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 Frost, and the whole tenour of the proceedings was one of depression and distrust. The balance sheet was read to the accompaniment of quarrelsome discussion, for scarcely anything had been collected. Another report relates that one member of the Manchester Chartist Council declared that not one in twenty of those who attended the meeting addressed by O'Connor and Cardo to raise funds for Frost, would be sorry if Frost were hanged. At Birmingham the Chartists could scarcely raise a penny for this purpose. One report shows that expenses of £2:17:4½ had been incurred to raise a subscription of £2:16:9, so that, as a speaker put it, Frost owed them 7½d. There was a quarrel with Cardo on December 31. Cardo was accused of being in the pay of foreign and Tory agents, a charge to which he refused to reply. This charge, at least as regards Tory agency, was true. Cardo was apparently not a man of good character. Place thought him dishonest. Cardo, Warden, Richards, Lowery, and others appear during 1840 as the paid agents of an anti-Russian, anti-Palmerston committee of which Attwood's brother and David Urquhart were the chiefs, facts which give still more colour to the latter's narrative of the Chartist plottings. At Carlisle Cardo repeated his assertion that Frost was betrayed by Russian agents. As regards the rest of Urquhart's story, it may be admitted that he was correctly informed as to the nature of the plot which came partially to a head at Newport, and probably, too, the fantastic designs which he describes may actually have been entertained. Apparently, too, he did win over Cardo and Warden and even others to his peculiar views, Cardo in fact within a short time of the rising. But whether the rising was so marvellously planned, and whether Cardo and Warden had the important rôles which he described, may well be doubted. These details were probably thrown in to justify Urquhart, who was a bit of a megalomaniac, in assuming the title of "the tamer of the English Democracy."

Meanwhile the trial of Frost and his companions began. On December 14 the Grand Jury found a true bill for high treason, and the trial was fixed for the 31st. Geach, a relative of Frost and a solicitor, prepared the case for the defending counsel. Geach was a man of dishonest character, and does