CHAPTER IX
THE CONVENTION AT BIRMINGHAM
(1839)
A strange event upset the Chartist calculations early in May 1839. The Whig Government of Lord Melbourne had at no time possessed a sound working majority. In a division upon the question of suspending the constitution of Jamaica in consequence of the evil treatment of the negro freedmen by the white oligarchy, the Government majority dwindled to five, and on the following day, May 7, Melbourne decided to resign. This unlucky event put an end for the moment to all ideas of presenting the National Petition, as there was no prospect of a hearing for it. It made a bad impression, too, that the House of Commons should apparently be so concerned with the affairs of Jamaica as to bring about a change of Government at so critical a time. The Convention was compelled to face the prospect of another long wait for the decisive moment at which political agitation might pass into armed insurrection. The delegates were of course far from unanimous either as to the necessity or as to the precise moment for the employment of force. Some were opposed to force altogether, others were for waiting until the Petition was definitely rejected, and yet others, convinced that the Petition was useless, were for an immediate appeal to arms.
The Convention had not been unimpressed by the preparations of the Government to resist any insurrectionary movement. Without going as far as Place, who believed that all the proceedings of the Convention about this time were dictated by a cowardly fear of prison, the biggest braggarts like O'Connor being the most arrant of cowards,[1] we may well agree that none of the delegates wanted to go out of their way
- ↑ Additional MSS. 27,821, pp. 113-14.
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