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 offered 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."[1] 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 all declarations not required by law were illegal, the voluntary declaration of adhesion to the principles of the Charter had to be omitted.[2] 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 in 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, and for various 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
