Dear brothers! Now are the times to try men's souls! Are your arms ready? Have you plenty of powder and shot? Have you screwed up your courage to the sticking place? Do you intend to be freemen or slaves? Are you inclined to hope for a fair day's wages for a fair day's work? Ask yourselves these questions and remember that your safety depends on your own right arms. How long are you going to allow your mothers, your wives, your sweethearts, and your children to be for ever toiling for other people's benefit? Nothing can convince tyrants of their folly but gunpowder and steel, so put your trust in god, my boys, and keep your powder dry … Be ready then to nourish the tree of liberty with the BLOOD OF TYRANTS. … Now or never is your time: be sure you do not neglect your arms, and when you do strike do not let it be with sticks or stones, but let the blood of all you suspect moisten the soil of your native land.
Let England's sons then prime her guns
And save each good man's daughter.
In tyrants' blood baptize your sons
And every villain slaughter.
By pike and sword your freedom strive to gain
Or make one bloody Moscow of old England's plain.[1]
As Whitsuntide drew near, Napier became more and more confident that the Chartists would not accomplish much in the way of carrying out their threats. On May 15 he wrote:
The Chartists hardly know what they are at. The people want food and think O'Connor will get it for them: and O'Connor wants to keep the agitation alive because he sells weekly 60,000 copies of the Northern Whig [sic]. While this lasts he will try to prevent an outbreak. No premeditated outbreak will occur, I think, whilst our imposing force furnishes an excuse for delay: and delay will injure their cause because the deputies are paid and the people are growing weary of the physical-force men.
The second part of this statement shows a better appreciation of the situation than the first. Later on, Napier writes that the orders of the Convention to avoid parading arms at public meetings was due to "funk."
They [the leaders] saw they would be obliged to lead their pikemen in the field, and knowing Demosthenes did not like fighting, they as orators think it not derogatory to follow his example.[2]
The Whitsun demonstrations were carried through peacefully and quietly, but the panic amongst the magistracy and propertied folk was as great as ever. The chief demonstrations were at Huddersfield and Manchester, and meetings of some importance took place at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Mon-
