little success in the Birmingham area. He was on good terms with the working people and even with their employers. An iron-master in the district allowed him the use of a large room "which was crowded to suffocation every Sabbath afternoon from half-past two till a quarter past four." A Wesleyan minister, who was no friend to Chartism, describes O'Neill's methods thus:
O'Neill called himself a Christian Chartist and always began his discourse with a text, after the manner of a sermon; and some of our people went to hear him just to observe the proceedings and were shocked beyond description: there was unmeasured abuse of Her Majesty and the Constitution, about the public expenditure and complete radical doctrines of all kinds. They have a hymn-book of their own and affect to be a denomination of Christians. This is the way they gained converts here, by the name. There were very few political chartists here, but Christian Chartist was a name that took. It is almost blasphemy to prostitute the name of Christian to such purposes.[1]
A Government Commissioner sent to inquire into the causes of the strike which engulfed Chartism in the Black Country in 1842, actually attended a "Christian Chartist Tea Party" at Birmingham, where O'Neill was the chief speaker. He thus reports O'Neill's sermon:
The necessity of their new Church was evident, for the true Church of Christ ought not to be split up into opposing sects: all men ought to be united in one Universal Church. Christianity should prevail in everyday life, commerce should be conducted on Christian principles and not on those of Mammon, and every other institution ought to be based on the doctrines of Christianity. Hence the Chartist Church felt it their duty to go out and move amongst the masses of the people to guide and direct them by the principles of Christianity. They felt it incumbent upon them to go out into the world, to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. The true Christian Church could not remain aloof but must enter into the struggles of the people and guide them. The characteristic of members of a real Church was on the first day of the week to worship at their altar, on the next to go out and mingle with the masses, on the third to stand at the bar of judgment, and on the fourth perhaps to be in a dungeon. This was the case in the primitive Church and so it ought to be now.[2]
If this sermon is the worst which the Commissioner in spite of the "pain" which his attendance caused him can report, we may safely assume that the Wesleyan minister's account is
