futile in view of the existing state of Parliamentary representation, but there is little or no evidence that his middle-class followers shared this view. The Complete Suffrage Movement did receive the support of large numbers of Corn Law Repealers, and even of men actively engaged in the work of the League—men like John Bright, Charles Cobden,[1] Archibald Prentice, ex-Chartist and later historian of the League, and Francis Place, who placed his vast stores of political wisdom at the disposal of Free Traders and Sturgeites alike. These men were all Radicals and supported Sturge because they were Radicals, though it is not too much to suppose that many of the rank and file of the Free Traders were not sorry to have a kind of second string in the Radical movement initiated by Sturge. The Complete Suffrage leaders acted totally independently of the Free Trade movement, and if they sought support, they sought it on the common basis of radical beliefs. When they began to recruit working-class support, it was on the same basis. In short, the Complete Suffrage Movement was an honest attempt to organise a single Radical body without distinction of class or interest. The suspicions of the Chartists that it was a dodge of the League to draw off support from Chartism were quite unfounded.
The appeal of the Complete Suffrage Union to the working classes was answered almost exclusively by those Chartists who, for various reasons, were at loggerheads with O'Connor and his friends. Lovett saw in the Declaration an opportunity for that co-operation of all classes which he so much desired, and he no doubt looked forward to a revival of the agitation for the Charter upon the idealistic lines laid down in Chartism. O'Brien also began to sympathise with the Sturge movement, but his motives are less easy to discover; pique and a growing personal dislike for O'Connor were probably the chief. O'Brien could not stand the patronage of one so inferior to himself. He found allies in the Bath Chartists, and their exceptionally able leaders, R. K. Philp, Henry Vincent, and W. P. Roberts, all of whom were rapidly falling away from their allegiance to the National Charter Association, no doubt for the same reason which made it impossible for any man of independence and spirit to tolerate for long the yoke of O'Connor. The Christian Chartists, to whom Sturge and his pietist ways appealed strongly, rallied round the new movement. Arthur O'Neill, John Collins, Robert Lowery,
- ↑ Brother of Richard.
