modest part. He was one amongst several leaders almost equally endowed with powers of denunciatory oratory, and in like latter months of 1837 and throughout 1838 their followers' 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 Star. Beaumont, 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 produce 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 child 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.[1]
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 unbridled language of the three demagogues, whereupon Beaumont 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.[2]
So month after month the North of England was lashed into frenzy by these leaders. It is hard to say what would have
