in that election, one ventures to think, contained as much good sense as the one composed in Lancaster Gaol. It shows, however, how much O'Brien was drifting from the somewhat Ishmaelite standpoint of O'Connorite Chartism.
The Newcastle Election gave rise to a curious legal point. O'Brien and two other candidates stood for two seats. Though absent, O'Brien carried the day on the show of hands; he did not go to the poll, and the other two were declared elected. O'Brien's committee decided to petition on the ground that the two had been elected neither by show of hands nor by the poll. Counsel actually thought O'Brien was the person elected, though, of course, he had not the requisite financial qualification. The cost of petitioning was, however, prohibitive and no further steps were taken.[1] It stirs the imagination to think of O'Brien in the Corn Law debates. How he would have laid about him!
O'Brien was to be released in October 1841. His popularity was still great in the Chartist world, and a movement was at once set on foot to give him a great ovation, and to raise a fund to enable him to start a newspaper.[2] He refused the demonstrations; they would cost money; working men would lose employment and wages by attending. Let Chartists give O'Connor an expensive ovation if they liked.[3] The "press fund," however, went on with the result that O'Brien became part owner and editor of the British Statesman,[4] a Radical weekly which started in March 1842. The Statesman was at first largely an Anti-Corn Law journal, but O'Brien gave it a somewhat different complexion. It was never a Chartist paper in the O'Connorite sense. Like all the rest of O'Brien's ventures, it died an untimely death. In the latter months of 1841 O'Brien was still very active as lecturer and agitator, but in the early part of 1842 events occurred which brought to a head the various enmities and rivalries which the policy or person of O'Connor had aroused.
(3) The Complete Suffrage Movement (1842)
In 1842 the focus of Chartist interest once more shifted to Birmingham, which, since the riots of July 1839 had not figured very prominently in Chartist affairs. The Chartists of that town were divided in allegiance between Arthur O'Neill
