September 1839 to October 1841, under the name of the Chartist Circular. An elective Committee of fifteen members was constituted, with the title, "Universal Suffrage Central Committee for Scotland," and so the organisation got under weigh. Harney seems to have been one of its paid lecturers, having temporarily shelved his physical force ideas. In March 1840 he was recommending English Chartists to follow suit,[1] in a letter to the Northern Liberator.
Harney's letter is one of many which were communicated to the Chartist press about this time, all with the same object—organise, organise! They show how far the reaction from the exaggerated confidence of the previous year had gone, and suggest that there is some dim realisation of the necessity for hard spade work before the foundations of success can be laid. Harney relates how the failure of the late Convention had ruined the Chartist cause in the Border counties. He suggests a programme of organisation and systematic petitioning. He touches on a question which was to exercise many Chartist minds in the next few years—namely, the Free Trade agitation. He declares unremitting war upon it, and urges Chartists to attend Anti-Corn Law meetings in force to procure the rejection of all resolutions proposed there. His scheme of organisation includes a permanent paid central committee which shall sit at Manchester. There shall be local county leaders who will act as teachers of Chartism and as enemies of the people's enemies, especially of the priests. These men will in fact stand between people and patricians like the tribunes of the people at Rome.[2]
R. J. Richardson from his cell at Liverpool made public a scheme of organisation—a high-falutin affair culled from the Constitution of the United States, Freemasonry, Rousseau, archaeology, and R. J. Richardson.[3] It had all the essentials of a bad constitution. The Dumfries Chartists submitted another constitution in which an elective Convention played a part "to focus attention upon horrifying wrongs and oppressions."[4] Robert Lowery had another scheme in which the contesting of Parliamentary seats was the chief feature. Significantly enough, Lowery will hear no more of Conventions.[5] "Republican" wrote a series of articles in the Northern Star in support of a "permanent, secret, and irresponsible" directory, which would control the movement. He, too, will
