were gallant hearts and virtuous arms under a black coat as well as under a red one." The troops were apparently determined to provoke the people to resistance, but the discretion of the people averted a riot, and the meeting was concluded in perfect order.

Public meetings were also held with distinct success in Sunderland and Northampton. The addresses by Vincent and others were received with great enthusiasm. The Whig rule was contrasted with the honeyed promises made by the party before it came into power. Unanimous resolutions in favor of the People's Charter were carried with shouts of joy and defiance. These meetings were followed on the 6th of August by a great demonstration at Birmingham. Arranged under the auspices of the famous Political Union of that city, the parade attracted the workingmen of the whole manufacturing district. About two hundred thousand persons were said to have participated in the procession. The Birmingham division was followed by six others from Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Halesowen, Warwick and Studley.

The trades were represented with their flags and banners inscribed with appropriate mottoes. Feargus O'Connor was introduced amidst loud cheers, as representing six towns in Yorkshire. Thomas Attwood, who presided at the meeting, reiterated his moral force policy, but at the same time threatened the House of Commons that should the Charter not be speedily granted, the people would be forced to exercise a little gentle compulsion. He again suggested a general strike of one week as a means of impressing the government. It was at this meeting that O'Connor for the first time introduced his physical force notions. The people yearned for a strong word, and he knew how to please them. The whole tenor of his speech was in harmony with the exhortation to "flesh every sword to the

hilt." While the crowd demonstrated its approval of O'Connor's sentiments, the local leaders could hardly repress their feelings against the speaker. The meeting, however, was concluded in perfect peace. Important resolutions were adopted calling upon all workingmen to sign a National Petition for the enactment of the Charter and to elect

delegates to a General Convention of the Industrious Classes.1

O'Connor's allusion to physical force caused unfavorable comment in the press and great anxiety among the leaders of the London Working Men's Association. As the 17th of September was fixed for a grand demonstration in London, the Association seized the opportunity to repudiate O'Connor by instructing its speakers " to keep as closely as possible to the two great questions of the meeting-the Charter and the Petition-and as far as possible to avoid all extraneous matter or party politics, as well as every abusive or violent expression which may tend to injure our glorious cause." 2

Apprehensive of fostering the sentiments created by the Birmingham manifestation, the London Working Men's Association endeavored to have the metropolitan meeting arranged with as little pomp and display as was possible under the circumstances. In order to invest the proceedings with some air of authority, the high bailiff of Westminster was requested to convene the meeting. It may have been due to these circumstances that the Palace Yard demonstration, although represented by delegates from eighty-nine towns, was attended by a comparatively small assembly of about thirty thousand persons. Practically every speaker cautioned against violence. But this very fact betrayed

the alarm which was felt by the leaders. It was evident that the mood of the masses was beyond control. One of the speakers, a delegate from Newcastle, referred to the right of the people to assert their own independence in no ambiguous terms:

The men of the north are well organized. The men of Newcastle would dare to defend with their arms what they utter with their tongues, as the military would have learned on the coronation day had they made any attack upon the meeting. We are willing to try all moral means that are left, we are willing to try a throne, so long as it is conducive to the happiness of the people; we are willing to have an aristocracy, so long as they behave themselves civilly; but we think we have a right to have a reciprocity of rights, and if not, we are prepared to go against the throne and the aristocracy. The men of the Tyne and the Wear would not draw their swords until their enemies draw upon them, but having once put their hands to the plough they would never look back.1

O'Connor, who appeared as a representative of forty or fifty towns in Scotland and England, delivered one of his wittiest speeches. The people, he said, were called pickpockets. There was, however, a striking difference between a poor pickpocket and a rich pickpocket: "the poor man picked the rich man's pocket to fill his belly, and the rich man picked the poor man's belly to fill his pocket." He proclaimed that the people did not want the obsolete constitution of tallow and wind, but a constitution "of a railroad genius, propelled by steam power and enlightened by the rays of gas." Every conquest which was called honorable had been achieved by physical force, but the Chartists did not want it, because "if all hands were pulling for universal suffrage, they would soon pull down the stronghold

1 Gammage, op. cit., p. 49.

of corruption." O'Connor was followed by several speakers who alluded to physical force in similar vein. A delegate from Manchester expressed his conviction that the people had a right to arm in defence of their liberties and, if the Petition failed, he defied "the power of any government or any armed Bourbon police" to put down the armed people.1

The meeting which lasted over five hours adopted Lovett's resolution in favor of the People's Charter and responded to the Birmingham call by collecting about sixteen thousand signatures to the National Petition and appointing eight delegates to the General Convention which was to meet in London "to watch over the presentation of the Petition and to obtain, by all legal and constitutional means, the enactment of the People's Charter."

In order to avoid an open rupture with O'Connor and, at the same time, to counteract the effect of the "physical force swagger ", the London Working Men's Association, immediately after the Palace Yard demonstration, prepared an Address to the Irish People, imploring " the co-operation of rich and poor, male and female, the sober, the reflecting, and the industrious" to carry forward the principles of moral force:

We are not going to affirm that we have been altogether guiltless of impropriety of language, for when the eye dwells on extremest poverty trampled on by severe oppression, the heart often forces a language from the tongue which sober reflection would redeem, and sound judgment condemn. But we deny that we are influenced by any other feelings than a desire to see our institutions peaceably and orderly based upon principles of justice. We believe that a Parliament composed of the wise and good of all classes, would devise means

1 Gammage, op. cit., pp. 50-53.

of improving the condition of the millions, without injury to the just interests of the few. We feel that unjust interests have been fostered under an unjust system, that it would be equally unjust to remove without due precaution; and, when due, individual indemnification. We are as desirous as the most scrupulous conservative of protecting all that is good, wise and just in our institutions, and to hold as sacred and secure the domain of the rich equally with the cottage of the poor. But we repeat that we seek to effect our object in peace, with no other force than that of argument or persuasion.1

Regardless of the fact that the Address was signed "on behalf of one hundred and thirty-six workingmen's and radical associations ", actual events showed that the influence of the London Working Men's Association was on the wane. The meetings began to assume a formidable aspect even as early as the autumn of 1838. The Manchester demonstration of September 25th was arranged on a gigantic scale. There was scarcely a village in the Lancashire district that did not contribute its quota to the assembly of about three hundred thousand persons who demonstrated their determination to have the Charter become the law of the land. Practically all workshops and factories throughout the district were closed. The hundreds of flags and banners had various devices and mottoes of a threatening character. "Murder demands justice' was the comment inscribed under a picture of the Peterloo massacre. Another banner represented a hand grasping a dagger and bore the gruesome inscription: "Oh, tyrants! will you force us to this?" A spirit of enthusiasm pervaded the line, and the warnings of vengeance brought forth deafening cheers of the crowds. O'Connor and Stephens, who were among the speakers, received a royal reception. The

1 William Lovett, op. cit., pp. 188-9.