of the year there was a distinctly revolutionary party in the Association. Hartwell contrasted with pain the apathy of London as compared with the rest of the country. O'Connor was beginning to gain a following amongst the London Democratic Association as at Birmingham, and at a meeting on December 20, 1838, Lovett found himself overborne by the party of physical force.[1] Both at Birmingham and in London the influence of excitement and of O'Connor sufficed to reduce, if not to annihilate, the party of moderation.
The meeting at Palace Yard was practically the last spectacular proceeding of the London Working Men's Association. It was a great meeting. The Association packed it carefully with supporters and sympathisers. It was a public meeting only in a formal sense. The High Balliff of Westminster was the convener, and so the law was observed. The resolutions were all cut and dried. Eight delegates were proposed for election—Place, Roebuck, O'Brien, Lovett, Hetherington, Cleave, Vincent, and Hartwell. Place and Roebuck declined, and Moore and Rogers were elected in their place. There were present at the meeting delegates from all parts of the kingdom, Ebenezer Elliott of Sheffield, quickly lost to Chartism, Douglas and P. H. Muntz of Birmingham, Feargus O'Connor, and several of his northern fire-eaters, and delegates from Edinburgh, Colchester, Carmarthen, Brighton, Ipswich, and Worcester.
So the great movement got under weigh. Henceforward the London Working Men's Association was swallowed up in Chartism. Its leading members were transferred to a higher sphere of activity in the People's Parliament, but when the revolutionary intoxication had passed they returned without regret to the quiet educational activity which some had relinquished with much misgiving, whose results were surer and better, though visible only to the eye of faith.
Sanguine to the end, however, though its finances were depleted, the Association lent its aid to the project of founding a newspaper to serve as a Chartist organ in London. London alone was without a Chartist newspaper. Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, and Birmingham were well supplied, but not so London. A Committee of thirty was appointed by a meeting of London Trade Societies in September 1838, and a prospectus of a weekly paper to be called The Charter was issued. Lovett was Secretary to this Committee, and Hartwell was apparently manager of the printing department. William Carpenter, the
- ↑ Additional MSS. 27,820, pp. 354-58.
