A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



cratic movement for popular representation. Immediately after the young 

 queen's accession in 1837, the Radical party in the House moved the exten- 

 sion of the franchise to the working classes, in their amendment to the 

 address. Working men's political unions spread throughout Lancashire, and 

 all over the country, and the London association drafted their demands in 

 special terms, Universal Manhood Suffrage, Annual Parliaments, Vote by 

 Ballot, No Property Qualifications, the Payment of Members and Equal 

 Voting Districts, and this, in 1838, became known as 'The People's 

 Charter.' "° The language of the mob orators was at times dangerously 

 incitive. Mr. Richardson, speaking at Manchester, said that 



The people of Lancashire had begun to think seriously upon the matter . . . and had 

 learned that the people had a right to petition, that failing that they had a right to remon- 

 strate, and that failing that they had a right to arm in defence of their liberties. 



' The people of Lancashire,* he went on, 



had last session laid on the table of Parliament a petition bearing a quarter of a million 

 signatures, and praying for the repeal of the Poor Law Amendment Act. How was that 

 petition treated ? VVhy, it was carried away . . . and never heard of more. The people 

 of Lancashire had thereupon determined to petition no more, but would remonstrate, some 

 had said they would not remonstrate but would arm, the people began to arm, the people 

 were armed, but the national petition came in most opportunely. ... If that petition 

 should fail he did not pretend to say what would be the consequence. Rifles would be 

 loaded. . . . Everything would be done openly by the people of Lancashire ; and it would 

 be done constitutionally and legally.*" 



The distress was acute in Lancashire, and the situation was indeed 

 critical. In 1842 a great strike of workers was adopted, and the 'hands' 

 marched in multitudes from one place to another, turning out the workers 

 and stopping the factories. On 15 August, at a Stockport meeting, it was 

 resolved to make the charter the basis of the strike. For fifty miles round 

 Manchester the workers were out. At Preston, however, the Riot Act was 

 read and the soldiers fired on the mob, who thereupon dispersed. But the 

 populations of Burnley, Bacup, Colne, and Blackburn were all in a very 

 excited state. The shopkeepers of Burnley called a meeting to petition for 

 the People's Charter. For several years the movement was led in Lancashire 

 by one Fergus O'Connor, but he advocated peaceful measures and broke with 

 the ' physical force ' party, and this split gradually weakened the unity and 

 cohesion of the movement, which, as regards Lancashire, came to a head in 

 May, 1848, when at a Chartist meeting for Lancashire and Yorkshire a reso- 

 lution was formed to raise a national guard."' MiUtary training and drilling 

 went on in parts of the county adjacent to Yorkshire, and a meeting was 

 arranged to be held at Manchester, which a party of Oldham Chartists, armed 

 with pikes, started to join. Hearing, however, that the military were in 

 readiness to receive them, they returned home, and thus passed over the most 

 crucial period of the Chartist agitation in Lancashire."' For one or two 

 years more meetings at Stockport, Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton, Bolton, and 

 other places were held to discuss the charter,"" but nothing more came of it. 

 Meanwhile, O'Connor's mind became unhinged, and in 1852 the Northern 

 Star, the paper he had owned and edited as the organ of the party, was 



116 



lis 



Gammage, Htst. of the Chartist Movement, 3-5. •" Gammage, op. cit. cz 



I^^^^-33^. '-'Ibid. 333. "» Ibid. 369. 



252 



