consideration of foreign interests has been forced upon us by neglect of our domestic resources: and I believe that overgrown taxation for the support of idlers and the unrestricted gambling speculations upon labour, applied to an undefined and unstable system of production without regard to demand, is the great evil under which manual labourers are suffering.[1]
O'Connor's reply to Cobden in the famous debate at Northampton in 1844[2] may well be studied from this point of view. His inability to follow out an argument became greater with the advance of mental disorder.
In the North of England O'Connor's rise to popular leadership was rapid in the extreme. Within fifteen months from the foundation of the Northern Star, he was the universally acknowledged leader in those parts. The apparition of an apparently wealthy newspaper proprietor, of superior education, an ex-member of Parliament, and undoubtedly sincere in his championship of the people's cause, was a welcome one to the leaderless multitudes. Stephens and Oastler were prevented by other duties from assuming complete control, whilst the older trade union leaders, like Doherty, were not sympathetic with so disorganised a movement. O'Connor was further welcomed for the sake of his rebellious ancestry, which lost neither in numbers nor in rebelliousness in his frequent references. In 1838, when O'Connell made his attack upon Trade Unionism, it was remembered in O'Connor's favour that he had been O'Connell's enemy. At the end of the same year the arrest of Stephens removed his most serious rival, who, however, had already been losing ground through the drifting of the Anti-Poor Law agitation into Chartism—a process much encouraged by O'Connor—and through his condemnation of Radicalism, for it was his habit to pose as a Tory and a Royalist.
O'Connor had, in fact, all the instincts and certain of the qualities requisite for domination. Hence his quarrel with O'Connell. He wanted himself to be the O'Connell of the English Radicals, and, actually succeeded in reducing the later Chartist leaders to the position of a "tail." He was a man of energy and will, and had some commercial instincts which saved him from the disasters into which cleverer men, like O'Brien, fell. His foundation of the Northern Star was a great stroke of business. He took over the funds, to which he himself contributed little or nothing, from a committee, of which
