either to surrender the leadership of the popular reform movement, as O'Connell had suggested, or to abate one jot of their demands. However, Roebuck agreed to present the Association's petition for universal suffrage, and the others promised to support him.[1] For various reasons, however, nothing more was done until the spring of 1838. The Association published an account of these proceedings in its Address to Reformers on the Forthcoming Elections.[2]
From this time onwards the London Working Men's Association gradually abandoned its quieter methods of agitation, and made with its radical programme a public bid for the leadership of working-class opinion. Its missionary tours were immensely successful, and its petition and the various manifestos it had published found a wide and enthusiastic response. During the latter months of 1837 the working classes in the manufacturing districts began to be infected with a vague but widespread excitement. The trade boom was over and unemployment was on the increase. Agitators like Hetherington, Cleave, and Vincent found audiences ready made at every street corner. As the year wore on the failure of the harvest began to tell its tale; prices rose as wages fell. Discontent was growing apace. Resentment against the New Poor Law added to the excitement. The handloom weavers of the northern counties were especially touched by the new regulations, whose, rigour had passed almost unnoticed in the years of good trade and cheap corn, which followed the passing of the Poor Law Amendment in 1834. Agitations sprang up like magic. Under the stimulus of Stephens, O'Connor, Oastler, and other orators of a fiery and sentimental character, the working people of the North broke out into a furious campaign against the restriction of poor relief. Radical papers like the Northern Star[3] and the Northern Liberator carried the flaming words of the various orators to the ears of thousands who had not heard them spoken. Nor did these speeches lose much in being reduced to print, as they were read out loud by orators of equal passion and less eloquence, in public-house and street-corner meetings. Birmingham was rousing the Midlands to a campaign of a different character, in which it was endeavouring to enlist working-class support.
It was at this moment, too, that the Government aroused the antagonism of all Trade Unionists by the prosecution of the
