Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/121

 control over the whole movement, of which it fondly imagined it was the author.

It was this feeling, no doubt, which induced the Association to take up again in the spring of 1838 the project of a Parliamentary Bill embodying the specific radical demands, which had been mooted in the previous year. The idea underlying this proceeding was that, as the Bill was about to be presented to the Commons by Roebuck or some other radical member, a great and general agitation should be set on foot throughout the country with a view to bringing to bear upon the House of Commons that pressure which, it was believed, had compelled the Government to pass the Bill of 1832.

At the meeting of June 7, 1837, a committee of twelve had been appointed to draw a Bill. The committee consisted of O'Connell, Roebuck, Hindley, Leader, Col. Perronet Thompson, and Sharman Crawford, all members of Parliament; and Lovett, Watson, Hetherington, Cleave, Vincent, and Moore of the Working Men's Association. This appointment had been announced to the working men of the country in the address on the forthcoming elections, and had raised great expectations. But the Parliament men did not keep their side of the bargain. O'Connell went on a trade union hunt which robbed him of all support amongst the English working people. Roebuck, as agent of the Assembly of Lower Canada, was busy with the case of the Canadian rebels, and the others were probably already involved in the Free Trade agitation, in which they foresaw much greater prospects of success than in a Bill compelling the House of Commons to sit daily from 10 till 4 for £400 a year. Lovett was therefore advised by Roebuck and urged by the Association to draw up the Bill himself. This he did in the intervals when he was not engaged in earning his living. "When I had finished my work I took it to Mr. Roebuck, who, when he had read it, suggested that I should show it to Mr. Francis Place of Brompton for his opinion, he having taken a great interest in our association from its commencement." Place suggested improvements in the text, and the amended measure was discussed by the committee of twelve. Roebuck wrote the preamble, an address was prefixed to it by Lovett, and the whole was printed and published on May 8, 1838, as the "People's Charter."