The Chartist Movement/Chapter 9

by Mark Hovell

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 to get themselves arrested. They wanted to keep their forces together if there was to be an outbreak, and the seizure of the delegates would either provoke a leaderless insurrection or put a stop to the whole agitation, at least for the time being. Neither of these alternatives was pleasant to contemplate. The delegates, therefore, felt themselves unsafe in London, almost under the eyes of Government and the already efficient Metropolitan Police. The debates in the Convention had not escaped the notice of the Home Secretary, who especially asked for reports of the proceedings there.^[2]

In the Metropolis the Chartists had totally failed to get together a real following. An effort to organise agitation in London had been made by the Convention, but it did not accomplish much. Long and loud were the complaints about the apathy of the Londoners "because they had more wages than the men of the North."^[3] A meeting addressed by Pitkeithly and Smart at Rotherhithe on March 28 drew only fifty or sixty persons, and Pitkeithly complained that he had only to call a meeting in the North and he would crowd a room six times as large as the present one.^[4] The notion that the populace of London would play in a Chartist Revolution the part of the Paris folk in the French Revolution, if it were ever entertained, was hopelessly impossible. In London the Convention, in spite of its exertions, was never more than an interesting phenomenon.

The thought was natural, therefore, to withdraw from London to some place where there was a greater following and a greater immunity from arrest. Birmingham was the town selected. The delegates believed that the Convention could combine preparation with propaganda, and Birmingham, the half-way house to the North and to South Wales, was naturally the first stopping-place for a movable People's Parliament.

Birmingham Chartism had undergone a change since the collapse of the Attwood party. The moderate middle-class element had seceded and left the leadership in the hands of working men. Collins still preserved a tolerable following,^[5] but he was overshadowed by a noisier party led by Brown, Powell, Donaldson, and Fussell. Brown, Powell, and Donaldson were elected delegates in the place of Douglas, Hadley, and Salt, whilst Fussell stayed in Birmingham to agitate. Since the end of March the behaviour of the Chartists had become more and more provocative.^[6] The Bull Ring, a triangular space in the centre of the town, and a gateway into the poorer quarters, was crowded day after day with excited meetings, and the tone of the speeches became more and more inflammatory. The shopkeepers in the High Street were half ruined by the stoppage of their business. The Mayor^[7] professed to believe that there was no danger of any serious disturbances, but the manager of the Bank of England branch feared for his strongboxes.^[8] A letter from Fussell to Brown, dated May 7, describes the excitement in Birmingham. The Bull Ring is daily beset by crowds "waiting to hear the result of the Petition." All the week no work has been done, and Fussell has addressed the crowds during the day-time "to preserve the peace." The soldiers are all under arms and the Riot Act has been read "to exasperate the people." "And Depend upon it no stone shall be left unturned by Mee for the Purpose of keeping up the excitement." "I shall continue my exertions though the Workhouse be My Doom." He urges Brown, who no doubt kept him informed of the course of events in the Convention, to use all his force to get the Convention to transfer its sittings to Birmingham "as this was their battlefield and the men of Birmingham their forces."^[9] The next day, however, the magistrates of the town forbade meetings in the Bull Ring and also meetings of any sort where seditious and inflammatory language was used. On the 9th MacDouall and a certain James Duke, of Ashton-under-Lyne, were in Birmingham ordering a score of muskets and bayonets to be sent to the latter's home at Ashton, and promising an order for several hundred more if these were approved.^[10]

These indications suggest strongly that the "movement party," both in the Convention and in Birmingham, desired the removal to that town because they thought it a better base of operations for the intended outbreak. The supposed weakness of the newly created municipal body, which included a large sprinkling of the ex-leaders of Birmingham Chartism, the supposed strength of the physical force Chartists, and the existence of large stores of munitions of war, encouraged the hope that a successful beginning might be made there. When, on May 8, O'Connor for the second time moved the transference of the Convention, a majority of three to one was in favour. O'Connor said that the advent of a Tory Government would make it dangerous to stay in London, whereas at Birmingham they would be safe. Lovett voted with the majority, Hetherington, Cleave, Hartwell, Sankey, and Halley with the minority. Cleave, Sankey, and Halley entered a very strong protest against the removal, and had it recorded in the minutes. Cleave and Halley said they would quit the Convention altogether, but changed their minds, whilst Sankey wobbled again and struck out his signature from the protest.^[11] George Rogers, another London delegate, withdrew also. He was treasurer to the Convention. He wanted to know what character the Convention would assume, now that the Petition was disposed of, for he would sign no cheques, except for a petitioning body. He wanted to know what the Whit-week meetings were for. Anticipating no satisfactory answer, he resigned.^[12] Thus the moderate party was rapidly disappearing.

The sittings in London were terminated by proceedings which showed how far the Government's measures had taken effect upon the delegates. On May 6 Lowery had moved an "Address to the People" of a moderate character. This was rejected and replaced by an Address compiled by O'Brien, who said it was intended to urge the people to take arms without saying so in as many words. The gist of the Address was as follows: The first duty of the people was to obey the law, for a premature violation of it would ruin the cause. Their oppressors were trying to provoke such an outbreak through spies and traitors; they had already induced incautious persons in Lancashire to practise training and drilling in contravention of the Six Acts; they were arming the rich against the poor. The only way to avoid these schemes and plots was to be rigidly law-abiding, to avoid spies and traitors, to keep their arms bright at home, but not to attend meetings with them, and to be prepared with those arms to resist attempts to suppress their peaceful agitation with physical violence.^[13]

It is significant of the wavering attitude of some at least of the delegates towards the use of force that, on Carpenter's motion, the crucial words "with those arms" were deleted. Place says that the debate was very excited. Burns and Halley, the Scottish delegates, opposed the Address altogether. Burns said that so far from being in a majority, they were only a minority of the nation. (He was met with cries of "We are ten to one.") He answered that he was glad to hear it. They had only to show that they were in such a majority and there would be no need to talk of arms.^[14] Many of the delegates spoke very boastfully of the strength of their following. With this ambiguous address, and the completion of the arrangements for the great Whit-week campaign, the Convention quitted London.

It reached Birmingham on May 13. There was apparently no great excitement and no meetings were held in the Bull Ring. So far the Convention's injunctions regarding the strict observation of the law were effective. The delegates evidently heaved a sigh of relief on quitting London, which O'Connor said was "the most damnable of all places for bad air"; the members had come to Birmingham "to recruit their health."^[15] The Convention was welcomed by an address from the Radicals of Duddeston-cum-Nechells, a suburb of Birmingham. Its authors "hail with heartfelt and boundless joy the auspicious hour which has given to the millions of our brethren in political bondage a mighty Congress, solemnly elected by the people, to assert and win our natural and imprescriptable [sic] rights and franchises," and invoke "upon your gigantic labours the blessing of that Providence at whose breath every oppressor shall be swept from off the land."^[16]

Once arrived in Birmingham, the Convention took up a vigorous line of action. It treated the preparations of the Government as a signal for hostilities, and issued what may be regarded as a declaration of war. This was the fiery document styled "The Manifesto of the General Convention of Industrious Classes," which ran as follows:—

Countrymen and fellow-bondsmen! The fiat of our privileged oppressors has gone forth, that the millions must be kept in subjection! The mask of CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY is thrown for ever aside and the form of Despotism stands hideously before us: for let it be no longer disguised, THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND IS A DESPOTISM AND HER INDUSTRIOUS MILLIONS SLAVES.

Fellow-countrymen, our stalwart ancestors boasted of rights which the simplicity of their laws made clear and their bravery protected: but we their degenerate children have patiently yielded to one infringement after another till the last vestige of RIGHT has been lost in the MYSTICISM of legislation, and the armed force of the country transferred to soldiers and policemen.

Then follows an appeal to "rouse from your political slumbers." The Convention would lead. The Petition would be rejected and "we may now be prepared for the worst."

Men and women of Britain, will you tamely submit to the insult? Will you submit to incessant toil from birth till death, to give in tax and plunder, out of every twelve hours' labour, the proceeds of hours to support your idle and insolent oppressors? Will you much longer submit to see the greatest blessings of mechanical art converted into the greatest curses of social life? to see children forced to compete with their parents, wives with their husbands, and the whole of society morally and physically degraded to support the aristocracies of wealth and title? Will you thus allow your wives and daughters to be degraded; your children to be nursed in misery, stultified by toil, and become the victims of the vice our corrupt institutions have engendered? Will you permit the stroke of affliction, the misfortunes of poverty, or the infirmities of age to be branded and punished as crimes, and give our selfish oppressors an excuse for rending asunder man and wife, parent and child, and continue passive observers till you and yours become the victims?

Unless freedom was attained, revolution must follow and ruin and destruction would be the result. The middle class had betrayed the people, Whigs and Tories alike were hostile. Nevertheless the people must not be tempted to commence the struggle which the Government was preparing to wage. "We have resolved to obtain our rights peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must."

Then followed a list of "ulterior measures" to be adopted in the event of the rejection of the Petition. This list had been drawn up by a committee from the multitude of suggestions made from time to time by the delegates and others. Most of them were expedients which had been proposed in the height of the Reform Bill struggle eight years before. At every Chartist meeting until July 1, the following questions were to be submitted:

1. Whether Chartists will be prepared, AT THE REQUEST OF THE CONVENTION, to withdraw all sums of money they may INDIVIDUALLY OR COLLECTIVELY have placed in savings banks, etc., and whether at the same time they will be prepared immediately to convert their paper money into gold and silver?

2. Whether, IF THE CONVENTION SHALL DETERMINE THAT A SACRED MONTH WILL BE NECESSARY to prepare the millions to secure the Charter of their political salvation, they will FIRMLY resolve to abstain from their labours during that period, as well as from the use of all intoxicating drinks?

3. Whether, if asked, they would refuse payment of rents, rates, and taxes?

4. Whether, according to their old constitutional rights, they have prepared themselves with the arms of freemen to defend the laws and constitutional privileges their ancestors bequeathed to them?

5. Whether they will support Chartist candidates at the General Election?

6. Whether they will deal exclusively with shopkeepers known to be Chartists?

7. Whether they will resist all counter and rival agitations?

8. Whether they will refuse to read hostile newspapers?

9. Whether they will OBEY ALL THE JUST AND CONSTITUTIONAL REQUESTS OF THE MAJORITY OF THE CONVENTION?^[17]

These "suggestions" betray great perplexity on the part of the Convention. Compared with the incisive character of the prefatory address, they make an almost ridiculous impression. They rest largely upon the ill-founded assumption that the Chartist enthusiasts were everywhere a majority amongst the working people. They follow the tendency already noted, to place the responsibility for extreme measures and their consequences upon the shoulders of the rank and file instead of the leaders. Behind all, there seems to lie a hope that these suggestions, by bringing the more reckless and unthinking Chartists face to face with stern realities, might have a sobering effect and put an end to the possibility of conflict altogether. The appeal to arms now takes a secondary place and the economic weapons, the general strike, a run on the banks, and boycotting, are put into the first place.

The manifesto and the "ulterior measures" were not adopted without great division of opinion. Lovett and Harney were its chief defenders—a curious alliance. Lovett thought it was the most honest and courageous step to take. The Convention ought not to go on postponing the decision; it ought to give a lead to its followers even at the cost of some sacrifice. Harney was sure it would precipitate the long-wished-for conflict.^[18] There was strong opposition from Halley, Cleave, Whittle, and others. Most curious was the attitude of O'Connor and O'Brien. O'Connor spoke very doubtfully in favour of the address, whilst O'Brien thought the Convention ought to make sure of its ground before publishing the manifesto. They ought to be certain of the unanimous support of all Chartists before proceeding with it. Perhaps nothing reflects more the wavering courage of the Convention than the request (No. 9) that Chartists should obey the decisions of the majority. They feared that the personal influence of minority delegates would suffice to tear away large bodies of Chartists and put an end to unity. That O'Brien and O'Connor should be forsaking the paths of violence and precipitancy was more significant still.

On the 16th it was decided, on the proposition of Marsden and O'Connor, that any serious step on the part of the Government to arrest the delegates should be the signal for the adoption of the "ulterior measures." Yet Vincent had been arrested the week before! On the motion of O'Brien and O'Connor solemn warnings were issued with regard to the parading of arms in public, and to the avoidance of disorder at public meetings. Chairmen were to dissolve meetings on the first sign of tumult.^[19] Thus timorously and cautiously did the Convention enter upon the great Whitsuntide campaign which was to indicate whether they could safely proceed to defy Government and society. After three days' sittings in Birmingham, the Convention adjourned until July 1.

By this time the civil and military authorities had the situation well in hand, though panic and terror were by no means diminished. Everywhere special constables were being sworn in—at Bradford, for instance, to the number of 1835^[20]—and armed associations sprang up in threatened areas. The Yeomanry was called up in the rural districts. Magistrates were beginning to arrest individual Chartists, whenever they felt safe in so doing. Many were so arrested in Lancashire.^[21] A dozen members of the London Democratic Association were seized with arms in their hands.^[22] There was a riot towards the end of April at Llanidloes. Hetherington, who had visited the district shortly before the outbreak, reported that Llanidloes and Newtown (Montgomery) were filled with armed Chartists. As a result of the outbreak a number of Chartists were arrested. At Derby, Strutt, the famous threadmaker, fortified his mills with cannon and had a troop of horse in readiness.^[23]

It had been generally understood that May 6, the day originally intended for the presentation of the petition, would be the critical day, the commencement of the insurrection. In Lancashire, Monmouthshire, and elsewhere the excitement, terror, and panic rose to a climax during the first week of May. On the 4th, Colonel Wemyss, in command at Manchester, reported: "Two Magistrates from Ashton-under-Lyne came into Manchester this forenoon seemingly in great alarm, and made a requisition for troops. I immediately put a squadron, a gun, and four companies of the 20th Regiment in march on the Ashton Road." It turned out that the magistrates had arrested four Chartists, but the mob had prevented them from sending their prisoners to Manchester.^[24] The sending of a force of all three arms in such a case shows how great the tension seems to have been. The Manchester magistrates were not so alarmed as their neighbours in the smaller towns, owing to the presence of Wemyss and his garrison, but they sent in disquieting reports as to the accumulation of arms and the prevalence of drilling. There was a second outbreak at Llanidloes on May 7. One of the delegates for Birmingham, Powell, was arrested.^[25] At Monmouth a riot was barely avoided on the arrival of Vincent and Edwards, who had been arrested on the 7th. The Convention sent down Frost to provide legal assistance, and it was probably his personal influence alone which prevented a premature outbreak.^[26]

May 6, however, passed without serious events, and attention was concentrated on the Whitsuntide campaign. Napier, in his headquarters at Nottingham, was keeping the situation well in hand, though alarming reports reached him from all quarters. It seems clear from his reports that many of the Chartist rank and file were under the impression that the great Whitsuntide demonstrations were to be of a much more business-like character than the mere discussion of possible "ulterior measures." A fragment of a torn letter was put into his hands, which suggested that ideas of barricades and street warfare were about, and that Whit Monday was the day appointed to begin. At Stone, in Staffordshire, barricades were actually erected.^[27] A handbill circulated in Manchester runs thus:

Dear brothers! Now are the times to try men's souls! Are your arms ready? Have you plenty of powder and shot? Have you screwed up your courage to the sticking place? Do you intend to be freemen or slaves? Are you inclined to hope for a fair day's wages for a fair day's work? Ask yourselves these questions and remember that your safety depends on your own right arms. How long are you going to allow your mothers, your wives, your sweethearts, and your children to be for ever toiling for other people's benefit? Nothing can convince tyrants of their folly but gunpowder and steel, so put your trust in god, my boys, and keep your powder dry … Be ready then to nourish the tree of liberty with the BLOOD OF TYRANTS. … Now or never is your time: be sure you do not neglect your arms, and when you do strike do not let it be with sticks or stones, but let the blood of all you suspect moisten the soil of your native land.

⁠Let England's sons then prime her guns
⁠And save each good man's daughter.
⁠In tyrants' blood baptize your sons
⁠And every villain slaughter.
By pike and sword your freedom strive to gain
Or make one bloody Moscow of old England's plain.^[28]

As Whitsuntide drew near, Napier became more and more confident that the Chartists would not accomplish much in the way of carrying out their threats. On May 15 he wrote:

The Chartists hardly know what they are at. The people want food and think O'Connor will get it for them: and O'Connor wants to keep the agitation alive because he sells weekly 60,000 copies of the Northern Whig [sic]. While this lasts he will try to prevent an outbreak. No premeditated outbreak will occur, I think, whilst our imposing force furnishes an excuse for delay: and delay will injure their cause because the deputies are paid and the people are growing weary of the physical-force men.

The second part of this statement shows a better appreciation of the situation than the first. Later on, Napier writes that the orders of the Convention to avoid parading arms at public meetings was due to "funk."

They [the leaders] saw they would be obliged to lead their pikemen in the field, and knowing Demosthenes did not like fighting, they as orators think it not derogatory to follow his example.^[29]

The Whitsun demonstrations were carried through peacefully and quietly, but the panic amongst the magistracy and propertied folk was as great as ever. The chief demonstrations were at Huddersfield and Manchester, and meetings of some importance took place at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Monmouth, Bolton, and Sheffield. At Huddersfield O'Connor was the chief attraction, but the magistrates there said the affair was poor compared with the previous demonstrations. At Manchester, on May 25, a crowd, whose number varies from twenty thousand, according to the Times, to half a million, according to the Chartist papers, marched to Kersal Moor to hear O'Connor, Dr. Fletcher, Dr. Taylor, and some local orators. The meeting was wholly peaceable.

Napier was apparently very much afraid of an outbreak in Manchester and took very peculiar precautions. He heard that the Chartists had five brass cannon, and purposed desperate things under the lead of Taylor, who had come down from Glasgow. He thereupon gave a private artillery exhibition to a few Chartist leaders with whom he was acquainted.^[30] He also sent a message to the responsible persons to tell them "how impossible it would be to feed and move 300,000 men; that, armed, starving, and interspersed with villains, they must commit horrid excesses; that I would never allow them to charge me with their pikes, or even march ten miles, without mauling them with cannon and musketry and charging them with cavalry, when they dispersed to seek food; finally, that the country would rise on them and they would be destroyed in three days."^[31]

These measures doubtless damped much of the warlike ardour of the Chartist leaders. Napier and Wemyss went in person to the Kersal Moor demonstration. His troops had been strengthened by the 10th Regiment from Liverpool, and he had promised the magistrates to arrest any one who preached treason after the meeting had dispersed. Napier's estimate that the meeting was thirty or thirty-five thousand strong, we may take to be fairly correct, but he says that not five hundred of this crowd were seriously bent on mischief.

Wemyss addressed a few of the people in high Tory oratory and argued with a drunken old pensioner, fiercely radical and devilish sharp: in ten minutes one-eighth of the whole crowd collected round Wemyss and cheered him.^[32]

The speeches, delivered by the official Chartist orators at this meeting, consisted largely of eulogies of Henry Hunt and the Peterloo martyrs. Resolutions condemning the delegates who resigned from the Convention were passed, as well as resolutions approving the programme of "ulterior measures." At Newcastle-on-Tyne, however where Harney, Dr. Taylor, and other advocates of extreme measures were the speakers, the speeches were censored by the chairman. James Craig spoke of agitating the bricks and mortar, Harney of marching on London, Taylor and Lowery of the advantages of a general strike of colliers.^[33] Generally speaking, however, the Whitsuntide campaign gave the authorities little real ground for uneasiness, though the panic, generated by the frequent assemblies of Chartists and the wild rumours which were abroad, was in no way abated.

The campaign was continued throughout June 1839, but there was increasing evidence of disaffection in the Chartist ranks. On May 15 James Craig of Ayr quitted the Convention with leave of absence. He had been regarded as a stalwart and promising leader, but apparently he had lost his nerve. He fell into a sordid squabble with his former constituents about his salary as delegate, and the Chartist body in that neighbourhood was split into fragments.^[34] R. J. Richardson resigned towards the end of May because his Manchester supporters were either unable or unwilling to pay him the five pounds weekly which had been promised as his salary. Apparently a rival, Christopher Dean by name, had been preferred to him.^[35] Halley, the Scottish delegate, who had always been so powerful an advocate of sober measures, took advantage of the adjournment of the Convention to sever his connection with it, for which, curiously enough, he was denounced in person by Richardson himself.^[36] Not only resignations but arrests thinned the ranks of the Convention. About the beginning of June Carrier of Trowbridge was arrested, and on the 8th MacDouall. The latter was committed on the charge of attending a seditious meeting at Hyde towards the end of April, when he had advised his audience to make use of arms if soldiers were called out, sentiments which were greeted with pistol-shots. MacDouall thereupon squabbled with his Ashton constituents, seemingly because he was suspected of desiring that part of the fund raised for Stephens's trial should be applied to his own defence.^[37] He also quitted the Convention.

The effect of these resignations ought not to be exaggerated. They did not imply entire withdrawal from the movement, for Richardson, Ryder, and MacDouall continued to be very active leaders. In fact the two latter probably resigned because they felt that they could be of much more use in the country than in the Convention. On the other hand, the constant local dissensions, of which more and more is heard from this time onward, could not but have a bad effect upon the unity which was requisite for any effective action. It was frequently reported that the more timid were openly withdrawing from the movement. In the Convention the steady shrinkage had a depressing effect, and the wavering which characterised its earlier proceedings was emphasised in the later. It was finally left to accident and the restlessness of the remaining members to precipitate a crisis.

The Convention met again on July 1 at Birmingham. The next day it was decided to migrate, on July 10, once more to London,^[38] a very curious move which is excused, though not at all explained, by the fact that Attwood's motion upon the prayer of the Petition was down for the 12th. On July 3 and 4 the party of violence, led by Dr. Taylor and MacDouall (whose resignation does not seem to have taken effect), began to advocate an early decision upon the adoption of ulterior measures, basing their arguments upon the evidence of readiness supplied by the meetings during the past six weeks. Craig alone seriously questioned the preparedness of their followers, and finally abandoned the Convention. After some very irresolute proceedings, it was decided to put into force the milder of the "ulterior measures," the run on banks, exclusive dealing, the newspaper boycott, and so on, at an early date. The question of a general strike was held over until the fate of the Petition was known. In the minds of the movement party the strike was synonymous with insurrection, for they refused to listen to Lovett's argument^[39] that a strike fund should be formed, preferring Benbow's vague but unmistakable reference to the "cattle upon a thousand hills"^[40] as the most suitable strike fund.

The action about which the Convention was debating was precipitated by events which took place in Birmingham on July 4. The return of the Convention had raised the excitement in that town to fever heat. The magistrates had forbidden meetings in the Bull Ring since the beginning of May,^[41] and the Chartists had been meeting at Holloway Head, not many minutes' walk away. With the increasing excitement the Bull Ring was again invaded, despite the prohibition. The magistrates therefore sent for a detachment of the Metropolitan Police. The Mayor, William Scholefield, with two other magistrates, proceeded to London and brought back sixty constables.^[42] This was on July 4. On arriving at Birmingham about eight o'clock in the evening, they found a meeting in full swing in the Bull Ring. As if to make the earliest use of their new weapon, the magistrates ordered the police to disperse the meeting, which was perhaps a thousand strong. The struggle which ensued was bloody and indecisive until soldiers were brought up. Many of the crowd were armed in various ways, and ten policemen were seriously wounded and taken to hospital. Some dozen armed and unarmed Chartists were arrested on the spot. The magistrates wrote off at once for a further draft of Metropolitan Police, and forty were sent next day. Meanwhile the crowd had reassembled in the Bull Ring, and towards midnight, in spite of the efforts of Dr. Taylor and MacDouall (whose presence was not likely to suggest peaceful behaviour) to dissuade them, the infuriated body began to pull down the wall surrounding St. Martin's Church, which stands at the lower end of the Bull Ring, to use the stones as missiles or for a barricade. The police came up again and arrested the two delegates with seventeen other Chartists. The next morning, Friday, the magistrates mobilised some hundreds of tradesmen as special constables, but nevertheless excited crowds continued to assemble, especially round the Golden Lion Hotel, where the Convention was sitting. The magistrates released MacDouall upon examination, but not Taylor.^[43]

These events produced a situation in which Lovett was supreme. Where personal sacrifice was required, Lovett's courage was beyond question. In the excited and half-terrified Convention he brought forward a series of strong resolutions condemning the magistrates of Birmingham.

That this Convention is of opinion that a wanton, flagrant, and unjust outrage has been made upon the people of Birmingham, by a bloodthirsty and unconstitutional force from London, acting under the authority of men who,^[44] when out of office, sanctioned and took part in the meetings of the people, and now, when they share in the public plunder, seek to keep the people in social and political degradation. That the people of Birmingham are the best judges of their own right to meet in the Bull Ring or elsewhere, have their own feelings to consult respecting the outrage given, and are the best judges of their own power and resources to obtain justice. That the summary and despotic arrest of Dr. Taylor, our respected colleague, affords another convincing proof of the absence of all justice in England and clearly shows that there is no security for life, liberty or property till the people have some control over the laws they are called upon to obey.

These resolutions were carried without opposition, and it was further decided to have five hundred copies of them placarded throughout the town. Characteristically enough, Lovett insisted that his own signature alone should be attached, so that the Convention should run no risk. Characteristically enough, the Convention was quite willing to sacrifice him. Lovett and Collins, who had acted as chairman at this momentous sitting, took the draft to the printer. The placards appeared on Saturday morning, the 6th. Lovett and Collins were arrested the same day for publishing a seditious libel, hurried before the magistrates, whom Lovett upbraided as traitors to the Chartist cause, and were committed to Warwick Gaol, where they were forthwith lodged.

This was Lovett's hour. He knew perfectly well that the publication of his resolutions was a serious offence, but he wanted to break the law. Against a wholesale insurrection, which might involve the sacrifice of innocent lives, the destruction of property, and the poisoning of social and political feeling, he had always raised his voice in protest. To break a bad law by his own personal act, to vindicate the justice of his cause by his eloquence before the judges and before the world outside, and by suffering with fortitude the punishment which his action involved, to do all this was Lovett's moral force. Thus had he resisted the ballot for the Militia in 1831; thus had the Newspaper Taxes been defied and successfully defied; thus would Lovett win the Charter. He would be the advocate of the disfranchised before the bar of public opinion and speak where his advocacy would be most effective. It was a noble ideal, but it was the ideal of a martyr, not of a leader of would-be insurgents. Yet it is not questionable that Lovett accomplished more by this sacrifice for the cause of Chartism and the advance of democracy in England than all those who sneered at his moral philosophy and brandished their arms when the enemy was absent. In the history of the first Chartist Convention there is but one cheering episode, and Lovett is its hero.

The news of the events at Birmingham produced intense feeling throughout the Chartist world. Lancashire was as usual the focus of the excitement. On July 2, Wemyss, at Manchester, reported that one Timothy Higgins of Ashton-under-Lyne had been found in possession of twenty-seven rifles and muskets of various descriptions and three pistols. A placard was posted at Ashton Parish Church:

Men of Ashton, Universal Bread or Universal Blood, prepare your Dagger Torch and Guns, your Pikes and congreve matches and all march on for Bread or blood, for life or death. Remember the cry for bread of 1,280,000 was called a ridiculous piece of machinery.^[45] O ye tyrants, think you that your Mills will stand?^[46]

On July 10 the Manchester Chartists issued a placard calling a meeting to protest against the introduction into Manchester of a DAMNABLE FOREIGN POLICE SYSTEM and to denounce the BLOODY DOINGS of the police at Birmingham. The placard is headed in leaded type TYRANNY! TYRANNY!! WORKING MEN OF MANCHESTER.

The Convention added to the excitement by rushing through various strong resolutions regarding the immediate resort to ulterior measures. The National Holiday or General Strike was still kept in reserve. These resolutions were published in the form of placards. On July 10 the Convention, now back again in London, passed a resolution of censure upon the Government for allowing the police to be used for suppressing public meetings.

This Convention is of opinion that wherever and whenever persons, ASSEMBLED FOR JUST AND LEGAL PURPOSES and conducting themselves without riot or tumult, are so assailed by the police and others, they are justified upon every principle of law and of self-preservation in MEETING FORCE BY FORCE, EVEN TO THE SLAYING of the persons guilty of such atrocious and ferocious assaults upon their rights and persons.^[47]

The manifesto of the Convention, embodying the resolution to resort immediately to ulterior measures, appeared in Manchester, on July 12, in the shape of a placard summoning a meeting for the next day "to support the People's Parliament, and to recommend [sic] her MAJESTY to dismiss her Present Base, Brutal, and Bloody, Advisers." The placard contains the list of ulterior measures, signed by twenty-seven of the delegates. In heavy print are the recommendations to withdraw money from the savings banks, to run for gold, and to abstain from excisable articles. In smaller and smaller type are the recommendations to boycott and to obtain arms, whilst a reference to the Sacred Month is scarcely legible.

A manifesto against the paper money system was issued by the Convention about the same time.

The corrupt system of Banking, speculating and defrauding the industrious, had its origin, has been perpetuated, and still form [sic] the greatest support of despotism, in the fraudulent bits of paper our state tricksters dignify with the name of money. Through its instrumentality our rulers destroy freedom abroad and at home. Our whole system has been tainted by its pestilential breath. … It has created one set of idlers after another to prey upon the vitals of the industrious. … It has raised up a host of defenders (who) have induced thousands to assist in upholding their corrupt system, while they are being robbed by that system of three-fourths of their labour.

This was the O'Brien-O'Connor counterblast to Attwood's currency theories. Within a day or two of the publication of this outburst, Attwood was using the National Petition to float his currency notions, and Lord John Russell was refuting him out of the mouths of his own petitioners.

1. Additional MSS. 27,821, pp. 113-14.
2. Home Office, 40 (44), Metropolis. Pencil note on back of letter, date May 3: "I wish to have account of proceedings of the Convention itself."
3. Home Office, 40 (44), Metropolis.
4. Ibid.
5. A strong protest was received by the Committee against the election of Brown and his colleagues. Charter, April 28, 1839.
6. A speech of March 28, probably by Brown: "We know the use of barricades. We know how to make use of the lanes and alleys. We know the use of broken glass bottles. We know the use of aqua fortis," etc.
7. William Scholefield.
8. Home Office, 40 (49), Birmingham.
9. Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 414.
10. Home Office, 40 (49). Sworn deposition of gunmaker at Birmingham.
11. Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 432.
12. Ibid. 34,245, A, p. 410.
13. Charter, May 12, 1839.
14. Additional MSS. 27,821, pp. 126-8.
15. Ibid., 27,821, p. 170.
16. Ibid. 34,245, A, p. 442.
17. Charter, May 19, 1839, p. 258.
18. Place Bays Harney opposed the Address on this very ground (Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 175), but I prefer my own reading of the matter.
19. Charter, May 19, 1839.
20. Ibid. May 26, 1839.
21. Ibid. May 12, 1839.
22. London Dispatch, May 12, 1839.
23. Charter. April 28, 1839.
24. Home Office, 40 (43), Manchester.
25. Charter, May 12, 1839.
26. Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 133.
27. Napier, ii. 12, 27.
28. Napier, ii. 29.
29. Ibid. ii. 27, 38, 34.
30. Napier, ii. 40.
31. Ibid. ii. 43.
32. Ibid. ii. 39-43.
33. Northern Liberator. May 25, 1839.
34. Northern Star, September 7, 1839. Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 447: B, pp. 36, 58.
35. Dean's credentials: "Stephens Squair (i.e. Stevenson Square, Manchester). We the men of Manchester in Public assembled have Duly elected Cristipher Dean, Operative stone Mason, as a fitt and proper person to Represent us in the People's Convention. Sign in be halfe of the meating. William Rushton, Chairman." Additional MSS. 34,245, A, p. 201, April 4.
36. London Dispatch, July 7, 1839.
37. Charter, June 16, 1839; July 7, 1839. See also curious account in Manchester Guardian, June 29, 1839.
38. Moir proposed this: said they ought to be at hand to take every advantage of the embarrassments of the Government and of the Bank of England.
39. Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 283.
40. See his Grand National Holiday, 1831.
41. Additional MSS. 27,821, p. 112.
42. Hansard, 3rd ser. xlix. 86.
43. The meeting was undoubtedly illegal. First, because it had been forbidden to hold meetings in the Bull Ring, which was a narrow and confined space, bounded by rows of shops. Meetings there, unless small, were very detrimental to business in the shops. Second, because the meeting was attended by armed men. But there is no doubt that the magistrates acted very hurriedly and recklessly. They did not read the Riot Act or give any warning before attempting to disperse the meeting. Scholefield, the Mayor, said he had always been received with groans on passing the Bull Ring, and he was probably angry and timorous. There were only twenty street-keepers, and six or seven constables in Birmingham itself before the new police force was organised. See also Charter, July 7, 1839.
44. The reference is, of course, to the Attwood-Muntz-Scholefield body.
45. A reference to the huge bobbin on which the National Petition was wound.
46. Napier reports (ii. 62) in the House of Commons that at Wigton the magistrates were horrified to discover that the persons they had appointed as special constables had arms and "would soon settle your forty soldiers, if they are saucy." Of this period he relates thus: "Alarm! Trumpets! Magistrates in a fuss! Troops! Troops! Troops! North, South, East, West! I screech at these applications like a gate, swinging on rusty hinges, and swear! Lord, how they make me swear!"
47. Placard at Bolton, Home Office, 40, 44.