Spence in various speeches, was declaring that the "Petition to Parliament" movement was spreading rapidly.

30,000 at Ashton, he said, had agreed to memoralize the Government.

But on January 30, 1864, Mason Jones, a pro-Northern speaker in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, asked why Southern public meetings had come to a halt.

"The Southerners," he declared, "had taken the Free Trade Hall in the outset with that intention and they were obliged to pay the rent of the room, though they did not use it.

They knew that their resolutions would be outvoted and that amendments would pass against them[1145]." There must have been truth in the taunt for while _The Index_ in nearly every issue throughout the middle of 1864 reports great activity there, it does not give any account of a public meeting.