solidated Trades Union. The little group of men, from whose exertions the whole series of unions and associations took its rise, had already for some time been devoting themselves to another agitation, the object this time being the abolition of the stamp duty on newspapers. This agitation had achieved a partial victory in 1836, when the stamp duty was reduced from fourpence to one penny. This was a solid gain to working men, to whom the newspaper became for the first time accessible. Within a year or two of the reduction there was a rapid growth of popular, radical newspapers which played a very important part in the Chartist movement itself. This agitation had been carried through largely by the exertions of five men—Francis Place, William Lovett, Henry Hetherington, John Cleave, and James Watson, who had been the leading spirits ever since 1829.
William Lovett was thirty-six years of age in 1836. He was born at Penzance in Cornwall of humble parentage. His father, whom he lost when he was still an infant, was the captain of a small trading vessel. His mother reared him upon stern Methodist lines. He was sent to two or three schools at which he acquired some acquaintance with the three R's. He served an apprenticeship to rope-making, but his tastes lay more in the direction of cabinet-making which he contrived to learn in his spare time.[1] In 1821 he migrated to London, and after some difficulty he succeeded in obtaining entrance to the trade and society of the Cabinetmakers, of which society he eventually became President.[2] He thus took a place in the van of the trade union movement, to which he was able to render able service. He was methodical, careful, and businesslike, qualities which were highly prized in those early days, when there were few to whom correspondence, the keeping of books, accounts, and minutes could be safely entrusted. Lovett was the universal secretary.
Lovett's political education began in a small literary society called the "Liberals," of which he gives us no details.[3] He joined the London Mechanics' Institute, where he heard Birkbeck, and probably Hodgskin, lecture. He also heard Richard Carlile and Gale Jones speak in the various coffeehouses where radicals congregated. From Carlile he derived a hatred of dogmatic and intolerant Christianity and was persuaded "that Christianity was not a thing of form and
