"going to work, and to do it in better fashion than it had been done in Wales, where they consider it to have been badly mismanaged." Bradford is the objective of the would-be insurgents. Wemyss further reports meetings of similar character at Bolton, Todmorden, Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, Burnley, and Bury. The Ashton Chartists are known to have been in touch with the Newport leaders. He also relates that Feargus O'Connor was in Manchester at the time of the Newport rising,[1] and this is not impossible, as he may have stopped there on his way from Ireland to Leeds, which he reached, as we have seen, two days after the Newport failure. On December 22 Wemyss declares that there were very persistent rumours of a projected rising on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border for the end of the month. So serious was the news from Bradford that Napier went there in person. Bury is another centre specially mentioned in this connection, and another letter from Wemyss suggests that Fielden's mill at Todmorden was an important place of meeting. In spite of all these rumours, however, Wemyss reports that the general impression was that nothing would happen.[2]
And this is in fact the general impression made by all the secret reports, papers, and informations. Without going into the question as to how far these doings were prompted by agents provocateurs, it may be safely said that there was some real intention of doing something desperate in connection with the trial of Frost, but that the lukewarmness generated by the failure at Newport, the suspicions which were abroad as to the trustworthiness of the leaders, the presence of spies, and the wariness of the authorities, combined to cause the whole business to peter out in a rather ridiculous fashion! In the controversy which raged between O'Connor and his detractors in 1845, neither side denied the existence of a plot of some sort. O'Connor even mentioned that Dr. Taylor fitted out a vessel to waylay the convict-ship conveying Frost to Australia. Another story, related by Lovett, attributes the collapse of the plot to the cowardice of Bussey, who shortly afterwards fled to America. There was a plot and it came to nothing.
Two rather curious reports of Chartist doings in Manchester may be cited.[3] A Chartist committee of eight met on December 16, a police agent being concealed in the vicinity. They were discussing the collection of subscriptions for
