in which they are held. Such assemblies as those of Manchester, not only do not contribute to the formation of opinion; in any fair sense, they do not even express it. At least they do not express the opinion which, if they have any meaning at all, it must be their very business to exhibit, that of the particular district in which they are held. On the contrary, the voices of the local community are, in such assemblies, overborne by those of myriads of nameless intruders, acting under the command of mountebanks as ignorant and as itenerant as themselves. Just before the fatal rendezvous at Manchester, a revolutionary provincial newspaper boasted, that, on the approaching day of meeting, the population of that immense town would be doubled. The boast was probably exaggerated; but that a vast influx of itenerant strangers took place on the occasion, none can dispute. And then the question arises, can there be a grosser misnomer of an assembly so constituted, than to denominate it the Manchester meeting ?-This view of the subject becomes most important, if a distinguished member of opposition was correct in supposing, that the large meetings held during the last year, consisted in a great measure of one and the same body of persons, who, like a strolling company of actors, trudged from place to place, every where repeating the same dull, but mischievous farce. If the right honourable leader was founded in his remark, can any thing be more preposterous than to bewail the prohibition of such assemblies, as if it were a death blow to the expression of public opinion? The Sun of British Liberty, it is said, is set; the people of England are silenced; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever! Scarcely have we given way to our sorrows at this melancholy annunciation-scarcely have we, with streaming eyes, consigned Magna Charta to its kindred antiquarian dust, and mournfully left the Bill of Rights to be food for worms when we are suddenly re-assured-the prospect shiftsboards, scenes, and sliders give way-and with smiles we discover that we were weeping over the suppressed opinions, not of the people of England, but of a company of strolling mountebanks!

Next to this act, we may mention those relating to training, and to the seizure of arms.-The first prohibits meetings for drilling and training, unless authorized in such manner as there mentioned, on pain of imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or transportation for a term not exceeding seven years, to the persons employed in drilling others; and, as to the persons who attend to be drilled, on pain of fine, and imprisonment not exceeding two years.-The other act empowers justices, upon oath being made to them that arms or weapons are in the possession of any person, or kept in any house or place, for purposes believed to be dangerous to the public peace, to issue warrants to search for, seize, and detain such arms or weapons; and the peace-officer executing

such warrant, may, if refused admission into the suspected house or place, enter it by force, either by day or by night. The latter act is local, and is to expire on the 25th day of March, 1822. Of these two acts, the first met with the almost unanimous support of both houses of parliament. The other was strenuously opposed. The provision authorizing a search for arms by night, was deprecated as laying the foundation for much private oppression and abuse; but the objection admits of this among other answers: that the evil meant to be repressed was not only great and extensively diffused, but was the result of a secret combination among considerable numbers; that the law can grapple with such an evil only by dint of promptitude and surprise; and that nothing could be more foolish, in a contest of this nature, than to give the adversary the unlimited command of the hours of darkness, especially during the winter months. In effect, the provision is a severe remedy for a monstrous evil. The act was also opposed as being unconstitutional in its principle; and here again, but with somewhat more of plausibility, at least, than in the instance of the Seditious Assemblies' Act, an appeal was preferred to the Declaration of Rights, which says that the subjects, which are Protestants, may have arms for their defence, suitable to their condition, and as allowed by law.'

The measures we have hitherto described, chiefly aimed at repressing the bolder and more overt acts, or at least at embarrassing the actual preliminary movements, of the disturbers of the public peace. But there was another branch of the mischief, which could be reached only by regulations of a different kind. For some time past, a part of the public press had distinguished itself by an effrontery of licentiousness, without any former example. The stamp act imposed a certain duty on newspapers and other publications containing news and political intelligence; but whether this description could be understood to comprise publications which, though appearing periodically, and wholly of a political character, affected rather to deal in discussion than to convey intelligence, was a point evidently admitting of much question. Availing themselves of this doubt, to avoid, if not to evade, the stamp-duty, a set of pestilent works were circulated at the lowest prices, and in fact swarmed in all parts of the country, threatening to devour every green thing. The Black Dwarf, the Republican, and the Medusa, were, we believe, the most conspicuous of these performances; and the doctrines which they promulgated were such as might fully justify the assumption of titles like the last. They wore, indeed, the saxificus vultus'— a form and aspect that might congeal the beholder with horror. They spoke a language hitherto unknown to Englishmen ;-the mingled and virulent dialect of treason, blasphemy, malice, hatred,

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and all uncharitableness. This was in their graver mood; but they had their intervals of facetiousness also; when, quitting the heights of revolutionary tragedy, they condescended to disport themselves in a strain of pleasantry, rivalled only by the murderous wit that attended the memorable noyades in the Loire. In a word, the Heberts and Chaumettes, the scorn and aversion of Robespierre himself, (for even they that love night, love not such nights as these,) seemed, in these writers, to have transmigrated into the abused persons of Englishmen. The pestiferous words of this fraternity have come but by halves to our ears;' and we are not very desirous, either of further acquaintance with them ourselves, or of contributing to make them known to our readers. Yet a single specimen of their moral taste and temper-unum de crinibus anguem,―we may perhaps be allowed to exhibit. A learned, virtuous, and amiable judge, having, in a charge delivered to the grand jury of York, expressed it to be his honest and conscientious opinion that this country was really in a flourishing condition, and that there was no foundation for alarm or complaint,' the sentiment was noticed by the Medusa in the following terms :'When men are starved and insulted, are assassinations to be won'dered at? Or is it not more wonderful that they do not more fre'quently occur? Could it excite any surprise if any deserving 'but distressed being, whose family is crying for bread, and of ' which there are tens of thousands in every neighbourhood, should raise his dagger, and plunge it into the bosom of a monster who 'could coolly insult his sufferings? Every one whose mind was not 'perverted would extol the deed, and say it was a praise-worthy act. It is, Sir, a spirit that ought to be encouraged, and requires only to be properly directed, to be of great national advantage.-The 'name of the insolent wretch must be recorded; his deeds are evil, 'and, if the Lord does not, I hope the people will, reward him ' according to his works.'

In the extract just given, if the most prominent cause of disgust be the unmixed wickedness of the sentiments it inculcates, the next object of horror is its portentous contrariety of spirit to all that has hitherto characterized the dispositions of Englishmen. The inhabitants of this island have, by one of their own poets, been pronounced infamous for suicide;'-the charge was urged with the bitter exaggeration of a satirist ;-but when before have we been celebrated for praising and encouraging deserving assassins? This deviation from the old national feelings and principles is among the most conspicuous features of the disciples of Radicalism; and, to do them justice, they are as little national in their affections as in their morals. Formal malcontents have loved their country, while they detested its rulers; and, at the very moment of disparaging and condemning whatever was visible or tangible

around them, they have still clasped an ideal England to their hearts. The radicals exhibit the real hatred, unredeemed by the romantic affection; and are content not to be Englishmen, even in imagination. If there be any one constituent part or element of our national greatness, which might be considered as of no party,— which, like the common sun, the air, the skies,' might be deemed incapable of geographical division,-which might have been expected to touch a vein even in the most disaffected bosom,—it is the fame of our arms. Such indeed has hitherto been the fact; -the very outlaw can discover no region exempt from the magic influence of this sentiment; an alien in every thing else, his irrepressible sympathy with the military glory of his country tells him that he is not wholly expatriated; and, renouncing all other consanguinity with her, he instinctively claims kindred with the blood of her heroes. None but my brave English could have done this,' exclaimed the unfortunate James, captivated by the sight of that prowess which crushed his hopes. But a radical is made of sterner stuff than a tyrant. Will it be believed that, in the dialect of the new school, the common appellation of contempt for a soldier, is to call him a Waterloo-man? Who could have thought that the name of that field,-a name endeared to us by associations the tenderest and the most exalted,—a name which, like those of Cressy and Agincourt, will be pronounced by the remotest posterity with a pause of veneration,-a name by which, as by that of Marathon of old, future orators will adjure the slumbering valour of their countrymen, and evoke the genius of national honour from the dead, that such a name should by any compatriot of those whose exploits have immortalized it, be held up only as a by-word, and a term of scoffing and derision?

-- Lord Grenville, in a passage we have before quoted, intimates with equal justice and candour, that it has long been the practice in this country, to administer with tenderness, even in cases of acknowledged wrong, the laws affecting the rights of the subject. But this very circumstance shows that the magnitude of the evil will not be adequately explained by the mere fact of the lenity which it has experienced. Libels have never been wanting among us, and the libeller has, in numberless instances, been suffered to fret his hour unmolested: but when before did sufferance produce such consequences? Under the impunity of a single year, the mischief has attained an immensely greater size, than heretofore under that of a century. Is not this a proof that other than merely negative causes have been at work? Must we not infer the existence of something peculiarly vicious in the habit, when we find that the mere absence of remedies has generated a disease so deadly? Lord Coke could formerly say with Tacitus, Convicia, si irascaris, tua divulgas; spreta, exolescunt. If you seek to revenge

slanders, you publish them as your own; if you despise them, they vanish.' Is it not to be considered as a phenomenon, when maxims adopted by the joint authority of philosophy and law are found to have lost their efficacy?

The remedy, however, was at length resorted to; the terrors of justice were put in motion; and, in the case of one unhappy hawker of penny-blasphemy in London, and of two more (as we believe, but we cannot speak with certainty) in the country, a conviction ensued. The effects were such as sufficiently to illustrate the inadequacy of the existing laws. First, the individual to whom we have particularly alluded, availed himself of the privilege allowed to persons charged with bailable offences, of traversing, or postponing his trial; and, during the whole of the intervening period, his noxious compositions, gaining notoriety and celebrity from the accusation, triumphed in a still increasing sale. The duration of a trial protracted through several days, only gave the Buisance a fresh impulse and an extended range; the whole town seemed to teem with the most abandoned blasphemies, the unhappy vulgar flocking to the repository whence they chiefly issued, as men flocked to visit the rattle-snake in the Haymarket, whose poisonous bite had killed a human being. This was indeed frui Dis iratis; the animadversion of the law added wings to the offence. Even after the conviction of the delinquent, there were no direct means of seizing his stock of unsold libels; and they would have been sought with greater avidity than ever, had not the expedient been resorted to of taking possession of them in satisfaction of the fine which made part of his sentence. To such shifts was the majesty of justice reduced, in attempting to arrest the progress of a declared plague! Happily, no rich patron of blasphemy paid the fine, or this legitimate stratagem would have availed nothing But, though the wares were thus destroyed, the manufacturer remained; he even boasted that the leisure of his prison afforded him fresh facilities for the pursuit of his calling; and one number at least of his own paper, the Republican, was published by him when in confinement, which, both in religion and in politics, fully supported his inverted fame. If the unhappy conviet himself could be thus bold, no wonder that the rest of the crew should rise in andacity. Numerous prosecutions were commenced against them; but they abated not a jot of heart or hope; the Medusa, Gorgoneis infecta venenis, became yet more furious; and it appeared to have been truly vaunted by one of the apostles of radicalism, that the sect had now learned to despise the dungeon-system.

It is trite enough to remark, how greatly the influence of that which, with a mixture of literal and figurative meaning, we commonly call the press, has increased in modern times. The process of printing, mechanically considered, has undergone improvements