f that
time the Tory Oastler was active, and hundreds of petitions for
improvements of the social condition of the workers were circulated along
with the national petition for the People's Charter adopted in
Birmingham. In 1839 the agitation continued as vigorously as ever, and
when it began to relax somewhat at the end of the year, Bussey, Taylor,
and Frost hastened to call forth uprisings simultaneously in the North of
England, in Yorkshire, and Wales. Frost's plan being betrayed, he was
obliged to open hostilities prematurely. Those in the North heard of the
failure of his attempt in time to withdraw. Two months later, in
January, 1840, several so-called spy outbreaks took place in Sheffield
and Bradford, in Yorkshire, and the excitement gradually subsided.
Meanwhile the bourgeoisie turned its attention to more practical
projects, more profitable for itself, namely the Corn Laws. The Anti-
Corn Law Association was formed in Manchester, and the consequence was a
relaxation of the tie between the Radical bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The working-men soon perceived that for them the abolition
of the Corn Laws could be of little use, while very advantageous to the
bourgeoisie; and they could therefore not be won for the project.

The crisis of 1842 came on. Agitation was once more as vigorous as in
1839. But this time the rich manufacturing bourgeoisie, which was
suffering severely under this particular crisis, took part in it. The
Anti-Corn Law League, as it was now called, assumed a decidedly
revolutionary tone. Its journals and agitators used undisguisedly
revolutionary language, one very good reason for which was the fact that
the Conservative party had been in power since 1841. As the Chartists
had previously done, these bourgeois leaders called upon the people to
rebel; and the working-men who had most to suffer from the crisis were
not inactive, as the year's national petition for the charter with its
three and a half million signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical
parties had been somewhat estranged, they allied themselves once more. At
a meeting of Liberals and Chartists held in Manchester, February 15th,
1842, a petition urging the repeal of the Corn Laws and the adoption of
the Charter was drawn up. The next day it was adopted by both parties.
The spring and summer passed amidst violent agitation and increasing
distress. The bourgeoisie was determined to carry the repeal of the Corn
L