226 
THE CHARTER. 
dual member of the corporate body enjoys, freely and without re- 
serve, the privilege of recording, in the presence of his assembled 
professional brothers, his sentiments and opinions, whatever they 
may be, on any and all matters under discussion ; nay, on this oc- 
casion it is that he is invited to do so. Those who have had most 
concern with the charter — who have had the labour and anxiety of 
obtaining it, and who have all along, under the trials to which it 
has been put, borne the burden upon their shoulders, and who are 
still found fighting manfully under its banners — these persons, we 
say, have from the very first sought the assistance and co-opera- 
tion of their professional brethren ; and so far from having any ends 
or purposes of their own to serve — any private or selfish interest 
to forward — have all along, foolishly and culpably as it would now 
seem, admitted even their very enemies into their councils. Had 
their cause not been a sound one, a disinterested one, one intended 
for the general and not for their own individual benefit, it could 
never have stood such a test of magnanimity as this — never have 
maintained itself against the attacks and machinations of opponents 
armed with all the information the camp of the advocates for the 
charter could afford them in furtherance of their own sinister pro- 
jects to destroy that charter. Nothing, we repeat, short of a 
sound and just cause could have borne an ordeal like this. And 
if any proof were wanting to confirm the integrity of the present 
charter, it may be found in the total inability of those who are 
opposed to it, either to bring forward an objection of any real 
weight or moment against it, or to strike out another charter that 
should be found worth any thing save insomuch as it contains of 
the wise and wholesome provisions of its predecessor. 
In the possession of such a charter as the one you have, and 
with men in your council who are resolved, through good report 
and evil report, to uphold that charter, and through it your interests, 
how is it, we ask, members of the profession ! you do not, as 
you are bound to do, come forward in a body to the General 
Meeting, and by your presence in ample numbers there, at once 
confound the politics both of anti-chartists and other-chartists ; 
while } r ou convince those who entertain any doubts touching the 
popularity or working of your own 'charter, that such dubitations, 
and all allegations to the contrary, are but weak inventions of the 
