The Parade of 18J+8. 
521 
and activity. He was an enthusiastic speaker and was possessed 
of a disposition that made him the natural leader of the more 
boisterous element. He was the proprietor and editor of the 
Northern Star and the originator and director of the National 
Land Co., a scheme for home colonization, which got no further 
than to use for campaign purposes the subscriptions paid in 
to it by workingmen. O’Connor was elected to Parliament for 
Nottingham in 1847 and he kept up a vigorous attack in the 
House of Commons and addressed mass-meetings all over Eng¬ 
land. 
One method of the Chartists of this period was to attend city 
churches in large numbers, marching in ranks to and from the 
services. They often wore badges and usually sat as nearly 
in a body as possible, their aim being to attract attention to 
themselves and their condition. Upon one occasion a body of 
Chartists in Manchester ventured to send directions to the pas¬ 
tor of the Old Church, from what text he should preach. On 
the following Sunday the church was packed by Chartists but, 
when the text was announced, they arose in a body and left. 
The preacher had not taken their text but chose the passage 
“ My house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den 
of thieves. ” 
When the year 1840 was passed the most dangerous years of 
Chartism were over. Plentiful harvests came again. The dis¬ 
tress passed from trade. The government which had been wait¬ 
ing for excitement to subside, in order that juries might be 
gotten to convict, asserted itself and many Chartist leaders 
were imprisoned. Others left the country. 
THE PARADE OF 1848. 
Throughout the first few years of the forties the forces of 
Chartism worked only in a quiet way. The evolution was a 
silent one molding men’s minds and preparing them for the re¬ 
forms which were to come after the turbulence of 1848 should 
have passed away. The withdrawal of the Moral Force element 
from Chartism was the decapitation of the movement; yet the 
corpse was, by a mighty effort, galvanized into a state of^ap- 
