and policy was left to be decided later. Meanwhile the Chartist were no doubt satisfied with their gains; their principles had been adopted and their Charter not rejected. With the people of Birmingham they were still popular, for at the great public meeting with which the Conference closed, Lovett, O'Brien, Vincent, Mills, Richardson, Neesom, and Lowery were the speakers. It was a Chartist meeting with Sturge in the chair,[1] but all the speakers, O'Brien included, spoke in favour of union with the middle classes in the great cause of political and social regeneration.
Following the Conference the Complete Suffrage Petition was drawn up. It was dated in good Quaker fashion on the 5th of the fourth month, and contained all the "six points" now so familiar. But the struggle between the old Chartists and the Complete Suffragists had resulted in a final split between them, and the O'Connorites pursued their independent action for the whole Charter, regardless of the rival movement. When the Suffrage Petition came before the House of Commons, Sharman Crawford, member for Rochdale, moved on April 21 that the House should discuss in Committee the question of the reform of the representative system. His motion was of course rejected, the figures being 67 for and 226 against. All the Radicals and Free Traders voted for it.[2]
So matters stood in the Chartist world in the spring of 1842. The National Charter Association, active and virulent, was still organising its Petition and, like certain celestial bodies we read of, giving off in its convulsions an ever-increasing ring of detached fragments. The other Chartists were endeavouring to gain a new support in the Complete Suffrage Movement. Popular Radicalism was organised into three distinct sections under O'Connor, Lovett, and Sturge, and the outcome of the triangular struggle was doubtful.
