and sir Charles Wolseley, the object of their choice, undertook to claim his seat in the house of commons. The ministers and their partisans had the shallow foppery to regard this proceeding as a mere matter of jest. They should have seen in it a practical demonstration, ad absurdam, that Birmingham should be represented. But lord Sidmouth was thrown into the last state of alarm by the novelty of a female reform association at Blackburn. He entered the field against blasphemy and sedition by proclamations and warrants. Among those held to bail was the legislative attorney of Birmingham for words spoken at Stockport.

Manchester, like Birmingham, was unrepresented. A public meeting was announced for the election of a legislatorial attorney. The magistrates made known their resolution to prohibit a meeting for a purpose obviously illegal. The originators of the meeting got over this obstruction by a mere change of title or decoration. They announced a meeting to petition for parliamentary reform. This was clearly within the law. A vast assemblage met on the 16th of August, in an open space, called Peter's Field, at Manchester. Several bodies approached in something like military order, with banners inscribed "Parliamentary Reform," "Annual Parliaments," "Universal Suffrage," "Vote by Ballot." But that which was afterwards urged as particularly ominous and alarming, was the approach of a body of male reformers, keeping time to a cracked bugle, and of two columns of female reformers, with white silk banners. The chairman of the meeting, and the hero of the day, was the same " Mr. Hunt of

Bristol," then so called, who had presided at the Spa Fields' meeting in 1817. This individual was now the chief leader of the extreme radicals. Cobbett, a man of towering talent and public effect, whose political tergiversations have been the result of his impetuous passions rather than of interested calculation, had sought shelter in America from the suspension of the habeas corpus act.* The chairman appeared in his rostrum, and began to harangue the meeting. A body of yeoman cavalry advanced at a rapid pace, and having approached the meeting, drew up to resume something like order, then dashed through the unarmed unresisting crowd, took into custody Hunt, the chairman, and another person, named Johnson, by authority of warrants in the hands of an officer of police, who accompanied them; next rushed, with intemperate fury, and with a cry "Have at their flags!" through the crowd, cutting and trampling men, women, and children, and, in about ten minutes, dispersed the assemblage, leaving several killed or mortally wounded, and

No

* Cobbett and Hunt have been perpetually named together. It is an absurd though established association. Cobbett is an English classic; a political writer, able and original as Swift. Hunt has no political knowledge, no intuitive political sagacity, no eloquence, no excitement even. He merely talks shrewd common-places in the vocabulary of the vulgar. one can have observed the working people, individually or collectively, in London, Birmingham, or Manchester, without witnessing men in jackets or their shirt sleeves discussing trade and politics with the aptness of experience and reflection, and a simple and scientific propriety of expression. It is one of the wonders of 1830-31 that they could find no fitter representative of their intelligence and interests than Mr. Hunt.

between three and four hundred injured by their horses' hoofs, or the slashing of their sabres.

The intelligence no sooner arrived at Downing Street, than lord Sidmouth, upon ex parte and interested statements, transmitted, with a frantic and feeble precipitation, the thanks of the prince regent to the magistrates and yeomanry engaged in this horrible parody of military execution. Hunt and Johnson, and several others, arrested upon the monstrously absurd charge of high treason, were committed for "the minor offence." A feeling of indignant horror pervaded the country. It was universally denominated the Manchester massacre. Meetings were held, and addresses to the regent voted, in the cities and principal towns of England; some calling for an investigation, others further expressing the strongest condemnation of ministers. The most energetic as the most important was that of the city of London. The regent rebuked the city for prejudging the matter, and refused an enquiry. Lord Grey subsequently, in the house of lords, charged the ministers with having placed in the hands of the regent" an impertinent and flippant answer," rebuking them for prejudging after they had themselves, by transmitting the thanks of the regent, prejudged. Lord Fitzwilliam, a nobleman still more venerable for his virtues than for his years, gave the sanction of his name to a meeting of the westriding of Yorkshire, and was immediately dismissed from the lieutenancy. The alarm of ministers may be called melancholy and ludicrous, -flebile ludebrium. Lord Sidmouth called out the Chelsea pensioners: and was so frightened at some old cast

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off cannon formerly used on board merchants' ships, and thrown aside by the owners as incapable, that he began his circular letter on the subject, to the lieutenants of counties, in the following strange English: My lord. Having been informed that there are laying about, throughout the kingdom, a great number of cannon," &c. He concluded with ordering the cannon, already condemned as useless even for a signal shot, to be spiked, or removed to a place of security.

The house of commons, in the first session of the sixth parliament of the United Kingdom, merited, as it eminently possessed, the contempt of the people, and yet the meeting of parliament was generally desired with impatience. It met prematurely for the despatch of business before Christmas. The prince regent, on the 23d of November, opened the session by a speech full of alarm, ominous of ministerial "vigour," and announcing an addition of 11,000 men to the military force. Lord Grey moved an amendment to the address in the house of lords. His amendment proposed to repress every disorder by giving full vigour to the law of the land, advised, at the same time, a just attention to the wants of the people, and insisted on the necessity of an enquiry into the "melancholy events at Manchester, "in order to dispel all those feelings to which they have given birth, and to show that the measures then resorted to were the result of urgent and unavoidable necessity; that they were justified by the constitution, and that the lives of his majesty's subjects cannot be

sacrificed with impunity." The lord chancellor Eldon opposed the amendment, and more particularly the proposed enquiry, by the following truly characteristic sorites: "When," said this ingenuous jurist, "I read in my law books that numbers constitute force, that force constitutes terror, and that terror constitutes illegality; I feel that no man can say that the Manchester meeting was not an illegal one." The amendment was negatived, and the address agreed to by a majority of 159 to 34. A similar amendment proposed by Mr. Tierney was long and ably debated, and with as little success, in the house of commons.

The short sitting of parliament in this year before the Christmas recess, is memorable for the fetters imposed upon all the essential political rights of Englishmen. If English liberty depended for its exercise upon the statute book, text books, and books of reports, and not upon the intimate conviction, the native instinct, of the people, that it is their inalienable right to be free, the acts now passed would introduce a despotism. Various papers containing information respecting the state of the country, but more especially bearing on the Manchester meeting, or "Manchester massacre," were laid on the tables of both houses. An imposing case was easily made out by statements, all ex parte, some interested, some irresponsible, and some even anonymous. The well-known "six acts" were introduced, and as ably and eloquently as they were vainly resisted in both houses. Perhaps their despotic and dangerous spirit may be best understood from the protests recorded by several

VOL. III.