Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/407

 O'Connor Reporter, 4 June 1835). Thereupon he announced his intention of raising an Irish brigade for the queens of Spain, but offered himself instead as a candidate for the seat at Oldham vacated by Cobbett's death. He received only thirty votes, but they enabled the tory candidate to beat Cobbett's son by thirteen. After the election he drove from Oldham to Manchester in a carriage-and-four, with a flag representing Roderick O'Connor, monarch of Ireland, from whom he claimed descent (ib. 11 July 1835).

Henceforward O'Connor spent a large part of his time in travelling through the northern and midland districts, addressing huge meetings, denouncing the new poor law and the factory system, and advocating the ‘five cardinal points of radicalism,’ which afterwards were expanded into the ‘six points of the charter.’ He founded the central committee of radical unions in 1836 (Place MS. 27819, f. 34), and the London Democratic Association in 1837 (ib. f. 217). On 18 Nov. 1837 he established the ‘Northern Star,’ a weekly radical paper, published at Leeds, price 4½d., which achieved a great and immediate success. In 1838 the various radical movements were consolidated. The members adopted the ‘People's Charter’ of the Working Men's Association (cf. art. ), and took the name of ‘Chartists.’

O'Connor was from the first the ‘constant travelling dominant leader of the movement’ (Place MS. 27820, f. 135), and his paper was practically the official organ of chartism. The number and length of the speeches which he delivered during the next ten years and his power of attracting huge audiences were alike extraordinary. He was tall and handsome, though somewhat unintelligent in appearance, and a rambling and egotistical but most effective orator. Gammage (p. 51) speaks of his ‘aristocratic bearing,’ and says ‘the sight of his person was calculated to inspire the masses with a solemn awe.’ He was attacked from the first by Lovett and the other leaders of the Working Men's Association (e.g. Northern Star, 24 Feb. 1838), but retorted that they as skilled mechanics were not real working men, and appealed to the ‘unshaved chins, blistered hands, and fustian jackets’ (l.c.) At the chartist convention which assembled in London on 4 Feb. 1839, and which, after a visit to Birmingham, dissolved on 14 Sept. 1839, he was from the beginning the chief figure. In the split which developed itself between the ‘moral force’ and the ‘physical force’ chartists, O'Connor, owing to the violence of his language, was generally identified with the ‘physical force’ party, and justified this view by announcing in 1838 that, after Michaelmas day 1839, all political action for securing the charter should come to an end (Place MS. 27820, f. 282). But he always called himself a ‘moral force’ man, and seems to have been distrusted by the inner circle of the insurrectionary chartists (Engl. Hist. Rev. 1889, p. 642). O'Connor knew of the preparations for the Newport rising on 4 Nov. 1839, but was absent in Ireland until a few days before the rising actually took place (Northern Star, 22 May 1842). For this he was afterwards accused of cowardice by some of his opponents.

On 17 March 1840 O'Connor was tried at York for seditious libels published in the ‘Northern Star’ in July 1839. He was found guilty, and sentenced on 11 May 1840 to eighteen months' imprisonment in York Castle. He was exceptionally well treated in prison (State Trials, New Ser. iv. 1366), and succeeded in smuggling many letters to the ‘Northern Star.’ He declared that he had written a novel called ‘The Devil on Three Sticks’ in prison, which he ‘would fearlessly place in competition with the works of any living author’ (Northern Star, 16 Jan. 1841). Nothing more seems to have been heard of this work. From the moment of his release in September 1841, O'Connor was engaged in a series of bitter quarrels with almost every important man in the chartist movement, but with the rank and file he retained his popularity; and the ‘Northern Star’ contained weekly lists of the infant ‘patriots’ who had been named after the ‘Lion of Freedom.’ In December 1842 he helped to break up the complete suffrage conference called at Birmingham by Joseph Sturge with the hope of uniting the chartists and the middle-class radicals.

On 1 March 1843 he was tried at Lancaster, with fifty-eight others, for seditious conspiracy in connection with the ‘Plug Riots’ of August 1842. He was convicted; but a technical objection was taken to the indictment, and he was never called up for judgment. From the foundation of the anti-corn-law league O'Connor furiously opposed it, though on varying and often inconsistent grounds. On 5 Aug. 1844 he and McGrath held a public debate with Bright and Cobden, in which the chartists, by the admission of their followers, were badly defeated. In prison he had written a series of ‘Letters to Irish Landlords,’ in which he had advocated a large scheme of peasant proprietors. From that time forward he continually recurred to the subject, and in September 1843 induced the chartist convention at Birmingham to adopt his ideas. He was joined by Ernest