These proceedings throw some light upon the relations of the Association and the Parliament 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 enthusiastically 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 likely. But the Association was also very lukewarm 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 movement 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 pamphlets as The Rotten House of Commons, prevented any hearty co-operation, and ultimately 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 publication 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.[1] 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 all 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 call 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. 111 et seq.
