shall think fit. And may God almighty have mercy upon your souls.1 A similar sentence was subsequently passed upon five other rioters, who had pleaded guilty to the charge of high treason, on the understanding that their lives would be spared. The Chief Justice accordingly intimated to them that, as they had not been the contrivers of the treason, their punishment would be commuted to transportation for life. Of the other prisoners, eighteen were sentenced to various terms of hard labor, while a larger number were either traversed to the assizes or acquitted. The news of the conviction of the Welsh chieftains was received by the Chartists with an ebullition of wrath. Numerous spontaneous meetings were held throughout the country, protesting against the sentence as a perversion of justice and an act of vengeance, and petitioning both Houses of Parliament to save the lives of the convicts. Memorials praying for mercy were also presented to the Queen. The serious outbreaks in Sheffield, Bradford, and other towns, threatened to spread to the large industrial centers. Rumors of incendiarism began to circulate from town to town. The government, however, seemed not to waver from its determination to carry out the sentence. The possibility of mitigating the penalty caused Sir John Campbell, the AttorneyGeneral, keen mental anguish. He appeared personally to argue against the validity of the objection which had been raised at the trials by the counsel for the defense, and which the Lord Chief Justice had submitted for consideration to the Court of Exchequer, namely, that the lists of witnesses and the jury had not been delivered to the prisoners in pursuance of the Act of Parliament. The case was argued by both sides on the 25th, 27th and 28th of January, and the 'The Rise and Fall of Chartism in Monmouthshire, p. 82. Court decided that the objection, although valid, had not been taken at the proper time. The state of mind of Sir Campbell is revealed in the following remarks which he entered in his diary after the conclusion of the trials: 1 I have passed a very anxious day, as if I myself had been on trial. To my utter astonishment and dismay, Tindal summed up for an acquittal. What he meant, the Lord only knows. No human being doubted the guilt of the accused, and we had proved it by the clearest evidence. Chief Justice Tindal is a very honorable man, and had no assignable reason for deviating from the right course. Yet from the beginning to the end of his charge, he labored for an acquittal. The execution of the three convicts was fixed for Saturday, February 1, 1840. The executioner, the heads-man, the scaffold, and the implements of death were kept in readiness, when a respite for the prisoners reached Monmouth on the 30th of January. This, however, inspired but little hope, as it was immediately followed by an official announcement of the High Sheriff that the sentence would be carried out on the 6th of February. On January 31st, Sir Frederick Pollock, the chief counsel for Frost, for the sixth time headed a deputation to Lord Melbourne endeavoring to prevail on him to mitigate the severity of the punishment. The Premier remained inflexible, although Sir Pollock had conveyed to him the urgent personal entreaty of Lord Brougham. When informed of the result, the latter persuaded Sir Pollock to try once more. The seventh interview proved successful. Rumors had it that in this decision the government gratified the personal wishes of the Queen. On the 1st of February a respite during Her Majesty's pleasure was read to the prisoners, and secret orders were given to the governor of the jail to be pre 1 The Chartist Riots at Newport, pp. 66-67. pared for immediate departure with the convicts. On Sunday night, the 2d of February, Frost, Williams and Jones were removed from Monmouth jail and, under military escort, conveyed to Chepstow and placed on a steamer which was bound for Portsmouth. All efforts to save the victims from banishment proved futile, the Secretary of State holding that he could not, consistently with his public duty, advise the Queen to grant the prayers. On the 24th of the same month the three Welshmen, together with two hundred and ten other prisoners, embarked in a convict vessel at Spithead, destined for Van Diemen's Land. The motion which Representative Leader brought forward on the 10th of March, for an address to the Queen praying for a free pardon, was supported only by seven members.1 While the doom of the banished leaders continued to agitate the minds of the Chartists, sincere sympathy was everywhere expressed to the relatives of the men slain at the Westgate. On Sunday, April 12, 1840, the graves of the victims were decorated with flowers and laurels, surmounted with the following lines: May the rose of England never blow, 1 The repeated agitation on behalf of the three martyrs finally led the government, in 1854, to grant them conditional pardons, forbidding return to the United Kingdom. Frost went to the United States, where he resided for two years. The numerous memorials from Newport, Sheffield, and other towns, finally won him unconditional pardon. In August, 1856, he returned to Newport, and was received with great enthusiasm. The Town Council, however, refused to comply with his demand to have his name restituted in the list of freemen of the borough. He then took up his residence at Stapleton. After years of seclusion, he died on the 28th of July, 1877. Williams, who had become a wealthy coal owner, died on the 8th of May, 1874, in Tasmania. Jones pursued his occupation of watchmaker at Launceston, Australia, having no desire to go elsewhere. He died there in December, 1873. The onslaught of the government was not confined to Wales alone. The prosecutions of the Chartists filled the chronicles of well-nigh every town in the United Kingdom. The outrages of the police and the spies became a public nuisance. One after another the active men in the movement were apprehended and convicted. Most of the leaders conducted their own defense, and their addresses to the jury, some of them lasting five, six and even ten hours, became a singular feature at these trials. Severe penalties were imposed on Bronterre, O'Connor, the veteran radical William Benbow, and other leaders, and all were subjected to the most humiliating treatment by the prison authorities. The following table shows the distribution of the Chartist prisoners confined for various terms for seditious libel, for riot, for attending illegal meetings, for possession of arms, and other political offences, from January 1, 1839, to June 1, 1840 :1 1 Based on returns to an order of the House of Commons. Cf. The English Chartist Circular, no. I. The wholesale arrests and the ruthless persecution of the Chartists seemed to have crushed the movement. The Whig press had apparent cause to rejoice at the government victory. The excitement caused by the Newport riot and the subsequent trials was gradually waning; public meetings became less frequent and less aggressive, and a large portion of the Chartist press went out of existence. There were all the symptoms of an early death of the monster movement. Yet even then all, but those blinded with conceit and self-delusion could see the new weapons that were being forged by the workingmen against their enemies. Carlyle voiced the truth when he said that it was the "chimera of Chartism" and not the reality that was put |