That if the Convention did its duty, the Charter would be law in less than a month: that there should be no delay in presenting the Petition: and that all acts of injustice and oppression should be met by resistance.
These resolutions caused an immense hubbub in the Convention, which spent three whole days in discussing the conduct of its three traitorous delegates, who narrowly escaped expulsion. It is significant that the three outspoken advocates of violence found only three other supporters within the whole convention. One of these was Frost, the future rebel of Newport.[1]
Though the majority of the Convention was unwilling to avow a policy of violence, individual members were not so timid in the use of threats. The policy adopted by many of the northern delegates, especially O'Connor and his followers, was to adopt an official caution in the Convention and reserve their violence for public meetings. Thus whilst on the 7th of March Harney and his colleagues were officially condemned, nevertheless on the 16th several members of the majority on that occasion joined Harney in a carnival of denunciation which had as its scene a public meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern. This meeting produced some significant speeches. Sankey, a doctor from Edinburgh, moved a resolution declaring that the Convention had a right to adopt any means whatsoever in order to carry the Charter, and that every meeting had a right to censure or approve any act of the Convention. Mere petitioning would not carry the Charter, which would be rejected, however many signatures it had, unless they were "the signatures of millions of fighting men who will not allow any aristocracy, oligarchy, landlords, cotton lords, money lords, or any lords to tyrannise over them longer." Rogers, a mild-mannered tobacconist, spoke of signing the Petition in red, but hoped they would achieve their object without bloodshed. O'Connor spoke in the same sense as Sankey. Millions of petitions would not dislodge a troop of dragoons. He warned the delegates that they would have a duty imposed upon them by the people after the Petition was presented. There would be martyrs. If the Convention should separate without doing something to secure the Charter, the people would know how to deal with the Convention, Harney wound up the evening by declaring that by the end of the year they would have universal suffrage or death.[2]
