should be invited to form a grand procession previous to the meeting.
The demonstration was announced to take place on Wednesday, the 2nd of June. Two years before, a meeting, held in the Corn Exchange to receive the report of the anti-corn-law delegates to London, had been invaded by a rude and violent rabble; many meetings had been disturbed in a similar manner, no matter what their object was, by men professing chartism; and O'Connor, in his Northern Star, had issued his mandate to convert all meetings into demonstrations for the charter. The requisition for the Manchester meeting of the working classes—a meeting which would show that they did not sympathise with the physical-force chartists—was considered to be dangerous to the power assumed by those enemies to free discussion. So soon as the announcement appeared, the disturbers were at work. Bills in great profusion were posted on the walls, not only of Manchester, but of Bolton and other large towns, calling on the chartists to congregate in their "countless thousands," and put down the "humbug clap-trap of the League;" a formidable list was given of chartist leaders, who were to come from Huddersfield and other places to take part in the proceedings; Mr C. Wilkiris, the barrister, was reported to have presented a cheque at Messrs. Jones, Loyd, and Co.'s, drawn by the Duke of Buckingham for £150, and it was believed that this sum was to help the war of opposition; and hustings were put up during the night of Tuesday, closely adjoining those which had been erected by the requisitionists, in order that the hirelings, by having a place of their own to speak from, might throw the meeting into confusion and, by the mouth of their own chairman, announce a glorious victory over the "base whigs," who asked for the liberty of exchanging the products of their labour for food. The thinking working men of Manchester were roused by these preparations for disturbance. They thought this was a
