ABSTRACT
The publication of the People’s Charter gave a fresh impetus to the enthusiasm of the universal suffragists. The best talents of the Working Men’s Associations and other radical societies joined in a gigantic effort to obtain the immediate enactment of the Charter. The general press cautioned against the Chartist missionaries who were branded as scoundrels, firebrands, plunderers, knaves, and assassins. The people, however, paid little heed to the warnings and eagerly demonstrated their “general approbation” of the Charter in a series of grand meetings and parades. The people of England were invited to reflect on the question whether the working classes had fit representatives in the great number of land-holders, money-makers, speculators, usurers, lords, earls, and other honorables, as well as in the number of military and navy representatives, barristers and solicitors. The petition was drawn up by William Lovett and contained the nucleus of the subsequently famous People’s Charter.
