the Swedenborgian ex-minister William Hill was chief, and floated the 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 publishing any and every report of any meeting, however insignificant, 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 Star 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 journalism. 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.[1] 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 will perhaps do for O'Connor's success as well, for the paper was an expanded O'Connor. For a while after its foundation 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
- ↑ Additional MSS. 27,820, p. 154.
