"£60,000 a year to the Princess Charlotte," wrote Place. “£1150 a week, £192 a day for every working day in the year to be given to a woman who never did anything for it— to a woman and a man who can never do us any service,—a monstrous sum taken from the pockets of people, some of whom die of hunger in our streets."1

As the summer went on, the distress spread, commercial difficulties reached an alarming height. London took the lead as regards meetings, and from the Platform appealed to the Government, and to the outer world. On the 21st of August 1816 a large meeting was held in the Common Hall, the Lord Mayor presiding, and a Petition to the Regent was adopted, setting forth the state of distress that prevailed, and asking him to call Parliament together.

One resolution set forth: "That this distress is the natural result of the corrupt system of Administration, and of a long and profligate waste of the public treasure."

Another: "That our national distress imperiously demands the most prompt abolition of all useless places, and sinecure pensions, and the immediate adoption of the most rigid economy."

Another: "That long experience has but too fully proved that the only efficient hope of the people is in themselves united, to exercise their constitutional powers, in order to secure a free, full, and frequent representation of the people in the Commons House of Parliament; the want of which representation having been the primary source of our multitudinous evils, the possession of such a representation will be the only tranquil, sure, and effectual mode of obtaining indemnity for the past, and security for the future. . . . That we earnestly recommend to every county, city, town, and parish in Great Britain immediately to assemble, and to direct their efforts to obtain a reduction of the taxes-a system of rigid economy in every department of the Government, the abolition of useless places and sinecures, and a reform of Parliament." 2

On the 11th September a large meeting was held in Westminster Palace Yard. It was addressed by Henry Hunt, who had by this time risen into notoriety as a Platform speaker,

1 Place, MSS., 27,809, p. 30.

2 The Examiner, 25th August 1816, p. 543.

and by Sir Francis Burdett, member for Westminster, who was the successor to Fox, filling the role of moderate and respectable democracy on the Platform, and of extreme liberalism and independence in the House.

A short summary of their speeches on this occasion will convey something of the spirit of the Platform at this time, as displayed by some of its most extreme votaries.

Hunt said: "He would speak plain facts, and call things by their right names. The general distress was now acknowledged by every class of persons, except the tax-gatherers, and those who lived on them. There was no doubt that all our distresses had their origin in a want of a proper representation of the people. The immediate cause of our distress was, the carrying on for upwards of twenty years a war, cruel, and bloody, and unjust, against the liberty of all mankind—a war, the expense of which had ruined our commerce, and reduced us to beggary and distress."1... He then proceeded to inveigh against sinecures and placemen: "Would it be believed that upwards of £200,000 of the people's money was paid to place men having seats in the House of Commons?" He proposed that a Petition should be addressed to the Prince Regent to call Parliament together-"Not as it had usually been called together to divide the spoils of the people amongst themselves, but to receive the Petitions of the people and to attend to them. . . . It was time the voice of the people should be heard and attended to."

Sir Francis Burdett said: "That meeting showed the spirit of Westminster, and he trusted that it was but a sample of that which would be shown in every part of the kingdom. Their enemy was formidable, and deeply intrenched behind forms of law, as well as rows of bayonets, and nothing would conquer that enemy but a firm union among all classes of the country. . . . No Englishman ought to look to the sham causes of the distress held out to them by the boroughmongers; the real cause consisted in the corrupt state of the representation of the people. . . . Let it be remembered that nothing was more dreadful in the ears of the oppressors than the voice of the oppressed." He inveighed against the national debt, against the oligarchy in the House of Commons: "That oli

1 The Examiner, 15th September 1816.

garchy had a hundred hands in every man's pocket, and almost everything, great or small, found its way into its immense net... He trusted that there would be meetings in every county, and every great town in England. This oligarchy would not give up its plunder unless it were forced."

As the autumn went on meetings for Parliamentary reform became more frequent. Early in October there was a meeting of some 7000 to 8000 persons at Bolton; a little later one at Southwark.

1

On the 29th of October a county Cornwall meeting was held at Bodmin, the High Sheriff presided. "The Shire Hall was completely filled." Mr. Rashleigh made a most able and argumentative speech: "The interest excited by his observations," wrote the reporter, "was evident by the profound attention of the meeting, only interrupted by those bursts of applause which, like electric sparks, were continually elicited from all present by the convincing and energetic eloquence by which he traced all our privations and sufferings to their true source the corrupt influence exercised by the Government over the majority of a House of Commons neither participating the feelings nor expressing the sentiments of the people because not chosen by them." The principal resolution declared that the abuses in the Government of the country were to be traced to the defective representation of the people, and a Petition was adopted. On the same day a great meeting was held at Glasgow, of which some details are interesting as showing what use was being made of the Platform to teach and elevate the people. The meeting was "the largest that ever took place for any political purpose in Scotland; about 40,000 persons were at it. The greater part of those present were of course workmen, but such was the general order that not the slightest injury was done to any article on the ground" ("not even the boxwood border of the enclosure," says the sympathetic reporter, with some pride), "and the whole was conducted with a decorum which strikingly proved how groundless had been the prejudice against popular meetings."

1 See The Morning Chronicle, 5th November 1816.

2 For his speech see The Morning Chronicle of 9th November.

3 See The Morning Chronicle of 5th November 1816, which quotes the account from The Glasgow Chronicle.

Among the speakers was a Mr. Gray, who, after referring to the "overwhelming load of indescribable calamity that existed," said: "Retrenchment and reform constitute the only remedy for the present distress, and to the attainment of these indispensable objects let all our efforts-let the efforts of the whole nation-be steadily and constitutionally directed. Let the cry of 'Retrenchment and Reform' be sounded at the foot of the throne from every corner of the island. .. The whole system of expenditure must be reduced. All those noble, sturdy beggars must also be discharged, who have fostered themselves like leeches upon the State, to suck from it every remaining portion of its vitality. The people must have their legal share in the Government of the countrythey must have representatives of their own choosing. Nothing short of a thorough retrenchment ought to satisfy themnothing short of a radical Reform can save them. The sacrifices they have made deserve some consideration. Their sufferings demand it. . . . Let all the wise and the virtuous unite. If the union be constitutional, and for constitutional objects, who shall dare to control or counteract it. While truth lies at the centre, the national mind must thither gravitate. A nation guided by truth is not to be resisted. Do we calculate on too much when we expect retrenchment and reform from discussion and petitioning? Are we without example or encouragement in looking for the recovery of our lost liberties and prosperity from the diffusion of knowledge, that best light of the mind? How triumphed Luther, an obscure monk, over combined potentates, one of them wearing the triple crown? In defiance of their armies, spread he not religious reform over whole nations? And was it not by bold discussion, and a resolute diffusion of knowledge, that our illustrious countryman, John Knox, redeemed Scotland from the miserable follies and abominable superstitions of Popery? To doubt, therefore, the efficacy of union and discussion is unworthy of an enlightened or a constant mind."

Nottingham also at this same time held a meeting and adopted a Petition to the Regent, which gave a graphic picture of the distress, and which was rather outspoken in its terms.

"Our manufacturers withdrawing their remaining capital from engagements they find to be unproductive or ruinous, our

artisans and labourers destitute of employment, our workhouses crowded beyond all precedent, and our poor-rates swelled to an extent which, if not speedily alleviated, must have the effect of involving us in total and irremediable ruin.

"At a period of national distress like the present, when we are called upon to sacrifice the comforts of our families to answer the demands of the Government, when the iron hand of taxation is extorting from the rich man his last guinea, and ransacking the poor man's scrip for his solitary penny, to see a voracious band of placemen, pensioners, and sinecurists wallowing in the wealth thus wrung from the hard earnings of honest industry, is a violation of common decency without a parallel in the annals of corruption; nor can it surprise your Royal Highness that your subjects murmur with discontent and remonstrate with indignation.”1

Hostile comment may be made on such resolutions and such speeches, but it is to be remembered in extenuation, first, that "in a state of suffering men cannot be expected to choose their expressions with a courtly precision, but the complaint itself may be well founded, however unguardedly expressed"; and next, that the people were being almost entirely left to their own devices. Except men like Major Cartwright, who was a feeble though well-meaning man, and Henry Hunt, they had few leaders. In London Sir Francis Burdett, and a few other gentlemen of position, took a considerable part in the agitation. Here and there, in some of the counties, there were also some able men of respectable position who did the same; but their influence did not extend beyond their own immediate neighbourhood, and in the large towns the people had absolutely no one to guide them or to help them.

"Do the nobles of the land, our hereditary guardians, do they call public meetings? Do they or any of them attend public meetings to instruct the people, and point out the road to good government, to independence, to happiness? No, not they. They call no meetings; they attend no meetings; they do all they can to prevent meetings; they would have all quiet -quiet as death." 2

1 The Examiner, 13th October 1816.

2 Hone's Prospectus of his Register quoted by Quarterly Review, vol. xvi. p. 546 (1817).