without any intimation of what was intended, then it was found in what situation the meeting had placed itself. The people fled, or attempted to fly, from the dreadful charge made upon them: but to their horror and surprise they found flight impracticable; for the avenues of the place were closed by armed men. On one side they were driven back at the point of the bayonet by the infantry, while on the other they were cut down by the sabres of the yeomanry. The description of the event in the daily prints conveyed a full idea of the horror of the scene. In one of them the description of the personal danger of those on the spot was striking in the extreme. In that print it was represented that so great was the frightful confusion among the crowd in their attempt to escape from the sabres of the yeomanry, when they found all the regular outlets shut against them, that they actually bore down a wall or building by the pressure of their own weight; and the writer of the paragraph in question described that he saw many of them buried under the ruins which they had caused by their violent contact with the building. The writer added-and well he might-that the cry of the multitude was sauve qui peut. Happy indeed was he who could save himself amid that frightful confusion.

The writer afterwards states that he had the good fortune to escape by placing himself under the protection of a constable. The account given of the massacre bore, indeed, no resemblance to the legal dispersion of any description of meeting: it rather described the taking of a town by storm,

when the officers had lost in the fury of the moment all control over the excited passions of the soldiery. Well might he have asked (he would not say what answer he got to his question)" Is this a Christian land? Is this a land of liberty? Yes, he would repeat, it was a Christian land. Yes, he would call it still a land of liberty-one in which power, however absolute might be the attempt to exercise it, had yet its limits; and where, whatever became of the money which was torn from the pockets of the people, there was one place, and that place the house of commons, where the shedding of their blood must be atoned for, shed by whom it may. It was some consolation for him to have heard that night, that a few of the wretches who had perpetrated the massacre at Manchester were at the time in a state of intoxication. It was always more consolatory to think that men engaged in a bloody purpose were not deliberately acting under the guidance of their own reason, but under the frenzy of feverish and drunken excitement; and he was happy to find that at least that excuse could be offered for some of those who were engaged in the outrages of that day. An idea might be formed of the violent and indiscriminate manner of the massacre, when it was known that these yeomanry, in their fury and blindness, actually cut down some of their own troops; for the constables on that occasion were armed, and some of them had fallen under the hoofs of the yeomanry. When a man was asked how he came to know the constables on that day, his reply was singular enough

that

that he did not know them until he saw men in the crowd knocked down by their bludgeons, and then he ascertained they were peace officers. Every thing both at the time, and subsequently to the 16th of August, was characteristic of the indiscriminate havoc of the day. A woman examined before the Oldham inquest, when describing the state of the body of the deceased John Lees, which she had seen stripped after death, said it was cut and stabbed from shoulder to hip; and she gave an illustration of its disfigured state, which he mentioned, on account of its allusion, with shame, namely, that the back of the deceased looked like that of a soldier after being flogged. With respect to the avenues to the place of meeting being closed upon the multitude by armed men, there was no doubt of the fact. People were forced back again into the field of havoc and slaughter: that aet had been recorded in the face of the country: it was known in the courts of law, where it had been disclosed; and well might his honourable friend the member for Southampton (sir W. de Crespigny) have again described it upon the authority of those who were eye-witnesses of the fact. Referring again to what had been written by Mr. Hay, he found that that gentleman went on to state that they (the Manchester magistrates) took Mr. Hunt, and that a few were hurt during the affair. But afterwards came that most extraordinary part of the whole of this peculiarly anomalous transaction; for it seemed that when the man was taken and the meeting dispersed, there arose an unexpected difficulty. Difficulty! of what nature! why, for the ma

gistrates to determine, and after the fact, what was the nature of the crime with which they were to charge the prisoners. They first apprehended a man they had no right to take into custody, and after that act they sat down for the first time in consultation together, to consider with what they should charge him; that was, they took a man first, and then they held a council to see what was the crime he might have committed. Having, however, done all this, they made it the subject of a despatch to government; and surely such a despatch, both as to the crime charged, and the manner of charging it, was never before transmitted to any government in any country. Doubtless the government, by whom that dreadful act was applauded, had consoled themselves with the hope that the terrible example of the massacre at Manchester would silence all public complaint, and terrify the people from meeting any where to promote parliamentary reform. It appeared, however, that the example, notwithstanding its obvious intention, had altogether failed in its effect; for the people, indignant as they were at the outrage, were not yet so entirely appalled as to be driven from the great question of reform; they met as before, and the ministers were compelled to desist from carrying on their system. Though, like Macbeth, they had stepped far in blood, yet they did not, like him, think that "returning were more tedious than go o'er:" they thought it better to stop where they had gone, than advance still deeper; and the people of Westminster and other parts of the country met, he believed, in still greater numbers

than

than they had done at Manchester, to consider of the best means of relieving the unfortunate sufferers on the 16th of August.

The number of victimsby the catastrophe of that day was considerable: itexceeded the number of killed and wounded in some of those glorious battles which redounded to the national fame; above 600 were relieved by the public subscription; and, strangely enough, there would be seen in the list of those who had received pecuniary relief, special constables who had been wounded by the yeomanry, and also a man named Murray, who had even been represented as a spy of the magistrates on that day, and who had got 151. to pay his doctor's bill for attendance, received during the cure of his wounds. In that melancholy and distressing list of sufferers, relieved by the subscription, would be seen the names of 120 women: aye, and of children at the breast: neither age nor sex had found nature's safeguard. Mr. Hulton himself admitted, in his evidence at York, that he had seen in the house where he and his brother magistrates sat, a woman fainting under a wound received upon her breast. This was no doubt admitting enough of the fact of the atrocities having been indiscriminately committed on that day; but it was said, "await the justification." They had awaited that justification, and found it false. The ministers had themselves confessed the guilt of the parties. There could be no more correct conclusion than this-that when any party accused set up a justification for having committed a particular act, it was a confession, per se, that he had committed that act. If, therefore, all the

reasons alleged in justification proved false, there remained only the parties' own confession of guilt that stood on record; and such was the situation in which his majesty's ministers stood before parliament and the country for this flagitious act. He repeated, that all the attempted justificatory reasons had failed; and, in pronouncing that decision, he was not recording alone his own opinion, but also that of, he might say, the highest judicial authority on the bench, namely, Mr. justice Bayley, who said, at the trial at York, that none of the circumstances relied upon by the government, abstractedly considered, did of themselves necessarily imply guilt. The learned judge had distinctly laid down that the numbers at the meeting did not alone constitute guilt. No, nor even the carrying banners in the procession, nor the drilling itself: he said that the intention alone constituted the guilt of the parties: that it was the intention with which their acts were done which must govern the jury in their verdict; and that it was unimportant in estimating the circumstances of the meeting. whether the crowd consisted of three persons or 3,000-that the intention of those assembled, be they large or small, was the whole point for consideration in the case. The learned judge was an old lawyer, and had, no doubt, read in his old books the maxim- Voluntas et propositum, distinguunt maleficium." If to meet peaceably for the consideration of a peaceable and legal subject was to expose a meeting to military violence, and to put them out of the protection of the law, then it was time for every Englishman to

reflect

reflect upon his situation, and bid adieu for ever to the liberties of his country. If numbers alone constituted guilt, how could the people ever meet with effect? It was by numbers they could alone speak, so as to give strength and consistency to their voice, and make their grievances listened to by the reluctant ears of that house. Mr. Hunt, at the Manchester meeting, had, in recommending a peaceable demeanour to the meeting, acted with more becoming prudence than the magistrates who had apprehended him. The pretence of the people having carried arms to the meeting was utterly groundless; and to talk of their having commenced the attack upon the armed soldiers was, on the face of it, absurd and ridiculous. To tell him that an unarmed and defenceless multitude were preparing to attack an armed and equipped soldiery, was to talk of the attack of a flock of sheep upon a body of wolves. The thing was, on the face of it, nonsensical. The people knew they had no means of repelling the attack. They thought they had assembled under the protection of the law, and they knew they had no other protection than that law, which used to be, according to the expressive phrase of an able lawyer, "the shield and helmet" of the people; but which, unfortunately at this sad crisis, they felt neither as a shield nor as a helmet. The people were, in fact, employed in doing that for which it might be said they had the sanction of the magistrates who had so outrageously dispersed them. Upon a previous day (the 9th of August) there was to have been a meeting

some

at Manchester similar to one held at Birmingham for electing a legislatorial attorney, or such object. The magistrates denounced that intended meeting, and thinking it to be for an illegal object, they did that which it was their duty-they gave public notice of their intention, and warned the people against attending any such assembly. That was a fair notice to the people: it had its due effect, and the original meeting was abandoned.

But it was said, the intentions of the people remained the same, although they had nominally changed the purpose of their meeting; that they still intended to subvert the existing order of society; that there were among the people those who sought rank by convulsion, who meant to become dukes and peers when they had divided among themselves and their associates the estates of the aristocracy of the country. Really persons who honestly and conscientiously entertained such sentiments of the people, were either very wilfully mistaken, or else they must have obstinately kept themselves in a strange state of ignorance. It would be in vain to argue with those who stedfastly entertained such opinions. With just the same reason might they in their fears apprehend, that Atlas would resign his load, and the world fall into pieces around them! He had already said that when the people were warned of the illegality of the first intended meeting, they abandoned it in obedience to the admonition of the magistrates, and they then assembled for a different purpose, which they and which he considered both proper

and

and lawful-namely, to prepare a petition for a reform in parliament. If the magistrates deemed the meeting of the 16th of August illegal, why not, as on the preceding occasion, have denounced it? Mr. Hunt had waited upon them a day or two before, in consequence of some rumour that a charge was intended to be brought against him; he wished to surrender to that charge if any existed, rather than expose the meeting to inconsiderate interrup

tion at the time it was to take place. What was on that occasion the conduct of the magistrates? They denied having any charge against him; they notified no opposition to the approaching meeting, and therefore he felt himself entitled to assume that the meeting must be considered as having had the sanction of the magistrates. The people had invariably preserved the peace when not obstructed at their meetings. After the Manchester business, one was held at Wigan, which, according to the letter signed "Balcarras," addressed to lord Sidmouth, was attended by all the symbols of sedition, and such like; the people had their leaders, their flags, and their marches, and what happened? They were left unmolested at their meeting, and "the day passed away in tranquillity." The same occurred at the subsequent meeting in York, at which there was, he had heard, a still larger attendance than at Manchester; and the people, after going through the business of the day in a peaceable and legal manner, quietly dispersed without any obstruction from the bludgeons of the peace officers. Indeed all the meetings throughout the coun

try were conducted in the same spirit of order when left to their own management, and without interference. The people uniformly showed the utmost deference to the laws, which were, he was sorry to say, only violated by those whose solemn duty it was to have kept them free from violation. He hardly knew a circumstance in history which was so much to be deplored as the dreadful occurrence at Manchester. The

people of England, he feared, never could, never would forget it? He was entitled to say that all would have been peaceable if the meeting had been left unmolested. Who then were the authors of that calamity which could never be forgotten? He would not stop to assign their share in the deeds of the day to the Manchester yeomanry. He would not stop to investigate the respective shares of the subordinate actors: but would at once demand investigation into the conduct of ministers themselves, and hold them responsible for all the calamities which they had countenanced.

But to return to the list of the killed and wounded, a list which was swelled in amount beyond the loss endured by admiral Jervis in that great and brilliant victory off Cape St. Vincent, which conferred the splendor of a title upon his name. In that victory fifteen sail of British ships defeated twenty-seven sail of Spanish, and brought (what was unusual) a number of them into port; and the loss, in killed and wounded, was between 300 and 400-á number falling short by upwards of 200 the amount which had suffered in the massacre at Manchester;