ignominious restoration of the Government had scotched political interest generally. Hume and Attwood led 46 followers into the lobby, but five times as many—to be exact, 235—mustered against them. The Petition was dead, slain by the violence of its supporters, the tactlessness of its chief advocates, the inertia of conservatism, and its own inner contradictions.[1]
The Petition was dead, but Chartism was yet alive. The rejection of the Petition had long been foreseen, but its actual demise left the way clear for the decision on Ulterior Measures about which the Convention had boggled so long. The delegates had now to make up their minds, and that quickly. The excitement throughout the country was higher than ever. The approaching trials of various leaders—Stephens, Lovett, Vincent—the constantly increasing number of arrests, both of leaders and rank and file, all helped to make the tension greater. On the other hand, the gradual shrinkage in the Convention and the undoubted secession of moderates in the country required that some heroic decision should be taken at once, before the repute and prestige of the Convention were wholly destroyed.
Immediately after the rejection of the motion of the 12th, Fielden and Attwood suggested that the Convention should organise another petition, which suggestion the Convention rejected forthwith, thereby breaking finally away from the Birmingham leaders—and in fact from the Anti-Poor Law leaders too. Instead, the Convention now drew from its armoury its most potent weapon—that of the General Strike, the "National Holiday" or "Sacred Month."
The question was brought forward on July 15, a day already fixed for the discussion. Thirty delegates were present. O'Brien, O'Connor, and Dr. Taylor were absent, a fact upon which Carpenter commented bitterly, for it was these men who had made the largest promises to their followers and the strongest threats to the Government. Marsden opened the debate in favour of the strike. Marsden was a desperately poor weaver, who had horrified his audiences with his description of the sufferings of his fellow-weavers. A strike was nothing to him, to whom both work and play alike were synonymous with starvation. His passionate demand for action was answered by James Taylor, a Unitarian minister of Oldham, and Carpenter, who showed with absolute clearness how little their followers were prepared for a strike. Their argu-
- ↑ Hansard, 3rd ser. xlix. 220-78.
