A dissatisfaction with the existing laws for the repression of sedition was one of the first feelings inspired in ministers and many of their adherents by the events of the 16th of August at Manchester. So early as on the 19th of that month, Lord Redesdale, in a letter to Lord Sidmouth, while maintaining the very strong doctrine, that 'every meeting for radical reform was not merely a seditious attempt to undermine the existing constitution of government by bringing it into hatred and contempt, but was an overt act of treasonable conspiracy against that constitution of government, including the king as its head,' admits that something more explicit was now required,' and suggests that a declaratory law should be passed, 'to remove all doubt of the treasonable criminality of such assemblies.' About the same time we find Lord Eldon writing to his brother: 'In fact, the state of our law is so inapplicable to existing circumstances, that we can't meet the present case; and I am as convinced as I am of my existence, that if parliament don't forthwith assemble, there is nothing that can be done but to let those meetings take place, reading the Riot Act if there be a riot at any of them.' Lord Sidmouth accordingly, early in September, proposed to Lord Liverpool that parliament should be assembled as soon as possible. The premier was then opposed to the suggestion; a cabinet-council, which met on the 15th of September, came to no decision; another, which met on the 21st, decided against Sidmouth's views; but at a third meeting, on the 8th of October, an order for the assembling of parliament on the 23d of November was agreed upon.

The session was accordingly opened on that day by the prince-regent in person. Amendments to the address were moved by the opposition in both Houses, and long debates ensued-that in the Commons extending over two nights, and till five o'clock in the morning of the third day; but the ministerial majorities on the division were 159 to 34 in the Lords, and 381 to 150 in the Commons. A collection of papers relative to the internal state of the country having then been presented by command of the prince-regent, four bills were introduced in the

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Lords on the 29th of November; one by the lord chancellor, entitled: 'An Act to prevent Delay in the Administration of Justice in Cases of Misdemeanour;' the three others, by Lord Sidmouth, entitled, severally: 'An Act to prevent the Training of Persons to the Use of Arms, and to the Practice of Military Evolutions and Exercise;' 'An Act for the more effectual Prevention and Punishment of Blasphemous and Seditious Libels;' and 'An Act to authorise Justices of the Peace, in certain disturbed Counties, to seize and detain Arms collected and kept for purposes dangerous to the Public Peace; to continue in force until the 25th of March 1822.' the 3d of December, Lord Castlereagh introduced in the Commons a bill entitled: 'An Act to subject certain Publications to the Duties of Stamps upon Newspapers, and to make other Regulations for restraining the Abuses arising from the Publication of Blasphemous and Seditious Libels;' and on the 17th of that month, Lord Sidmouth introduced in the Lords a bill entitled: 'An Act for more effectually preventing Seditious Meetings and Assemblies; to continue in force until the end of the session of parliament next after five years from the passing of the Act.' These measures, which became memorable under the designation of the Six Acts, were strenuously resisted at every stage; but they were all eventually passed. Both Houses then adjourned, on the 29th of December, to the 15th of February 1820.

more.

In this interval, an event occurred, without occasioning any change whatever except only of certain names and forms, which, if it had happened twenty or even fifteen years before, might possibly have given a new movement to the whole political system of this country and of Europe. Yet it was not without a momentary pause of solemn and even somewhat tender emotion that all ranks of the people received the announcement that the old king was no After a seclusion of nearly ten years, George III. died at Windsor, on the evening of Saturday, the 29th of January 1820, in the eighty-second year of his age, and the sixtieth of his reign. The death of his majesty had been preceded by that of his fourth son, the Duke of Kent, in his fifty-third year, on the 23d of the same month. Thus, within little more than two years, had been taken away the king and queen, the actual wearers of the crown, the daughter and only child of him by whom it was inherited, and the father of her to whom it was eventually to fall. The birth of that other daughter and only child, our present gracious sovereign, had taken place on the 24th of May 1819. In the same year, a son had also been born, on the 26th of March, to the Duke of Cambridge; a daughter, who died on the same day, the 27th of March, to the Duke of Clarence; and a son, on the 27th of May, to the Duke of Cumberland.

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CHAPTER I.

HERE had been a subsidence, for some time before the Manchester massacre of August 1819, of the sedition and rebellious intentions of the sufferers and demagogues who had caused a panic to the government, and a portion of the country magistracy of England and Scotland. The extensive conspiracy supposed by the ruling powers had never existed; and the separate parties of malcontents who had employed the leisure and relieved the painful thoughts of poverty in seditious movements, had become tired of fruitless efforts, of disappointment in their leaders, and of that failure in combination which is the invariable lot of the ill-informed and inexperienced, when they aim at objects too large for their powers. Their funds fell off; their drillings ceased from non-attendance; and they dropped back into their sad homes, to mutter there their discontents, or wait for better days. But the Manchester affair and the subsequent proceedings roused them again as by an express summons; and during the months of September, October, and November, there was a busy reorganisation of the associations of the discontented, who put aside their mutual quarrels to carry on the grand one with the government. It was in November that Sir Herbert Taylor, who held a high office in the establishment of the king, was accosted at Windsor by a man named Edwards, who kept a small shop at Eton for the sale of plastercasts, and who gave information of a desperate plot against the ministers. This information was, of course, immediately communicated to Lord Sidmouth. Edwards was taken into the pay of the home office; and the police were employed to verify his statements during the months when he stimulated the purposes of the conspirators, and received their confidence, in order to betray them, day by day, to his paymasters. It was after the affair became known to the government, that an emissary of Oliver the spy appeared at Middleton and elsewhere, and told of other agents who were going

about the country with the same commission-to engage the discontented to join in the plot of Thistlewood and his comrades to assassinate the ministers, seize the Bank, the Mansion-house, and the Tower, and establish a provisional government. The discontented refused to join. The scheme was too horrible and too foolish. In the end it appeared that the number involved was very small; so small, that the affair would scarcely deserve a place in history, but for the atrocity of the plan, and the illustration the event affords of the working of the spy-system adopted by the government of the day.

The leader, Thistlewood, was a desperate man; too vindictive about his private wrongs to make much pretence of patriotism. He had been engaged with the Watsons, and acquitted on his trial for that matter. After his acquittal, he had sent a challenge to Lord Sidmouth; and this piece of audacity had procured him a year's imprisonment. He came out of jail thirsting for the blood of the minister. He drew about him a few ignorant and desperate men; and they would have attempted the deed at once-in the autumn of 1819-but for a series of accidents which delayed the enterprise, and gave time for an aggravation of their wickedness by the arts of Edwards the informer. When the affair had been delayed till Christmas, there came the dispersion of the intended victims for the holidays; and then the death of the king and the Duke of Kent, and the royal funerals; and, perhaps, Edwards, who furnished the party with so much information about the ministers, might have told the conspirators how uncertain was the tenure of office by their enemies, who were very near going out immediately on the accession of George IV., on account of their refusal to procure him a divorce from his queen. The first record of the existence of the plot is in a note from the Duke of Wellington of the 5th of January, wherein he states, that he had 'just heard that Lord Sidmouth had discovered another conspiracy.' On Saturday,

February 19th, it was resolved by the gang to murder the ministers, each at his own house; and without further delay, as their poverty would not allow them to wait any longer. On the Tuesday, however, Edwards informed them that there was to be a cabinet-dinner at Lord Harrowby's the next day. Thistlewood sent out for a newspaper,

CHAP. I.]

to see if this was true; and, finding it to be so, remarked: As there has not been a dinner so long, there will, no doubt, be fourteen or sixteen there; and it will be a rare haul to murder them all together.' Thus it was settled. Some of their number were to watch Lord Harrowby's house, to see that no police or soldiers were brought there. One was to call with a note while the ministers were at dinner; and the others were then to rush in, to commit the murders, carrying bags in which to bring away the heads of Lords Sidmouth and Castlereagh. Then they were to fire the cavalry barracks, by throwing fire-balls into the straw-sheds; and the Bank and Tower were to be taken by the people, who, it was hoped, would rise upon the spread of the news.

Edwards was not the only traitor. A man named Hidon, who afterwards found himself well recompensed by the gift of a hackney-coach, went from this final council to warn Lord Harrowby, by putting a letter into his hand during his ride in the Park. No notice was apparently taken. The preparations for dinner went on at Lord Harrowby's till eight o'clock in the evening; but the guests did not arrive. The Archbishop of York, who lived next door, happened to give a dinner that evening; and the arrival of the carriages deceived those of the conspirators who were on the watch in the street, till it was too late to give warning to their comrades, who had assembled in a stable in Cato Street, near the Edgeware Road.

While the conspirators were arming themselves in a room above this stable, by the light of one or two candles, the ministers, having dined at home, met at Lord Liverpool's; where they awaited, in great anxiety, the tidings of what the police and soldiers had done. When the news arrived, it was bad. One of the police had been stabbed through the heart, and Thistlewood had escaped. This was owing to the soldiers not having been ready, as ordered, to turn out at a moment's notice. The police proceeded without them; and Smithers, the man who was killed, mounted the ladder which led from the stable to the upper room. Thistlewood stabbed him, and blew out the light; and after the exchange of a few shots in the darkness and confusion, several of the conspirators escaped. A reward of £1000 was immediately offered for the apprehension of Thistlewood; but he was taken before eight o'clock the next morning, in bed at a friend's house in Moorfields. When about fourteen of the conspirators had escaped, the soldiers arrived, and captured the remainder of the party-nine prisoners-and their arms and ammunition.

On the publication of the Gazette, the next morning, with the proclamation of the reward for the apprehension of Thistlewood, London was thrown into consternation, from the natural supposition that this plot was but the first movement of a great insurrection. But there is no evidence that it ever extended beyond the few desperate men who were immediately concerned in it. The vigilance of the government and the magistracy throughout the kingdom detected no more schemes of rebellion, though there were flying rumours from time to time of

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marches of armies of Radicals, who were to burn the towns and overturn the throne. Those who are old enough to have a distinct recollection of those times are astonished now to think how great was the panic which could exist without any evidence at all; how prodigious were the Radical forces which were always heard of, but never seen; how every shabby and hungry-looking man met on the road was pronounced a Radical;' how country-gentlemen, wellarmed, scoured the fields and lanes, and met on heaths to fight the enemy who never came; and how, even in the midst of towns, young ladies carried heavy planks and ironing boards, to barricade windows, in preparation for sieges from thousands of rebels, whose footfall was long listened for in vain through the darkness of the night. This imaginary state of the times was used by the alarmists as an argument against popular education (among other purposes to which it was turned); the plea being that the leaders of the Radicals, having circulated proclamations, must be able to write; and that this fact sufficiently proved the necessity of keeping the discontented dumb.

On the next Sunday, February 27th, the ministers publicly returned thanks for their preservation, in the Chapel Royal, St James's. The king, who was at Brighton, recovering from his dangerous illness, was supplied daily with a minute account of the proceedings in regard to the conspirators. What he heard seems to have failed to convince him of the true causes and extent of the treasonable schemes of the day; for in the speech delivered by commission previous to the dissolution of parliament, on the 13th of March, the following notice is taken of the recent disturbances: 'Deeply as his majesty laments that designs and practices such as those which you have been recently called upon to repress, should have existed in this free and happy country, he cannot sufficiently commend the prudence and firmness with which you directed your attention to the means of counteracting them. If any doubt had remained as to the nature of those principles by which the peace and happiness of the nation were so seriously menaced, or of the excesses to which they were likely to lead, the flagrant and sanguinary conspiracy which has lately been detected must open the eyes of the most incredulous, and must vindicate to the whole world the justice and expediency of those measures to which you thought it necessary to resort, in defence of the laws and constitution of the kingdom.'

On the 20th of April, Thistlewood was condemned to death, after a trial of three days; and on the 1st of May, he and his four principal accomplices were executed. Five more who pleaded guilty had their punishment commuted to transportation for life; and one, who appears to have been present at Cato Street without being aware of the object of the meeting, received a free pardon. The question which must next occur to every one is, what became of Edwards?

He was never punished; and to what extent he was rewarded has never been certainly known. That, after having been at the point of starvation, he was soon able to assist Thistlewood with 'some pounds' at need, is known; and that some of the conspirators

No

attributed their treason to his instigation; and that he went about, giving away hand-grenades and divers weapons of atrocious device, and endeavouring to persuade many persons to blow up the House of Commons; and that he was not brought forward as a witness in the trials of the conspirators, nor himself ever arrested as a participator in their designs. On the day after the execution of Thistlewood, Alderman Wood brought forward a motion in the House, in regard to the conduct of this man; and renewed the subject on the 9th of May, adducing depositions from many persons which had been brought before him in his magisterial capacity, charging Edwards with the promulgation of horrible schemes for the destruction of the ministers and the parliament, and with many direct attempts to seduce needy men to join in those schemes. The information further shewed that he had then been living for six weeks in great affluence, under an assumed name, in the house of a schoolmaster, in St George's, Hanover Square, his host having no idea, till informed by Edwards himself, whom he was harbouring. permission, however, was given by government for justice to overtake this wretch. The ministerial members enlarged on the necessity of employing such agency for government purposes in critical times; drew nice distinctions between the offices of spy and informer; disputed about the amount of Edwards's new affluence; ridiculed Alderman Wood, and his supposition that the home-office would proceed against Edwards on the depositions furnished to Lord Sidmouth by magistrates; and finally negatived the motion for a select committee, to inquire into the conduct of this acknowledged traitor. From that time, Edwards disappeared; and nothing more was heard of him but an occasional rumour that he was living in Ireland, or on the continent, in ease and affluence. He escaped punishment from the hands of man; but his case was so flagrant and so universally understood, that probably no one of the meanest of the sufferers from poverty and ignorance whom he endeavoured to seduce would have exchanged conditions with him, loaded as his name was with infamy, and his soul with the doom of his victims.

In Scotland, an outbreak occurred this spring. At the end of March, a vague alarm began to spread of some approaching disturbance; and the peaceable work-people were visited by commands, from unknown quarters, to cease their work. On Sunday, April 2d, a treasonable proclamation was found posted up on the walls all through Glasgow, inviting the people to effect a revolution, and commanding a cessation of all labour. On the Monday morning, everybody stood idle, to see what was going to happen; all, except the people of some cotton-mills, who went to work as usual, but dared not return after breakfast. Nothing ensued, except the calling out of the military and the preparations of the magistracy for defence against some attack of whose nature they were, and ever remained, entirely ignorant; for the alarm continued a mystery. Two days afterwards, one of the Stirlingshire Yeomanry was met, near Kilsyth, by a party of armed men, who demanded his weapons. Some shots were exchanged,

and the man returned to Kilsyth. A detachment of twenty men was immediately sent out to scour the roads; and they found a party of rebels, about fifty in number, posted on some high ground in Bonnymuir. The rebels made some resistance, but were soon overpowered, some being wounded, and nineteen made prisoners. It appeared that most of these poor creatures had been tempted hither from Glasgow, in the expectation of joining an army of four or five thousand men, who were to take the Carron Ironworks, and thus supply themselves with artillery. On the side of the authorities, no death was caused but that of a horse; but the commanding-officer and three of his party were wounded. This is the affair which goes by the name of the Battle of Bonnymuir. Numerous arrests were made, in various parts of Scotland; but the excitement caused was not great, and soon at an end. In a few days, everybody was at work again, as if nothing had happened; and the trials, which took place in July and August, engaged little attention. Of the persons convicted, all were pardoned except three; of these, two had been active at Bonnymuir, and the third was one of those reckless agitators who were, at that time, the curse of the suffering classes of society.

It was while the Cato-Street conspirators were lying in prison that the leaders of the Manchester movement-Hunt and his companions-underwent their trial, and received sentence. The intervening months had done much to undeceive some of Hunt's followers as to the character of their leader, and the prospects of any cause intrusted to such hands.

In the close intercourse of imprisonment and preparation for trial, Hunt lost all the attributes of the hero, with which the credulous imaginations of his admirers had invested him when he played the orator. One of these, his fellow-prisoner, declares that he could not endure to entertain an unworthy opinion of any of his comrades, and least of all of him who occupied such a position as Hunt's. 'I deemed all reformers as good as myself,' declares Bamford; and I knew that I could answer for the sincerity and disinterestedness of my own intentions. It was not until years had elapsed, that observation and reflection enabled me to penetrate the mist which had so long enveloped me; then it was that I became aware of the real nature of past transactions, and of the character of some who had been my political friends and fellow-workers in the cause of reform.' The evidence was pretty clear in the case of Hunt, as soon as he was lodged in Lancaster Castle, where he 'gave way to fits of impatience because no one appeared to bail him;' 'generally made use of the strongest terms he could, at the moment, command;' and shewed exhibitions of violent feeling.' In London, it appeared that 'he became annoying and offensive, and his best friends were sometimes compelled to defend themselves by not being at home.' On his return from Lancaster to Manchester, as he sat on the box-seat,' the hero of the procession, there was that in his manners which made his ingenuous admirer almost doubt whether he who loved himself so well, could ever really love his country for its own sake.' 'Hunt

CHAP. I.]

continually doffed his hat, waved it lowly, bowed gracefully, and now and then spoke a few kind words to the people; but if some five or ten minutes elapsed without a huzza or two, or the still more pleasing sounds: "Hunt for ever!" he would rise from his seat, turn round, and cursing poor Moorhouse in limbs, soul, or eyes, he would say: "Why don't you shout, man? why don't you shout? Give them the hip!" When the hurrah was produced by the 'hip' of the panting and hoarse subaltern behind, 'he would resume his seat, and the bowing and hat-waving went on as before.' On the trial, when the defence was to begin in the afternoon, by which time the audience might probably be weary, Hunt reveals himself again to the humbler defendants: "Now, Bamford, I'll tell you what you must do, if called this afternoon; you must talk against time."-"Talk against time! what's that?"-" You must talk to put on time, in order to prevent them from calling upon me, under any circumstances, to-night. Then came the denouncing in court of his friend Carlile, at that time under punishment; and next-'the worst thing' his admirer 'ever knew him do'-slandering Mrs Thistlewood. Here was enough the charm of the mob-orator was dissolved. 'At times I had some difficulty to avoid laughing in Hunt's face; at times I was vexed at being a party in such a piece of contemptible vanity. I contrasted all this glare and noise with the useful results of calm, sober thought, and silent determination; and I made up my mind that, when once out of this, I would not, in future, be a party in such trumpery exhibitions-in the unworthy setting up of the instrument instead of the principle of a great cause.' This is but a fair representation of the relation between the demagogue and his followers in all critical times of any state; and if such critical times cannot but arise in every state from the inevitable inequalities of human condition, those have much to answer for who, by needlessly abridging liberty of popular speech and action, stimulate the powers of the demagogue, and the passions of the simple and ignorant, who know of no better leader.

The simple-minded men who had followed Hunt were surprised, when brought into the presence of the privy-council, at the actual appearance and manners of the rulers of the land, whom they had regarded as their cruel persecutors. They found no cruelty and ferocity in the faces and demeanour of the tyrants; the 'good-looking person in a plumcoloured coat, with a gold ring on the small finger of his left hand, on which he sometimes leaned his head,' while eyeing the prisoners-Lord Castlereagh; or the person who addressed them-Lord Sidmouth -'a tall, square, and bony figure, upwards of fifty years of age, with thin and rather gray hair, forehead broad and prominent,' and whose 'mild and intelligent eyes' looked forth from 'cavernous orbits;' his manner affable, and much more encouraging to freedom of speech than' had been expected. Perhaps there was something of the same surprise on the other side. It certainly appears that the prisoners were treated with kindness and respect by the great men they had to deal with, from the home

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secretary to the police officials, when the parties were brought face to face. If they could have known each other better beforehand-their feelings, ideas, and interests-perhaps there would have been no Six Acts on the one hand, or Spa-fields and Manchester meetings on the other. As it was, the leaders and comrades of the discontented had to take their trial at York, on the 16th of this month of March 1820: they were found guilty, and were to appear for judgment, in the Court of King's Bench, at the end of April. They were found guilty of unlawful assembling, for the purpose of moving and inciting to contempt and hatred of the government; and their sentences were various terms of imprisonment, in different jails, and the giving of large securities for future good behaviour. Hunt spent the next two years and a half in Ilchester jail, whence he sent forth incessant complaints of bad treatmentcomplaints which may fairly be considered as efforts, natural in such a man, to keep himself in the eye of the world, as his followers appear to have been satisfied with the usage they met with in their several places of confinement. Some of them learned certain lessons, through the experience of their adventures, which enlightened them as to the causes of social evils which they had hoped to remedy by political action. They found, on occasion of the trial, that among us at York,' 'the same really contemptible feeling of classism, the curse of England and Englishmen, and of Englishwomen also, existed in too great a degree among the witnesses. There were the "broad-cloth" and the " narrow-cloth " ones-the rich and the poor; and the former seldom sought opportunities for intercommunication with the latter, but rather shunned them.' The conclusion drawn is one which it is worth some suffering to arrive at First of all, [for men] to respect themselves; next, to invite to a respectful equality by unoffending manners; and, thirdly, to assert their right position in society, by withholding the smallest deference to mere assumption. This would be quite sufficient, without rudeness or noise, to restore the natural balance of society.' Such conclusions, arrived at by men whose action is a part of the history of their time, are a worthy subject of historical record.

One other trial, for the seditions of the preceding year, remained—that of Sir Charles Wolseley and a coadjutor, Mr Harrison, for their conduct and speech at a meeting in favour of parliamentary reform, at Stockport, in July 1819. The sentence was eighteen months' imprisonment, and the giving of securities at the expiration of the term.

With the new reign, new interests openedinterests so general, and admitting of such overt expression, that the spies and secret agitators who had, of late, become the curse of the country, found themselves driven from their diabolical game. They are not traceable among the scenes and movements which were now to engross the mind of the nation, and fix the attention of the world.