But in spite of great public meetings the movement was already breaking up. The Chartist Convention, which met in London on May 1st, dissolved on May 13th in hopeless disagreement, and Ernest Jones, who had attended as a member of the executive committee, exclaimed that “amid the desertion of friends, and the invasion of enemies, the fusee had been trampled out, and the elements of their energy were scattered to the winds of heaven.” Still he tried to rally the broken ranks, and the government decided that the time had come to put the movement down by means of the new “Treason Felony” Act. Feargus O’Connor, now a member, was no longer dangerous to the authorities. His attendance in the House kept him from the agitation in the country, and Ernest Jones was the man to be struck at. On May 29th and 30th Ernest Jones addressed great, but quite orderly, meetings in London, on Clerkenwell Green and Bishop Bonner’s Fields, and then proceeded to Manchester. Here he was arrested and put on trial with five other Chartists--Fussell, Sharpe, Williams, Vernon, and Looney. The judge had little patience for the prisoners, and Ernest Jones was frequently interrupted in his defence. In the end, he and his fellows were all found guilty of seditious speech, and Ernest Jones was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, to find sureties, himself in £200 and two persons in £150, and to keep the peace for five years. A number of police spies procured many more arrests and convictions by gaining admission to Chartist meetings, joining Chartist unions and inciting the members to violent speech and an armed conspiracy. By these means at the end of the year 1848 the government had succeeded in getting the prominent Chartists into prison, as it had done in 1840. That Ernest Jones exhorted his followers to learn to bear arms is indisputable; that the success of the revolutionary movements on the continent encouraged the belief amongst a certain number of Chartists that an armed rising was desirable and could be successful in England is equally true. But as no serious attempt was made in 1848 by the “physical force” Chartists to organize such a rising, no rising took place, and “the conspiracy,” as it was called, was chiefly the work of the government’s police spies.