the Combination Act in 1838, and he wrote the analysis of the evidence which his committee subsequently published. Holyoake calls him ‘the greatest radical secretary of the working class.’ He drafted the bill which was afterwards circulated among the working men's associations as the ‘People's Charter,’ and in his first draft included universal female suffrage, a provision afterwards dropped. The ‘charter’ was first published 8 May 1838. In the subsequent agitation he and his friends were careful to hold themselves aloof from the physical force doctrines of O'Connor and Stephens. At the first meeting of the chartist convention, 4 Feb. 1839, he was unanimously elected its secretary, and as such took part in the preparation of the monster chartist petition in that year, until he was arrested at Birmingham in June for his manifesto of protest against the action of the police in breaking up the popular meetings in the Bull Ring there. It was only after he had been nine days in custody that he was able to procure bail, and during this period he was treated as if he had been already convicted. He was tried on 6 Aug. 1839 at the Warwick assizes for seditious libel. He persisted in defending himself, was convicted, and was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment (Gammage, Hist. of the Chartist Movement, p. 146; Trial of W. Lovett, published by H. Hetherington, 1839: the trial is reported in ‘State Trials,’ new ser. iii. 1178; ‘Correspondence as to the Treatment of William Lovett and John Collins,’ Parl. Papers, 1839 xxxviii. 447, 1840 xxxviii. 751). His health appeared to have suffered permanently from the abuses then prevailing in Warwick gaol, but in May 1840 he refused an offer, made by the government, of release before the expiry of his sentence if he would consent to be bound over to good behaviour for the remainder of the term. On 25 July he was released, and, with his fellow-prisoner, Collins, was entertained at a banquet at the White Conduit House on 3 Aug. by the combination committee and the Working Men's Association. He then opened a bookseller's shop in Tottenham Court Road, and published a work on ‘Chartism,’ written by himself and Collins in gaol (Chartism; a New Organisation of the People, 2nd edit. 1841). This, the best book on the organisation of the chartist party, dealt with schemes of practical education as well as political action. It was fiercely attacked by O'Connor and most of the other chartists as a middle-class scheme for destroying the chartist movement. The foundation of a National Association for the political and social improvement of the people, which was to establish schools, libraries, and public halls for amusement and instruction, incurred the hostility of Feargus O'Connor, who denounced Lovett and his friends in his paper, the ‘Northern Star,’ and of the chartist associations which were under O'Connor's influence. Lovett took part in Joseph Sturge's complete suffrage conferences at Birmingham in 1842, and endeavoured to bring the middle-class reformers into line with the working-class radicals by joint organisations, an effort which was to some extent successful until the conference split in December upon the question whether the old bill, called the ‘People's Charter,’ should be superseded by a new bill called the ‘New Bill of Rights,’ or ‘People's Bill of Rights,’ promoted by the middle-class representatives in order to get rid of the party of Feargus O'Connor (see Life of Thomas Cooper, by himself, 1873, p. 223; see, too, Gammage, Chartist Movement, p. 261). In 1844 Lovett assisted to bring the practice of opening letters in the post-office before parliament. He sent a letter to his intimate friend Mazzini so folded that if opened the fact could with certainty be detected. The letter was opened, and the matter was brought before the House of Commons by Duncombe. In the same year he assisted to form a society called the ‘Democratic Friends of All Nations,’ principally composed of French, German, and Polish refugees, to promote brotherhood among nations by issuing pacificatory manifestoes to them at political crises. He wrote the society's first address ‘to the friends of humanity and justice among all nations,’ but being couched in peaceful terms it alienated the physical force party from the society. Addresses were, however, issued to the working classes of France and of America. He became a member of the council of the Anti-Slavery League in 1846, but shortly afterwards resigned his secretaryship of the national association, and withdrew from active politics. He had undertaken the publication of ‘Howitt's Journal’ for William and Mary Howitt, work which occupied all his time. In 1848 he again attempted, in conjunction with Hume and Cobden, to find some mode of uniting the middle class and the workmen adherents of radical reform, and a conference was assembled which passed a resolution in favour of universal suffrage, but in terms less wide than those adopted by the conference in 1842. The People's League, which was then formed, was so fiercely attacked by the violent chartists that it proved abortive, and was finally dissolved in 1849.
This was the last political association with which Lovett was actively connected; from
