As the summer went on the agitation in the manufacturing districts grew apace, and the local authorities grew alarmed. On the 1st July five magistrates of Lancashire made the following representation to the Government: "Upon the general view of the subject, we cannot have a doubt that some alarming insurrection is in contemplation. Of the deep distresses of the manufacturing classes of this extensive population your Lordship is fully apprised, and the disaffected and ill-disposed lose no opportunity of instilling the worst principles into the unhappy sufferers in these times, attributing their calamities not to any event which cannot be controlled, but to the general measures of Government and Parliament; and when the people are oppressed with hunger, we do not wonder at their giving ear to any doctrines which they are told will redress their grievances. Although we cannot but applaud the hitherto peaceable demeanour of many of the labouring classes, yet we do not calculate upon their remaining unmoved. Urged on by the harangues of a few desperate demagogues, we anticipate at no distant period a general rising, and possessing no power to prevent the meetings which are weekly held, we, as magistrates, are at a loss how to stem the influence of dangerous and seditious doctrines which are continually disseminated. To these meetings and the unbounded liberty of the Press we refer the principal weight of the evil which we apprehend."1

And on the 13th of July, at the Quarter Sessions for the county of Chester, a resolution was passed by the magistrates stating, "That it appears that various public meetings have lately been held in this and the neighbouring counties, at which evil-disposed and designing persons, taking advantage of the depression of trade and the consequent distress, have wickedly disseminated inflammatory doctrines, and under the false pretext of Parliamentary reform, have vilified the constituted authorities, inciting thereby the ignorant and unwary to insurrection and the commission of crimes."

Though numerous meetings were being held in many parts of the country, there was, whilst Parliament sat, no sufficient excuse even for such a Government as was then in power, to

1 See Parliamentary Debates, vol. xli. p. 230-"Papers relative to the internal state of the country."

revive either the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, or the Seditious Meetings Act; and Parliament was prorogued on the 13th of July without any restrictive legislation being adopted. On the eve of the prorogation, however—namely, on the 12th of July-a public meeting took place, which, had the intelligence of it reached London sooner, might have altered the date of the prorogation. It was held at Birmingham, on Newhall Hill, "for the purpose of considering of the best means of obtaining a representation of the people of this town in Parliament, and also of the representation of all the unrepresented inhabitants of the Empire."

The meeting was not a very brilliant affair, but it was altogether different from any that had preceded it. It disconcerted the Government more than any other that had been held, and was instructive as showing how deeply the minds of the people were running on Parliamentary reform, and to what devices they were prepared to resort to obtain it. In papers subsequently laid before Parliament, a description of the meeting was given, evidently not by a friendly hand.1

"An attempt was first made to collect a crowd by a miserable procession, as it was called, of Major Cartwright (a veteran reformer), 2 Wooller, and Edmunds, in a street chariot carrying two flags, and by one Maddocks, whose father had been executed, and brother transported, 'upon a bank prosecution.' The chair was taken by Edmunds (the proprietor of a newspaper). From 10,000 to 25,000 persons were present, of whom, however, a great proportion were women and children. The most violent speaker was Lewis; the tenor of all the speeches was abuse of the body calling itself the House of Commons."

Edmunds, Maddocks, a schoolmaster and Wooller, spoke; and the novel idea was propounded, that as Birmingham had no representative in Parliament, and Parliament would not give Birmingham one, the best thing was for Birmingham to send a representative to Parliament in despite of Parliament; accordingly Sir Charles Wolseley was proposed to the meeting as a most eligible person for such a position, and was elected

3

1 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 1819, vol. xli. p. 233.

2 He was aged eighty-two at the time.

8 He was unable to be present, owing to the death of his mother.

by the meeting "amid the thundering acclamations of one undivided multitude," to be "Legislatorial Attorney" and representative of the people of Birmingham in Parliament for one year, "if so long he execute his trust faithfully;" and he was charged to present himself at the bar of the House of Commons, and to claim admission.

Edmunds, in the course of his speech, is reported to have said: "It was asked of what use could any one man be in the House of Commons, five hundred of the seats of which are articles of purchase, and always go to the best bidder; in which it has been allowed that the sale of seats is as notorious as the sun at noonday? Of what use would one man be in a House that treated with contempt the prayers of a million of men, no doubt expressing the sentiments of other millions when they prayed for reform? What would be the power of one man among a body of oligarchs, who, in spite of the prayers of an undoubted majority, passed the Corn Bill (of 1815), or among the tyrants who dared to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act? The effect to be produced is not in the House, but upon the country and upon public opinion. The claim of the people of Birmingham is founded upon the same principle as that of the people of England. It is, therefore, one of the means of advancing the general cause. It is very difficult for people to reason upon abstract questions. The present proceeding supplies a fact. We have been long talking about the right of the people to representation. We are now about to exercise the right. This is doing something, and something which, from its novelty, as well as its justice, will excite a very general sensation throughout the country. Every one must allow that something ought to be done. Look into the cause of those distresses which universally prevail, and we shall find that it arises from the bad state of the representative organ of the Legislature."

Maddocks also spoke, and is reported to have said: "I consider, that as the source of all our calamities, and, in a considerable degree, the calamities of a great part of the world, lies in the corrupt state of the representation of the people of England in Parliament, every Englishman who deserves the name ought to join heart and hand in laying open 1 State Trials, New Series, vol. i. p. 794.

and exposing to the world those base and infamous transactions of the Honourable House through which Englishmen have been treated no better than the slaves of the despot of Spain or those of the Dey of Algiers." 1

Some resolutions were duly passed, and the meeting dispersed, no disorder or breach of the peace having occurred.

The idea of sending a representative to Parliament in this manner was absurd, and in itself a proof of the ignorance of those who originated it, but it showed conclusively the hopelessness of the people as to obtaining Parliamentary reform from Parliament itself, and their abiding faith in the efficacy of Parliamentary reform for the alleviation of their ills.

Foiled at every turn in their effort for reform, receiving stripes and punishment whenever the law could be brought into operation against them, sunk in misery, and poverty, and hardships, and starvation, groaning under the infamous injustice of the existing state of things, and convinced that in reform lay their only hope of safety, one cannot, I think, hold the people in any way morally blamable for their agitation.

From Birmingham we may follow the agitation to London. Here, on the 21st July, a meeting was held at Smithfield. Hunt arrived about one o'clock and ascended a waggon, from which he spoke. It was said that 70,000 persons were present. He wound up his speech by saying "He was sure it was not necessary for him to request them to suffer nothing to instigate them to acts of riot; what they wanted was not devastation, but the recovery of their rights." Certain resolutions were then read and carried; the first declared the inherent right of every man to be free. The succeeding ones contained propositions founded upon the principle of every man being entitled to a voice in the election of representatives who made the laws, and that no man ought to be taxed without his previous participation in that right. They declared that the members of the present House of Commons were not in such manner justly elected; that after the 1st January 1820 they could not consider themselves conscientiously bound by any enactments made by persons who did not represent them; that with a view to accelerate the choice of just representatives,

1 State Trials, New Series, vol. i. p. 795.

books should be opened for the enrolment of every man of mature age, and sound mind, so as to enable him to give his vote when required to do so, and that an humble address should be presented to the Prince Regent, requesting him to issue his writs to the returning officers of the Empire, to cause representatives to be chosen agreeably to these resolutions. A resolution was also passed in favour of Catholic emancipation, and another disclaiming the National Debt. As if with the distinct object of provoking a riot, the authorities arrested the Reverend Mr. Harrison while the meeting was proceeding. He was with Hunt on the waggon, which was used as a platform, and was to have spoken; but as he at once surrendered himself, and as the people were urgently counselled to preserve quiet, no riot ensued. After this interruption, Hunt read a letter from Lord Sidmouth, stating that he declined to present to the Regent two Remonstrances which had been voted-one at a meeting in Westminster, and another at Manchester. A resolution was thereupon proposed and passed: "That this meeting, jealous of the right they possess of addressing by Petition, Memorial, or Remonstrance, the highest authority of the Government, with feelings of indignation towards any individual that presumes to stand in the way of this right, publicly censure the conduct of Lord Sidmouth for having dared to withhold Petitions and Remonstrances from the Prince Regent."

One other little incident is worth noticing in connection. with this meeting. "A Mr. Gast, a ship carpenter from Deptford, addressed the meeting. He refuted the calumny (advanced in the House of Commons) that the lower orders were too ignorant to understand the mysteries of Government. The lower orders of society were more wise in the regulation of their private affairs than Ministers were in the regulation of the affairs of the public."

On the 28th July a meeting was held at Stockport.1 Some 4000 to 5000 persons were present. "Most of the men had large sticks, which appeared to have been newly cut from the hedges. Several persons were on the scaffold." There were flags one of them surmounted by a cap of Liberty—with the mottoes of "Universal Suffrage," "Annual Parliaments," 1 See Annual Register, 1820, p. 908, etc.

VOL. I

2 B