mixed up with that of the League.[1] Complete Suffrage was denounced because it apparently did not involve the other five "points" of the Radical Programme,[2] and a comparison was drawn between the "Charter Suffrage" and Complete Suffrage.
The Charter Suffrage would not rob any man while it would protect and enrich all: while Complete Suffrage would merely tantalise you with the possession of a thing you could not use, and would entirely prostrate labour to capital and speculation. The Charter Suffrage would, firstly, more than treble our production now locked up, restricted, and narrowed, while it would cause a more equitable distribution of the increased production. Complete Suffrage would not increase the production while it would monopolise all that was produced. Repeal of the Corn Laws without the Charter would make one great hell of England, and would only benefit steam producers, merchants, and bankers without giving the slightest impetus to any trade, save the trade of slavery, while it would from the consequent improvement and multiplication of machinery,[3] break every shopkeeper and starve one half of our population. On the other hand the Charter would in less than six months from the date of its enactment, call forth all the industry, energy, and power of every class in the State.[4]
This was followed by an article from O'Connor who denounced Complete Suffrage as "Complete Humbug," and said that Sturge, being a banker and corn-merchant, was striving, for interested reasons, to draw Chartists into the Anti-Corn Law Movement.[5] Nothing could have been more unjust or untrue than this charge.
Meanwhile the plans for the Conference at Birmingham were being elaborated, and it was fixed for April 5 and the following days. O'Connor thereupon ordered a meeting of delegates and others at the same place and on the same days. Every delegate was to bring with him as much money as his constituents could collect.[6] The delegates were apparently to sit as long as the money lasted.
Thus on April 5, 1842, two rival conferences met at Birmingham. The Complete Suffrage Conference consisted of 103 members. The majority of these were representatives of the middle-class supporters of the movement, but the workers were represented by Vincent, Lovett, O'Brien, Neesom, John Collins,
