unit of administration was the same as that of the Poor Law, the Guardians being also the registration authority. The Bury folk denounced the attempt to introduce the Poor Law via the Registration Act as "low cunning and deceit," "illegality and moral turpitude."[1]
Within a few months after the campaign opened the excitement throughout the two shires was already high. It was sufficient at least to attract the attention of radicals and revolutionaries of all kinds. The London Working Men's Association was already feeling its way to establish similar associations amongst the factory population. Much more important, however, was the coming into the North of two men who had hitherto confined their political attention to the capital. These were Augustus Harding Beaumont and Feargus O'Connor.
Beaumont was a youngish man of somewhat superior birth and in well-to-do circumstances. He was a kind of Byron, an aristocrat who threw himself recklessly and probably uselessly into popular revolutionary movements. He was of a wild disposition, uncontrolled temper, and unbalanced intellect. He had seen some stormy doings in France, and had become a figure in London radical circles, where he was on the Dorchester Labourers' Committee. In speech he was brutally candid and vehement to the verge of madness. In fact it was an outburst of this description at a public meeting in January 1838 which carried him off and prevented him from adding to the difficulties of the other Chartist leaders. In 1837 he founded at Newcastle-on-Tyne a paper called the Northern Liberator, which was one of the best of the popular newspapers. It took a vehement part in the campaign led by Oastler and Stephens, and in other respects it was noted for its intelligent interest in foreign affairs.
Feargus O'Connor deserves some special reference. He was born in 1794 of an Irish landed family in County Cork. His family had in the preceding generation been closely associated with nationalist and revolutionary movements, and consequently enjoyed no little popularity in the county and elsewhere. Both his father, Roger, and his uncle, Arthur O'Connor had been United Irishmen. Roger had claimed for his family a highly dubious descent from the Kings of Connaught; Arthur, a more serious and prominent rebel, had been the chief agent in bringing about a French invasion of
- ↑ Mackay, p. 251.
