time terror of moderates, and the enthusiastic advocate of arming, now regrets that he is no longer a member of the Convention, as there never was a time when prudence and caution were more requisite in its debates. He will offer advice. He considers the decision to hold the National Holiday undigested and ill-timed. The Convention had not even reviewed their resources, but had relied upon false and exaggerated reports. In the South of England there was no following. Even in Manchester, the faithful stronghold, the Chartists could not make an effective strike; the hands were on half-time; many have petitioned to be allowed to work longer. The employers were praying for the Convention to order a strike so as to be relieved of the necessity of locking their workpeople out altogether. Liverpool is still less hopeful. Neither Yorkshire nor Scotland was much better. The National Holiday is hopeless, and would only "bring irretrievable ruin upon thousands of poor people, while the rich would not suffer in comparison." Thus did Richardson find wisdom.
The Convention found wisdom also. On Monday, July 22, the Convention met to hear O'Brien's views upon the National Holiday. He had been absent the previous week, and now moved that the decision then taken be rescinded. In his speech he made the best of a bad job. He had been one of the stalwarts of the physical force revolutionaries. Now he was compelled to recognise that all the assumptions on which his former views rested were false, and it required no little courage on his part to make his confession that both he and the majority of the Convention had been deceivers and deceived. Whilst still retaining a belief in the general strike as the ideal political weapon, O'Brien declared that the Convention was incompetent to wield it. They were not unanimous or at full strength. Their followers in the country were not unanimous, and therefore the strike would be a ghastly failure. The Convention, therefore, ought not to advise so dangerous a proceeding, but leave the matter to the people, "who were the best judges after all, whether they would be able to meet the exigencies of a strike, and he would prefer that the Convention should leave the holiday to the people themselves, and at the same time tell the people that nothing but a general suspension of labour could convince their oppressors of the necessity of conceding to them their rights." Surely a miserable exhibition of leadership! Phrases like "pregnant with such dreadful consequences for
