic disKke of the
ballot was allowed to prevail over the sacred traditions of the
Six Points, consecrated by ten years of agitation. The Peti-
tion asked for the Charter, but henceforth the Charter was
a Charter of Five Points. The Sixth Point, the Ballot, was
quietly dropped. Yet it must have been a real stimulus to
men, who had long lived in a backwater, conscious, despite
their own assertions to the contrary, that the general public
was little heedful of their doings, to learn that crowds were
flocking on every side to sign the Petition, and that there
was every prospect of making a braver show than even in the
glorious days that preceded the coUapse of the Petition of 1842.
With February came the news of the ignominious flight of
Louis Philippe and the supersession of the citizen king by a
Radical Repubhc with socialistic leanings. The Northern
Star rejoiced in the triumph of the " Paris proletarians," and
declared that " as France had secured for herself her beloved

1 NoHhem Star, July 18, 1846. « Hid. March 21 and 28, 1846.

288 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Republic, so Ireland must have ter Parliament restored and
England her idolised Charter." ^ It scathingly compared the
glories of the national workshops of revolutionary France with
the miserable " bastilles " of the Enghsh Poor Law.^ Some-
thing more novel and drastic than mass meetings and petitions
was necessary, if the men of England were to follow efiectively
the example of the heroic sovereign people of France.

In March disturbances broke out aU. over the country. On
March 6 there were food riots in Glasgow. A mob paraded the
town, looting the shops and crying " Bread or Revolution,"
" Vive la Repubhque." * Everywhere great damage was done
and keen alarm excited. At Bridgeton, an eastern suburb of
Glasgow, the soldiers fired on the crowd and shot five men
dead. On March 7 there was a less formidable movement at
Manchester, a feature of which was the attempt of the mob
to clear the workhouse " bastUle " in Tib Street of its inmates.
There was also wild rioting at Aberdeen, at Edinburgh, and
in many other places. In London a meeting, called for
Trafalgar Square on March 6 to protest against the income tax,
was, owing to its injudicious prohibition by the police, turned
into a Chartist demonstration. George M. W. Reynolds, a
journalist who had long upheld the claims of foreign revolu-
tionaries, took the chair, and motions were passed sending
congratulations to the French Repubhc, and declaring the
adherence of the meeting to the Charter. The police sought
to disperse the assembly, but were driven into Scotland Yard.
Towards nightfall there ensued slight disturbances, the break-
ing down of the railings round the Nelson Column and the
smashing of lamps in front of Buckingham Palace. The dis-
persal of the crowd by the palace guard showed that there was
not much danger in the outbreak. Where there were not riots,
there were meetings to demonstrate sympathy with the French
Republicans. At a gathering of Fraternal Democrats, who
cheered the French Repubhc and the Charter, Ernest Jones
declared that " the Book of Kings is fast closing in the Bible
of Humanity." He was sent with Harney and McGrath to
Paris to convey in person the Chartists' congratulations.*
There was another demonstration on March 13 on Kennington
Common.

The Convention met on April 3 in London, where forty-
four representatives came from about thirty-six towns. On

1 Northern Star, March 25, 1848. ^ HM. March 18.

» Ibid. March 11. * Ibid. March 4.

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 289

April 4 serious business began with a proposal from Bronterre
O'Brien^ whose revolutionary enthusiasm now brought him
once more to a meeting controlled by O'Connor. But he came
not to bless but to curse, and poured abundant cold water on
the ardent schemes of the executive. Bronterre upheld the
view that, as the Convention only represented a small fraction
of the nation, it should limit its action to presenting the new
petition, and that a larger assembly should be summoned to
consider ulterior measures. By this dilatory measure time
would be gained to prepare for revolution. In opposition to
this the executive moved resolutions that in the event of the
petition being rejected, a National Assembly should be con-
voked. This body was to draw up a memorial to the Queen
to dismiss her Whig Ministers and choose others who would
make the Charter an immediate Cabinet question. Eeynolds,
the hero of the Trafalgar Square disturbances, had stepped into
some prominence as a Chartist leader. He now moved an
amendment to this, proposing that on the rejection of the
Petition the Convention should declare itself in permanent
session, and proclaim the Charter the law of the land.

In the end the Convention decided in favour of the convoca-
tion of a National Assembly, consisting of delegates appointed
at public meetings, and empowered to present a National
Memorial to the Queen and to remain in session until the
adoption of the Charter. Elaborate plans for the constituting
of the Chartist Commonwealth of the future were now in the
air. The aim before the zealots was a Eevolutionary assembly
that would secure the extension of the Republic from France
to England. Even before the Convention had met, O'Connor
had sketched in the Stwr an ideal polity which had many
affinities with the French Constitution of the Year Three, and
included a House of Commons, elected after the Chartist
fashion, a Senate or House of Elders, rather of the pattern
of the Gonseil des Anciens, and an Executive Council of five,
like the Executive Directory, but with a President chosen
for life. Local government was to be provided for by each
electoral district choosing twelve justices of the peace, whose
mandate was to magnify their office by overthrowing all
centralisation.1 Projects of this sort show; how the Chartist
leaders had widened their platform. Unluckily they could
not agree on the same plan, and events soon made their
deliberations abortive.

1 Northern Star, April 1.

U

290 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

,/
/ The National Petition was now ready for presentation, and,
according to O'Connor and Jones, had been signed by something
approaching six million persons. The Convention publicly
announced that it was to be handed in to Parliament on Monday,
April 10, and convoked for that day a mass meeting of sym-
pathisers on Kennington Common. The plan was for the
Petition to be carried solemnly to Westminster, accompanied
by an imposing procession. The great multitude of Chartists,
reinforced by any friends of the cause who cared to join, was
to convince the timid aristocrats of the strength of the people's
cause and terrorise them into the immediate concession of the
Charter. In other cities sympathetic demonstrations were to
show that zeal for the Charter was not limited to the capital.
The greatest alarm was created by the proposed action of
the Chartists, and the publicity chivalrously given to the
proposed meeting gave the administration the opportunity of
taking adequate precautions to deal with the threatened dis-
order. The Government lawyers discovered a law of the
Restoration period which forbade the presentation of a petition
by more than ten individuals. An Act was hurried through
Parliament making certain seditious deeds felony. Among
such acts were " seeking to intimidate or overawe both Houses
of Parliament," and " openly or advisedly writing or speaking
to that efEect." An army of special constables approaching
170,000 in strength was hastily levied, among their number
being Louis Napoleon, the future Emperor of the French.
The Duke of Wellington, still Commander-in-chief though on
the verge of his eightieth year, was entrusted by the Cabinet
with the direction of all the measures necessary for defence, and
the Tory veteran appeared in the Whig Cabinet to deliberate
with it on the steps to be taken. His plans were judicious and
promptly carried out. All available troops were collected,
and carefully massed at certain central points from which
they could be easily brought to defend the bridges over the
Thames, and watch the two mUes of road that separated
Kennington Common from Westminster Bridge. But they
were carefully hidden out of sight and few suspected the
strength of the forces reserved for emergencies. The dis-
cipline of the streets, even the control of the .passage over the
bridges, was left to the new police and to the civilian special
constables who were everywhere in evidence. In Kennington
and Lambeth peaceable citizens carefully barricaded their
houses and kept within doors.

THE REVOLUTIQN OF 1848 291

On AprU 10 a great crowd assembled on the open space of
rough grass then known as Kennington Common. No attempt
was made to stop the bands of Chartist processionists who
marched from all parts of London to the rendezvous. Soon
the Lh^rtists were there in force, and with them were many
adventurous spirits, attracted by curiosity or love of excite-
ment. But the alarm as to what might happen was so real
and widespread that the assembly was far smaller than the
organisers of the demonstration expected. While O'Connor
boasted of a gathering of half a million, more impartial ob-
servers estimated the crowd as something in the neighbourhood
°L ^^l^- O'Connor drove up in a cab, and was ordered by
the chief commissioner of police, Mr. Richard Mayne, to come
and speak to him. He looked pale and frightened, and was
profuse m thanks and apologies when Mayne told him that
the meeting would not be stopped but that no procession
would be allowed to cross the bridges over the Thames. He
then harangued the assembly, advising it to disperse. The
leader was followed by Jones, Harney, and other popular
orators. Small as the mob was, it consisted of spectators
quite as much as sympathisers. It listened good-humouredly
to the speeches and scattered quietly after they were over.^
The processionists, however, were no longer allowed to cross
the bridges in force, and a few heads were broken before they
accepted the inevitable and made their way home in small
detached groups. Meanwhile O'Connor had driven to the
Home Office, where he reported to the Home Secretary, Sir
George Grey, that the danger was over, and repeated the
thanks and assurances that he had already made to the com-
missioner. The Petition duly reached Parliament in three
cabs, and the day of terror ended in the shouts of laughter that
greeted its arrival in the House of Commons. Meanwhile
similar precautions had been attended with similar results in
the other great centres where Chartist violence had been
expected. When April 10 dawned in Manchester, cannon
were found planted in the streets, and dragoons patrolled the
chief thoroughfares with drawn swords. Thousands of miners
and factory hands marched out from Oldham, Ashton, and
the other manufacturing towns to the east, and many of them
bore pikes and other implements of war. As they approached

1 A letter ol Lord John Russell to the Queen, dated 2 p.m., giving a
useful eunmiary of the events of the morning, is in Letters of Queen Victoria,
ii. 168-9. There is a coloured hut very accurate account in Anntml
Register, xc. ti. 50-54 (1848).

292 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

the city, they were warned of the danger that confronted them
and were persuaded to return to their homes. ^

Chartism never recovered from the tragic fiasco of April 10,
1848. The panic fears that had preceded it were now turned
into equally unthinking and more provocative ridicule. The
Petition came out badly from the scrutiny of the Commons
Committee on Petitions. The gross number of signatures was
somewhat less than two millions, and many of these were in
the same handwriting. The Committee solemnly drew atten-
tion to the fact that among the signatories were " the names
of distinguished individuals who cannot be supposed to have
concurred in its prayer," such as " Victoria rex, 1st AprU,"
Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington [who was supposed to
have signed seventeen times], and Sir Eobert Peel. " We
also," continued the Committee, " observed another abuse
equally derogatory of the just value of petitions, namely the
insertion of names which are obviously altogethe;r fictitious."
" Mr. Punch," " Flatnose," " Pugnose," and " No Cheese "
were examples of this reprehensible tendency. Even including
such efiorts of the practical joker, there were fewer signatures
to the Petition of 1848 than to the Petition of 1842. It
Was to no purpose that O'Connor blustered in the House of
Commons and declared the great things that he proposed to
do. The Petition was dead and was never resuscitated.

A few stalwarts stiU insisted on the summoning of the
National Convention which was to take the " ulterior measures
threatened if the Petition were disregarded." Accordingly a
National Convention met on May 1. O'Connor opposed its
meeting, and took no part in its proceedings. The half-
hearted and irresolute assembly set up a new Executive, in
which Jones and MacDouall were the leading spirits ; but-
neither Convention nor Executive could decide on any practical
steps to secure the acceptance of the Charter in Parhament.
Within a fortnight the Convention broke up for good. Lack
of funds and a more paralysing lack of interest effectively
stayed the hands of the Executive.

A further diminution of O'Connor's reputation now came
from the collapse of his Land Scheme. The promises of 1846
and 1847 had not been realised ; the little groups of land
settlers were very far from earning their Uving and providing

1 Seelithe interestiiig remlnlsoenoeB ol the old Chartist, WUllam Chad-
wlok, quoted from tbeBury Times of February 24, 1894, in SlosBon, p. 100.
KusseU had reported to the Queen that " at Manchester the ChartistB are
armed and have bad designs " (Letters of Queen Victoria, il. 109).

THE EEVOLUTION OF 1848 293

tte surplus of profit to the funds from which new lands could
be bought ; the aUotment holders of O'ConnorviUe and its
like were m many cases reduced to dire distress. Many were
m danger of having to faU back on the cruel charity of the
JVfew Ji-oor Law. Eumours of incompetence and malversation
were so rife that there was a great outcry against the whole
plan. Finally the House of Commons took the matter up and
appointed a committee of investigation, which reported in
August strongly against the National Land Company and all
its works. The Company was an illegal scheme; it could
not fulfil the expectations held out by the directors to the
shareholders ; its books and accounts had been most imper-
fectly kept ; the original balance sheets signed by the auditors
had been destroyed, and only those for three quarters were
producible in any form. One point only in the damning
catalogue of error could in any wise be construed in O'Connor's
favour. The Committee reported that the confusion of the
accounts was not attributable to any dishonesty on O'Connor's
part. The irregularity had been against him, not in his
favour, and a large sum of money was due to him at the
moment. The conclusion of the Committee was that power
should be given to wind up the undertaking, and reheve the
promoters of the scheme from the penalties to which they
might have incautiously subjected themselves. i In September
Parliament accepted the report. It dealt such a blow to
O'Connor's diminished prestige that the strongest of men could
hardly have recovered from it. The Land Scheme, hke the
Petition, had ended in ridicule and contempt. It was small
consolation to the faUen leader that his colleagues regarded
him as a fool rather than as a rogue.

A minimum of disturbance and protest followed the coUapse
of April 10. As after the failure of 1842, there was a certain
amount of agitation and rioting, but the disorders of the spring
of 1848 fell as far short of those of the summer of 1842 as the
Petition of 1848 fell short of the Petition of 1842. There were
tumults in Aberdeen in April, occasioned by the election of a
delegate to the Convention.^ In May there were several suc-
cessive disturbances in London on Clerkenwell Green, now a
favourite meeting-place of Chartists ; and at Bishop Bonner's
Fields in the Tower Hamlets.' In Manchester the vigilance

1 The conclusions of the Committee are quoted In Slosson, pp. 91-92.
The evidence and report are set forth at length in Parliamentary Pavers,
1847-8, lis.. „ ^.^

2 Ammal Register, xc. 11. 59. » Una. p. 80.

294 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

of the police prevented any outbreak, but on July 14 there
was a collision at Ashton-under-Lyne between a mob, armed
with pikes, and the special constables, supported by a small
mihtary force. In the course of it the mob did to death a
policeman, who was wrongly identified with a constable who
had given evidence against MacDouall, who had long plied
his trade as an unquaMed medical practitioner at Ashton, and
was something of a local hero.^ In London several secret
deposits of arms and weapons were discovered by the pohce
in August.^

These circumstances gave some justification to the numer-
ous arrests and trials which vindicated the dignity of the law.
Ernest Jones was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for
his share in the troubles at ClerkenweU Green and Bonner's
Fields. In August MacDouaU received a similar punishment,
while in September WiUiam Cuffey and others were condemned
to transportation for life.* The most chilling circamstance
for the last victims of Chartism was the profound indifierence
shown to their threats and sufierings. But their foolish
schemes of impracticable rebellions no less than the eagerness
with which they incriminated each other might well have
disgusted a pubho less attuned to anti-Revolutionary panic
than the disillusioned men of 1848.

(4) The Last Stages or Chartism (1849-1858)

I After the Chartist coUapse of 1848 there remains nothing

; save to write the epilogue. But ten more weary years elapsed

[before the final end came, for moribund Chartism showed a

strange vitality, however feeble the Hfe which now Ungered in

i it. But the Chartist tradition was already a venerable memory,

and its devotees were more conservative than they thought

when they clung hopelessly to its doctrine. It is some

measure of the sentimental force of Chartism that it took such

an unconscionably long time in dying.

O'Connor had survived with difficulty the double catastrophe
of the National Petition and the Land Scheme. But he still
remained member for Nottingham, and, though his parlia-

1 Anmual Register, p. 103. ' Ibid. p. 104.

3 Cuffley, a notorious London Chartist, is perhaps the Chartist leader
most often mentioned m Punch, whose attitude to the men of 1848 was
much less 83Tnpathetic than It had been to the heroes of 1842. Cufley,
for instance, is nerer spoken of without ridicule. But the change of tone
in this widely read paper reflects the change of sentiment in its middle-class
readers with regard to the Chartist movement.

THE LAST STAGES OF CHAETISM 295

mentary activity was now rapidly declining, lie stiU spoke
and voted upon occasion. There was a last flash of the old
O Connor spirit when, in 1849, he indignantly denounced the
seventy of the treatment meted out to Ernest Jones, when the
Chartist captive incurred the wrath of the prison authorities
by refusing to pick oakum. But it was a sign of failing power
or interest when he delayed bringing forward until that same
session of 1849 his long-promised motion in favour of the
principles of the National Petition. He was, however, voted
down by 224 to 15, and, when in 1850 he once more revived
his proposal, he sufiered the ignominy of a count-out. It was
O'Connor's nature to shout with the crowd, and these deadening
experiences led him to seek parliamentary notoriety in other
channels. Early in 1852 he sold the Northern Star to new
proprietors, who forthwith dissociated it from the Chartist
cause. His last parliamentary appearances were when he
spoke on Irish subjects. If this were no new experience for a
pohtician who never swerved in his allegiance to the Irish
national idea, it showed demorahsation that he should make
overtures to the Cobdenites, and worship the gods whom he
had of old contemned. But O'Connor's career was now nearly
run. The shadow of insanity had long been brooding over
him and the end came the more quickly by reason of his
intemperate habits. At last he was removed from the House
of Commons under deplorable circumstances. In 1852 he
outrageously insulted a brother member and was committed
to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. Next day he was
pronounced insane and placed in an asylum. He died in 1855,
and the huge concourse that attended his funeral at Kensal
Green showed that the last years of failure and sickness had
not altogether destroyed the hold he had so long possessed
over his followers.

Ernest Jones gradually stepped into O'Connor's place. j
His imprisonment between 1848 and 1850 had spared him the
necessity of violent conflict with his chief, and after his release
he had tact enough to avoid an open breach with him. His
aim was now to minimise the efiects of O'Connor's eccentric
pohcy, and after 1852 he was free to rally as he would the
faithful remnant. He wandered restlessly from town to town,
agitating, organising, and haranguing the scanty audiences
that he could now attract. His pen resumed its former
activity. He sought to replace the fallen Northern Star by a
newspaper called Notes to the People. Jones was an excellent

296 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

journalist, but there was no public which cared to buy his new
venture. It was in vain that he furiously lashed capitahsts
and aristocrats, middle-class reformers, co-operators, trades
unionists, and, above all, his enemies within the Chartist ranks.
He reached the Hmit when, under the thin disguise of the
adventures of a fictitious demagogue called Simon de Brassier,
he held up his old chief to opprobrium, not only for his acknow-
ledged weaknesses, but as a self-seeking money-grabber and a
government spy. It was in vain that Jones denied that his
political novel contained real characters and referred to real
events. Simon de Brassier's sayings and doings were too
carefully modelled on those of O'Connor for the excuse to
hold water. But however great the scandal excited, it did not
sell the paper in which the romance was pubUshed. After
an inglorious existence of a few months Notes to the Peopk
came to an end, and the People's Paper, Jones's final joumal-
istio venture, was not much more fortunate. It dragged on as
long as sympathisers were found to subscribe enough money
to print it. When these funds failed it speedily coUapsed.

The scandal of Simon de Brassier showed that Jones was
almost as irresponsible as O'Connor. In many other ways also
the new leader showed that he had no real gift for leadership.
He was fuUy as difficult to work with, as petulant and seli-
wiUed, as O'Connor had ever been. He threw himself without
restraint into every sectional quarrel, and under his rule the
scanty remnant of the Chartist flock was distracted by constant
quarrels and schisms. Meanwhile the faithful few still as-
,'sembled annually in their Conventions, and the leaders still
! met weekly in their Executive Committees. But while each
.' Convention was torn asimder by quarrels and dissensions, the
outside public became stonily indifierent to its decisions.
Jones himself retained a robust faith in the eventual triumph
of the Charter, but he soon convinced himself that its victory
was not to be secured by the co-operation of his colleagues on
the Chartist Executive. He now grew heartily sick of sitting
Wednesday after Wednesday at Executive meetings where no
quorum could be obtained, or which, when enough members
attended, refused to promote " the world's greatest and dearest
cause," because minding other matters instead of minding
the Charter. He was one of the last upholders of the old
Chartist anti-middle-class programme ; but he preached the
faith to few sympathetic ears. In 1852 he withdrew in dis-
gust from the Executive, but came back ?igain when the Man-

THE LAST STAGES OF CHAETISM 297

ckester Conference of that year adopted a new organisation
of kis own proposing. This Conference, however, made itself
ridiculous by persisting in the old policy of refusing to co-
operate with other parties pursuing similar ends, and after
1853 no more Conventions were held. The release in 1854?
of the martyrs of the Newport rising — ^Frost, Jones, and •
Williams — showed that in oiEcial eyes Chartism was no longer ';
dangerous. For the five more years between 1853 and 1858
Jones still lectured on behalf of the Charter, and could stUl,
in 1858, rejoice with his brother Chartists on his vindication
of his character against the aspersions of Eeynolds. With
his passing over to the Radical ranks the Chartist succession
came to a final end.

During its long agony many attempts were made to re-
vivify Chartism on Imes independent of the official organisa-
tion. Now that O'Connorism was no more. Chartist pioneers,
whom the agitator had driven from the field, came back with ;
new schemes for saving the Charter. But in all of these the ■
Charter was but an incident in a long programme of social
reconstruction. In efiect politics were to be relegated to the
background, and the Charter was to be a symbol of Radical
reforms.'- The first proposals came from William Lovett,f
who, in May 1848, a month after the failure on Kennington
Common, started the People's League, which was to combine '
with the Charter national economy, the abohtion of indirect '
taxation, and a progressive tax on property. Lovett found
so little response that in a few months the new society was
wound up. Even more discouraging was the reception of a
half-hearted attempt of Thomas Cooper to start in 1849 a new
form of Chartist agitation by way of individual petition.
Jones would have nothing to say to it, and Cooper so com-
pletely gave up the idea that he does not so much as allude to
it in his autobiography. • j j ni, f <•

Other plans came from more Radical - mmded Chartist
seceders. Conspicuous among these was a scheme set up by
Bronterre O'Brien with the goodwiU of G. W. M. Reynolds
These two estabHshed a National Reform League which
aimed at combining with the political programme of the
Chartists large measures of social reform, notably the national-
isation of the land, which had always been a leading pmiciple
of O'Brien. It kept on good terms with the National Charter

1 Dierlamm, mugschHften lUeratur der Chartisteribewegung, pp. 9-10, brings
out this new tendency Tery clearly.

298 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Association, Reynolds forming a link between them. Yet this
compromise between political Chartism and the visions of
abstract Socialism never prospered, and O'Brien soon trans-
ferred his support to another equally abortive society. And
^ven in the thin ranks of orthodox Chartism there was still
jschism. In 1850 a National Charter League was founded by
>Thomas Clark in open opposition to the Charter Association.
This advocated a more moderate programme and an alliance
with the " Manchester School," and had the ambiguous advan-
tage of the secret backing of Feargus O'Connor. Nevertheless
at died in infancy. A final attempt to combine the various
projected organisations in a single body proved equally
[abortive. The fewer the Chartists the more they were divided.
Harney, Jones's ally in fierce attacks on the Charter League,
soon quarrelled himself with Jones and fell into schism.
Later on, Reynolds assailed Jones with even greater fierceness,
accusing him of malversation of funds and of other gross acts
of dishonesty. At last in 1858 Jones was compelled to vindi-
cate his honour in a libel action, from which he emerged
absolutely triumphant. It was sheer despair of such aUies
that at last led Jones to drop the Chartist cry.

Individual Chartists survived the Chartist organisations for
' another generation. Down almost to the latter years of the
I nineteenth century there was hardly a populous neighbourhood
where some ancient Chartist did not live on. He was generally
in poor, often in distressed circumstances, but he enjoyed the
respect and esteem of his neighbours, was brimful of stories of
the hard struggles of his youth, and retained amidst strangely
different circumstances a touch of the old idealism which had
ever shone with a purer flame among the rank and file than
among the leaders. Some of the older Chartists had still work
before them which had been suggested by their earlier struggles.
Some of the younger Chartists made names for themselves in
new directions.

Of the last Chartist leader, Ernest Jones, there is still
something to say. In 1858 he initiated a National Suffrage
Movement and accepted the presidency of the organisation
established for that end. It became, under his guidance, one
of the forces which, after a few years of lethargy, renewed the
agitation for reform of Parliament, and was a factor in bringing
about the second Reform Act of 1867. In 1861 he transferred
himself from London to Manchester, where he resided until
his death, writing plays and novels, agitating for reform,

THE LAST STAGES OF CHARTISM 299

watching tte movement of foreign politics, and winning a
respectable practice at the local bar. Here his greatest
achievement was his able defence of the Fenian prisoners
convicted in 1867 of the murder of Pohce Sergeant Brett!
He remained poor, but obtained a good position in Eadical
circles, contesting Manchester in 1868, when, though un-
successful, he received more than ten thousand votes. He
died in January 1869, and the pubUc display which attended
his burial in Ardwick cemetery was only second to that which
had marked the interment of O'Connor.^

Jones's bitter enemy, George W. M. Reynolds (1814^1879),
survived for another ten years. He ended as he had begun,
as a journalist, and Reynolds' Weekly Newspaper, started by
him in 1850, and still published, early obtained a position as
the organ of republican and extreme labour opinions. Three
of O'Connor's enemies still had much work before them.
Robert Gammage, the historian of Chartism, found, after the
coUapse of the movement, a new occupation in the practice of
medicine at Newcastle and Sunderland, from which he only
retired shortly before his death in 1888. Lovett survived until
1877, mainly absorbed in his declining years in the work of
popular education, which had always seemed to him the most
essential condition of social progress. Cooper hved on until
1892, even more divorced from pohtics than Lovett, and
finding consolation in his last years in upholding in his lectures
the evidences for Christianity. Frost, the Newport rebel, after
his return to England, lived quietly near Bristol, where he
died in 1877 when over ninety. Notable among the younger
men, who could stUl strike out fresh lines, was George Jacob
Holyoake (1817-1906), the young Birmingham Chartist
whose long pubhc life ranged from the Bull Ring Riots of 1839
to his many battles for co-operation and secularism, continued
until a very advanced age. Even more noteworthy was the
career of William James Linton (1812-1898), who, after he
had thrown ofi the trammels of O'Connorism, won reputation
as an ardent political reformer, a true poet, and, above all,
as the most distinguished wood-engraver of his time.

The great band of Chartist patriarchs show that the re-
proaches of mediocrity and inefiectiveness, often levelled

1 See for Jones's later years the remarkable oolleotion ol pamphlets and
manuBoripts about Mm preserved in the Manchester Reference Librajy. The
election of 1868 produced a good deal of biographical literature, both for and
against him. His " business diary " shows that between 1860 and l»Oi!
[MSS. 312 A 19), he had a good many briefs, and another note-book
(ibid. A 21), that he devoted some attention to his legal Btudles.

300 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

against the movement, must not be pressed too far. Nearly
all of them beguiled their old age by settiag down in writing
the reminiscences of their youth, or in treating in some more
or less general fashion of the history of the Chartist move-
ment. Their memoirs share fully in the necessary limitations
of the literary type to which they belong. There are failures
of memory, over - eagerness to apologise or explain, strong
bias, necessary Hmitation of vision which dwells excessively
on trivial detail and cannot perceive the general tendencies of
the work in which the writers had taken their part. But, how-
ever imperfect they may be as set histories of Chartism, we
find in most of them that same note of simplicity and sincerity
that had marked their authors' careers. If these records
make it patent why Chartism failed, they give a shrewder
insight than any merely external narrative can afford of the
reasons why the movement spread so deeply and kept so long
aUve. They enable us to understand how, despite apparent
failure. Chartism had a part of its own in the growth of modern
democracy and industrialism.

(5) The Place of Chartism in Histoey

Contemporaries, whether friendly or hostile to Chartism,
had no hesitation in declaring the movement] fruitless. The
initial failure to gain a hearing for the National Petition
was complicated by unending faction among the Chartists,
and culminated in the great fiasco on Kennington Common.
Then, after a few frenzied efforts had been made to keep the
cause alive, it slowly perished of mere inanition. The judg-
ment of its own age has been accepted by many later historians,
and there has been a general agreement in placing Chartism
among the lost causes of history.

That there is some measure of truth in the adverse judgment
can hardly be gainsaid. The Chartist organisation failed ;
the individual Chartists were conscious of the wreck of their
hopes. But how many of the greatest movements in history
began in failure, and how often has a later generation reaped
with little efiort abundant crops from fields which refused to
yield fruit to their first cultivators ? A wider survey suggests
> that in the long run Chartism by no means failed. On its
immediate poUtical side the principles of the Charter have
gradually become parts of the British constitution. If on its
broader social aspects there was no such complete and obvious

ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 301

vindication of tte Chartist point of view, this is due partly to
the fact that the Chartists had no social poUcy in the sense
that they had a political platform, and partly to the obvious
truth that it is harder to reconstitute society than it is to reform
the political machinery of a progressive community. Yet even
here Chartism may claim to have initiated many movements
which are still with us, both in Britain and on the Continent.
Accordingly we shall take a much truer view of the place of
Chartism in history, if we disregard the superficial judgments of
despairing agitators and contemptuous enemies, and look rather
at the wider ways in which Chartism has made its influence felt
upon succeeding generations. From this point of view Chartism
deserves a much more respectful consideration than it has
generally received. Hard as it is to study it in isolation
from the other tendencies with which it was brought into close
relations, either helpful or hurtful, it is not impossible to dis-
sect out the Chartist nerve and trace its ramifications into
regions of the body politic which, though apparently out of
relation to Chartism, were yet unconsciously amenable to its
stimulus. Let us work out this point of view in somewhat
greater detail.

We may begin with political Chartism, for though Chartism
was in essence a social movement, yet, for the greater part of
its active existence, it limited its immediate purpose to the
carrying out of a purely political programme. Here the con-
summation of its policy was only deferred for a season. Its
restricted platform of political reform, though denounced as
revolutionary at the time, was afterward^^ substantially
adopted by the British State without any conscious revolu-
tionary purpose or perceptible revolutionary efiect. Before
all the Chartist leaders had passed away, most of the famous
Six Points became the law of the land. A beginning was
made in 1858, the year of the final Chartist coUapse, by the
abolition of the property qualification for members of Parlia-
ment. Next followed vote by ballot, established in 1872.
More tardily came the accomplishment of a third point, when
in 1911 members of the House of Commons voted them-
selves pay for their services. If the other three points have
not been carried out in their entirety, substantial progress has
been efiected towards their fulfilment. Two great strides were '
made in the direction of universal sufirage by the Eeform
Acts of 1867 and 1885, which extended the right of voting to
every adult male householder, and to some limited categories

302 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

beyond that limit. In 1917, in the midst of the Great War,
Parliament is busy with a third wide extension of the electorate
which, if carried out, will virtually establish universal sufErage
for all males, and, accepting with limitations a doctrine which
Lovett considered too impracticable even for Chartists, will
allow votes to women under a fantastic limitation of age that
is not likely to endure very long. The changes of 1867 and
1885, with the more drastic ones under discussion in 1917,
will bring about something as nearly approximating to equal
electoral districts as geography and a varying increase of
population make possible. Its effect will be the greaiter since
the drastic limitation of plural voting, and the abohtion of the
freeholder's time - honoured qualification, make voters, as
well as votes, more nearly equal in value. One only of the
Six Points has been regarded as undesirable, namely the
demand for annual parliaments. Yet even here the recent
curtailment of a normal Parhament's life from seven years to
five is a step in that direction.

Even minor articles of the Chartists' programme, not
'important enough to be included in the Six Points, are
either adopted or in course of adoption. The payment of
returning officers for their services, the relegation to the
rates of the necessary expenses of elections, the shorten-
ing of the electoral period, with the view of concentrating
elections on a single day, are now approved, and it wiU be a
short step from a maximum of two votes to the Chartists'
veto of all plural franchises. Thus as far as poUtical machinery
goes the Chartists have substantially won their case. England
has become a democracy, as the Chartists wished, and the
domination of the middle class, prepared for by the Act of 1832,
is at least as much a matter of ancient history as the power of
the landed aristocracy.

In the light of the adoption by the State of the whole of its
positive programme it is hard to reproach Chartism with
failure. But let us not overstress its success. Against it
we must set the fact that not a single article of Chartist policy
had the remotest chance of becoming law until the movement
had expired. It was only when Chartism ceased to be a name
of terror that the process of giving effect to its programme
was taken up by the middle-class Parliaments of the later
Victorian age. The plice only became quick when, after
1867, Parhament, with each extension of the franchise, grew
more susceptible to working-class pressure. But the Chartist

ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 303

programme was only the first step towards the consummation
of the Chartist ideal. The most optimistic of Chartist enthusi-
asts could hardly have believed that a new heaven and a new
earth would be brought about by mere improvements in
political machinery. Behind the restricted limits of avowed
Chartist policy lay the vision of social regeneration that alone
could remove the terrible evils against which Chartism had
revolted. The latest phases of Chartism after 1848 fully
recognised this fact, but the machine, which had failed at the
moment to work out its political programme, could not be
reconstructed by its discredited makers for the discharge of
still more difficult tasks. Accordingly the social ideals of
Chartism attained even a scantier degree of realisation through
direct and immediate Chartist action than did its political
programme.

In estimating the measure of success won, when the time
was ripe, for the Chartist social programme we must apply
the same tests that We have used in studying the execution of
its political reforms. We must determine the extent to which
its social and economic ideals have been taken up, and made
practical, in the sixty years that have elapsed since the ex-
tinction of the movement. The real difficulty before us is,
however, to discover what were the broader visions of the
Chartists. They were well agreed in the diagnosis of the
obvious social diseases of their time ; they could unite in
clamouring for the political reforms which were to give the
mass of the people the means of saving themselves from their
miseries. Beyond this, however, the Chartist consensus
hardly went. It was impossible for them to focus a united
body of opinion in favour of a single definite social ideal. The
true failure of Chartism lay in its inability to perform this task.
Political Chartism was a real though limited thing ; social
Chartism was a protest against what existed, not a reasoned
policy to set up anything concrete in its place. Apart from
machinery. Chartism was largely a passionate negation.

The Chartists need not be severely reproached for their
lack of a positive policy. It was a fault which they shared
with the chief English parties of the time. It was a limitation
which was inevitable in the existing circumstances. The new
Britain, in which we still hve, had been slowly arising out of
the old England which had preceded the Industrial Eevolution.
The forms and trappings of the old system stiU cumbered the
ground though the reasons for their existence were rapidly

304 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

passing away. There was no prospect of such sweeping
changes as those which, after 1789, rudely destroyed the
mediaeval survivals in government and in society which had
been much more noticeable in eighteenth-century France than
in nineteenth-century England. There was the less need for
political revolution in England since her political institutions,
unlike those of France, were stiU sufficiently sound to be capable
of legal adaptation to their new social environment. It was
necessary then that the first reforms should be pohtical, and that
both these, and such social ameliorations as were immediately
possible, should be rather the removal of restrictions than the
establishment of positive principles. The first business of
every reformer was to clear away evil survivals that could no
longer justify themselves. Thus it was that within twenty
years it was practicable to abolish the excessive cruelties of
the criminal code, to initiate the first timid attempts to miti-
gate the brutalities of the factory system, to remove the more
glaring disabilities imposed on Nonconformists and Eoman
Catholics, to repeal the anti-combination laws, which had
made the healthy development of Trades Unionism impossible,
and to cut away unworkable and harmful restrictions on
freedom of trade between the United Kingdom and the rest
of the world. It was thus that the Benthamites, the only
reformers who acted upon principle, could erect the very
practical test of utihty into a philosophical doctrine, and preach
the unrestrained freedom of the individual as the panacea for
all the evils of society.

' Chartism then was the union of men who agreed in a
negative policy of protest against restrictions which were the
source of infinite misery and unrest, but whose positive policy
was narrowed down to a sensible but limited pohtical pro-
gramme which, when realised, left the root of social evils
hardly touched. That this should be so was unavoidable,
since Chartists were profoundly disagreed as to what use
should be made by the proletariat of the pohtical power which
they claimed for it. Every conceivable wave of doctrine
flowed from some portion or another of the Chartist sea.
Ideas the most contradictory, dreams the most opposite, were
strongly and passionately expressed from one section or other
of the Chartist ranks. Many Chartists were, like O'Brien
and Harney, frank revolutionaries, who wished a complete
breach with a rotten and obsolete past and desired a thorough-
going reconstruction of the social order. But even these

ITS PLACE m HISTORY 305

difiered among themselves. Some desired the erection of an
autocratic and Jacobinical state which would dragoon the
individual into progress on socialist hues. Others, even among
those who shared the socialist ideal, were as suspicious of
state control as the Benthamites or as Eobert Owen, and
believed that their goal could best be attained by free volun-
tary association. Another school, headed by Lovett, was
brought by the rude teaching of experience to modify its
original abstract doctrine in the direction of a practical
compromising individualism. Its final faith was that all would
be well when positive restraint on freedom was removed, and
when the spread of popular education, organised by private
associations, untrammelled by state or clerical interference, had
been secured. While all these varied types looked to the future,
there were many Chartists who gazed back with such longing to
a mythical golden age that they were not so much conservative
as reactionary. Men like Joseph Stephens of Ashton, the Tory-
Protectionist, the ally of Oastler and Sadler, made a much more
direct appeal to the industrial North than did Jacobins hke
O'Brien and Harney. O'Connor himself in his sincerer moments
was much more akin to Stephens than to the revolutionary crew
which he inspired to battle. Thus Chartism represented not
one but many social ideals. Two essentially divergent Chartist
types struggled unhappily in a single Chartist organisation.

Much has been written about the various schools of
Chartism. There have been many superficial attempts to '
divide Chartists, both in their own time and later, into the
partisans of moral and physical force. But the dispute
between O'Connor and the physical force men was a mere
difEerence as to method ; it did not touch the fundamental
problem of the Chartist ideal ; it corresponded to what is
found in one shape or another in the history of every revolu-
tion. Moreover, there was little sincerity in the physical
force party. To a large section of it, notably to the Birming-
ham Political Union, the appeal to arms was a game of bluff
calculated to terrorise the governing classes into submission.
To another section it was even less than this ; it was simply a
blatant device to attract attention. There was little depth
then in the physical force cry. Even more superficial than
the division between the champions of moral and physical
arms is the attempt to split up Chartism into schools, arismg
from the miserable personal rivalries that did so much to wreck
the movement as a force in practical politics. The clearest

X

306 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

way of dividing the Chartists into schools is to group them
into two sections, a reactionary and a progressive section.
While men like Stephens and O'Connor looked back to the
past, and strove to bring back those good old days which aU
history proves never to have existed, Chartists of the type of
Lovett and Cooper ttirned their eyes to the future and sought
the remedy for past evils in a reconstruction of society which
frankly ignored history. ^

These schools correspond roughly to the agrarian and the
industrial schools. The past which Stephens and O'Connor
wished to reconstitute was the rural England, as they imagined

( it to have been, before the Industrial Eevolution. A nation
of small farmers, a contented peasantry, rooted to the soil,
and capable by association of controlling its own destinies, was
to replace the sordid industrialism of the factory system,
which to men thus minded was so hopelessly bad as to be
incapable of improvement and was to be ended as soon as

•■ practicable. On the other hand, the school of Lovett and
Cooper accepted the Industrial Revolution and tried to make
the best of it. These men saw that the country had neces-
sarily to remain preponderatingly industrial and commercial,
and sought to recast society in the interests of the industrial

, classes, exploited by the capitalists. From these efforts
came the most ideahstic school of Chartism which recognised
that the first step in aU improvement was the moral and intel-
lectual regeneration of the workers. At the other end of the
scale were the coaijsely material ChartistSj- whose object,
narrowed by their miserable conditions, was limited, to palp-
able and tangible benefit-for themselves. There Were further
cross divisions. The northern crowd of factory hands and
miners had a spirit very difierent from that of the south-
country Chartists who looked for guidance to the London
artisans and agitators. The midland movement, centring
round Birmingham, was conspicuous for the part played in
it by the " respectable " middle class. To some extent, but
not by any means universally, the northerners tended towards
physical force and the southerners towards moral force.
Then, again, there was the line of demarcation between the
individualists and the socialists, also to some extent following
the local diArision of south and north. It was the socialistic
wing that had the more clearly cut policy, and the one which
carried on most fruitfully the Chartist tradition to the next
1 Dlerlamm, pp. 8-9, has some excellent remarks on these heads.

ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 307

generation. Tte great Chartist following had, we may safely
say, no policy at all. It followed its leaders with touching
devotion into whatsoever blind alleys they might go. The
plain Chartists had nothing to contribute to Chartist doctrine.
A moving sense of wrong, a fierce desire to remedy the con-
ditions of their daily life, were the only spurs which drove
them into agitation and rioting. Hence the incoherence as
well as the sincerity of the whole movement.

It followed from the contradictory tendencies within their
ranks that Chartists could agree in little save in negations,
whether in their social or in their political activity. Nothing
kept Chartists together long, save when they made common
cause against some obvious and glaring evils^ Thus they
united their forces easily enough when they fought manfully
against the New Poor Law or for factory legislation and
declared in chorus their abhorrence of the Manchester Radicals,
like Bright and Cobden, who opposed it in the interest'of the
naanufacturers. When a more positive remedy was sought, the
divergent schools parted company. We have seen this when
the agrarian proposals of O'Connor were opposed, not only in
detail but on principle, within the Chartist ranks. A stolid
and prosperous peasant democracy was hateful to Jacobin
Chartism, because it would be hostUe to all change as change,
and would therefore stop any idealistic reconstruction of
society.

Whatever else it was not, Chartism certainly was an efiort
towards democracy and social equality. Nowadays the gulf
between classes is bad enough, but it is difficult for the
present generation to conceive the deeply cut line of division
between the governing classes and the labouring masses in the
early days of Victoria. It was the duty of the common man
to obey his masters and be contented with his miserable lot.
This had been the doctrine of the landed aristocracy of the
past ; it was equally emphatically the point of view of the
capitalist class which was using the Reform Act to establish
itself in an equally strong position. Against the autocracy'
both of the landlord and of the capitalist Chartism was a strong
protest. Every Chartist was fiercely independent and eager
that the class for which he stood should work out its own
salvation. It is this which makes the most reactionary
Chartist idealisation of the past differ from the Young England-
ism which was expressed most powerfully in Disraeli's SyUl.
The Chartists rejected the leadership of the " old nobility,"

308 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

of the landed aristocracy and the priest, almost as hotly as
they resisted the patronage of the plutocrat and the capitalist.
In finding no place for the independence of the worker the
Young England scheme of salvation parted company from all
Chartism.

There was the same conflict in the Chartist social outlook
as in their ideals of reconstruction. To some Chartists the war
of classes was the necessary condition of social progress, and
their characteristic attitude was the refusal of all co-operation
between working men and those who did not gain their bread
by manual labour. To others of a more practical temperament
experience showed that it was wise to unite the proletariat with
the enlightened middle classes in common bonds of interest
and afiection. Yet even the straitest zealots for class war
could not dispense with the guidance of men of higher social
position, " aristocratic " deserters from their own class, and
middle-class men, like the preachers, barristers, apothecaries,
shopkeepers, and journalists who were so numerous that they
left but few positions of leadership open to real working men.
And it is typical of the deep-rooted habit of dependence and
deference in early Victorian society that the men who resented
the patronage of Young England lords and cotton kings should
have been almost entirely imconscious of the blatant con-
descension involved in O'Connor's supercilious attitude to his
followers. But it would be bewildering to develop stiU further
the varieties of social type included within the Chartist ranks.
) The religious outlook of Chartists was as varied as their
/social ideals. To the timid folk who trembled at Chartism
without even trying to understand it. Chartism meant irrehgion
even more than it meant revolution. And it is clear that to
most Chartists organised middle-class religion was anathema.
" More pigs and fewer parsons " was a famous cry of Chartism
on its most material side. Chartist leaders, like Hetherington
and Cleave, handed on to Lovett and Holyoake the uncom-
promising free-thought of revolutionary France, untH, under the
tatter's auspices, it crystallised into the working-class " secular-
ism " of the later nineteenth century. Yet a strain of exalted
mysticism gave force and fervour to many Chartists. We
have seen how many Chartist leaders were ministers of religion.
Even among the doubters there were elements of spiritual
emotion, sometimes extinguished by environment, but at
other times kindled into flame by favourable conditions.
Thomas Cooper, a Methodist preacher in his youth, the mis-

ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 309

sionary of free - thought in his mid - career, the unwearied '
vindicator of the Christian faith in his old age, belonged at
one time or another to all the chief religious types of Chartism.
There was, too, a serious movement for the formation of so-
called Chartist churches, though these never comprehended
all the rehgious fervour of the Chartist fold.i

The difierences of general ideal and social status, the con- '
trasts in method, faith, and conduct explain to some extent
the constant feuds which made it hard for the Chartist organ-
isation to follow up a single hne of action. The utter inexperi- i
ence of the Chartist leaders in the give-and-take of practical
afEairs, their abhorrence of compromise, the doctrinaire
insistence on each man's particular shibboleth still further
account for their impotence in action. We must not complain
overmuch of these deficiencies; they, too, flowed inevitably
from the conditions of the time. The working-men leaders
had had no opportunity of learning how to transact business
one with another. The law denied them any participation-
in pohtics, central or local. The still-enduring Six Acts threw
aU sorts of practical difficulties in the way of the most
harmless associations. No political society could lawfully
have branches or correspond with kindred organisations or
impose on its members a pledge to any categorical policy.
Even the right of association in the interest of their own
trades had been a boon of yesterday for the British work-
man, and, when given, it was hampered by many restrictions
and limitations. There was never more danger of the plausible
tongue prevaihng over the shrewd head. Men with httle
education and untrained in afiairs moved in an atmosphere of
suspicion, the more so as they were exacerbated by real suffer-
ing and inevitably prone to class jealousy and intolerance.
The leaders of higher social position taught them httle that
conduced to moderation, business method, or practical wisdom.
The men who most easily won their confidence were the wind-
bags, the self-seekers, the intriguers. Yet there was a better
type of Chartist leader, and the touch of complacent self-
satisfaction, the doctrinaire impracticability, and the limited
outlook of a Lovett or a Cooper must not bhnd us to their
steady honesty of purpose, to their power of learning through
experience to govern themselves and others, to their burning
hatred of injustice and to their passion for the righting of

1 For CJhartism in its relations to organised religion see H. U. Faulkner's
" Chartism and the Churches " in Columbia University Studies in History,
ete.lxxiu.No.3(1912).

310 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

wrongs. Yet, making all allowances, Chartism as an organisa-
tion was inefEective, just as Chartism as a creed possessed no
body of coherent doctrine.

In tracing the influence of Chartism on later ideals we must
look to the individual rather than the system, to the spirit
rather than the letter. But it would be unjust to deny the
variety and the strength of the stimulus which the Chartist
impidse gave towards the furtherance of the more wholesome
spirit which makes even the imperfect Britain of to-day a
much better place for the ordinary man to live in than was the
Britain of the early years of Victoria. The part played by the
Chartists in this amelioration is not the less important because,
as with their political programme, the changes to which they
gave an impetus were effected by other hands than theirs.
At first their efiorts were mainly operative by way of protest.
They were seldom listened to with understanding, even by
those who sincerely gave them their sympathy. As early as
1839 Thomas Carlyle's Chartism had shown his appreciation
of the social unrest and burning sense of wrong that underlay
the movement, but Carlyle imderstood the mind of Chartism
as little as he understood the spirit of the French Revolution.
His remedy of the strong saviour of society was as repulsive
to the Chartist as was the sham feudalism of Disraeli's Sybil.
It was a time when the mere attempt to describe social unrest
was looked upon with disfavoui by the respectable, when a
book so conservative in general outlook as Mrs. GaskeH's
Mary Barton (1848) could be denounced for maligning the
manufacturers, and when the chaotic fervour of Kingsley's
Alton Locke (1850) could be interpreted as the upholding of
revolutionary principles. But the setting forth by men of
letters of the social evils, first denounced by Chartists, spread
knowledge and sympathy, and at last some efiorts at improve-
ment. The complacent optimism of a Macaulay, the easy
indifierence of a Palmerston to all social evil in the best of all
possible Englands became tolerable only to the bhnd and the
callous. Men of the younger generation, too young to take
active part in the Chartists' work, gratefully recognised in
after years the potency of the Chartist impulse in the formation
of their views.^

The Chartists first compelled attention to the hardness of
the workmen's lot, and forced thoughtful minds to appreciate

1 See, for Instance, the pleasant story of the " conversion " of Anthony
John Mundella, then a boy of fifteen, by Cooper's earnestness at a Leicester
meeting {I4fe of Thomas Cooper, p. 170).

ITS PLACE IN HISTORY 311

the deep gulf between the two "nations" which lived side!
by side without knowledge of or care for «ach other. Though
remedy came slowly and imperfectly, and was seldom directly
\^°\^ p^'iS'^tist hands, there was always the Chartist impulse'
behind the first timid steps towards social and economic better- •
ment. The cry of the Chartists did much to force public
opimon to adopt the policy of factory legislation in the teeth
of the opposition of the manufacturing interests. It compelled
the administrative mitigation of the harshness of the New
Poor Law. It swelled both the demand and the necessity for
popular education. It prevented the unqualified victory of
the economic gospel of the Cobdenites, and of the political
gospel of the Utilitarians. If the moderate Chartists became
absorbed in the Liberal and Radical ranks, it gave those
parties a wider and more popular outlook. In a later genera-
tion rival political organisations vied with each other in their
professions of social reform. The vast extension of state inter-
vention, which has been growing ever since, was a response on
thoroughly Chartist lines for the improvement of social con-
ditions by legislative means. A generation, which expects the
state to do everything for it, has no right to criticise the early
Chartist methods on the ground that one cannot interfere
with economic " laws " or promote general well-being by act
of parliament. The whole trend of modern social legislation
must well have gladdened the hearts of the ancient survivors
of Chartism.

In the heyday of Chartism public opinion dreaded or
flouted the Chartist cause. In the next generation the
accredited historians of political and parUamentary transac-
tions minimised its significance and dealt perfunctorily with its
activity. Yet Chartism marks a real new departure in our
social and political history. It was the first movement of
modern times that was engineered and controlled by working
men. Even its failures had their educational value. Its
modest successes taught elementary lessons of self-discipline
and self-government that made the slow development of
British democracy possible without danger to the national
stability and well-being. Its social programme was, like its
political doctrine, gradually absorbed into current opinion.
It helped to break down the iron walls of class separation, and
showed that the terrible working man was not very difierent
from the governing classes when the time came for him to
exercise direct power.

312 THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Nor was the Chartist message for Britain only. The crude
experiments of Chartism were watched at the time with keen
interest by reformers from other lands, and have been studied
in later days with much more curiosity in Germany, France,
'and America than in the island of its birth. It was the
first genuinely democratic movement for social reform in
modern history. It was the first stage of the many-tongued
movement which transferred the bou/rgeois demand for Uberty,
equality, and fraternity from the purely political and legal
to the social sphere, and was thus the unconscious parent of
Continental social democracy. Hence its anticipation of the
cry for a universal proletarian brotherhood which was to cut
across national lines of division by organising the laborious
classes of all lands in a great Confederation of aU workers.
The first efforts towards international brotherhood came from
the Chartist leaders, and their methods were studied by the
revolutionaries of the Continent and adapted to the conditions
of their own lands. Thus a movement, which was only to a
limited extent socialistic at home, became an important factor
in the development of abstract sociahsm abroad. It is strange
that in the evolution of Continental socialism the Chartists
should have played a more direct part than did Eobert Owen
and the whole-hearted pioneers of the British socialist move-
ment. It was from the Chartists and their forerunners that
Marx and LassaUe learned much of the doctrine which was only
to come back to these islands when its British origin had been
forgotten. Europe is stiU full of " the war of classes " of the
" international " and other disturbing tendencies that can in
their beginnings be fathered on the Chartists. There is no
need to discuss here the value of these points of view. How-
ever they may be judged, their importance cannot be gainsaid.
As a result of such tendencies our own generation has seen
a much nearer approach to the realisation of Chartist ideals
than the age of our fathers. It need not be afraid to recognise
that, with all their limitations, the Chartists have a real place
in the development of modern English politics and society.
In stumbling fashion they showed to the democracies of the
West the path which in our own times they have first striven
seriously to follow. Many of the problems which stUl vex
the reformer were first attacked by the Chartist pioneerSi

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The Place Manuscripts. (British Museum.) Collections on Work-
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Ernest Jones's Manuscript Diaries, Notebooks, and Account Books.

(B) BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS

The Annual Register. 1838-49.

AsHWOKTH (T. E.). The Plug Plot at Todmorden.

Bampoed (Samuel). Passages in the Life of a Radical. 2 vols.

London, 1893. [Krst published in parts at Heywood, Lanes,

1839-1842.]

313

314 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Baxter (G. E. W.). The Book of the Bastilles. History of the New

Poor Law. 1841.
Beer (M.). Oeschichte des Sozialismus in England. Stuttgart, 1913.
Benbow (Wiluam). Grand National Holiday and Congress of the

Productive Classes. London, 1831.
Bbay (J. P.). Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy : or, the Age of

Might and the Age of Right. Leeds, 1839.
Brentano (Lttjo). Die christliche-sociale Bewegung in England.

Leipzig, 1883.
Die englisehe Chartistenbewegung ; Preussisehe Jahrhikher,

Bd. 33 (1874).
Brewster (P.). The Seven Chartist and Military Discourses,

ordered by the Assembly's Commission to be libelled by the Paisley

Presbytery. Paisley, 1842.
Brief Sketches of the Birmingham Conference. London, 1842. [In

Manchester Free Library.] Compare Report of the Proceedings

at the Conference of Delegates of the Middle and Working Classes

at Birmingham, April 5, 1842, etc.
Carlyle (Thomas). Chartism (1839). Past and Present (1843).
Cabtwright (Miss P. D.). The Life and Correspondence of Major

Carturright. 2 vols. London, 1826.
Clarke (W.). The Clarke Papers, 1647-49, 1651-60, edited by

0. H. Firth. 3 vols. Published by the Camden Society, now

included in the Camden Series of the Royal Historical Society.

London, 1891, 1894, and 1899.
Cobbett (William). Cobbett's Legacy to Labourers. In Sis Letters.

London, 1834.
CoLQUHOUN (Patrick). A Treatise on the Population, Wealth,

Power, and Resources of the British Empire. 1814.
Cooper (Thomas.) Life of Thomas Cooper. London, 1872.

The Purgatory of Suicides. London, 1845.

Da VIES (David P.). Life and Labours of Ernest Jones. Liverpool,

1897.
Dictionary of National Biography. Edited by Leslie Stephen and

Sidney Lee. London, 1885-1912.
DiERLAMM (GoTTHlLr). " Die Flugschriftenliteratur der Chartisten-
bewegung und sem Wiederhall in der offenthohen Meinung," in

Milnchener Beitrage zur romanischen und englischen Philohgie,

Leipzig, 1909.
Disraeli (Benjamin). Sybil (1845).

DoLLEANS, (E.). Le Chartisme, 1830-48. 2 vols. Paris, 1912-13.
"La Naissanoe de Chartisme, 1830-37," in Revue d'histoire

des doctrines dconomigues et sociales. No. 4. Paris, 1909.
Bngels (Friedrioh). Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in

England (1845). Translated by P. K. Wischnewetzky as The

Condition of the Working Class in England in 181^1^. 1892.
Faulkner (Harold U.). " Chartism and the Churches," Columbia

University Studies in History, etc. Ixxui. No. 3. New York,

1916. (With good bibliography.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 315

Frost (Thomas). Forty Years' Recollections. 2 vols. London,
1880.

Gammage (RoBEBT G.). History of tU ChaHist Movement. 1854.

(2ndedition, 1894.)
Gabdineb (S. R.). The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan

Revolution, 1625-1660. 1906.
GoNNBB (E. C. K.). " The Early History of Chartism," in English

Historical Review, iv. 625-644 (1889).
Hall (Charles). Effects of Civilisation on the Peoples of Eurovcwn

States. 1805. j- j r

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates.
Held, A. Zivei Bucher zur socialen Oeschichte Englands.' Leipzig,

HoDGSKEN (Thomas). Labour defended against the Claims of Capital :
or, the Unproductiveness of Capital proved. 1825.

HoLDEN (Joshtta). A Short History of Todmorden. Manchester
University Press, 1912.

HOLYOAKE (G. J.). Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens. London, 1881.

History of Co-operation. 1875-76. Revised ed. 1906.

The Life and Character of Henry Hetherington. London,

1849.

Hunt (Hbney). Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. (Written by himseU
in Ilohester Jail.) 2 vols. London, 1820-22.

The Green Bag Plot. London, 1819.

Jones (Ebnbst C). The Wood Spirit, 1841.

Ernest Jones. Who is He? What has He Done? Man-
chester, 1868.
- Chartist Songs and Fugitive Pieces. London, n.d.

Kay (J. P. ). The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working
Classes employed in the Cotton Marmfacture in Manchester.
1832.

Ktngsley (Charles). Yeast (1848-51). Alton Locke (1850).

LovETT (William). Pamphlets by, bomid in one volume, formerly
the author's property. British Museum (8138a55).

Life and Struggles of William Lovett. London, 1876.

and Collins (John). Chartism, a New Organization of the

People. London, 1840.

Linton (W. J.). Memories. London, 1895.

James Watson : a Memoir (privately printed, London,

1879). Manchester, 1880.

Maokay (Thomas). History of the English Poor Law, 18S4r-98.
London, 1904.

Marx (Kabl). Das Kapital. 1 vol. (1867. English Translation,
1886.)

Mason (G. W.). Mr. Ernest Jones and his Candidature. Man-
chester, 1868.

Mbngbr(A.). Das Recht auf den vollen ArbeitseHrag. 1891. Trans-
lated by M. E. Tanner, as The Bight to the whole Produce of
Labour, with Introduction by H. S. Foxwell. 1899.

316 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

MoELBY (Viscount). Life of Richard Oobden. London, 1881.
Napieb (Sit W. F. P.). Life and Opinions of Oeneral Sir 6. J.

Napier. 2 vols. London, 1857.
NiBHUTJS. Englische Bodenreformtheorien. Leipzig, 1910.
Ogilvie (William). An Essay on the Bight of Property in Land. 1782.
Paine (Thomas). Agrarian Justice (1797).

RighU of Man (1791-92).

Philp (R. K.). Vindication of his Political Conduct. 1842. [In

Manchester IVee Library.]
PoDMORE (Frank). Life of Robert Owen. 2 vols. London, 1906.
PoREiTT (E. and A. G.). The Unreformed House of Commons.

Parliamentary Representation before 1833. Cambridge (Uni-
versity Press), 1903.
RiOARDo (David). Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.

1817.
Rosenblatt, Frank F. " The Chartist Movement in its Social

and Economic Aspects," Columbia University Studies in

History, etc. Ixxiii. No. 1. New York, 1916.
Spenob (Thomas). The Rights of Infants. 1797.
Slosson (Preston W.). " The Decline of the Chartist Movement,"

Columbia University Studies in History, etc. Ixxiii. No. 2.

New York, 1916.
SoMBEViLLE (ALEXANDER). AutobioQrophy of a Working Man.

London, 1848.

Warnings to the People on Street Warfare. 1839.

Steepen (G. P.). Studien zur Oeschichte der englischen Lohnarbeiter.

Ubersetzt von M. Langfeldt. 3 vols. Stuttgart, 1901-5.
Thompson (William:). An Inquiry into the Principles of Distri-
bution most condv/dve to Human Happiness. London, 1824 ;

reprinted 1850.
TiLDSLBY (John). Die Entstehung und die okonomischen Qrundsatze

der Chartisteribewegung. Jena, 1898. *
Veitch (G. S.). The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform. London,

1913.
Wallas (Graham). The Life of Francis Place, 1771-18S4.

London, 1898.
Webb (S. and B.). History of Trade Unionism. London, 1894.

Newed. 191 L

(C) parliamentary papers

1837-38. Vol. VIII. Reports from the Select Committee on Com-
binations of Worhnen.
Vol. XLV. Reports of Inspectors of Factories, and Memorial
of the Short Time Committee of Factory Operatives of

1839. Vol. XLII. Factory Returns, Reports of Factory Inspectors,
and Reports from the Assistant Handhom Weavers Com-
missioners.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 317

1^40. Vol. XXIV. Reports on Handhom Weavers.

1842. Vol. Xi. Beport from the Select Committee on Payment of

Wages.
Vol. XV. Children's Employment Commission. (Report
on Mines.)

1843. Vol. XIII. First Report of the Midland Mining Commission

and Children's Employment Commission. (Report on
Trades and Manufactures.)

1844. Vol. XVI. Report on the Slate of the Population in the

Mining Districts, and of the South Wales Inquiry. (Rebecca
Riots.)

1845. Vol. XV. Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire

into the Condition of the Framework Knitters, with

Appendixes.
1848. Vol. XIX. Reports on the National Land Company.
Various dates. Reports of Poor Law Commissioners.

(D) PERIODICALS

The Birmingham Journal. Birmingham (from 1825).

The British Statesman. (Bronterre O'Brien's.) London, 1842-43.

The Charter. London, 1839-40.

The Chartist Circular. Glasgow, 1839-41.

The Diplomatic Review. (See the Free Press.)

The Dispatch. (Hetherington's Twopenny.) London, 1836-39.

The Free Press. London, 1855-65. Continued as the Diplomatic

Review, 1866-77. (Edited by David Urquhart.)
The Labourer. Edited by P. O'Connor and Ernest Jones, 1847-48.
The Leeds Mercury. Leeds.
Lloyds' Weekly Newspaper. London (from 1843).
The London Mercury. (Bronterre O'Brien's.) 1836-37.
The Manchester Guardian. Manchester (from 1821).
The Morning Chronicle. London.

The National Reformer. (Bronterre O'Brien's.) London, 1837.
The Nonconformist. London (from 1841).
The Northern Liberator. Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1837^0.
The NoHhern Star. (O'Connor's.) Leeds, 1837-44, then London to

1852.
Notes for the People. (Edited by E. Jones.)
The People's Paper. (Edited by E. Jones.)

The Poor Man's Guardian. (Hetherington's.) London, 1831-35.
Punch. London, 1841 and later.
The, Republican, 1831.
The Southern Star. London, 1841.
The Times. London.

INDEX

Aberdeen, 35, 1S3, 138, 244, 288, 293

Abergavenny, 178, 180

Abinger, Lord, 266

Accrington, 14

Adam, James, 244

Address of the National Association to the

Political and Social Retormers of

the United Kingdom, 232
Address to the Queen on Political and

Seligious Monopoly, 68
Address to Beformers of Qreat Britain and

Ireland, 69
Address to Reformers on the Forthcoming

Elections, 71
Agreement of the People, the, 4
Alison, Archibald, 72
America, 184, 312
Annual ParUaments, 1, 3, 302
Anti-Combination Laws, 30, 45, 304
Anti-Corn Law Agitation, 123, 193, 196,

204, 208, 209, 213-219, 237, 239,

241-246, 252, 276
Apprentices, Act of 1562, 11
Apprenticeship, 11-12
Ashley, Lord, 140
Aahton-under-Lyne, 88, 90, 120, 122,

145, 151, 168, 170, 171, 184, 227,

261, 279, 291, 294, 305
Parish Church, 158
Stephens's chapel at, 88
Ashtou, William, of Barnsley, 176
Ashworth, T. E., his The Plug Plot at

Todmorden, 260
Attwood, Thomas, 100-110, 118, 134-

135, 154-161, 188
Australia, 184
Ayr, 154

Babeul, 31, 285

" Bagmen," 18

BaU, John, 30, 85

BaUot, vote by, 2, 282, 287, 301

Bamford, Sam, 91, 138

Barnsley, 66, 138, 176, 227

Bartlett, 253

Bastille, anniversary celebrations of fall

of, 287
Bastilles, workhouses so called by

Chartists, 82
Bath, 75, 169, 196, 202, 212, 228, 244,

246, 257

Bath, the Chartist Church at, 202
Baxter, G. B. W., his Book of (he

Bastilles, 82, 83
Beaumont, Augustus Harding, 66, 92,

97, 103
Beer, Max, 32, 91
Beesley, 212, 251, 253
Belgium, 285
BeU, John, 65, 66, 69
Benbow, WiUiam, 49, 91, 138, 155, 170,

187, 195, 196, 210, 223
Beniowski, 176, 177, 181-183, 187
Benthamites, 304-305
Bernard, J. B., 65, 66
Bible, the, 85, 89, 202
BUI of Eights, the new, 264-265
Bilston, 27, 129
Binns, George, 64, 199, 215
Birkbeck College, 49
Birkbeok, Dr., 48

Bkmingham, 22, 71, 75, 76, 85, 98-117,
120, 132, 135, 140, 144-159, 165,
170, 177, 178, 182, 185, 191, 200,
201, 208, 228, 240-251, 264-267,
270, 272, 273^ 299
Association for Promoting the General

Welfare, 241
BuU King at, 122, 145, 147, 156, 157,

166, 299
Chartist Church at, 200-202
Complete Suffrage Movement at, 243-

250
Conference (1842), 264
Duddeston-cum-Kechells, 147
Golden Lion Hotel, 156
Holloway Head, 156
Nelson Monument at, 166
Newhall HiU, 107
Political Union at, 72, 99-115, 305
Public Office, 166
Reform Association, 100, 101
Bural Dean of, 26
St. Martin's Church, 122, 156
Birstall. 186
Black, John, 59, 61
Blackburn, 14, 227, 259, 262

Enfield Moor near, 259
Bolton, 14, 81, 111, 120, 122, 133, 159,

165, 184, 227
Booth, William, 211
Botany Bay, 186

319

320

THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Brabant, 285

Bradford, 91, 111, 119, 120, 138, 140,
150, 182, 184, 186, 227
Hartshead Moor, 119
Peep Green, 111

Brassier, Simon de, Jones's, 295

Bray, J. F., 31, 44, 47
His Labour's Wrongs and Labour's
Remedy, or the Age of MigUand the
Age of Right, 44

Brett, Police Sergeant, 299

Brewster, Sir David, 202

Brewster, Patrick, of Paisley, 120, 202,
227, 246
His 'the Seven Chartists and Other
MUitarp Discourses libelled by the
Marquis of Abercom and Other
Heritors of the Abbey Parieh, 202

Bright, Jolin, 218, 244, 248, 272, 307

Brigliton, 67, 76

Bristol, 75, 119, 122, 136, 182

Britisli Association for Promoting Co-
operative Knowledge, 50

Bromsgrove, 280

Bronterre, see O'Brien, James

Brotherton, Joseph, 238

Brough, a brewer, 179

Brown, Birmingham delegate, 144, 145,
171, 178

Brussels, 286, 287

Bryant, William Cullen, hia TMnat-
opsis, 59

Buonarotti, 31

Bm-nley. 184

Bmrns, W. G., 146, 196, 202, 232

Burslem, 131

Bury, Lanes, 87, 91, 111, 113, 120, 121,
122, 128, 184

Buflsey, Peter, 91, 134, 187, 188

" Butty " system, the, 23-24

Byron, Lord, 283

Cade, Jack, 85
Cambridgeshire, 65, 80
Campbell, John, 199, 261
Canterbury, Archbishop of, 254
Capital, 42, 43
Capitahsm, rise of, 8-11

revolt against, 31
Cardo, William, 122, 130, 174, 181-183,

185, 210
Carlile, Bichard, 49, 63, 135
Carlisle, 14, 15, 81, 196

Badical Association at, 196
Carlyle, Thomas, his Chartism, 310
Carmarthen, 76

Carpenter, William, 76, 146, 165, 275
Carrier of Trowbridge, 130, 154, 187
Cartwright, P. D., Miss, her Life of

Major John Cartuiright, 6
Cartwright, Major John, 6, 200, 255

His pamphlet. Take your Choice, 6
Chadwlck, Edwin, 78
Chadwick, William, 292
Chatham, William Pitt, 1st Earl of, 5
Cheltenham, 122
Cheshire, 80, 81, 196
Chester Castle, 171
Child, Josiah, 244

Christian Chartism, 200-203, 309

Clark, Thomas, 298

Class War, the, 9, 52, 74, 108-109, 123,

142, 163, 232
Clayton, Edward, 227
Cleave, John, 53, 59, 60, 67, 71, 73, 76,
122, 146, 149, 199, 209, 212, 236,
242, 308
Cobbett, J. P., 87, 122, 124, 125
Cobbett, E. B. B., 87
Cobbett, William, 36, 41, 81-86, 200, 239
His Legacy to Labourers, 82
His History of the Reformation, 82
Cobden, Charles, 245
Cobden, Eichard, 214, 215, 218, 272,

276, 307
Colchester, 76

Collins, John, 100, 105, 106, 113, 144,
157, 166, 171-172, 202, 203, 208,
210, 230, 235, 245-247
Colne, 14, 168, 227
Colguhoun, Patrick, 40
His Treatis^fin the Population, Wealth,
Power ana Resources of the British
Empire in every Quarter of the
World, 40
Combe, George, 207
Combination Laws, the, 30, 45, 304
Communism, 31-32, 44-47, 306, 312
Complete Suffrage Movement, the, 240-

250, 253, 264
Complete Suffrage Petition, the, 250
Congleton, 131
Condorcet, 285
Conseil des Anciens, the, 289
Convention of the Industrious Classes
(1839), 75, 106, 121, 116-135, 189,
194, 195, 208
At London, 121-147
Meetings to elect delegates, 119
Members of, 122
Bules and Begulations, 126
Discussion on right of people to

possess arms, 132
Besignations, 131-159
At Birmingham, 147-159
Manifesto, 147, 159
At London, 159-173
Debate after Bejection of Petition,

164-169
Adjournment, 170
Dissolution, 172-173
Convention 1842 at London, 252-254

1843 at Birmingham, 267

1844 at Manchester, 273

1845 at London, 273
1845 at Manchester, 276
1848 at London, 288-289, 292

Conventions, 296

Cooper, Thomas, 199, 200, 209-211, 223,

224, 225, 228, 238, 241, 251, 261-

263, 265-267, 297, 299, 306, 308-

310
His Purgatory of Suicides, 265-267,

276-277
His Life of Thomas Cooper, 21, 203,

209-211, 260, 261, 277, 310
Cork, 92, 93, 181
CornwaU, 129, 208

INDEX

321

Corresponding Societies Acts, 102, 107,

198, 309
Coventry, 9, 12 13, 168
Craig James, of Ayrshire, 123, 128, 154
Crawford, Sliarman, 70, 73, 243, 245,

250, 253, 283
Cray, Richard, 60, 62
Crewe, 261

Criminal Code, the, 304
Croydon, 176
Cufley, William, 294
Cumberland, Ernest, Dulse of, 254, 280
Cupar, 106
Currency Scheme (Attwood's), 100-103,

109, 114-115, 117

Darlaston, 129

Davenport, Allan, 66

Davies, David P., his Life and Latmirs

of Srnest Jones, 280
Dean, Christopher, 154
Deegan, Chartist delegate, 169, 187,

196, 225
Democratic Society of French Exiles,

287
Democratic Association, the London,

65, 67, 126, 150
Deptford, Working Men's Church at,

203
Derby, 18, 80, 160
Deutsche JBildungsgesellsehaft fiir Ar-

beiter, 287
Devizes, 13, 171, 187
Devonshire, 130

Dewsbury, 82, 106, 177, 186, 227
Dierlamm, G., his Flugschnftenliteratur

der Chartistenbewegung, 297, 306
Disraeli, Benjamin, 161-163, 307, 310

His Sybil, 24, 307, 310
Dtxon, Peter, 81
Dodford, near Bromsgrove, 280
Doherty, John, 22

Dolltens, E., his Le Chartisme, 260, 275
Domestic System of Industry, 8-11, 18,

29
Donaldson, Birmingham Chartist, 144
Dorchester, 62, 58, 72, 92, 117

Labourers, the, 52, 75, 117
Dorset 122
Douglas, B. E., 76, 100, 103, 111-112,

113, 123
DouTO, Marquis of, 283
Dublin, 93, 181

Trinity College, 93
Dudley, 27
Duke, .Tames, 145
Dumfries, 193
Duncan, A., 129, 168, 253
Duncombe, Thomas S., 228, 251, 253,

255, 258, 285
Dundee, 106
Dunfermline, 106
Dunning, T. J., 217
Durham, 25, 169

Edinburgh, 76, 106, 109, 120, 127, 137,

187,282,288
Edmunds, George, 65, 104, 105, 113
Educational Chartism, 200, 202

Edwards, Eobert T., 151, 183
Elliott, Ebenezer, 76, 119
Enclosures, revolt against, 31
Enfield Moor, near Blackburn, 259
Enfranchisement of women, 70, 207,

209, 236, 259, 302
Engels, Priedrich, 285-286
Equal Electoral Districts, 4, 6, 802
Essex, 80

Factory Act, 1833, 30
Legislation, 241
System, 11, 17, 22-23, 31, 304
Farmers' Association, the Cambridge-
shire, 65
Faulkner, H. XJ., his Chartism and the

Churches, 200, 309
Fenian Prisoners, 299
Fielden, John, 47, 86-87, 134, 161,164,

255
Flanders, 285
Fletcher, Matthew, Dr., 91, 128, 153,

168, 173, 188
Fontenoy, 287
Fox, Charles James, 6
Fox, W. J., 61, 218
France, 37, 45, 93, 128, 262, 312
Freeholder's qualification, abolition of,

302
Free Trade, 73, 119, 193, 204, 213, 242,

244-245
French Revolution, 4, 6-7, 28, 30, 144,

200
of 1848, 284-285, 288
Frost, John, 117, 127, 174, 175, 177, 180,

186, 188, 191, 212, 223, 264, 297,

299
Frost, Thomas, 176
Fuasell, Birmingham Chartist, 144, 145,

178

Gammage, Eobert G., 176, 181, 187,
214, 225, 287, 299
His History of the Chartist Movement,
214, 277
" Gang " System, the, 223
Gast, John, 60
Geach, solicitor, 185
Germany, 312

Glasgow, 66, 72, 75, 76, 104-106, 109,

117, 119, 120, 136, 163, 202, 227,

260, 264, 288

Bridgeton, 288 ^ „„

Cotton spinners, prosecution of, 72,

103, 106, 117
Universalist Church at, 192
Gloucester, 280
Gloucestershire, 17
Godwin, William, 30, 31, 200
Goulbuin, Serjeant, 172
Graham, Sir James, 255
Gray, Charles, 31, 47, 49
Grey, Sir George, 291
Griffln, journalist, 224

Hadley, Benjamin, 100, 105, 122, 132,

144
Halifax, 137, 138, 140, 227, 228, 262, 283
Hall, Charles, 17, 31, 36-38

y

322

THE CHAETIST MOVEMENT

Hall, Charles, bis Effects 0/ CivUisatioH

on the People in European Statei,

36-37
Halley, 132, 146, 147, 149, 154
Hammeisnuth, 93
Hanley, 262

Ciown Bank, 261
Hanover, Emest, Elng of, 254, 280
Bansards Parlixanemtary Debates, 164,

166, 251, 258
Harney, George Julian, 66, 126, 149,

154, 174, 178, 187, 191, 193, 197,

223, 225, 264, 267, 268, 287, 288,

291, 298, 304
Hartwell, Eichard, 60, 75, 76, 146, 174
Heclcmondwlke, 186
Hendon, Place Collection at, 77, 172,

198, 203, 231, 233
Hertfordshire, 279
Hetherington, Henry, 38, 53, 56-58, 60,

66, 67, 71, 73, 75, 76, 107, 146, 150,

195, 209, 236, 308
Heywood, Lanes, 227
Heywood, Abel, 199
Heyworth, Laurence, 265
Hibbert, Julian, 58
Higgins, Timothy, 158, 170
Hill, William, 96, 224, 225, 234, 262
Hinckley, T. P., 20

Hindley, Member of Parliament, 70, 73
Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath, 244
Hoare, Citizen William, 65
Hobhouse, Sir John Cam, 283
Hobson, Joshua, 96, 227
Hoche, Lazare, 285
Hodgsldn, Thomas, 31, 39, 41-44, 49,

207, 286
His Labour Blended againH the

Claims of Capital, 41-44
Holberry, Sheffield Chartist, 187
Holden, J., his Short Hietory of Tod-

morden, 87
Holy AUiance, the, 284
Holyoake, George Jacob, 199, 299, 308
His Life of J. R. Stephens, 90
His Life of E. Betherintton, 68
Hosiery trade, the, 18-21
Household Suffrage, 101, 160, 234
Huddersfleld, 87, 152, 153, 169, 226, 227

Fixby Hall, near, 87
Hull, 139, 169
Hume, David, 35
Hume, Joseph, 70, 163, 234
Hunt, Henry, 49, 94, 138,163, 200,215

His Memoirs, 91
Hyde, Cheshire, 137, 139, 154

Individualism, 64-66, 305, 306
Industrial Bevolution, the, 8-27, 28, 46,

303, 306
InstrumeM of Oovemment, the, 8
Ipswich, 76
Ireland, 287
Ireton, Henry, 4
Irish Coercion JBill, 283
Irish immigrants, 14, 80, 81

Jackson^ W. V., 187
Jacobimsm, 285

Jamaica, 143
JenMns, Samuel, 20
Jones, Emest Charles, 199, 279-283,
286, 290-292, 294-298

His SiaTy, 280-282

Emest Jones. Who it Bel What hat
Be Done? 280
Jones, John Gale, 49, 53
Jones, Major, 280
Jones, William, 180
Junius, 5

Kay, J. P., his Worhing Classes in Man-
chester (1832), 104
Keighley, 227
Kelly, Fitzroy, 180
Kenilworth, 129
Kensal Green, 296
Kilmarnock, 106

Kingsley, Charles, bis Alton Locke, 310
Kirriemuir, 188
Knox, Robert, 169
Knntsford Gaol, 17

Labour Exchange Scheme, Eobert

Owen's, 50, 64
Lanarkshire, 72

Lancashire, 14, 18, 26, 46, 80, 81, 84, 87,
88, 90, 98, 106, 107, 111, 112, 119,
139, 150, 151, 196, 212, 227, 259,
260, 266, 280
Lancaster, 171, 237, 240
Lancaster, Joseph, 69
Land Scheme, O'Connor's, 32, 232, 267-
280, 292-293
Theories, 32-36
Values, 35
Lane End, Staffordshire, 131
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 312
Leach, James, 196, 199, 208, 214, 216,

227, 235, 252
Leader, 73, 255
League of Communists, 286
League of the Just, 286
Leamington, 168

Leeds, 58, 76, 93, 106, 118, 130, 141, 181,
227, 262, 270, 271
Great I^orthern Union, 118
Leeds Radical Association, the, 196
Leek 131 281
Leicester, 18, 80, 137, 196, 200, 209, 212,

262
Lincolnshire, 80
Lhiton, William James, 199, 209, £99

His Memories, 55, 66, 59
Liverpool, 163, 167, 170, 193
Llanidloes, 150, 151, 171
Locke, John, 33

London. 12, 47, 48, 52-77, 86, 98, 106,
116, 119, 120, 144, 146, 177, 182,
183, 191, 196. 199, 200, 212, 231,
232, 252, 262, 264, 268-276, 287
Abbey Street, 183
Bethnal Green, 186
Bishop Bonner's Fields, 293-294
Blacktriars Bridge, 49
Bolt Court, 121
Brick Lane, 183

British Hotel, Cockspur Street, 121
Brompton, 73

INDEX

323

London — continued

Buckingham Palace, 288

Bunhlll Fields, 49

Charing Cross, 48, 49, 121

Clerkeuwell Gaol, 58

Clerkenwell Green, 293-294

Crown and Anchor lavern, the
Strand, 69, 70, 125, 127. 132

Fleet Street, 48, 49

Gray's Inn Lane, 48, 67

Holborn, 48, 69, 209

Kennington Common, 288, 290, 291,
297, 300

Kensal Green, 295

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 254

Lumher Troop's Hall, 121

Marylebone, 122

Nelson Column, 288

Oxford Circus, 255

Palace Yard, 75, 76

St. George's Church, Hanover Square,
280

St. Stephen's, 198

Scotland Yard, 288

Seven Dials, 48

Shoe Lane, 59

Soho, 48

Spitalflelds, 48, 60, 62, 183

Strand, 69, 183

Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, 60

Tottenham Court Boad, 48, 208

Tower Hamlets, 293-294

Tower of London, 139

Trades Hall, 183

Trafalgar Square, 288, 289

Westminster, 49, 75, 76, 125, 290

Whitechapel, 237

White-Conduit House^ 208
London artisans, condition of, 47-51

Co-operative Trading Association,
50, 52, 54

Corresponding Society, 49

Democratic Association, 65, 67, 126,
150

Mechanics' Institute, 48, 50, 53

Working Men's Association, 48, 52, 77,
102, 103, 203 ; Leading members,
53-59 ; Objects, 60 ; Membership,
61 ; Proceedings, 62 ; Address and
Kules, 62 ; Propaganda, 67 ;
Pubhcations, 64-71 ; Publication
of " People's Charter," 74 ; Meet-
ing at Palace Yard, Westminster, 75
Lothians of Scotland, 25
Loughborough, 137, 171, 182, 196
Loveless, George, 122
Lovett, WiUlam, 38, 47, 49, 53-56, 59-60,

67, 68, 78, 76, 118, 123, 146-149,
155, 157-158, 166, 171-172, 176-177,
187, 188, 195, 203-209, 230-236,
245-251, 265-267, 284, 297, 299,
302, 306, 308

His Address on National Education,

68, 200 ^ ,
His Address and Rules for the London

Working Men's Association, 62
His Chartism, 68, 200
His Life and Struggles, 60, 61, 176,

190, 223, 284

Lowery, Chartist, 129, 146, 172, 181,
193, 196, 224, 236, 245, 248, 250,
253

Mably, SO

Mackay, J., his Biitory of the English

Poor Law, 91
Macaulay, T. B., 255-256, 258, 282, 310
Macclesfield, 12, 81, 214, 281
M'Crae, Ayrshire delegate, 235
M'CuUoch, Politician Economist, 41
MaoDouall, P. M., 91, 125, 138, 145, 154,
155, 168, 171, 187, 188, 199, 228,
239, 251, 252, 255, 261-264, 267,
285, 292, 294
M'Grath, Chartist, 288
M'Nish, James, 106
MTherson, Scottish delegate, 253
Macerone, Italian revolutionary, 138
Malthus, T. E., 37, 44, 64, 89, 91
Malton, 58

Manchester. 12, 14, 16, 76, 91, 111, 117,
118, 120, 122, 132, 138, 140, 141,
151-154, 165, 195-199. 216, 227,
228, 235, 243, 251, 260-262, 269,
271, 273, 276, 286, 291, 298-299

Ardwick Cemetery, 299

Ashton Boad, 161

Free Reference Library, 280, 299

Grammar School, 87

Griflin, the. Great Ancoats Street, 196

Kersal Moor, 118-119, 163

New Bailey Gaol, 120

Oldham Street, 199

Schofleld'B Chapel, 261

Stephenson Square, 154

Tib Street, 288
Manchester, Convention at, 278, 276

Political Union, 118
Manifesto of July 12, 1839, 159
Marat, 66

Marcus, anonymous writer, 91
Marsden, Bichard, of Preston, 111, 122,

126, 160, 164, 187
Marsden of Bolton, 259
Marshall, A., tiia Principles of Economies,

39
Marvell, Andrew, 6
Marx, Karl, 31, 286-286
Mason, G. W., his Mr. Ernest Jones and

his Candidature, 280
Mason, John, 210, 241, 253, 291
Matthew, Scottish delegate, 133
Mayne, Bichard, 291
Melbourne, Lord, 100, 102, 143, 218
Menger, A., 32
Merthyr Tydfil, 137
Methodism, 5, 88-89, 308
MetropoUtan Charter Union, 196
Miall, Edward, 244, 249
Middleton, Lanes, 138, 168, 227
Midlands, the, 27, 280
Mill, John Stuart, 41
Mills, James, of Oldham, 244, 248, 250
Mining Industry, the, 24-27
Minster Lovel, 280
Mitchell, Chartist, 209
Moir, Scottish ChartiBt,107, 130, 155, 268
Molesworth, Su- William, 70

324:

THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Monmouth, 137, 151, 152, 178, 179, 180,

182, 186, 187
Monmouthshire, 25, 27, 141, 151
Moore, Richard, 60, 73, 76, 209
Morelly, 30-31

Morley, John; his Life of Cobden, 264
Mottram Moor, 260
Mundella, Anthony John, 310
Muutz, George Trederick, 100
Muntz, P. H., 76, 100, 103, 105, 107
Murphy, Chartist delegate, 106

Napier, Sir Charles J., 136, 139-142,

151-153, 184, 216
Napier, Sir W. F. P., his Life and

Opinions of Sir Charles J. Saipieir,

136, 158
Napoleon Buonaparte, 285
Napoleon, Louis, 290

National Association for Promoting the
FoUtical and Social Improvement
of the People, 205-208, 230
Charter Association, 197, 198, 208-

209, 225, 228, 246, 250, 261, 298
Charter League, 298
Holiday, 158, 164-167, 170, 194
Land Company, 295
Land Society, 297
Memorial to the Queen, 289
Reform League, 297
Suffrage Movement, 298
tTnion of the Working Classes, 50, 52
Neesom, Chartist, 66, 168, 186, 209, 236,

247, 250
Newcastle-on-Tyne, 76, 92, 97, 120, 122,

137, 141, 152, 154, 170, 183, 239,
240 299

Northern Political tTnion of, 196
Newhall Hill, Birmingham, 107
New Lanark, 31, 38
Newport, Monmouthshire, 26, 117, 122,
127, 137, 138, 175-181, 187, 191

Westgate Hotel at, 180, 181
Newtown (Montgomery), 122, 150, 178
Nonconformists, 304
Northampton, 214
Norwich, 111, 283
Nottingham, 18, 80, 93, 141, 151, 171,

186, 191, 196, 283, 294
Nuneaton, 13

Oastler, Richard, 22, 74, 83, 87-91, 93,

188, 305
O'Brien, James (Bronterre), 23, 31, 32,

33, 40, 61, 65, 66, 94, 96, 109, 125,

138, 146, 150, 164, 167, 168, 169,

187, 188, 189, 195-197, 214, 215,
223-225, 227, 236-240, 245-251, 253,
267, 274, 285, 289, 297-298, 304

His Election Address, 239

O'ConneU, Daniel, 66, 70-71, 72, 73, 93,
95, 163, 234, 283, 285
His Coirre^ponienee, 93

O'ConneU, John, 283

O'Connor, Arthur, 92, 285

O'Connor, Peargus, 33, 61, 65, 67, 69,
71, 74, 76, 82, 92-96, 107, 111, 112,
118-121, 133, 150, 153, 164, 173,
180, 181, 187, 188, 189, 194-196,

202, 211-215, 220-229, 252-259,

261-287, 289-296, 298, 305-308
O'Connor, Feargus, his Letters U> Irish

Landlords, 271
O'Connor, Roger, 92
0'Connorville,29S, 297
Ogilvie, William, 31-35
His An Essay on the Right of Property

in Land, 35
Oldham, 25, 26, 82, 86, 106, 120, 164,

227 291
O'Neill, 'Arthur, 200-203, 236, 240, 245
Owen, Robert, 31, 32, 38, 39, 44, 45-47,

49-50, 64, 57, 58, 61, 87, 305, 312
His Neu> Vieu) of Society, 38

Padiham, 120

Paine, Thomas, 30-33, 36, 171, 200

His Agrarian Justice, 36

His BigMs of Man, 36
Paisley, 202-203

The Abbey Church, 202

The Chartist Church, 202-203
Palmerston, Lord, 197, 310
Pamphlets —

History of the SefomuUion, 82

Labour defended against the Claims
of CatpUal, 41-44

Legacy to Labourers, 82

Rights of Infants, 33-34

The Rotten House of Commons, 62-64,
74

Take your Choice, 6
Pare, William, 32
Paris, 111, 141, 144, 286, 287
Parkes, Bu'mlngham Chartist, 178, 181
Parry, J. H., 209, 248, 266, 283
Partick, 202
Payment of Members of Parliament, 6,

70, 101, 301
Feasants' Revolt, the, 85
Peel, Sir Robert, 227, 237, 257, 274, 276
Pennine Bistricts, 25
Penzance, 53
People's League, the, 297
People's Parliament. See Convention
Perth, 106
Pestalozzi, 207

Peterloo, 91, 111, 140, 153, 197, 215
Petition to the House of Commons, 1839,
69, 117, 160-164

Extract from Preamble, 69

Six Points, 69-70

1841, 228

1842, 251-258
Pettus, Mr., 4
Periodicals-—

Birmingham Journal, 113, 122, 126

British Statesman, 239, 250, 253, 263

Bury Times, 292

Champion, 87

Charter, 76-77

Chartist Circular, 193

Destructive or People's Con,senative, 67

Extinguisher, 261

Ittumimator, 251

Labourer, 282

Leeds Mercury, 272

Leeds Times, 118, 208

INDEX

325

Periodicals — continued
Lloyd)' Weekly Newspaper, 275
London or Turnpenny Dispatch. 54
57, 150, 154, 168 -^ > .

Mercury, 65, 66
Oazette, 281
Manchester Courier, 260
Examiner, 279

Guardian, 140, 155, 170, 175, 260
Morning Chronicle, 59, 128 179

Star, 195
Naiional Instructor, 93

Beformer, 275
Nonconformist, 242, 244, 265
ifortA Lancashire and Teetotal Letter

Sag, 251
Northern Litterator, 71, 92, 103 193
Star, 71, 93-96, 103, 111, 120, 173
176, 187, 217, 219, 220, 222 231-
237, 241, 246, 247, 254, 255, 259,
261, 262, 265, 268-271, 279, 286
287, 289, 295
Notes to the People, 295
People's Paper, 296
Poor Man's Shmrdian, 51, 57
Punch, 294
Republicanj57

Reynolds' Weekly Newspaper, 299
Rushlight, 251
Southern Star, 191, 197, 237
Times, 67

Weekly Oispateh, 284
Weekly Police Oazette, 58
Western Vindicator, 75
Philippe, Louis, King of the French, 287
Phillips, Sir Thomas, 137, 179
Philp, B. K., 196, 199, 212, 224, 236,
245, 246, 248, 253
His Vindicaiion of his Political Com-
duet, 246
Pilgrimage of Grace, the, 85
Pi^rim's Progress, the, 209
Pilling, Richard, 241
Pitkeithly, Chartist, 122, 144, 253
Place, I^ancis, 49, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61,
63, 64, 68, 73, 74, 75, 76, 101, 110,
114, 129, 133, 143, 146, 149, 172,
175, 185, 198, 203, 204, 205, 207,
208, 218, 225, 241, 245, 283
Plug Plot, the, 259-264
Plural voting, 302
Plymouth, 244
Podmore, Frank, 20, 32
Pollock, Six rrederick, 180
Pontypool, 137

Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, 16,
21, 36, 64, 71, 78-98, 188, 241, 252,
274, 288, 293, 307, 311
Poor Belief, 13, 80, 81
Poor Bate, 13, 36
Porritt, B., his TJnref armed House of

Commons, 3, 5
Potteries, the, 130-131, 168, 260
Powell, Birmingham Chartist, 144, 151
Power looms, introduction of, 15
Preamble of the Charter, 2
Prentice, Archibald, 245, 248
Preston, 111, 120, 168, 262
Prince Consort, the, 254

Property Qualification for Members of
ParUament estabUshed, 5
abolished, 301
Prussia, 286

Purdie, Scottish delegate, 107
Putney, 5

Bainborough, Colonel, 4

Eamsbottom, 91

Bavenstone, Piercy, 31

Eebecca Biots in Wales, 117

Eeform Act, 1832, 45, 50-52, 60, 216,
237, 271, 284, 302, 307
1867, 298, 301-302
1885, 301-302

Parliamentary, its history, 1647-1838,
3-7

Begistration Act, 1837, 91-92

Beports, Government, 10, 11, 19, 20, 23,
24, 26

Eevil, Thomas, 20

Beynolds, G. W. M., 288, 289, 295-299
His Reynold^ Weekly Newspaper, 299

Bicardo, David, 30, 36, 38-40
His Principles of Political Economy
and Taxation, 38

Bich, Colonel, 4

Biohards, John, 130-131, 169

Bichardson, B. J., 91, 107, 130, 132, 138,
154, 167) 171, 187, 193, 196, 246,
248

Biohmond, Duke of, 6, 241, 255

Bider, WiUiam, 91, 174, 223, 224, 236

Eidley, Buffy, 255

Bights, natural, 32-33

Blot Act, the, 145

Bisca, Monmouthshire, 179

Bitchie, John, 244

Boberts, W. P., 130, 187, 245, 253

Bobespierre, M., 285

Bochdale, 111, 120, 168, 227, 250

Boebuck, John Arthur, 70, 71, 73, 76,
234, 256, 268

Bogers, George, 76, 127, 235

Bosenblatt, F. F., his Social and Eco-
nomic Aspects of the Chartist Move-
ment, 190

Botherhithe, 60, 144

Bousseau, J.-J., 31, 36, 37

Bural Police Bill, 128

Bushton, William, 154

Bussell, Lord John, 139, 140, 161, 177,
179, 257, 276, 282

Byder, Chartist, 126, 155

Sacred Month, the, 159, 164-165, 221
Sadler, Michael Thomas, 22, 87, 305

ialt°T.' C.^ 100, 105, 112, 126, 129, 241

Sandbach, 131

Sankey, Dr., 127, 132, 146

Sawbridge, Alderman, 5

Scholefleld, Joshua, 100, 105

Soholefleld, William, 145, 156

Schools of Chartism, 305-307

Schools, Sunday, 26

Scotland, Chartism in, 167, 191-193, 196,

252
Septennial Act, the, 5

326

THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

Shakesperian Association of Leicester

Cliartists, 2H
Sheffield, 76, 119, 130, 168, 186, 191, 227
SheUey, Percy Bysslie, 200

l'it^^*/'^i?^°*;> *• 5' 6. «3, 101, 160

Silk Trade, the, Coventry, 11-13

Six Acts, the, 98, 146, 309

Six Points of the Charter, 2, 301-302

Skevington, Chartist, 16^

Slosson, P. W., his The Decline of the

Chartist Movement, 275, 292, 293
SmaUwood, Bu:mingham Chartist, 178
Smart, Chartist, 144, 196
Smith, Adam, 35, 37
Smith, J. By 168
Smith, Dr. Southwood, 207
Smith, Thomas, 275
Socialism, 30-39
Society for National Kegeneration, 47,

87
Somerville, Alexander, his Autobio-
graphy, 263
BiaWamings to the People on Street

Warfare, 264
Spence, Thomas, 31, 32, 33-34, 35

His Rights of Infants, 33-34
Spencer, Herbert, 241, 244
Spencer, Thomas, 244, 248
Spring Eice, Thomas, 102
Spuxr, E., 209
Stafford Gaol, 276
Staffordshire, 22, 24, 260, 266
Stamp duty on newspapers, abolition

of, 63
Stanhope, Lord, 6
Steflen, G. F., his Oeschiehte der Enfflis-

Chen LohnarbeU, 15
Stephens, George, 88
Stephens, Joseph Eaynor, 71, 74, 87-91,

93, 97, 111, 118, 120, 121, 171, 187,

188, 189, 202, 306, 306
Sthling, 106
Stockholm, 88
Stockport, 227
Stoke-on-Trent, 131
Stone, Staffs, 161
Stourbridge, 129
Strntt of Derby, 150
Sturge, Joseph, 242-250, 251, 253, 264,

265
His BeconcUialion between the Middle

and the WorHng Classes, 242-243
His Declaration, 243
Suffolk, 80
Sunderland, 64, 169, 196, 246, 299

Mechanics' Institute, 64
Sutton-iu-Ashfleld, 124, 128

Taylor, James, 164, 169, 191, 196
Taylor, Dr. John, 120, 133, 153, 154,

156, 164, 178, 174
Thomason, Chartist delegate, 253
Thompson, Colonel Perronet, 73, 283
Thompson, WiUiam, 17, 31, 39, 32, 44,

47, 49
His Distribiitvm of Wealth, 65
Tillman, William, 199
Tiverton, 198

Todmorden, 14, 86-87, 91, 184, 227, 260,
262

Trade CoUapse, 1815, 8, 12, 15, 16,
99
Societies'— attitude towards Chartism,
169

Trades Union Movement, 43, 45, 46, 52,
71, 72, 262, 274, 276, 304

Trades Union, Grand National Con-
solidated, 46, 53

Trier, 286

Tristan, Flora, 121

Trowbridge, 75, 131, 154, 234

Truck, 10, 17, 20, 24

Tyneside, 269

Ulterior Measures, 106, 134, 148-149,

169
Unearned Increment, the, 33, 35
Union, Eepeal of the, 262
United States, 99
Universal Suffrage, 265-266

Central Committee for Scotland, 193
Urquhart, David, 175-185
Utopia, More's, 30

Veiteh, G. S., 5, 6

Victors, Queen, 103, 183, 254, 280, 307
Letters of, 291, 292

Vincent, Henry, 33, 64, 71, 75, 76, 107,
117, 129, 130. 133, 151, 187, 188,
200, 203, 209, 235, 236, 246-250

Wade, Dr., Vicar of Warwick, 38, 49,
61, 75, 106, 109, 131, 191, 244,
248
Wages, 12-18, 20, 21, 81
Wales, 26, 117, 138, 139, 196
WaUas, Graham, 50, 52, 102

His Life of I'rancw Place, 62, 73
Warden, Chartist, 186, 187
Warminster Guardians, Ubel on, 221
Warwick, 171

Gaol, 166
Waterloo, Battle of, 8, 287
Watson, James, 38, 49, 53, 58-69, 73,

209
Weavers, Cotton, 13-16

silk, 13-15

wool, 17-18
Webb, S. and B., theu: Eistor]/ of Trade

Unionism, 130
Wellington, Duke of, 283, 290
Welshpool, 171
Wemyss, Colonel, 141, 151, 153, 158,

174, 184
West, of Macclesfield, 214
Westrapp, Chartist, 176
West Elding, Yorkshke, 17, 87, 134,

196, 261
White, George, 224, 241, 253
Whittle, James, 111, 150
Wigan, 112
Wigton, 168

Wilderspin, educational writer, 207
WiUenhaU, 27, 129
Williams, Hugh, 117

INDEX

327

WilllamB, James, 246
Williams, Morgan, 64, 199, 215
Williams, Zephanlah, 180, 186, 223, 297
Wischnewetzky, 'E. K., his TAe Con-

dUUm of the Working Claases in

England in 18U, 286
Wolverhampton, 27, 129

Vicar of, 26
Wood of Bolton, 133

Worcester, 76
Wootton-under-Edge, 246

York, 187. 227

York Castle, 212, 220, 221, 271

Yorkshire, 18, 25, 67, 81, 88, 90, 98, 106,

107, 111, 112, 119, 141, 196, 227.

See also West Biding
Young Englandism, 807-308

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