Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:04:29.512Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Chartists and the Constitution: Revisiting British Popular Constitutionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2017

Josh Gibson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Despite having a powerful influence on the historiography of radicalism and nineteenth-century politics for the past several decades, the language of the constitution has not recently received scholarly attention. In Chartist and radical historiography, the constitution is usually treated as a narrative of national political development. This article extends the horizons of Chartist constitutionalism by exploring its similarities with American constitutionalism. By doing so, it also opens up questions regarding the ideas of the movement. Like the Americans sixty years before, the Chartists were confronted by a parliament that they believed had superseded its constitutional authority. This perception was informed by a belief that the constitution rested on the authority of the fixed principles of fundamental law, which they argued placed limits beyond which Parliament had no power to reach. As a result, the Chartists imagined that the British constitution functioned like a written constitution. To support this claim, they drew on a sophisticated interpretation of English law that argued that the common law was closely related to natural law.

Keywords

ChartismChartistradicalismConstitutionPopular constitutionalismCommon LawNatural LawAmerica
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 70 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Northern Star, 1 June 1839.

2 Belchem, John, “Republicanism, Popular Constitutionalism and the Radical Platform in Early Nineteenth-Century England,” Social History 6, no. 1 (January 1981): 1–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Epstein, James, “The Constitutionalist Idiom,” in Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (Oxford, 1994), 3–28 Google Scholar; Taylor, Miles, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847–1860 (Oxford, 1995), 5–9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 100; Joyce, Patrick, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1840–1914 (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vernon, James, ed., Rereading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England's Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar.

3 Hilton, Boyd, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), 347 Google Scholar.

4 The classic account is Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law; a Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar.

5 [Hulme, Obadiah], A Historical Work on the English Constitution (Dublin, 1771)Google Scholar; Burgh, James, Political Disquisitions, 3 vols. (London, 1774)Google Scholar.

6 Cartwright, John, Take Your Choice! representation and respect, imposition and contempt: annual parliaments and liberty, long parliaments and slavery (London, 1777)Google Scholar.

7 Hill, Christopher, “The Norman Yoke,” in Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in the Interpretation of the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1997), 46–111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 62, cc. 1373–81, 2 May 1842, Hansard Online, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/may/02/the-peoples-charter-petition.

9 Epstein, “Constitutionalist Idiom,” 26.

10 Jones, Gareth Stedman, “Rethinking Chartism,” in Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), 90–178 Google Scholar. See also, idem, “Anglo-Marxism, Neo-Marxism and the Discursive Approach to History,” in Was bleibt von marxistischen Perspektiven in der Geschichtsforschung, ed. Ludtke, Alf (Gottingen, 1997), 148–209 Google Scholar, at 177–82. For an abridged version of this chapter, see Jones, Gareth Stedman, “The Determinist Fix: Some Obstacles to the Further Development of the Linguistic Approach to History in the 1990,” History Workshop Journal 42 (Autumn 1996): 19–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Epstein, James and Belchem, John, “The Nineteenth-Century Gentleman Leader Revisited,” Social History 22, no. 2 (May 1997): 174–93Google Scholar, at 180; Belchem, John, “Radical Language and Ideology in Early Nineteenth Century England: The Challenge of the Platform,” Albion 20, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 247–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 257.

12 Grotke, Kelly and Prutsch, Markus, “Constitutionalism, Legitimacy, and Power: Nineteenth-Century Experiences,” in Constitutionalism, Legitimacy, and Power, ed. Grotke, and Prutsch, (Oxford, 2015), 3–19 Google Scholar, at 5–6; Mirow, M. C., “The Age of Constitutions in the Americas,” Law and History Review 32, no. 2 (May 2014): 229–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 229.

13 Wood, Gordon, “The Origins of American Constitutionalism,” in The Idea of America (New York, 2011), 171–88Google Scholar, at 173–74.

14 Billias, George Athan, American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776–1989: A Global Perspective (New York, 2009), 4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Colley, Linda, “Empires of Writing: Britain, America and Constitutions, 1776–1848,” Law and History Review 32, no. 2 (May 2014): 237–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 237.

16 Ibid, 237–38; Hill, Henry, “The Constitutions of Continental Europe: 1789–1813,” Journal of Modern History 8, no. 1 (March 1936): 82–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 82–84; Armitage, David, Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 103–5Google Scholar.

17 Saunders, Robert, “Parliament and the People: The British Constitution in the Long Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Modern European History 6, no. 1 (January 2008): 72–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 76.

18 Colley, “Empires of Writing,” 254–259. See also, Guilluy, Thibault, “Visions of Constitutionalism: The Implementation of Representative Institutions in the British Colonies,” in Constitutionalism, Legitimacy, and Power: Nineteenth-Century Experiences, ed. Grotke, Kelly and Prutsch, Markus, (Oxford, 2014), 281–99Google Scholar; Paul McHugh, “‘The Most Decorous Veil which Legal Ingenuity Can Weave’: The British Annexation of New Zealand,” in Constitutionalism, Legitimacy, and Power, 300–20.

19 Colley, “Empires of Writing,” 249–52.

20 Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, Part the Second (1792), 194 and, more generally, chap. 4, https:// www.ucc.ie/archive/hdsp/Paine_Rights_of_Man.pdf.

21 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1968), 84–110 Google Scholar; Vernon, “Notes Towards an Introduction,” in Re-Reading the Constitution, 1–22.

22 Vernon, James, Politics and the People: Politics and the People: a Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993), 306 Google Scholar; Epstein, “Constitutionalist Idiom,” 5; Gurney, Peter, “The Democratic Idiom: Languages of Democracy in the Chartist Movement,” Journal of Modern History 86, no. 3 (September 2014): 566–602 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 356; Chase, Malcolm, “Paine, Spence, Chartism and ‘The Real Rights of Man,’” in Thomas Spence: Poor Man's Revolutionary, ed. Bonnett, Alastair and Armstrong, Keith (London, 2014), 13–25 Google Scholar, at 14.

23 For example, Royle, Edward, Revolutionary Britannia? Reflections on the Threat of Revolution in Britain, 1798–1848 (Manchester, 2000), 145 Google Scholar.

24 Ben-Israel, Hedva, English Historians on the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1968), 116 Google Scholar.

25 Ibid, 117; Jones, Gareth Stedman, “The Redemptive Power of Violence? Carlyle, Marx and Dickens,” History Workshop Journal 65, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 3.

26 Dickinson, H. T., “The Eighteenth-Century Debate on the ‘Glorious Revolution,’” History 61, no. 201 (February 1976): 29–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 43.

27 Riley, Patrick, “Social Contract and Its Critics,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Goldie, Mark and Wolker, Robert (Cambridge, 2006), 347–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 374. See also, Iain Hampsher-Monk, “British Radicalism and the Anti-Jacobins,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, 660–87, at 673–77.

28 Pocock, J. G. A., “Burke and the Ancient Constitution––A Problem in the History of Ideas,” Historical Journal 3, no. 2 (June 1960): 125–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Lamb, Robert, Thomas Paine and the Idea of Human Rights (Cambridge, 2015), 94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Cooper, Thomas, Address to the Jury by Thomas Cooper (Leicester, 1843), 2 Google Scholar.

31 Chase, Chartism, 8. See also, Saunders, “British Constitution,” 75.

32 Cooper, Address, 2.

33 Taylor, Miles, “The Six Points: Chartism and the Reform of Parliament,” in The Chartist Legacy, ed. Ashton, Owen, Fyson, Robert, and Roberts, Stephen (Rendlesham, 1999), 1–23 Google Scholar, at 11–13.

34 The People's Charter; Being an Outline of An Act to Provide for the Just Representation of the People of Great Britain in the Common House of Parliament (London, 1838), 2 Google Scholar.

35 Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?, 620.

36 Northern Star, 27 April 1844.

37 Northern Star, 1 August 1840, 27 February 1841, 16 September 1843, 27 April 1844, and 20 May 1848.

38 Ibid., 1 August 1840.

39 Yeo, Eileen, “Some Practices and Problems of Chartist Democracy,” in The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture, 1830–60, ed. Epstein, James and Thompson, Dorothy (London, 1982), 345–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 364–65; Thompson, Dorothy, The Early Chartists (London, 1971), 28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 For the Northern Political Union's constitution, see Northern Star, 18 April 1840; for the constitution of the United Suffrage Central Committee of Scotland, see Northern Star, 31 August 1839; and for the delegate meeting that discussed and drafted it, Northern Star, 24 August 1839.

41 Northern Star, 1 June 1839. Richardson was possibly referencing St. Paul's statement that the law was “written in the hearts” of the Gentiles (Romans 2:12–15), which was foundational to Augustine natural law theory.

42 Northern Liberator, 12 January 1839.

43 Postema, Gerald, “The Philosophy of the Common Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence, ed. Coleman, Jules and Shapiro, Scott (Oxford, 2004), 588–622 Google Scholar, at 590.

44 Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Law of England, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1765)Google Scholar, 1:68.

45 Clark, J. C. D., The Language of Liberty: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World, 1660–1832 (Cambridge, 1993), 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cromartie, Alan, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Northern Star, 27 July 1839. O'Connor made a similar point at another trial in 1843, O'Connor, Feargus, The Trial of Feargus O'Connor (Manchester, 1843)Google Scholar, ii.

47 Greenberg, Janelle, The Radical Face of the Ancient Constitution: St Edward's “Laws” in Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, 2001), 27–28 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Clark, Language of Liberty, 4.

49 Owers, George, “Common Law Jurisprudence and Ancient Constitutionalism in the Radical Thought of John Cartwright, Granville Sharp, and Capel Lofft,” Historical Journal 58, no. 1 (March 2015): 51–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Finnis, John, “Natural Law: The Classical Tradition,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law, ed. Coleman, Jules and Shapiro, Scott (Oxford, 2002), 1–60 Google Scholar, at 1.

51 Horne, Thomas, Property Rights and Poverty: Political Arguments in Britain, 1605–1834 (Chapel Hill, 1990), 9–21 Google Scholar.

52 Ibid.; Waldron, Jeremy, “Decline of Natural Right,” in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Philosophy, ed. Wood, Allen W. and Hahn, Songsuk Susan (Cambridge, 2012), 623–50Google Scholar, 625.

53 Claeys, Gregory, “Paine's Rights of Man and the Religiosity of Rights Doctrines,” in Revolutionary Moments: Reading Revolutionary Texts, ed. Hammersley, Rachel (London, 2015), 85–92 Google Scholar.

54 Chartist Circular, 17 October 1840. Also quoted in A Tyne Chartist, The Way to Universal Suffrage (Newcastle, 1839), 22 Google Scholar.

55 Times, 6 April 1848.

56 Declaration of Independence, para. 2 (U.S., 1776), http://www.ushistory.org/documents/declaration.htm.

57 John Phillip Reid, Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 4 vols. (1986–93), 1:5.

58 Armitage, Declaration of Independence, 18, 63, 104.

59 Lovett, William, “Justice Safer than Expediency: An Appeal to the Middle Classes on the Question of the Suffrage (London, 1848),” in The Chartist Movement in Britain, 1838–1850, ed. Claeys, Gregory, 6 vols. (London, 2000)Google Scholar, 5:81.

60 Chartist Circular, 1 February 1840; Northern Star, 1 July 1848; Fraternal Democrats, Address of the Fraternal Democrats Assembling in London to the Working Class of Great Britain and the United States (London, 1846)Google Scholar, 1, 4; Turner, Michael, Liberty and Liberticide: The Role of America in Nineteenth-Century British Radicalism (Lanham, 2013), 5 Google Scholar.

61 Mark Matthew Trumbull, Thomas Jefferson: The Father of American Democracy. His Moral, Religious and Political Philosophy (Chicago, n. d.), 7.

62 Northern Star, 22 April 1844.

63 Ibid., 2 October 1847.

64 Clark, Language of Liberty, 3.

65 Northern Star, 27 July 1839.

66 “The Trial of the Rev. Mr. Stephens for Uttering Seditious Language. Before Mr. Justice Patterson,” in The Chartist Movement in Britain, 1:376–77. Stephens also quoted Willoughby Bertie, John Somers, William Paley, John Locke, Bracton, Bishop Antony Ellys, Bishop Richard Hurd, and John Cartwright.

67 “The Trial of the Rev. Mr. Stephens,” 376; Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:41.

68 Northern Star, 17 November 1838.

69 Hovell, Mark, History of the Chartist Movement (Manchester, 1921), 78–98 Google Scholar; Thompson, Dorothy, The Chartists (London, 1984), 30–34 Google Scholar; Gareth Stedman Jones, “Rethinking Chartism,” 104, 151–54, 160; idem, An End of Poverty? A Historical Debate (London, 2004), 108 Google Scholar; Taylor, Miles, “Rethinking the Chartists: Searching for a Synthesis in the Historiography of Chartism,” Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (June 1996): 479–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 485; Chase, Chartism, 17–19, 22–29.

70 For example, Cobbett, William, Legacy to Labourers; or, What is the Right Which Lords, Baronets, and Squires have to the Lands of England (London, 1834)Google Scholar; idem, Cobbett's Poor Man's Friend: or, Useful Information and Advice for the Working Classes; in a Series of Letters, Addressed to the Working Classes of Preston (London, 1826)Google Scholar; idem, Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (London, 1829)Google Scholar. See also Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, 228–34.

71 Cobbett, Legacy, 106–7.

72 Northern Star, 27 July 1839.

73 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 62, cc. 1373–81, 2 May 1842, Hansard Online, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/may/02/the-peoples-charter-petition

74 Ibid.

75 Southern Star, 15 March 1840. After he had been jailed, O'Brien requested a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries to read. Southern Star, 31 May 1840.

76 For example, Northern Liberator, 21 October, 16 December 1837; 2 June 1838; Cleave's Penny Gazette of Variety, 21 July 1838; Chartist Circular, 19 October 1839, 22 May 1841; Western Vindicator, 19 October 1839; Northern Star, 30 June 1838, 17 November 1838, 27 July 1839, 7 September 1839; Richardson, , The Right of Englishmen to Have Arms: As Shown in a Speech Delivered in the National Convention … (London, 1839), 7–10 Google Scholar, 11.

77 Northern Liberator, 16 December 1837.

78 Richardson, Reginald, The Rights of Woman: Exhibiting Her Natural, Civil, And Political Claims to a Share in the Legislative and Executive Power of the State (Edinburgh, 1840), 7 Google Scholar, 8, 11.

79 Clark, Language of Liberty, 3; Tuck, Richard, “Grotius and Seldon,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. Burns, J. H. (Cambridge, 1991), 499–529 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alfred DuFour, “Pufendorf,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, 561–88; James Tully, “Locke,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, 616–52.

80 Lieberman, David, The Province of Legislation Determined: Legal Theory in Eighteenth Century Britain (Cambridge, 2003), 33–55 Google Scholar.

81 Northern Star, 6 January 1838.

82 Cobbett, Legacy, 62–63, 72–73; Northern Star, 17 November 1838 and 27 July 1839.

83 London Dispatch, 18 August 1839; Northern Star, 14 September 1839; Charter, 15 September 1839; Champion, 15 September 1839; Northern Liberator, 21 September 1839; Chartist Circular, 29 September 1839.

84 Chase, Chartism, 57–86.

85 Parssinen, T. M., “Association, Convention and anti-Parliament in British Radical Politics, 1771–1848,” English Historical Review 88, no. 348 (July 1973): 504–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Northern Star, 26 October 1839.

87 Trevelyan, G. M., England under the Stuarts (repr., London, 2013), 318 Google Scholar.

88 Parssinen, “Convention,” 508. For the formation of the state constitutions, see Handlin, Oscar and Handlin, Mary, The Popular Sources of Political Authority (Cambridge, MA, 1966)Google Scholar; Peters, Ronald, The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: A Social Compact (Boston, 1978)Google Scholar. For both state and federal constitutions, see Tuck, Richard, The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy (Cambridge, 2016), 181–248 Google Scholar; and Caplan, Russell, Constitutional Brinkmanship: Amending the Constitution by National Convention (Oxford, 1988), 1–40 Google Scholar.

89 Chase, Chartism, 207, 289.

90 For example, London Dispatch, 18 August 1839; Northern Liberator, 21 September 1839; Champion, 15 September 1839.

91 Unfavorable comparisons between the Convention and the French Revolution were made in unsympathetic quarters of the press, for example, Brighton Patriot, 9 July 1839, Age, 3 February 1839, and Derby Mercury, 29 May 1839.

92 Hovell, Chartist Movement, 119; Chase, Chartism, 58.

93 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp.

94 Taylor, Miles, “Republics versus Empires: Charles Dilke's Republicanism Reconsidered,” in Republicanism in Victorian Society, ed. Nash, David and Taylor, Antony (Stroud, 2000), 25–34 Google Scholar, at 25; Wood, Gordon, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1993), 95–108 Google Scholar; idem, “Monarchism and Republicanism in the Early Republic,” in The Idea of America (New York, 2011), 231–50Google Scholar; Nelson, Eric, “Prerogative, Popular Sovereignty, and the American Founding,” in Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, ed. Bourke, Richard and Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge, 2016), 187–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson, Eric, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Cambridge, MA, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Chartists continued to cite this point, for example, Northern Star, 17 June 1848 and 8 July 1848; 3 February 1849 and 24 February 1849.

96 London Dispatch, 18 August 1839; Northern Star, 14 September 1839; Charter, 15 September 1839; Champion, 15 September 1839; Northern Liberator, 21 September 1839; Chartist Circular, 29 September 1839.

97 Charter, 1 September 1839; London Dispatch, 1 September 1839. The Declaration was written by Julius Schroeder, about whom little is known other than he was a German émigré lawyer and an associate of Henry Hetherington. He was not a Convention delegate. Chase, Chartism, 373 n. 38.

98 Northern Star, 14 September 1839.

99 Northern Star, 24 July, 1841; Cleave's London Satirist and Gazette of Variety, 7 August 1841.

100 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, vol. 62, cc. 1373–81, 2 May 1842, Hansard Online, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1842/may/02/the-peoples-charter-petition.

101 Northern Star, 14 September 1839.

102 Ibid.

103 Chartist Circular, 30 May 1840.

104 Ibid.

105 Northern Star, 1 June 1839.

106 Lovett, William, The Trial of William Lovett, Journeyman Cabinet-Maker, for Seditious Libel (London, 1839), 10 Google Scholar.

107 Southern Star, 15 March 1840.

108 Chartist Circular, 30 May 1840.

109 Wood, “Origins of American Constitutionalism,” 176.

110 For opposing views, see Allan, T. R. S., The Sovereignty of Law: Freedom, Constitutionalism, and Common Law (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldsworthy, Jeffrey, The Sovereignty of Parliament: History and Philosophy (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 Stoner, James R., “Natural Law, Common Law, and the Constitution,” in Common Law Theory, ed. Edlin, Douglas (Cambridge, 2007), 171–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 174.

112 Blackstone, Commentaries, 1:156–57. See also, Clark, Language of Liberty, 6, 86; Goldsworthy, The Sovereignty of Parliament, 181.

113 Lobban, Michael, “Custom, Nature, and Authority: The Roots of English Legal Positivism,” in The British and Their Laws in the Eighteenth Century, ed. David Lemmings (Woodbridge, 2005), 27–58 Google Scholar.

114 David Lieberman, “The Mixed Constitution and the Common Law,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth Century Political Thought, 317–46, at 322–24.

115 Wood, Gordon, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969), 344–54Google Scholar. See also Bailyn, Bernard, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1971), 198–229 Google Scholar; Grey, Thomas, “Origins of the Unwritten Constitution: Fundamental Law in American Revolutionary Thought,” Stanford Law Review 30 (May 1978): 843–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Lutz, Donald, “Relative Influence of European Writers of late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,” American Political Science Review 78, no. 1 (March 1984): 189–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 193.

117 On the development of this context, see Waldron, “Decline of Natural Right”; Bell, Duncan “What is Liberalism?,” Political Theory 42, no. 6 (December 2014): 1–34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Claeys, Gregory, “The French Revolution Debate and British Political Thought,” History of Political Thought 11, no. 1 (January 1990): 59–80 Google Scholar; Stedman Jones, An End of Poverty?, 64–110.

118 On Chartism's radical heroes, see Roberts, Matthew, “Chartism, Commemoration, and the Cult of the Radical Hero, c. 1770–c. 1840,” Labour History Review 78, no. 1 (January 2013) 3–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Northern Liberator, 16 December 1837; Northern Liberator, 21 October 1837.

120 Chartist Circular, 30 May 1840.

121 Northern Liberator, 14 September 1839.

122 Charter, 17 March 1839. Repeated on 31 March 1839.

123 Lovett, Justice Safer than Expediency, 80.

124 Northern Star, 3 August 1839; Yeo, “Some Practices,” 364.

125 For Australia, see Pickering, Paul, “‘The Oak of English Liberty’: Popular Constitutionalism in New South Wales, 1848–1856,” Journal of Australian Colonial History 3, no. 1 (April 2001): 1–27 Google Scholar; idem, “A Wider Field in a New Country: Chartism in Colonial Australia,” in Elections Full, Free and Fair, ed. Sawer, Marian (Sydney, 2001), 28–44 Google Scholar; Messner, Andrew, “Land, Leadership, Culture, and Emigration: Some Problems in Chartist Historiography,” Historical Journal 42, no. 4 (December 1999): 1093–1109 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for Canada, see Vance, Michael, “Scottish Chartism in Canada West? An Examination of the ‘Clear Grit’ Reformers,” Scottish Tradition 22 (1997): 56–104 Google Scholar; McNairn, Jeffrey, The Capacity to Judge: Public Opinion and Deliberative Democracy in Upper Canada: 1791–1854 (Toronto, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ducharme, Michel, “Closing the Last Chapter to the Atlantic Revolution: The 1837–1838 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada,” in Liberty! Égalité! Independencia!: Print Culture, Enlightenment, and Revolution in the Americas, 1776–1838, ed. Shields, David and Meléndez, Mariselle (Worcester, MA, 2007), 413–30Google Scholar; and for New Zealand, see Griffiths, John and Evans, Vic, “The Chartist Legacy in the British World: Evidence from New Zealand's Southern Settlements, 1840s–1870s,” History 99, no. 338 (December 2004): 797–818 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Prothero, Iorwerth, Radical Artisans in England and France, 1830–1870 (Cambridge, 2006), 22–45 Google Scholar; idem, “Chartism and French Radicalism in the 1830s and 1840s: A Comparison,” Labour History Review 78, no. 1 (January 2013): 33–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Agnes, Benoît, “A Chartist Singularity? Mobilizing to Promote Democratic Petitions in Britain and France, 1838–1848,” Labour History Review 78, no. 1 (January 2013): 51–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

127 Weisser, Henry, British Working-Class Movements and Europe, 1815–1848 (Manchester, 1975), 66–200 Google Scholar; Prothero, Iorweth, “Chartists and the Political Refugees,” in Exiles from European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England, ed. Freitag, Sabine (Oxford, 2003), 209–33Google Scholar; Finn, Margot, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics 1848–1874 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar.

128 Weisser, British Working-Class Movements and Europe, 7–65.