in the same, were made liable to heavy pecuniary penalties. Even in a licensed house a magistrate was to have the right of admission whenever he chose.

The Act was to continue in force for three years, and until the end of the then next session of Parliament, that is to say, till well on in 1799.

These Bills met with a storm of disapprobation both inside. and outside Parliament. From the 6th November, when Lord Grenville gave notice of the intentions of the Government on the subject, down to the middle of December, when the Bills were read a third time and passed, the contest raged hot and furious. Fox led the Opposition in the House of Commons.1 "The proposal struck him with horror. Its essence was detestable. The people, he had always thought, had a right to discuss the topics from which their grievances arose. In all instances they had a right to complain by petition, and to remonstrate to either House of Parliament, or, if they pleased, to the King exclusively; but now it seems they are not to do so, unless notice be given to a magistrate that he may become a witness of their proceedings. There were to be witnesses of every word that every man spoke. This magistrate, this jealous witness, was to form his opinion on the propriety of the proceedings; and if he should think that anything that was said had a tendency to sedition, he had power to arrest the man who uttered it. Not only so, he had power to dissolve the meeting at his own will.” . . . And then, after describing a meeting where a magistrate exercised this power, he said: "I ask if this can be called a meeting of free people? Did ever a free people meet so? Did ever a free State exist so? Did any man ever hypothetically state the possibility of the existence of Freedom under such restrictions? Good God Almighty, sir! is it possible that the feelings of the people of this country should be thus insulted? Is it possible to make the people of this country believe that this plan is anything but a total annihilation of their liberty? . . .

"We have seen and we have heard of revolutions in different States. Were they owing to freedom of popular opinions? Were they owing to the facility of popular meetings? No, sir; they were owing to the reverse of these. . .

1 Parliamentary History, vol. xxxii. p. 277.

"It has been the characteristic blessing of our Constitution. that it admitted of various ways in which the opinions of the public, nay, if you please, in which the ill opinions, the prejudices, and the ill humours of the body politic may have vent. And if their grievances be true, they may be redressed; if the allegation of them be false, the evil effects of their persisting in complaint may be prevented; but if you take away their hitherto well-known and legal method of stating their disapprobation of the measures of Government, you bring the best part of the Constitution of this country upon a level with the most despotic; you bring the people of this country to the terrible situation of those who have no alternative between a total and abject submission to the tyrannical Acts of Government, and a remedy by violence and force of arms.

"If you prevent discussion, if you stop up this vent for the humour of the body politic, there can be no alternative between abject submission and violent resistance."

In another speech (16th November) he said: "You may prevent men from complaining, but you cannot prevent them from feeling."

In another (25th November) he dwelt on the grand effects of freedom of speech. "By the passing of the Bill the people would have lost, it was said, a great deal. A great deal-ay, all that is worth preserving. For you will have lost the spirit, the fire, the freedom, the boldness, the energy of the British character, and with them its best virtue. I say it is not the written law of the Constitution of England; it is not the law that is to be found in books that has constituted the true principle of freedom in any country at any time. No; it is the energy, the boldness of a man's mind, which prompts him to speak, not in private, but in large and popular assemblies, that constitutes, that creates in a State, the spirit of freedom. This is the principle which gives life to liberty; without it the human character is a stranger to freedom. . .

"How did we rise into our eminence? By the written law? No. By the boldness of the English character arising out of the freedom of speech. This is the principle which led you on to fame. Take away the freedom of speech or of writing, and the foundation of all your freedom is gone.”1

1 Parliamentary History, vol. xxxii. p. 420.

The centre of the fight raged around the clauses directing the attendance of a magistrate or magistrates at the meeting, and the giving a single magistrate power to order the meeting to disperse, or to order the arrest of a speaker. The provision was nothing less than the establishment of a censorship of the Platform, of the very worst character. No Government even then would have dared to propose a censorship of the Press. The Platform, however, was not yet so powerful but that at least the attempt might be made so far as it was concerned. It was true that certain conditions were laid down before the magistrate was justified in interfering, but they were so very wide that, practically, people had no safeguard against the violence of some hotheaded partisan magistrate, who, as Grey expressed it, "by a tyrannical and capricious mandate, might frustrate every purpose for which a meeting was called."

Woodward, in one of his humorous sketches, entitled "Liberty of Speech," has admirably represented the state of the case. A trembling-looking orator is depicted standing on a stump of a tree, while a fierce-looking bully, grasping a heavy bludgeon, says to him: "Go on. Speak your mind freely. Tell all your grievances, but if you don't stop when I tell you, I'll knock you down."

Fox did not exaggerate when he said: "For instance, were he in a public meeting to state coolly and dispassionately the inadequacy of our representation, and the disproportionate influence of 'Old Sarum' to some large and populous towns in choosing their representatives, he might be taken up for sedition, a justice or magistrate might dissolve the meeting, and on their refusing to disperse, he might call on the military to murder them.”

Opposition in the House of Lords was restricted to the few Liberal peers still left, who made a strong protest against both the Bills. The Duke of Bedford pointed out that "Such attempts might silence the voice of complaint, but they cannot reach the mind, which will brood over the injustice; they may restrain and fetter the actions of men, but cannot make them love the Constitution or reconcile them to the Government."

The best speech was made by Lord Thurlow.

He, too,

dwelt on the novel addition to the power of magistrates, and said that if the words whereby magistrates were given the power of taking all persons into custody who should hold any discourse for the purpose of "inciting or stirring up the people to hatred or contempt of the Government and Constitution of the realm" were allowed to stand in the Bill, "there was an end at once of all discussion with a view to Parliamentary reform."1

"How was it possible, in agitating the question of Parliamentary reform, to forbear mentioning the inequality in point of importance, inhabitants, etc. etc., between the county of Yorkshire and the borough of Old Sarum without derision and ridicule, which might, by an ignorant magistrate, be construed to 'incite to hatred and contempt of the Government and Constitution as by law established,' and, acting upon that misconstruction, he might take the party into custody, and dissolve the meeting."

All in vain, however, was any opposition. Just as surely as a stone thrown into the air will fall to the earth again, so sure was a Bill once introduced by the Government in those times to be carried through both Houses of Parliament. To such small numbers had the defenders of freedom of meeting and speech dwindled down that only forty-two members voted against leave to introduce the Bill into the House of Commons. Pitt himself defended it and supported it with all sorts of arguments and pleas. He denied that the Bill abridged or limited the right of petitioning Parliament, "the channel through which Petitions usually came being left open"; but though the channel may have been left open, as a matter of fact it was so commanded that nothing could pass through except by permission.

He appealed to the fears of the House: "Was it possible for the House not to have felt the danger of some late meetings, and did they not feel the necessity of checking them? If they did not, he would only say that this was not the time to trifle; if they did not seize the opportunity of applying a preventive, they might soon lose the power of exercising their own funetions in that House. For this reason it was highly necessary to grant new discretionary powers to magistrates to disperse 1 Parliamentary History, vol. xxxii. p. 540.

meetings.... In fine, the sole object of the Bill was, that the people should look to Parliament, and to Parliament alone, for the redress of such grievances as they might have to complain of, with a confident reliance of relief being afforded them, if their complaints should be well founded and practically remediable. That it should be understood that the condition of no man was so abject but he could find a legal means of bringing his grievances before his representatives in Parliament, and subject them to their consideration; but that he would not leave a door open, through which a torrent might rush in, and overwhelm the Constitution." He was vigorously supported by his party, even Wilberforce-he who was leading a lifelong struggle against slavery in foreign countries-sided with the Government in enforcing the slavery of silence in this. He said: "For the last three years attempts had been making by every species of art and industry to poison the minds of the people of this country, to instil into them jealousies and suspicions, and to excite a contempt for the British Constitution. . . Various means had been taken to put a stop to these proceedings, but in vain. . . . Lectures were given, and harangues delivered, of the most seditious and inflammatory nature; handbills and prints of the most atrocious description were circulated. . . . What then was to be done? Were they to be permitted to pursue in all our great manufacturing towns what they had begun in more than one of them, that same system of popular assemblies, and debating clubs, and seditious harangues which they had introduced into the capital? Surely it was high time for Parliament to interfere in order to stop this growing mischief." 2

One Government supporter thought that the liberty of the Press, which would continue to exist in all its force, afforded "a mode of discussing all popular and political topics that he thought adequate to all the purposes of the community."

Another said: "The only question now was whether the Bill was sufficient to meet the exigency of the occasion."

These extracts are sufficient. There runs throughout the whole debates a vein of alarm and panic plainly discernible. But there is also very plainly apparent a determination on the part of the Government and its followers and dependents to 2 lbid. p. 292.

1 Parliamentary History, vol. xxxii. p. 361.