If this meeting was intended to scare away from the Convention all the moderates, it was not unsuccessful, as the sequel showed. It was followed by a furious debate in the Convention on the 18th, dealing with the Rural Police Bill then before Parliament.[1] A long series of tirades was brought to a climax by Dr. Fletcher of Bury. "He would not recommend the use of daggers against a Rural Police, but he would recommend every man to have a loaded bludgeon as nearly like that of the policeman's as possible; and if any of these soldiers of the Government, for soldiers they would really be, should strike him, to strike again, and in a manner that a second blow should not be required. … If resistance was necessary to oppose the Rural Police Bill, resistance there would be."
The next day, the 19th of March, the Morning Chronicle published accounts both of the meeting of the 16th and of the debate of the 18th. Fletcher was apparently horrified to realise how terrific his speech looked in cold print, and denounced the paper for having garbled it. The same paper printed a letter from Wade, dissociating himself from the sentiments expressed on the previous Saturday. Nevertheless from the Rural Police the discussion drifted on to the question of arming. As a justification, the Convention ordered the collection of certain articles in the Morning Chronicle. After the Bristol Riots of 1831, that journal[2] advocated the arming of respectable householders to defend life and property in such crises. Although this measure was not without justification in the pre-constabulary days, the Convention regarded it as on a par with its own proposed resistance to the introduction of police. When, however, the articles were collected, they were, on O'Connor's suggestion, put on one side.[3]
So the weeks passed without any decisive event. The Petition was not presented, and two months had gone. Constituencies were paying their delegates[4] and were looking anxiously for some return for their sacrifices. "Had we not been buoyed up," wrote the poor folk of Sutton-in-Ashfield, thinking of their £20, "by the hope that our sufferings would ere long have been ameliorated by the adoption of the People's
- ↑ The opposition to the Bill was due largely to the belief that the police were intended to enforce the New Poor Law as well as to provide additional soldiery against a possible insurrection. The speakers mostly had the example of France before their eyes, the police being suspected of being nothing but spies and informers.
- ↑ November 1831.
- ↑ Charter, March 31, 1839.
- ↑ E.g. Craig was paid £6 a week (Northern Star, September 7, 1839). The two Manchester delegates were promised £5 a week each, but did not get so much.
