arrested. Beniowski escaped. This meeting was an armed assembly, and Ashton afterwards declared that it was part of the intended rising in London.[1]
After this came another period of trials and imprisonments.[2] 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 actually 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 revolt—were still 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.[3] 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,
