Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/171

 Many Chartists, seeking after the event to explain the misfortune which attended the career of this assembly, attributed its failure to this large sprinkling of middle-class folk, but it must be said that the divisions and dissensions which ruined the Convention cannot be traced to the class divisions which prevailed. On the main points at issue the working men were divided as well as the "middle-class men." Place remarks that the class-war teaching was sufficient to frighten off the middle class as a body from the movement, but not sufficient to induce working men to elect leaders of their own kind to conduct their affairs. It was a sober, black-coated, middle-aged body which met on February 4, 1839. Harney, MacDouall, Vincent, and John Taylor were the youngest, as they were the most fiery, of the delegates. Neesom and Richards were already in their sixties, and quite a number were beyond fifty. Many of the delegates were married men with families already grown up. Truly not a very revolutionary-looking assembly.

On the same day there also met the first great Anti-Corn Law League Conference and the Imperial Parliament—three vastly different political assemblies almost within a stone's throw of each other. It was the portentous beginning of a triangular struggle which all but transformed the political and social character of the United Kingdom. The gage of battle was thrown by the successive rejection in Parliament of motions for Parliamentary Reform and for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. A ten years' war followed.

The first meetings of the Convention were purely formal. R. K. Douglas of Birmingham, who had had in hand the arrangements for the Convention, the Petition, and the "National Rent," acted for the time as chairman. It was decided to appoint a chairman daily in rotation. Lovett was of course appointed secretary, though O'Brien objected on the ground that he was "not in agreement with the men of the North as to the methods by which the Charter was to be obtained." The question as to the payment of delegates was left to the "constituencies" and their representatives for settlement. Douglas presented a report upon the Petition and the amount of rent subscribed and then vacated the chair in favour of Craig of Ayrshire, the first regular chairman.

Many signs testify to the enormous enthusiasm and