which the Convention would be morally, if not legally, responsible" do not sound well in the mouth of one who had long been damning the consequences. Nor was the solicitude for the followers, but for the delegates themselves, to whom prison and Botany Bay were becoming dreadful realities.
On this the Convention proceeded to an orgy of recrimination. One fact was clear: the delegates had grossly exaggerated their following and influence. Now they sought to blame each other for it. Neesom and MacDouall especially came in for abuse. O'Connor spoke both for and against the motion in a speech of which Fletcher said he could not make head or tail. Fletcher said that the Convention would now listen to his advice, to win the middle class to their side. Poor Fletcher had had enough of Chartism. He was an Anti-Poor Law man who had got into troubled waters. Duncan said those who voted for the Holiday ought to carry it through. Skevington and MacDouall protested against the motion as cowardly, but the former voted for it and the latter abstained. Half a dozen delegates alone had the courage to vote against the motion, twelve voted for it, and seven were too perplexed to vote at all. The formal result was the appointment of a Committee to take the sense of the people upon the question of a general strike; the real result was the suicide of the Convention and the temporary collapse of the whole movement.[1]
The Committee which was thus appointed obtained a number of replies, which are preserved in the letter-book. J. B. Smith writes from Leamington in fierce reproach. If the holiday is begun, will the Convention be ready to control the idle workmen? Will the strikers not assume that they have the Convention's permission to pillage and plunder? Why had the Convention never talked of saving money for Ulterior Measures instead of talking so much about arms and force? From Sheffield came a better report, but not encouraging. Coventry was decidedly against the strike. Colne reported that "the principal obstacle in the way of the holiday arises from those operatives and trades who are receiving remunerating wages for their labour, and whose apathy and indifference arise more from ignorance of their real position than an indisposition to benefit their fellow-men." At Preston, a supposed physical force stronghold, the Chartists could do nothing to further the strike as the trade societies refused to help. Neither Rochdale nor Middleton was decidedly favourable
- ↑ London Dispatch, July 28, 1839; Charter, July 28, 1839.
