the surplus of profit to the funds from which new lands could be bought; the allotment holders of O'Connorville and its like were in many cases reduced to dire distress. Many were in danger of having to fall back on the cruel charity of the New Poor Law. Rumours of incompetence and malversation were so rife that there was a great outcry against the whole plan. Finally the House of Commons took the matter up and appointed a committee of investigation, which reported in August strongly against the National Land Company and all its works. The Company was an illegal scheme; it could not fulfil the expectations held out by the directors to the shareholders; its books and accounts had been most imperfectly kept; the original balance sheets signed by the auditors had been destroyed, and only those for three quarters were producible in any form. One point only in the damning catalogue of error could in any wise be construed in O'Connor's favour. The Committee reported that the confusion of the accounts was not attributable to any dishonesty on O'Connor's part. The irregularity had been against him, not in his favour, and a large sum of money was due to him at the moment. The conclusion of the Committee was that power should be given to wind up the undertaking, and relieve the promoters of the scheme from the penalties to which they might have incautiously subjected themselves.[1] In September Parliament accepted the report. It dealt such a blow to O'Connor's diminished prestige that the strongest of men could hardly have recovered from it. The Land Scheme, like the Petition, had ended in ridicule and contempt. It was small consolation to the fallen leader that his colleagues regarded him as a fool rather than as a rogue.
A minimum of disturbance and protest followed the collapse of April 10. As after the failure of 1842, there was a certain amount of agitation and rioting, but the disorders of the spring of 1848 fell as far short of those of the summer of 1842 as the Petition of 1848 fell short of the Petition of 1842. There were tumults in Aberdeen in April, occasioned by the election of a delegate to the Convention.[2] In May there were several successive disturbances in London on Clerkenwell Green, now a favourite meeting-place of Chartists; and at Bishop Bonner's Fields in the Tower Hamlets.[3] In Manchester the vigilance
