A.D. 1818.

AMELIORATION OF THE PENAL CODE.

817

of his fellow citizens had awarded him. He died by his own hand on the 2nd of November, in a paroxysm of insanity, brought on by grief at the death of his wife.

On the 2nd of October, the evacuation of the French territory by the troops of the Allies was unanimously agreed upon at the Congress of the Allied Sovereigns and of the ministers of the several powers, at Aix-laChapelle. The duke of Wellington, who, associated with lord Castlereagh, represented Great Britain in this Congress, was satisfied with the state of things which he had witnessed in France during the occupation of that country by the troops of which he was generalissimo.

On the 17th of November took place the death of queen Charlotte, at the age of seventy-five. A Bill was brought into the new Parliament, which assembled on the 14th of January, 1819, appointing the duke of York as a successor to the Queen in the office of the King's Custos. In a committee on the Civil List it was proposed that the sum of 10,000, which her Majesty had received on account of this office, should be continued to the duke of York. The repugnance to this measure was not confined to the ordinary parliamentary Opposition, and was shared by the duke himself, whose scruples, however, were overruled by the Regent.

The state of the currency, and the question of the resumption of cash payments, were subjects of paramount importance in the deliberations of this Session. Secret Committees of both Houses had been appointed to inquire into the state of the Bank of England. Mr. Peel, the member for the University of Oxford, was chosen chairman of the Committee of the House of Commons. Early in April, both Committees presented Reports, recommending that a Bill should be forthwith passed to prohibit the continuance of the payment in gold by the Bank of their notes issued previous to the 1st of January, 1817, in conformity with the voluntary notice to that effect of the directors. This measure had for its object to facilitate the final and complete restoration of cash payments. Founded upon the resolution thus proposed, the Act for the gradual resumption of cash payments, commonly known as Peel's Act, was passed on the 23rd of June. The Bank anticipated by one year the period assigned by the Act, resuming the payment of its notes in specie on the 1st of May, 1821.

On the 2nd of March, sir James Mackintosh moved for a Select Committee "to consider of so much of the Criminal Laws as relates to capital punishment in felonies." His object was to bring the letter of the law more near to its practice, under which the remission of the law formed the rule and the execution the exception. The proposition of sir James Mackintosh was opposed by the Government; but, upon a division, the numbers in favour of the motion were 147; against it, 128. The Report of the Committee recommended the repeal of many capital punishSix bills, embodying some of these recommendations, were introduced by Mackintosh in the Session of 1820.

ments.

In this Session, the question of Parliamentary Reform was again agitated by sir Francis Burdett. He proposed that, early in the next session, the House should take into its consideration the state of the representation. On this occasion lord John Russell first declared himself for a moderate

reform. At the close of the Session, lord John announced his intention, which he fulfilled in the session of 1820, of proposing the disfranchisement of Grampound, the corruption of which borough had become notorious, and the adoption of the principle of admitting the unrepresented large towns into a share of the representation. The moderate Reformers became hopeful when these resolutions were met in a conciliatory spirit by the Government.

On the 3rd of May, the fervid eloquence of Mr. Grattan was heard for the last time in the House of Commons in support of the measure nearest his heart, that of Catholic Emancipation. His proposal that this measure should be taken into consideration by a Committee of the whole House, was rejected by a majority of 243 to 241. Grattan died on the 14th of May, 1820, having travelled to London, in a state of much debility, for the purpose of submitting to the House a motion for the removal of the Roman Catholic disabilities.

There had been considerable interruption to the prosperous state of trade from February to July. The number of bankruptcies was unusually great; credit was very generally impaired; the demand for labour was of course proportionably affected, and the rate of wages was necessarily lower. At the same time the price of food had been steadily advancing. There had been meetings of the operative classes in Lancashire and at Glasgow, in which gradually the peaceably disposed were borne down by the turbulent, and the speeches assumed a character of political violence. Parliament, however, separated without any expectation that serious mischief was at hand.

At a great open-air meeting at Stockport, seditious words were spoken by the chairman, sir Charles Wolseley, bart., who was afterwards elected "legislatorial attorney and representative" for Birmingham. Wolseley and a dissenting preacher were indicted. Wolseley was arrested at his own house, Wolseley Park, in Staffordshire. At a great assembly in Smithfield, Harrison was arrested; and on being conveyed to Stockport, the constable who arrived there with him was attacked and shot. A public meeting had been called at Manchester by the Reformers, who had now taken the name of Radicals, for the 9th of August, to elect a "legislatorial attorney" as representative of that place. The magistrates, in consequence, issued a notice declaring such a meeting to be illegal, and requiring the people, at their peril, to abstain from attending it. The design was relinquished; and another meeting was advertised to be held in St. Peter's Field, in Manchester, for the purpose of petitioning for a Reform of Parliament. In preparation for this great gathering, the Reformers held meetings for drill, which were a great cause of alarm to the Lancashire magistrates. Mr. Hunt-Orator Hunt, as he was called-took the chair of the meeting of the 16th of August, at which eighty thousand persons were assembled. Detachments, each of several thousand persons, had come from the neighbouring manufacturing districts, most of these bodies arriving in that military order for which they appear to have had a considerable aptitude. Mr. Hunt began to address the assembly amidst a profound silence. After a few sentences he paused; there was a pressure from the verge of the field towards the hustings; a body of cavalry was

A.D. 1819.

THE MASSACRE OF PETERLOO."

819

striving to make way through the terrified multitude. The magistrates had been taking depositions, and deliberating upon some course of action, through the Saturday and Sunday which preceded the meeting. They had been in communication with lord Sidmouth, who had told them "that he expected occasion to arise for their energy to display itself, and that they might feel assured of the cordial support of the government." They had a warrant ready for the arrest of the leaders of this meeting. They delayed its execution till Hunt and the others to be arrested were surrounded by a multitude, wedged together in the narrow area of St. Peter's Field. A small body of constables were stationed close to the hustings, and a continued line of the same civil force maintained a communication with the magistrates, who were assembled at a private house on the south side of the Field. A troop of Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry, whose ranks were chiefly filled by wealthy master-manufacturers, were stationed in Moseley Street. Two squadrons of the 15th Hussars were in waiting at a distance. When the warrant for the apprehension of the Reform leaders was given to the chief constable of Manchester to execute, he declared that he could not carry his orders into effect with the civil power at his command. It was immediately determined that he should have military aid. The Yeomanry dashed forward into the crowd. They could not penetrate that compact mass, and they fell into confusion, being powerless either to make an impression, or to escape. The four troops of Hussars were called up, and a panic-struck magistrate gave the order to disperse the crowd. The trumpet sounded the charge. The Hussars swept the mingled mass of human beings before them. "People, yeomen, and constables, in their confused attempts to escape, ran one over the other, so that, by the time we had arrived at the end of the field, the fugitives were literally piled up to a considerable elevation above the level of the ground." "In ten minutes," says Bamford, the 'Radical,' "from the commencement of the havoc, the field was an open and almost deserted space. The hustings remained, with a few broken and hewed flag-staves erect, and a torn and gashed banner or two dropping; whilst over the whole field were strewed caps, bonnets, hats, shawls, and shoes, and other parts of male and female dress; trampled, torn, and bloody." The number of those killed on this unhappy day did not exceed six, of whom one was a special constable, and another one of the Manchester Yeomanry. About seventy persons were received in the Infirmary, suffering from sabre wounds, fractures, or contusions. Many more are supposed to have returned to their homes without proclaiming their injuries. In the evening the people assembled in great numbers at the end of Oldham-street, using menacing language. Some troops who were stationed there as a night piquet, were assaulted with stones as the darkness came on. A magistrate having read the Riot Act, about thirty shots were fired, wounding three or four persons. Hunt, and eight or ten of his companions, having been seized upon the hustings, were brought before the magistrates upon a charge of high treason. The government having abandoned that charge, they were held to bail, or detained for the want of bail, to be tried for a misdemeanour, upon the

Sir W. Jolliffe's account.

charge of having conspired to alter the law by force and threats. They were tried at York on the 16th of March, 1820, and nine following days. Hunt, Bamford, and three others, were found guilty, and being brought up for judgment in the Court of King's Bench, were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. The Manchester affray produced a very widely spread feeling of indignation, both against magistrates and military, in every part of the kingdom. The government alarmists of that period were in a condition of almost helpless terror. "The country," said the Chancellor, "must make new laws to meet this state of things, or we must make a shocking choice between military government and anarchy." Parliament was called together, with the very unwilling assent of lord Liverpool, to make these new laws, which were known as the Six Acts. They were Acts to prevent delay in the administration of justice in cases of misdemeanour; to prevent the training of persons in the practice of military evolutions; to authorize justices of the peace to seize and detain arms, private houses being searched for that purpose; to more effectually prevent seditious meetings and assemblies, by forbidding public meetings to be held without the licence of magistrates; to prevent and punish blasphemous and seditious libel,-transportation being the punishment decreed on a second conviction for libel; and to subject certain publications to the duties of stamps upon newspapers. These measures were eventually passed, although resisted at every stage. Lord Campbell describes "the unconstitutional Code called the Six Acts," as "the latest violation of our free Constitution."

On the 29th of December the Houses adjourned to the 15th of February, 1820. They were called together at an earlier period by an event, not unexpected at any time during the last year or two. On the evening of the 29th of January, George the Third died at Windsor Castle, in his eighty-second year, having been for nine years secluded from the world, a sufferer under the most fearful of human infirmities. Six days before the death of the king, his fourth son, the duke of Kent, expired at Weymouth, after a feverish illness of three days. His infant daughter was then eight months old, having been born on the 24th of May, 1819. Neither of the three elder sons of George the Third had any child to succeed. It seemed probable that Alexandrina Victoria might wear the crown; and on this probability those who knew the admirable qualities of the duchess of Kent, felt hopeful and confident that the nurture of the royal child would fit her for her high destiny.

A.D. 1784-1820.

POETS OF THE PERIOD.

821

CHAPTER LXI.

THE great outburst of the French Revolution has always been associated with the Literature which preceded it. This Literature took the form of a fanatical and intolerant irreligion. English Literature, reflecting the general public opinion, received but a very feeble infusion of the destructive force that had rent the French people and the French Church and State asunder. Yet it was manifestly affected by this upheaving of the whole crust of society. A new power and a wider truth were especially marked in the highest expression of ideas, that of Poetry. The precursor of the poetical school that sprang up amidst the excitement of the French Revolution was William Cowper, in whose manifestation of the power of earnestness and simplicity, the conventionalities of most of the poets who had preceded him were to be cast aside and forgotten. From the first publication in 1786 of a volume of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, by Robert Burns, Scotland felt that a great spirit had arisen to shed a new lustre on the popular language and literature. What Burns produced under all the disadvantages of imperfect education, of continuous labour, of uncongenial employment, of corrupting society, made him emphatically the national poet of Scotland in the twelve years which were allotted to his life after his first publication. In their early career, Rogers and Crabbe belonged to the generation of Cowper and Burns; in their latter period they belonged to the same age as Byron and Moore.

A little before the beginning of the convulsions of France, and during the first year or two of the war, a school of poetry called Della Cruscan, originated with an English coterie at Florence. William Gifford says "the epidemic malady was spreading from fool to fool ;" and "from one end of the kingdom to another all was nonsense and Della Crusca." Gifford, in destroying this tribe by his ridicule, did something to make room for another school,-for Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. The Lake School, so called, which this illustrious trio founded, has survived, and will survive, the doubts and scoffs of their contemporaries. With "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," published in 1805, and “Marmion,” published in 1808, commenced the new era of narrative poetry, which has almost wholly superseded the merely didactic and descriptive orders of verse. The popularity of Walter Scott as a narrative poet was equalled, if not exceeded, by that of lord Byron, when he reluctantly turned from satire to write verse romances. Whilst Byron was in the full blaze of his reputation, and Wordsworth was slowly establishing an enduring influence upon the popular mind, two young poets appeared, -Shelley and Keats, whose inspiration was fitted to attract fervent votaries, but only amongst a comparatively small class-those "of imagination all compact." The narrative character was now adopted by writers whose earlier productions were more in conformity with the tastes of a generation passing away. Campbell, Rogers, Leigh Hunt, Moore, Crabbe, took their places amongst the narrative poets at this period. The poetical tendencies of the age