Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/207

 the form of placards. On July 10 the Convention, now back again in London, passed a resolution of censure upon the Government for allowing the police to be used for suppressing public meetings.

This Convention is of opinion that wherever and whenever persons, ASSEMBLED FOR JUST AND LEGAL PURPOSES and conducting themselves without riot or tumult, are so assailed by the police and others, they are justified upon every principle of law and of self-preservation in MEETING FORCE BY FORCE, EVEN TO THE SLAYING of the persons guilty of such atrocious and ferocious assaults upon their rights and persons.

The manifesto of the Convention, embodying the resolution to resort immediately to ulterior measures, appeared in Manchester, on July 12, in the shape of a placard summoning a meeting for the next day "to support the People's Parliament, and to recommend [sic] her MAJESTY to dismiss her Present Base, Brutal, and Bloody, Advisers." The placard contains the list of ulterior measures, signed by twenty-seven of the delegates. In heavy print are the recommendations to withdraw money from the savings banks, to run for gold, and to abstain from excisable articles. In smaller and smaller type are the recommendations to boycott and to obtain arms, whilst a reference to the Sacred Month is scarcely legible.

A manifesto against the paper money system was issued by the Convention about the same time.

The corrupt system of Banking, speculating and defrauding the industrious, had its origin, has been perpetuated, and still form [sic] the greatest support of despotism, in the fraudulent bits of paper our state tricksters dignify with the name of money. Through its instrumentality our rulers destroy freedom abroad and at home. Our whole system has been tainted by its pestilential breath. &hellip; It has created one set of idlers after another to prey upon the vitals of the industrious. &hellip; It has raised up a host of defenders (who) have induced thousands to assist in upholding their corrupt system, while they are being robbed by that system of three-fourths of their labour.

This was the O'Brien-O'Connor counterblast to Attwood's currency theories. Within a day or two of the publication of this outburst, Attwood was using the National Petition to float his currency notions, and Lord John Russell was refuting him out of the mouths of his own petitioners.