able J. S. Cocks, and seconded by the Honourable E. Cust. Mr Tierney entered at great length, and with much minuteness of detail, into the topics which we have already referred to, and concluded by moving an amendment substantially the same with that proposed by Earl Grey in the House of Peers. Lord Castlereagh replied with great animation to the statements and reasonings of the right honourable gentleman, and went into a detailed history of the progress and various ramifications of sedition, concluding by declaring his intention to support the original address. A long and keen debate, in which the principal speakers on both sides of the House took part, now followed; and so eager did every body appear to deliver his sentiments on the present occasion, when the feelings of all men both in and out of Parliament had been more or less excited, that the House were compelled to adjourn the discussion till the following day, when the contest was resumed with undiminished vigour. In the course of this adjourned debate, Mr Canning made one of the most eloquent and splendid speeches which has for a long time been heard within the walls of Parliament. Ultimately, however, the original address, which, as usual was a mere echo of the speech from

the throne, was carried by a majority of 381 to 150.

On the same day, Lord Castlereagh laid upon the table of the House, a variety of documents relative to the internal state of the

country, and to which reference had been made in the speech from the throne.

On the 25th, Mr Cocks brought up the report on the address, when the discussion of the transactions at Manchester was resumed, and prosecuted to considerable length; the only remarkable feature of the debate being a declaration, on the part of Mr Denman, that he conceived the meeting of the 16th of August to have been "perfectly legal." Ultimately, the report was agreed to without a division.

On the 29th Lord Sidmouth called the attention of the House of Peers to the measures which Ministers meant to propose in the present disturbed state of the country. The first, a bill to curb the licentiousness of the press, provided no increased punishment for the first offence, but, on a second conviction for publishing a blasphemous or seditious libel, the offender would be liable to the punishment of fine, imprisonment, banishment, or transportation. In cases of second conviction, it was also proposed that a power should

be given to seize the copies of the libel in the possession of the publisher; such copies to be preserved until it should be seen whether an arrest of judgment was moved, and then returned to the publisher. In another place it was intended to propose, that all publications consisting of less than a given number of sheets should be subject to a duty equal to that paid by newspapers, and that the publishers should enter into a recognisance, or give security to a certain amount, so as to ensure the payment of any fine inflicted on them in case of delinquency. In another place, also, a bill would be brought in for regulating meetings for the discussion of grievances, and for petitioning Parliament, which in its provisions would be found not to trench on the Petition of Rights. A bill to prohibit military training, except under the authority of Lord Lieutenants or Magistracy, was another measure which he would have to propose to the consideration of their Lordships. A large proportion of the disaffected were possessed of arms; and therefore it was proposed to give to the Magistrates a power of seizing and detaining them in the disaffected districts, upon any wellfounded suspicion that they were intended to be used against the peace of the country. These were the measures intended to be propcsed to Parliament, for the welfare of the people, and the safety of the State; and his Lordship called upon those who differed with Ministers, both on subjects of foreign and domestic policy, to join them in preventing anarchy, and the destruction of property. His Lordship then presented the bills for regulating the press and for preventing military training, and moved that they be read the first time.

Earl Grey protested warmly a

gainst the proposed measures, particularly that which affects the liberty of the press, which he considered the severest blow that had for a long course of time been inflicted on that palladium of our rights. With the exception of the bill empowering magistrates to search for arms, the Earl of Liverpool denied that any of the proposed measures invaded the rights or privileges of Englishmen; and even with regard to that bill, it was notorious, that the population, endangered and intimadated by the acts of the seditious, called upon Parliament to enact some such measure for their security.

On the same day, Lord Castlereagh having moved that such part of the speech from the throne as related to the disaffected state of the country should be read by the Clerk, proceeded to explain to the House of Commons the nature of the measures which Ministers had deemed it necessary to propose for meeting the dangers by which the country was threatened. The measures which he intended to propose divided themselves into five distinct heads; and of these five he should take that first which he considered most pressing, and that last which he considered most important to the tranquillization of the country. The first related to the tumultuous assembling of the people; the second to a system which had been produced by the extraordinary circumstances of the times, and which, if not checked, would rapidly extend itself—the training of large bodies of men for military, or rather rebellious purposes, without the authority of the crown; the third was, an act of local power, and intended to confer upon magistrates in the disturbed districts the same powers which were granted in 1812, to enter the houses of suspicious persons, and

seize such arms as they might find there; the fourth was, to procure a more speedy execution of justice, in cases of trial for misdemeanours; the fifth regarded the press. With regard to the first of these measures, he must desire the House to consider the abstract right on which meeting to petition was founded. From the mode in which this right had recently been laid down, and from the doctrines which had been founded upon it, it appeared to him, that unless common sense was applied to the law which had recently been promulgated on this subject, that law must inevitably lead to sanguinary rebellion in the first case, and that which was its never-failing concomitant, military despotism, in the second. It was obvious, that without some qualification of the right, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions, might meet in any one given place, at any one given time, and that it made no difference whether they met with or without arms, with or without flags, or with or without all that novel paraphernalia which had lately rendered those meetings so conspicuous. Now, he would ask any prudent man, whether it was right to assert that the people, (and for the sake of the argument, he was at liberty to assume the whole of the people,) might meet at one place, and to say that the magistrates were to stand quiet, after the meeting was assembled, until some positive damage was done? If such a principle could exist, it would prove that the laws of England were absurd and powerless. His Lordship then entered at large into the question of the legality of the Manchester meeting, and referred to the opinion expressed by Mr Plunkett of its decided illegality, and to the silence maintained on this subject by Mr Scarlett, which

his Lordship construed into an acquiescence in the same doctrine. The first enactment would therefore be, the limitation of numbers; the second to prevent persons residing in distant districts from attending meetings in districts where they did not reside; the third, to prevent the existence of simultaneous meetings. From this proposition he would except county meetings, meetings called by corporate bodies, by grand juries, or by five magistrates. With these exceptions every meeting must be preceded by a notice, for a certain number of days, of the inten tion to call such a meeting, and must be within the parish. In confining those meetings to their parishes, it was proposed to make it a misdemeanour for any person, not resident in the parish, to attend a meeting in it. Two objects would be effected by this regulation; the first was to exclude strangers, with security to the right of public deliberation, and without injury to the public peace; the second, to prevent the distraction of the attention of magistrates by vast numbers of simultaneous meetings, not perhaps known to them till the very time of meeting, and then often corresponding with other public meetings or markets. Therefore, it would be required to give notice of the meeting six days beforehand, and the magistrates were to have the power of postponing the day of meeting to a period not exceeding four days, and of preventing large meetings or simultaneous meetings. With respect to the next measure, none would be allowed to attend those meetings either armed or in martial array, nor with those symbols which threatened confusion and danger to the peaceable part of the community. This would extend to county meetings, as well as to meetings confined

to the parish; because a county meeting in this country had been disgraced by radicals armed who attended it. The next object to which he would call their attention, was the practice of training and drilling, Training, with or without arms, and all military manœuvres, would be prohibited. Meetings for these purposes would be rendered illegal, and magistrates might disperse them at their discretion. A distinction would be made between the drillers and the drilled, because the drillers must be supposed to be more intelligent than the drilled. For drillers, not only would fine and imprisonment be assigned as a punishment, but transportation might be inflicted, if the court saw proper. The measure would extend only to certain counties, but it might be extended to others at the desire of the LordLieutenant of any county. Another measure which he had to submit to them, respected the unbounded licence of delay which existed in certain cases of misdemeanour, and it would provide that such persons should go to trial immediately, unless they showed cause to the contrary. At present there was a power of putting off such trials for about a year and a half. The object was, to make such a regulation as would bring misdemeanours more nearly, in that respect, to the state of graver and capital cases. He now came to what he had postponed to the last, as being, in every constitutional point of view, the most difficult and the most important; he meant the dan ger which arose from the abuses of part of the public press. By this measure, what he considered the two great pillars of a free press would not be affected. Every man would be at liberty to publish his sentiments without any previous investigation into their nature, and without any

thing in the shape of a censorship or restraint upon individual discretion. In the second place, nothing should be done to affect the trial by jury. There was no intention to affect the tribunals appointed by law for the trial of libels, or to prevent any man from publishing his sentiments in the first instance; but measures would be adopted which would go to cut off the pestilent abuses of the press, because nothing could lower a free press more than such abuses. The first part of the measure he would propose, was that no pamphlet, newspaper, or paper not exceeding two sheets, in short, no political publications within that limit, would be suffered to be published without being regularly stamped. This measure would preserve the most respectable papers from being beaten out of circulation; or at least would make others more expensive. Another part of this subject was one which also embraced a principle already established and recognised by law. The name of the person responsible for the publication was always known by being on the face of the paper. The present object was only to prevent this law from being rendered nugatory by mere form and mode. It was therefore proposed to require from them some previous pecuniary security; that they should become bound, and find others to give security for them, to abide any consequences for treasonable, and blasphemous, or seditious libels. The third branch of this subject was absolutely necessary to give effect to the other two; it was to prevent hawking and vending about publications not duly stamped nor published by a responsible individual. In 1796 it was enacted, that upon a second conviction for sedition, a higher punishment might be imposed; and, in addition to fine and im

prisonment, transportation or banish ment for seven years might be inflicted when a person had been convicted a second time, not for an accumulated charge of two offences. He proposed a similar measure, not to be compulsory but discretionary, for the judge to sentence a person who had before been convicted of a treasonable, blasphemous, or seditious libel, to transportation. He could not apprehend that this would be viewed either as an unreasonable or an unfair proposition. That person who deliberately sinned after conviction had been once had against him, ought to be removed from the country, in order to protect the community against such deliberate offences. Having raade these observations, he did not know any thing further which he had to state, excepting that it had been found necessary to augment the forces. This aug mentation had been made in the man. ner which was conceived to be the most effective, and the least expensive, or the least connected with any motive of interest or partial views. His Lordship concluded by moving. for the introduction of the bills to which he had already alluded. The first of these would be a measure for the more effectually preventing sedi tious meetings and assemblies in the United Kingdom.

Mr Tierney strenuously denied that any case had been made out which justified the introduction of such measures as had been proposed. He contended, that the laws already in being were fully sufficient to repress the disturbances that had arisen, and to preserve public order and tranquillity; and, in support of this opinion, proceeded to comment in detail on the series of measures which had been proposed to the House; entering, at the same time, largely in to those facts which are already be

fore our readers. But while he maintained that attempts to regulate public meetings ought to be viewed with the utmost jealousy, the right honourable gentleman seemed to doubt whether, in any former parts of our history, meetings had occurred so numerous as some of those which had recently taken place, and whether, on that account, some legislative interference might not be expedient. He then proceeded to animadvert on the augmentation of the military force of the country, and asked, "If the Noble Lord thinks the new laws will be sufficient, where is the occasion for the 10,000 men?" Conciliation he warmly recommended; but concluded without embodying his opposition in any substantive form.

Lord Folkestone and Mr Brougham made each a few observations, the object of which was to represent the proposed measures as subversive both of the liberty of the press and the rights of public meetings; after which the bill was read a first time, and the second reading fixed for the 2d of December.

On the 30th, motions were brought forward in both Houses for the appointment of committees to inquire into the state of the country; that in the House of Lords, which was introduced by the Marquis of Lansdown, being rather more comprehensive in its object than that submitted to the House of Commons by Lord Althorp. The motion of the former nobleman embraced not merely an inquiry into the state of the country as regarded its tranquillity, but also into the causes and extent of the distress felt in the manufacturing districts, together with the manner in which the laws had been executed; while the motion of the latter simply proposed, that the papers relative to the state of the country, which had been laid on the table