to one infringement after another till the last vestige of RIGHT has been lost in the MYSTICISM of legislation, and the armed force of the country transferred to soldiers and policemen.
Then follows an appeal to "rouse from your political slumbers." The Convention would lead. The Petition would be rejected and "we may now be prepared for the worst."
Men and women of Britain, will you tamely submit to the insult? Will you submit to incessant toil from birth till death, to give in tax and plunder, out of every twelve hours' labour, the proceeds of hours to support your idle and insolent oppressors? Will you much longer submit to see the greatest blessings of mechanical art converted into the greatest curses of social life? to see children forced to compete with their parents, wives with their husbands, and the whole of society morally and physically degraded to support the aristocracies of wealth and title? Will you thus allow your wives and daughters to be degraded; your children to be nursed in misery, stultified by toil, and become the victims of the vice our corrupt institutions have engendered? Will you permit the stroke of affliction, the misfortunes of poverty, or the infirmities of age to be branded and punished as crimes, and give our selfish oppressors an excuse for rending asunder man and wife, parent and child, and continue passive observers till you and yours become the victims?
Unless freedom was attained, revolution must follow and ruin and destruction would be the result. The middle class had betrayed the people, Whigs and Tories alike were hostile. Nevertheless the people must not be tempted to commence the struggle which the Government was preparing to wage. "We have resolved to obtain our rights peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must."
Then followed a list of "ulterior measures" to be adopted in the event of the rejection of the Petition. This list had been drawn up by a committee from the multitude of suggestions made from time to time by the delegates and others. Most of them were expedients which had been proposed in the height of the Reform Bill struggle eight years before. At every Chartist meeting until July 1, the following questions were to be submitted:
1. Whether Chartists will be prepared, AT THE REQUEST OF THE CONVENTION, to withdraw all sums of money they may INDIVIDUALLY OR COLLECTIVELY have placed in savings banks, etc., and whether at the same time they will be prepared immediately to convert their paper money into gold and silver?
2. Whether, IF THE CONVENTION SHALL DETERMINE
