About two years ago the Chartist workers founded an association 
with the object of buying land and dividing it among its members 
into small holdings. It was hoped in this way to diminish the 
excessive competition between factory workers themselves, by 
keeping from the labour market some of these workers to form a 
quite new and essentially democratic class of small peasants. This 
project, whose author is none other than Feargus O’Connor himself, 
has had such success that the Chartist Land Company already num- 
bers from two to three hundred thousand members,’ that it disposes 
of social funds of £60,000 (a million and a half francs), and that its 
receipts, announced in The Northern Star, exceed £2,500 per week. 
In fact, the Company, of which I propose to give you later a more 
detailed account, has grown to such a size that it is already 
disquieting the landed aristocracy; for it is evident that this 
movement, if it continues to grow at the same rate as up to now, will 
end by becoming transformed into a national agitation for taking 
possession of the nation’s land by the people. The bourgeoisie 
does not find this Company to its taste either; it sees it as a lever in 
the hands of the people which will allow the latter to free themselves 
without needing the help of the middle class. It is particularly the 
small bourgeoisie, more or less liberal, which looks askance at the 
Land Company because it already finds the Chartists much more 
independent of its support than before the founding of the 
association. Moreover, these same radicals, unable to explain the 

indifference which the people show them and which is the inevitable 
consequence of their own lukewarm attitude, insist on attacking Mr. 
O’Connor continually as the sole obstacle to a reunion of the Chartist 
and radical parties. It was therefore enough that the Land Company 
should be the work of O’Connor to draw upon it all the hatred of the 
more or less radical bourgeois. At first they ignored it; when the 
conspiracy of silence could no longer be maintained they tried to 
prove that the Company was so organised as to end inevitably in the 
most scandalous bankruptcy; finally, when these means did not 
prevent the Company from prospering, they returned to the tactic 
that for ten years they had constantly used always without the least 
success against Mr. O’Connor. They sought to cast suspicions upon 
his character, to throw doubts on his disinterestedness, to destroy the 
right he claimed to call himself the incorruptible and unpaid 
administrator for the workers. When, therefore, some time ago, Mr. 
O’Connor published his annual report,’ six more or less radical 
papers, which appear to have had a clandestine meeting, joined in 
attacking him. These papers were the Weekly Dispatch, the Globe, the 
Nonconformist, the Manchester Examiner, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper and 
the Nottingham Mercury. They accused Mr. O’Connor of the most 
shameless thefts and misappropriations, which they sought to prove 
or to make probable by the figures of the report itself. Far from 
being satisfied with that, they pried into the private life of the 
celebrated agitator: a mountain of accusations, each graver than the 
other, was heaped on him, and his adversaries could well believe that 
he would be overwhelmed by it. But O’Connor, who for ten years has 
not ceased to fight the so-called radical press, did not flinch under 
these calumnies. He published in The Northern Star of the 23rd of this 
month a reply to the six papers. This reply, a polemical masterpiece 
which recalls the best pamphlets of William Cobbett, refutes one 
accusation after another and, in its turn taking the offensive, 
launches against the six editors very severe attacks, full of superb 
disdain. This was enough completely to justify O’Connor in the 
people’s eyes. The Northern Star of the 30th of this month contains 
the votes of complete confidence in O’Connor passed at public 
meetings of Chartists in more than fifty localities. But O’Connor 
wanted to give his adversaries the opportunity to attack him in front 
of the people. He invited them to maintain their charges at public 

meetings at Manchester and Nottingham. Not one of them turned 
up. At Manchester, O’Connor spoke for four hours before more 
than ten thousand men, who applauded him thunderously and 
unanimously confirmed their confidence in him. The crowd was so 
great that, besides the great meeting where O’Connor defended 
himself personally, it was necessary to hold another meeting in the 
public square, where ten to fifteen thousand other people, who 
were not able to enter the indoor meeting, were harangued by 
several other speakers. 

When the meetings had ended, O’Connor declared that he would 
receive the contributions and subscriptions of the members of the 
Land Company, and the sum paid to him that evening exceeded 
£1,000 (25,000 francs). 

At Nottingham, where O’Connor on the next day drew one of the 
greatest meetings which had ever taken place there, the same 
popular enthusiasm was caused by his speech. 

This was at least the hundredth time that Mr. O’Connor has 
triumphed in this brilliant way over the calumnies of the bourgeois 
press. Imperturbable amidst all these attacks, the indefatigable 
patriot continues his work, and the unanimous confidence of the 
English people is the best proof of his courage, his energy, his 
incorruptibility. 

November 1, 1847 and Translated from the French