in this case if the political and moral state of Bristol had not been bad. Its political state was disgraceful. The venality of its elections was notorious. It had a close corporation, between whom and the citizens there was no community of feeling on municipal subjects. The lower parts of the city were the harbourage of probably a worse seaport populace than any other place in England, while the police was ineffective and demoralised. There was no city in which a greater amount of savagery lay beneath a society proud, exclusive, and mutually repellent, rather than enlightened and accustomed to social co-operation. These are circumstances which go far to account for the Bristol riots being so fearfully bad as they were. Of this city, Sir Charles Wetherellthen at the height of his unpopularity as a vigorous opponent of the Reform Bill-was recorder; and there he had to go, in the last days of October, in his judicial capacity. Strenuous efforts had becn

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made to exhibit before the eyes of the Bristol people the difference between the political and judicial functions of their recorder, and to shew them that to receive the judge with respect was not to countenance his political course; yet the symptoms of discontent were such as to induce the mayor, Mr Pinney, to apply to the home-office for military aid. Lord Melbourne sent down some troops of horse, which were quartered within reach, in the neighbourhood of the city. It was an unfortunate circumstance that, owing to the want of a common interest between the citizens and the corporation, scarcely any gentlemen offered their services as special constables but such as were accustomed to consider the lower classes with contempt as a troublesome rabble, and rather relished an occasion for defying and humbling them. Such was the preparation made in the face of the fact that Sir Charles Wetherell could not be induced to relinquish his public entry, though

warned of danger by the magistrates themselves; and of the other important fact that the London rogues, driven from the metropolis by the new police, were known to be infesting every place where there was hope of confusion and spoil.

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On Saturday, October 29, Sir Charles Wetherell entered Bristol in pomp; and before he reached the Mansion House at noon, he must have been pretty well convinced, by the hootings and throwing of stones, that he had better have foregone the procession. For some hours the special constables and the noisy mob in front of the Mansion House exchanged discourtesies of an emphatic character, but there was no actual violence till night. At night, the Mansion House was attacked, and the Riot Act was read; but the military were not brought down, as they ought to have been, to clear the streets, The mayor had religious scruples,' and was 'humane;' and his indecision was not overborne by any aid from his brother-magistrates. When the military were brought in, it was after violence had been committed, and when the passions of the mob were much excited. Sir Charles Wetherell escaped from the city that night. During the dark hours, sounds were heard provocative of further riot; shouts in the streets, and the hammering of workmen who were boarding up the lower windows of the Mansion House and the neighbouring dwellings. On the Sunday morning, the rioters broke into the Mansion House without opposition; and from the time they got into the cellars, all went wrong, Hungry wretches and boys broke the necks of the bottles, and Queen Square was strewed with the bodies of the dead-drunk. The soldiers were left without orders, and their officers without that sanction of the magistracy in the absence of which they could not act, but only parade; and in this parading, some of the soldiers naturally lost their tempers, and spoke and made gestures on their own account, which did not tend to the soothing of the mob. This mob never consisted of more than five or six hundred; and twenty thousand orderly persons attended the churches and chapels that day, to whom no appeal on behalf of peace and the law was made. At a word through the pastors from the magistrates, indicating how they should act, the heads of these families could easily have co-operated to secure the protection of the city. The mob declared openly what they were going to do; and they went to work unchecked-armed with staves and bludgeons from the quays, and with iron palisades from the Mansion House-to break open and burn the bridewell, the jail, the bishop's palace, the custom-house, and Queen Square. They gave half an hour's notice to the inhabitants of each house in the square, which they then set fire to in regular succession, till two sides, each measuring 550 feet, lay in smoking ruins. The bodies of the drunken were seen roasting in the fire. The greater number of the rioters were believed to be under twenty years of age, and some were mere children; some Sunday scholars, hitherto well conducted, and it may be questioned whether one in ten knew anything of the Reform Bill, or the offences of Sir Charles Wetherell. On the Monday morning, after

all actual riot seemed to be over, the soldiery at last made two slaughterous charges. More horse arrived, and a considerable body of foot soldiers; and the constabulary became active; and from that time the city was in a more orderly state than the residents were accustomed to see it.

The inhabitants at large were not disposed to acquiesce quietly in the disgrace of their city. Public meetings were held to petition the government to make inquiry into the causes and circumstances of the disturbances, the petitioners emphatically declaring their opinion, that Bristol owed all the calamities they deplored to the system under the predominance of which they had taken place.' The magistrates were brought to trial, and so was Colonel Brereton, who was understood to be in command of the whole of the military. The result of that court-martial caused more emotion throughout the kingdom than all the slaughtering and burning, and the subsequent executions which marked that fearful season.

It was a year before the trial of the magistrates was entered upon. The result was the acquittal of the mayor, and the consequent relinquishment of the prosecution of his brother-magistrates. While every one saw that great blame rested somewhere, no one was disposed to make a victim of a citizen who found himself, at a time of extreme emergency, in the midst of a system which rendered a proper discharge of his duty impossible. All agreed that Bristol must no longer be misgoverned; but no one desired to punish the one man, or the three or five men, in whose term of office the existing corruption and inefficiency were made manifest by a sort of accident. Instead of complaining that Mr Pinney and the other aldermen escaped, men mourned that Colonel Brereton had not lain under the same conditions of impunity.

The magistrates believed that they had done their part in desiring that the commanders of the military would act according to their discretion. Colonel Brereton believed that, before he could act, he must have a more express sanction from the magistracy than he could obtain. Between them, nothing was done. The mayor was not the only 'humane' man. Colonel Brereton also was 'humane.' He saw a crowd of boys and women, with a smaller proportion of men, collected without apparent aim, and in a mood to be diverted, as he thought, from serious mischief. While inwardly chafing at being left without authority-not empowered to do anything but ride about-he rode in among them, made use of his popularity, spoke to them, and let them shake hands with him. This would have been well, if all had ended well. But the event decided the case against him. He knew how unfavourably these acts would tell on his trial. Full of keen sensibilities, nothing in him was more keen than his sense of professional honour. He sank under the conflict between his civil and professional conscience. He was crushed in the collision between the natural and the conventional systems of social and military duty in which he found himself entangled. He had been too much of the man to make war, without overruling authorisation, on the misguided and defenceless; and he

CHAP. V.]

found himself too much of the soldier to endure conventional dishonour. His trial began on the 9th of the next January. For four days, he struggled on in increasing agony of mind. On the night of the 12th, he, for the first time, omitted his visit at bedtime to the chamber of his children-his two young motherless daughters: he was heard walking for hours about his room; and when the court assembled in the morning, it was to hear that the prisoner had shot himself through the heart. The whole series of events at Bristol became more and more disconnected in the general mind with the subject of the Reform Bill, as facts came out which shewed that other proximate causes of disturbance would have, no doubt, wrought the same effects, sooner or later, as well as the one which chanced to occur. The question which did, from that time, lie deep down in thoughtful minds was, how long our Christian profession and our heathen practice-our social and military combinations-were to be supposed compatible, after a man who united in himself the virtues of both had been driven to suicide by their contrariety.

It is necessary to note the social disturbances which followed upon the rejection of the second Reform Bill; but it is no less necessary to point out that the turbulence of this, as of all seasons, is easy to observe, while no account can be given which can represent to the imagination the prevailing calmness and order of the time. Calmness and order present no salient point for narrative and description; but their existence must not therefore be overlooked. A truly heroic state of self-discipline and obedience to law prevailed over the land, while in particular spots the turbulent were able to excite the giddy and the ignorant to riot. The nation was steadily rising to its most heroic mood; that mood in which, the next year, it carried through the sublime enterprise which no man, in the darkest moment, had any thought of surrendering.

CHAPTER V.

HE preparations for the renewal of the struggle for parliamentary reform began immediately after the prorogation, and were of a very serious character on every hand. As might be expected from the protraction of the quarrel, each party went further in its own direction; and the king, whose station was in the middle, became occasionally irresolute, through anxiety; an anxiety which plainly affected his health.

On the 31st of October, the London Political Union held an important meeting, which was so fully attended that the multitude adjourned to Lincoln's Inn Fields. The object of the day was to decree and organise a National Union, the provincial associations to be connected with it as branches, sending delegates to the central board. Thus far, all had gone well, as regarded these unions. The

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administration had not been obliged to recognise their existence, while undoubtedly very glad of the fact. Whether their existence was constitutional, was one of the two great questions of the day. Hitherto, the government were not obliged to discuss it, in public or private, or to give any opinion; for, till now, the unions had done nothing objectionable. Now, however, the difficulty began. The less informed and more violent members of the London Union insisted upon demanding universal suffrage, and other matters not included in the bill, while the wiser majority chose to adhere to their watchword: The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill.' The minority seceded, and constituted a metropolitan union of their own, whose avowed object was to defeat the ministerial measure, in order to obtain a more thorough opening of the representation. In their advertisements, they declared all hereditary privileges and all distinction of ranks to be unnatural and vicious; and invited the working-men throughout the country to come up to their grand meeting at White Conduit House, on the 7th of November, declaring that such a display of strength must carry all before it. The government brought soldiery round the metropolis, had an army of special constables sworn in-all in a quiet way-and as quietly communicated with the union leaders. On the 5th, the Hatton Garden magistrates informed these leaders that their proposed proceedings were illegal. A deputation begged admission to the presence of the home secretary. Lord Melbourne saw them, and quietly pointed out to them which passages of their address were seditious, if not treasonable, involving in the guilt of treason all persons who attended their meeting for the purpose of promoting the objects proposed. The leaders at once abandoned their design. The ministers were blamed for letting them go, and taking no notice of the seditious advertisement; but no one who, at this distance of time, compares the Melbourne and the Sidmouth days, can doubt that the forbearance was as wise as it was kind. What the offenders needed was better knowledge, not penal restraint, as their conduct in disbanding plainly shewed. The peace of society lost nothing, and the influence of the government gained much, by the ministers shewing themselves willing to enlighten rather than to punish ignorance, and to reserve their penalties, where circumstances allowed it, for wilful and obstinate violations of the law. The affair, however, alarmed the sovereign and the more timid of the aristocracy who had hitherto supported the reform measure.

At the same time, Lord Grey was beset by deputations from all ranks and classes, urging the shortening of the recess to the utmost, and the expediting the measure by all possible means; and especially by inducing the king to create peers in sufficient numbers to secure the immediate passage of the bill through the House of Lords. All the interests of the kingdom were suffering under suspense and disappointment, and the popular indignation against the obstructive peers was growing dangerous. This proposition of a creation of peers was the other great question of the day.

And seldom or never has there been a question more serious. Men saw now that the word 'revo.. lution,' so often in the mouths of the anti-reformers, might prove to be not so inapplicable as had been supposed; that, if the peers should not come immediately and voluntarily, and by the light of their own convictions, into harmony with the other two powers of the government, it would prove true that, as they were themselves saying, 'the balance of the constitution was destroyed.' Was it not already so? it was asked. Unless a miraculous enlightenment was to be looked for between October and December, was there any alternative but civil war, and, in some way or another, overbearing the Lords? Civil war was out of the question for such a handful of obstructives. The king, commons, and people could not be kept waiting much longer for the few who shewed no sign of yielding; and it would be the best kindness to all parties to get the obstructives outvoted, by an exertion of that kingly power whose existence nobody disputed, however undesirable might be its frequent exercise. From day to day was this consideration urged upon the premier, who never made any reply to it. It was not a time when men saw the full import of what they asked; nor was this a subject on which the prime-minister could open his lips to deputations. He must have felt, like every responsible and every thoughtful man, that no more serious and mournful enterprise could be proposed to any minister than to destroy the essential character of any one of the three component parts of the government; and that, if such a destruction should prove to be a necessary condition of the requisite purification of another, it was the very hardest and most fearful of conditions. Men were talking lightly, all over the kingdom, of the necessity of swamping the opposition of the peers; they were angry, and with reason, with the living men who made the difficulty; and nobody contradicted them when they said that the extinction of the wisdom of these particular men in the national counsels would be no great loss; but they did not consider that the existing Roden and Newcastle, and Eldon and Rolle, were not the great institution of the British House of Lords, whose function shone back through the history of a thousand years, and might shine onwards through a thousand years more, if the ignorance and selfishness of its existing majority could be overcome on the present occasion by a long patience and a large forbearance. Lord Grey was the last man to degrade his order,' if the necessity could by any means be avoided. It was his first object to carry the reform of the Commons; but it would well-nigh have broken his heart to be compelled to do it through the degradation of the Lords. At this

time, while, from his silence, multitudes believed what they wished, and confidently expected a large creation of peers, it is now known that he had not yet proposed any such measure to the king.

One consequence of the prevalence of an expectation of a batch of new peers, was the parting off from the obstructive Lords of a large number who were called the Waverers. There is always such a set of people in such times; and greatly do they

always embarrass the calculations of the best informed. These kept the issue in uncertainty up to the last moment. On the one part were the honest and enlightened peers who saw that the end of borough corruption was come. On the other part were the honest and unenlightened, or the selfish, who would not have our institutions touched on any pretence whatever; and between them now stood the Waverers, hoping to keep things as they were, but disposed to yield voluntarily, if they could not conquer, rather than be put down by an incursion of

numbers.

There was something unusually solemn in the meeting of parliament on the 6th of December. It may surprise men now, and it will surprise men more hereafter, to remark the tone of awe-struck expectation in which men of sober mind, of cheerful temper, and even of historical learning-that powerful antidote to temporary alarms-spoke and wrote of the winter of 1831-2. A government proclamation, issued on the 22d of November, with the aim of putting down political unions, was found to be as ineffectual as such proclamations always are against associations which can change their rules and forms at pleasure. It appeared strange that the ministers should now begin to make war upon the unions, when their policy hitherto had been to let them alone; a policy befitting men able to learn by the experience of their predecessors in the case of the Catholic Association. There was a general feeling of disappointment, as at an inconsistency, when the proclamation appeared. It has since become known that the administration acted under another will than their own in this matter. In December, Lord Eldon had an interview with the Duke of Wellington, of which he wrote: 'I sat with him near an hour, in deep conversation and most interesting. Letters that he wrote to a great personage produced the proclamation against the unions. But if parliament will not interfere further, the proclamation will be of little use-I think, of no use.' It was certainly, at present, of no use. The National Union immediately put out its assertion that the proclamation did not apply to it, nor to the great majority of unions then in existence. So there sat the monstrous offspring of this strange time, vigilant, farspreading, intelligent, and of incalculable force-a power believed in its season to be greater than that of King, Lords, and Commons; there it sat, watching them all, and ready to take up any duty which any one of them let drop, and force it back into the most reluctant hands. A dark demon was, at the same time, brooding over the land. It chills one's heart now to read the cholera proclamations and orders of that year, and the suggestions of boards of health, to which men looked for comfort, but from which they received much alarm. Men were not then able to conceive of a mild plague; and what they had heard of the cholera, carried back their imaginations to the plagues of the middle ages. Among many dismal recommendations from authority, therefore, we find one which it almost made the public ill to read of— that, when the sick could not be carried to cholera hospitals, their abodes should be watched and guarded, to prevent communication; that the word