Page:The Chartist Movement.djvu/287

 through their support, secured his election. It is clear that cross-currents of opinion were already influencing Chartist policy. At Northampton the intervention of MacDouall, who went to the poll, actually prevented the return of a Tory.

O'Brien himself stood for Newcastle-on-Tyne. His election address is perhaps the first ever written in a prison. It is worth quoting. The candidate calls himself a "Conservative Radical Reformer in the just and obvious meaning of the words." He advocates unqualified obedience to the laws even where they are bad and vicious, so long as the people have an opportunity of altering them in accordance with the will of the majority. He stands for the inviolability of all property, both public and private, but amongst public property he includes church rates, public endowments, and unappropriated colonial lands which the aristocracy are appropriating just as they seized the land of this country. He also considers that the State has a right to interfere with private property where the public weal is at stake, but compensation ought to be given in just measure. He will oppose all monopolies, whether of wealth, power, or knowledge. He will therefore oppose the Bank of England monopoly and take away from the other banks the right to issue notes. A really National Bank under public control would be substituted if he had his way. He will equally oppose all restrictions upon trade, commerce, and industry, especially the Corn Laws, which, with the concentration of landed property through enclosure, are the chief causes of the present distress. He will vote for total and immediate repeal, provided that there is an equitable readjustment of public and private obligations in accordance with the increased purchasing power of money. He will demand the abolition of all further restrictions upon the Press, the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England, the adoption of a system of direct taxation of property, the reduction of indirect taxation, and the exclusion of placemen of every description from the House of Commons.

With the exception of a few words this address might have been written by Cobbett. It was a good and sensible document, but it was scarcely a distinctively Chartist pronouncement at all. It only had one reference to the Charter, for O'Brien no doubt wanted to appeal to a wider public than the Chartists of Newcastle. Not many election addresses, issued