chester Conference of that year adopted a new organisation of his own proposing. This Conference, however, made itself ridiculous by persisting in the old policy of refusing to co-operate with other parties pursuing similar ends, and after 1853 no more Conventions were held. The release in 1854 of the martyrs of the Newport rising—Frost, Jones, and Williams—showed that in official eyes Chartism was no longer dangerous. For the five more years between 1853 and 1858 Jones still lectured on behalf of the Charter, and could still, in 1858, rejoice with his brother Chartists on his vindication of his character against the aspersions of Reynolds. With his passing over to the Radical ranks the Chartist succession came to a final end.
During its long agony many attempts were made to revivify Chartism on lines independent of the official organisation. Now that O'Connorism was no more, Chartist pioneers, whom the agitator had driven from the field, came back with new schemes for saving the Charter. But in all of these the Charter was but an incident in a long programme of social reconstruction. In effect politics were to be relegated to the background, and the Charter was to be a symbol of Radical reforms.[1] The first proposals came from William Lovett, who, in May 1848, a month after the failure on Kennington Common, started the People's League, which was to combine with the Charter national economy, the abolition of indirect taxation, and a progressive tax on property. Lovett found so little response that in a few months the new society was wound up. Even more discouraging was the reception of a half-hearted attempt of Thomas Cooper to start in 1849 a new form of Chartist agitation by way of individual petition. Jones would have nothing to say to it, and Cooper so completely gave up the idea that he does not so much as allude to it in his autobiography.
Other plans came from more Radical-minded Chartist seceders. Conspicuous among these was a scheme set up by Bronterre O'Brien with the goodwill of G. W. M. Reynolds. These two established a National Reform League which aimed at combining with the political programme of the Chartists large measures of social reform, notably the nationalisation of the land, which had always been a leading principle of O'Brien. It kept on good terms with the National Charter
- ↑ Dierlamm, Flugschriften literatur der Chartistenbewegung, pp. 9-10, brings out this new tendency very clearly.
