The

judgment upon the facts presented to them, or were not unwilling to spread a panic which would leave parliament for an indefinite time to its ordinary struggles for the interests of particular classes, to the comparative neglect of the welfare of the great body of the people. But, under the influence of these reports, it would have been impossible to have made such a resistance to the government as would have prevented the enactment of stringent measures, one of which was decidedly unconstitutional. Bills were brought in and passed by large majorities, to guard against and avert the dangers which had been so alarmingly proclaimed. first of these renewed the act for the prevention and punishment of attempts to seduce soldiers and sailors from their allegiance; the second extended to the prince-regent all the safeguards against treasonable attempts which secure the actual sovereign; the third was for the prevention of seditious meetings. The last of the four was the most dangerous and the least called for. It gave to the executive power the fearful right of imprisonment without trial. In common parlance, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, under An Act to empower His Majesty to secure and detain such persons as His Majesty shall suspect are conspiring against his person and government.' The suspension was, however, in this instance, limited to the ensuing 1st of July.

The Habeas Corpus Suspension Act was passed on the 3d of March; the bill for restraining seditious meetings did not become law till the 29th of March. Within a week after the passing of the act for imprisonment without trial, and before the magistrates had received any accession to their power as to the dispersion of tumultuous assemblies, an occurrence took place at Manchester, which was at once evidence of the agitated condition of distressed multitudes in the manufacturing districts, and of the extreme weakness of their purposes. This was the famous march of the Blanketeers. And yet, when the renewed suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was proposed in June, the report of the secret committee entered into minute detail of this senseless project, as one of the arguments for tampering again with the liberties of the whole kingdom. A plain and honest account of this affair is given by Samuel Bamford. According to his narrative, William Benbow, the shoemaker, had taken a great share in getting up and arranging a vast meeting, subsequently called the Blanket Meeting, for the purpose of marching to London to petition the princeregent in person. Bamford himself wholly condemned the measure. He deprecated the blind zeal of those who had proposed it; he believed they were instigated by those who would betray them. Up to this time the maxim of the reformers had been: 'Hold fast by the laws.' New doctrines now began to be broached, which, if not in direct violation of the law, were ill-disguised subterfuges for its evasion. The Blanket Meeting, however, took place in St Peter's Field at Manchester. It consisted, according to Bamford, of four or five thousand operatives-according to the second report

of the Lords' secret committee, of ten or twelve thousand. 'Many of the individuals,' says Bamford, were observed to have blankets, rugs, or large coats, rolled up and tied knapsack-like on their backs; some carried bundles under their arms; some had papers, supposed to be petitions, rolled up; and some had stout walking-sticks.' The magistrates came upon the field and read the riot act; the meeting was dispersed by the military and constables; three hundred commenced a straggling march, followed by a body of yeomanry, and a hundred and eighty reached Macclesfield at nine o'clock at night. Some were apprehended, some lay in the fields. The next morning the numbers had almost melted away; 'about a score arrived at Leek, and six only were known to pass Ashbourne Bridge.' More terrible events, however, were in preparation. According to the second report of the Lords' secret committee: 'It was on the night of the 30th of March that a general insurrection was intended to have commenced at Manchester. The magistrates were to be seized; the prisoners were to be liberated; the soldiers were either to be surprised in their barracks, or a certain number of factories were to be set on fire, for the purpose of drawing the soldiers out of their barracks, of which a party stationed near them for that object were then to take possession, with a view of seizing the magazine.'

'This atrocious conspiracy was detected by the vigilance of the magistrates, and defeated by the apprehension and confinement of some of the ringleaders a few days before the period fixed for its execution.' Bamford records, that on the day after the Blanket Meeting, 'a man dressed much like a dyer' came to him at Middleton, 'to propose that in consequence of the treatment which the Blanketeers had received at the meeting and afterwards, "a Moscow of Manchester" should take place that very night.' Bamford and his friends dismissed him with the assurance that he was the dupe of some designing villain. The scheme which this dupe or scoundrel propounded was exactly that described in the Lords' report. But there were men who did not receive this proposal with disgust and suspicion, as those of Middleton did. The avowed reform-leaders-delegates and Hampden-club men-were under perpetual terror. Some wandered from their homes in dread of imprisonment; others were seized in the bosom of their families. Public meetings were at an end. The fears and passions of large bodies of men had no safety-valve. Open meetings thus being suspended, secret ones ensued; they were originated at Manchester, and assembled under various pretexts. . Their real purpose, divulged only

to the initiated, was to carry into effect the night-attack on Manchester, the attempt at which had before failed for want of arrangement and co-operation.' A little while after this 'Moscow' proposal, a co-delegate came to Bamford, to propose the assassination of all the ministers. We know that this scheme smouldered for several years. The fact was,' says Bamford, 'this unfortunate person, in the confidence of an unsuspecting

CHAP. IX.]

mind, as I believe, had during one of his visits to London, formed a connection with Oliver, the spywhich connection, during several succeeding months, gave a new impulse to secret meetings and plots in various parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire; and ended in the tragedy of Brandreth, Ludlow, and Turner, at Derby.' The course of this tragedy we have now to recount.

It is the only one of the insurrectionary movements of the manufacturing districts, in 1817, that has left any traces of judicial investigation, with the exception of proceedings at York, at which all the stateprisoners were discharged by the grand jury, or acquitted upon trial. All the persons connected with the Blanket expedition, and the expected risings at Manchester, were discharged before trial.

The midland counties of Nottingham, Leicester, and Derby, had been in a disturbed state for several years. The habit of daring outrage was familiar to large numbers of the manufacturing population. We have already exhibited that course of ignorant and brutal violence, known as Luddism. On the 23d of June 1817, Mr Ponsonby described this system, as one that had not originated in political principles; but he expressed his belief that those who had been trained to mischief by its laws had mixed themselves with those who had political objects in view, and that from them had proceeded some of the most atrocious suggestions for the disturbance of the public peace. At the Leicester assizes on the 1st of April, eight men were tried and convicted of the most daring outrages at Loughborough, and six of these offenders were executed on the 17th of the same month. There was not the slightest attempt at this trial to connect the crimes of these men with any political opinions. But amongst a population that for four years had witnessed the night-attacks of armed men upon machinery, and with whom some of the leaders of such organised attacks were in habitual intercourse, it is manifest that the materials for political insurrection were abundantly accumulated. It was not the part of a wise and humane government to permit the feeblest spark of excitement from without to approach these inflammable materials. We do not think that the facts which time has revealed warrant us in going so far as Sir Samuel Romilly, who in his place in parliament declared, on the 27th of January 1818, that in his conscience he believed the whole of the Derbyshire insurrection was the work of the persons sent by government; but we do think that these facts justify a strong conviction that without the agency of these persons the insurrection would not have taken place. On the motion for the first reading of the bill for continuing the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, on the 23d of June, Mr Ponsonby, who had been a member of the secret committee, but had dissented from the majority as to the necessity of the further suspension, stated to the House some of the information gained from the papers and evidence presented to the committee.' In March, a person calling himself a delegate came to London from one of the midland districts, and was introduced to one of similar opinions. He of similar opinions gave

55

discouraging information as to the state of public feeling in the capital. The representations of the delegate as to the impatience of the country districts to throw off the yoke,' as he termed it, were not responded to. But he met two other persons ready to return with him as delegates from London; and Mr Oliver proposed to go along with them, making a fourth delegate. Before they proceeded on their journey, Oliver was in communication with the Home Office; but received no instructions to compromise the safety of any one by tempting them into practices which he afterwards exposed. The co-delegates relied fully on Oliver-the country delegate introduced him to all his friends as a second self. Oliver remained among these people from the 17th of April to the 27th of May, everywhere received as the London delegate. He was examined before the secret committee, and told them he was very shy of giving information; what he said was, that 'London was ready to rise, and only wished to know what assistance could be derived from the country; and that the people of London would not stir first, but would be ready to second any movement from the country. His friend, the country delegate, gave effect to this information, by telling his brethren, the country delegates, that 75,000 individuals could be relied on in the eastern parts of the capital, and 75,000 in the western. Mr Ponsonby thus shewed, with a moderation and candour most advantageously contrasted with the frenzied declamations against individual members of the government, made by such popularity-hunters as Sir Francis Burdett and Mr Grey Bennett, that the representations of Oliver himself, and the representations which he permitted to be made with his knowledge and approval, did excite the wretched individuals, with whom the spy-delegate and the dupe-delegate conversed, to acts of rebellion or insubordination. But Mr Ponsonby only traced Oliver to the 27th of May. We are now enabled to follow his course up to the moment of the Derbyshire insurrection. On the 6th of June an outbreak in Yorkshire was expected, and ten delegates were arrested at Thornhill-lees, near Dewsbury. On the day of the meeting, Oliver called on Mr Willans, a bookseller of Dewsbury, and urged him to attend the meeting of delegates at Thornhill-lees. He had two months before addressed Willans in the most traitorous language. Willans, having some suspicion of the incendiary, refused to go. Oliver himself attended the meeting, and was arrested with the others; but in the evening he was at large in Wakefield, and, entering the coach to go to Leeds, was accosted by a livery servant of Sir John Byng, who commanded the forces in the disturbed districts. This servant, after Oliver was gone, said that a few days before he had driven him in a gig from his master's house to meet a coach. These circumstances were discovered by the activity of Mr Baines, of Leeds, who published them in his influential newspaper; and they formed the subject of a violent debate in the House of Commons on the 16th of June. In a work of considerable historical importance, which appeared in February 1847, and to which we shall

have occasion frequently to refer, this particular transaction was minutely gone into, for the purpose of justifying Lord Sidmouth, as secretary of state for the home department, against the imputations which arose out of the employment of such persons as Oliver. 'None of them,' says the author, 'were employed in the first instance by Lord Sidmouth, but themselves sought him out; and if, which is not probable, they in any instances instigated the conspirators to crime, in order to betray them, the treacherous act must have been entirely their own; as nothing would have excited more his lordship's indignation than the bare idea of so base a proceeding.' The Dean of Norwich has obtained the most satisfactory testimony of Lord Strafford (formerly Sir John Byng) to this opinion of Lord Sidmouth's own conduct, in a letter written in August 1846: Oliver,' Lord Strafford writes, 'was sent to me with a letter from Lord Sidmouth, to the purport that he, Oliver, was going down into that part of the country where meetings were being frequently held, and that he had been desired to communicate to me any information he might obtain as to the time and place of such meetings, in order that I might take timely measures to prevent their taking place; the wish and intention being to prevent, not to encourage them, as was alleged against the government.' Sir John Byng himself was perfectly incapable, as was acknowledged on all hands, of turning the spy into a tempter. We have no doubt that Oliver was a double deceiver. On the 16th of June, Mr Allsop, who had been active at Nottingham in the preservation of the peace, as the Dean of Norwich reports, wrote to Lord Sidmouth as follows: 'I feel myself called upon, in justice to Oliver, to make this communication to your lordship respecting him. The first time I ever saw him was on the 7th of June, on his arrival at Nottingham from Leeds. Although he then knew that a meeting was to take place in the evening, he fixed to leave for Birmingham in the afternoon, and only consented to stay for the meeting at the solicitation of Mr Hooley and myself, in order to furnish us with the necessary information. Oliver expressly stated to us that his instructions from Sir John Byng were, not to conceal anything as to the Yorkshire meeting by which these people could be deceived; and he also stated his instructions from your lordship, not to hold out any encouragement. It was then most explicitly decided, that at the meeting in the evening he should not, in any way whatever, hold out the least encouragement or inducement to the persons who might be there, to take any other steps than such as they might think proper to adopt themselves; and I am persuaded, my lord, that such was this man's conduct accordingly, for his life was in the greatest danger, their suspicion of him being excited by his refusal to remain at Nottingham and countenance their proceedings, and he only consented to stay, at last, to lessen their suspicions.' Of this meeting at Nottingham on the 7th of June, the trials of the Derby traitors convey no record. All evidence was suppressed of any circumstances prior to the 8th of June. We

have now to follow the course of these remarkable trials, with the certainty that the spy of government was at the meeting of the 7th of June, at which this outbreak was organised, and with a tolerably clear conviction, as will become more evident, that the unhappy agents in this insurrection were acted upon by the most extraordinary delusions from without. The defence of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus was, that the leaders of a conspiracy might be seized so as to prevent an outbreak. The peace preservers of Nottingham on the 7th of June induced the government spy to attend a meeting of supposed conspirators, for the purpose of giving them the necessary information. If they had acted upon that information by arresting the conspirators, the Derby insurrection would have been crushed in the egg. The expression of Mr Allsop, it was explicitly decided' that no encouragement should be given by the spy, assumes a discussion previous to the decision. Where there are clear and honest intentions alone, it is not necessary explicitly to decide against the adoption of a treacherous and disgraceful line of conduct.

On Sunday, the 8th of June, there was a remarkable assemblage at Pentridge, a village situated some two miles from the Ambergate station, on the present North Midland Railway. The village is in the hilly and thinly peopled district to the west of the river Derwent. In the neighbourhood of Pentridge there are several other scattered villages-all not far removed from a direct road to Nottingham. About a mile from Pentridge, at Butterley, was a large ironfoundry. Two men in the employ of the proprietors of this foundry went into the White Horse publichouse, at Pentridge, in the morning of the 8th of June, and found a good many persons in the parlour there, 'talking about this revolution.' There was

one amongst them they called 'The Captain.' He had a map in his hand, and the people came in, and kept asking him questions; and he said, there would be no good to be done except a complete overthrow of the government. All the country was to riseall at one time. Many talked thus. They made no secret. They spoke it openly. They did not mind who heard them. They said they had plenty of pikes; and they would go and take Nottingham wholly to themselves; and when they got to Nottingham, every man would have a hundred guineas and plenty of rum, and it would be nothing but a journey of pleasure. This extraordinary assembly lasted six or seven hours. The two men from the ironworks were special constables; but they were afraid to say anything about it. Having agreed to meet on the night of the 9th, after dark, the people separated. The captain, with the map in his hand, was Jeremiah Brandreth, a framework knitter, whose family had received parochial relief. Denman-who was counsel for the prisoners-after Brandreth had been convicted, compared this man with the Corsair of Lord Byron, as one who

Dazzles, leads, yet chills, the vulgar heart; and obtains his superiority by

Mr

In spite of Mr Denman's rhetorical description of the mastery of this man over his weak followers, through the influence of great courage, of uncommon decision, of unrelenting firmness; the influence of an eye like no eye that I ever beheld before, of a countenance and figure formed for activity, enterprise, and command,' we must be content to believe, from the evidence of Brandreth's acts, that he was a frantic enthusiast, goaded to violence by great poverty, by imaginary oppression, and, what is more, by the grossest delusions as to his own power and the strength of his cause. We do not think that he was the less dangerous from his real character and the real circumstances around him; but, we believe, as Mr Denman came to the conclusion, that, in spite of his influence and command, 'he was most clearly himself an instrument wielded by other hands.' On Saturday night, the 7th of June, Oliver goes to a meeting at Nottingham, with instructions from Sir John Byng, 'not to conceal anything as to the Yorkshire meeting by which these people could be deceived.' On Sunday morning the Nottingham captain is heard saying: All the country is to rise, all at one time.' On Monday night he passes the door of a labouring-man at South Wingfield, about three miles from Pentridge, in his way to an old barn up in the field; and he urges the man to come with him, saying that 'the countries, England, Ireland, and France, were to rise that night at ten o'clock;' and that the northern clouds, men from the north, would come down and sweep all before them.' This is somewhat different from the information that Oliver was authorised to give to the Nottingham meeting, that the Yorkshire delegates the northern clouds-were scattered on the previous Friday. It is difficult not to regard the language of Brandreth as pure insanity, especially when we contrast it with the sober sense of some around him. There was an old woman standing by,' says the South Wingfield man, and she tapped him on the shoulder, and said: "My lad, we have got a magistrate here;"' and the labourer himself thought he must be drunk or mad, to think of such things.' But on the madman went. In the old barn at South Wingfield he assembled twenty men, who had pikes and guns, and they went forward, stopping at solitary houses, and demanding guns, and dragging unwilling men out of their beds and hiding-places, and compelling them to march with them. At the farmhouse of a widow, who behaved with unflinching courage, Brandreth fired in at a window, and killed one of her servants, upon arms being refused to him. His followers said he should not have shot that poor innocent man; and he replied, it was his duty to do it. Onwards they marched-the volunteers and the conscripts; and the captain, when they halted at some lone dwellings, and met with any one who refused to march, had his ready exhortation, that 'a great cloud out of the north would sweep all before them;' with the more particular information, that 'it would not be necessary to go further than Nottingham, for London would be taken by the time they got there.' Who can doubt that the unhappy man was dreaming of the '75,000 men in the eastern

6

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parts of the capital, and 75,000 in the western?' Some of the pressed men ran away in the darkness; one refused to march in rank, and upon Brandreth swearing he would shoot him in a moment, the bold fellow stepped up to him with his knife; and the captain turned off from him. During all this march the rain was incessant. By the time they reached the Butterley ironworks, their numbers amounted to about a hundred.* Brandreth was boldly met by Mr Goodwin, the manager of the works, and, when he demanded men, was told: 'You shall not have one of them; you are too many already, unless you were going for a better purpose; disperse! depend upon it, the laws will be too strong for you; you are going with halters about your necks.' Three men took shelter in the office of the works. One man, Isaac Ludlam, who was afterwards convicted and executed, was exhorted by Mr Goodwin not to go on; but he answered, much agitated: 'I am as bad as I can be; I cannot go back.' After a short pause, Brandreth gave the command: 'March.' Soon after, this main body was followed by about fifty other men. On the morning of the 10th of June, Mr Rolleston, a magistrate, went from Nottingham, on the road towards Eastwood, about six miles from Nottingham, and meeting there a considerable body of men armed with pikes, he returned to Nottingham, and procured some troops from the barracks, eighteen privates, commanded by a captain and a subaltern. Upon hearing that the soldiers were coming, the insurgents fled. The captain in command of the hussars, deposed that the military were kept on the alert during the night. He was ordered out with a party, on the road towards Derbyshire, about six in the morning, and approached about sixty men near Eastwood, who fled across the fields. A man in the road tried to form them, but they paid no attention to him. A number of prisoners were taken, and about forty guns and other arms were collected together.

Thus ended 'the Derbyshire insurrection.' For these offences, three men were executed; eleven were transported for life; four were transported for fourteen years; and five were imprisoned for various terms.

There is one piece of evidence connected with these transactions which the Dean of Norwich has overlooked the evidence of Samuel Bamford, a poor weaver, but a man of considerable talent and unquestionable honesty-a man who has now a keen sense of his early mistakes, and a conviction that 'no redemption for the masses can exist, save one that should arise from their own virtue and knowledge.' Bamford was arrested on a suspicion of high treason, and was delivered to the custody of the king's messengers on the 30th of March, who conveyed him from Manchester to London. He was five times examined before the Privy Council; and he describes these examinations as being conducted by Lord Sidmouth with the greatest patience and kindness. He was finally discharged on the 30th

* This is the distinct evidence of the manager of the works. The Dean of Norwich says that, when they arrived at the Butterley ironworks, their numbers amounted to 500. Biography, as well as history, should have regard to accuracy.