Emigration to rich and undeveloped lands beyond the ocean began to afford a more hopeful outlook to surplus population than the doubtful experiments of O'Connor's Land Scheme. For those who still clung to panaceas there were rival Land Schemes which seemed as attractive, and were as unsound, as that of O'Connor himself.[1] And there were still orthodox adherents of the old Chartist political programme who complained that O'Connor's Land Scheme was but a device to divert the attention of the people from the vital "six points."[2] To this O'Connor's only answer was that he brought in the land question, before they won the Charter, to show to what purpose the Charter was to be applied when obtained.[3]
The return of prosperity was neither general nor deep-seated, but it had the more profound effects in diminishing Chartist zeal, since the constant dissensions and jealousies, that had repeatedly rent asunder the party, had spread among the rank and file a widespread distrust of the leaders which often amounted to complete disillusionment. Not only was the failure of Chartism due to the decrease of misery; it was also brought about by the decrease of hopefulness.[4]
The results of O'Connor's unscrupulous treatment of his foes within the party now came home to roost. Nowhere was there fiercer opposition to the Land Scheme than from the malcontents whom the dictator had drummed out of the Chartist army. O'Brien bitterly denounced the Land Scheme from the point of view of doctrinaire Jacobinism. If the Land Scheme succeeded, he declared, it would set up a stolidly conservative mass of peasant holders who would make all radical change impossible. "Every man," said the National Reformer, "who joins these land societies is practically enlisting himself on the side of the Government against his own order."[5]
- ↑ See, for instance, the rival scheme of Carpenter in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper for 1845, and O'Connor's answer to it in Northern Star, June 21 and 28, 1845. Compare the Land Scheme, mooted at a conference at Exeter, 1845, in conjunction with a project for a general union of trades (Ibid. July 12, 1845).
- ↑ Northern Star, May 20 and June 24, 1843, Letter of Thomas Smith of Liverpool: "According to this new light of Mr. O'Connor all our efforts to obtain what we have called our rights, all negotiation on behalf of the Charter, now prove to have been but superfluous and mischievous impertinence.
- ↑ Ibid. July 15, 1843. Speech of O'Connor at Manchester on July 8.
- ↑ See the valuable suggestions on the relative value of material and moral forces in the falling away of Chartism, and generally the whole of the chapter in Dolléans, ii. 317. Compare Slosson, The Decline of the Chartist Movement, pp. 115-38, ch. iv., "The Improvement in the Condition of the Working Classes after 1842."
- ↑ National Reformer, quoted in Slosson, Decline of the Chartist Movement, p. 88. It was O'Brien's own organ.
