yeomanry had dismounted; some were easing their horses' girths, others adjusting their accoutrements, and some wiping their sabres. Several mounds of human beings still remained where they had fallen, crushed down and smothered." Eight men, two women, and a child, were taken up before night dead, or mortally injured. The wounded had fled, or been carried, by hundreds to their homes.

Among the parties taken into custody on the hustings with Hunt, was the reporter of the (then reforming) “Times." But the news of what had transpired was not kept back from the public by this accident. Gentlemen who had taken no part in the meeting wrote to the London papers instantly, and the tragic news quickly circulated. Intense indignation was excited in all but a few, and the occurrence was generally regretted as a catastrophe where it was not denounced as a crime. The magistrates soon became concerned for the consequences of what they had done, and a private meeting of their friends was got up to thank them in the name of the town; which was immediately met by the protest of four thousand eight hundred inhabitants. The government, after anxious but hasty deliberation, resolved on supporting the magistrates; and on the 21st, the thanks of the Prince Regent for their " prompt, decisive, and efficient measures for the preservation of the public peace," were conveyed to them by Lord Sidmouth.* But votes of severe censure, and demands for inquiry, were passed by great meetings in London, Westminster, Glasgow, York, Bristol, Nottingham, Norwich, Liverpool, and other large towns, and the county of York. A committee was formed at Manchester, and attended by a deputation from London, to relieve the wounded and defend the imprisoned. Five hundred and sixty cases of serious injury were reported by the committee. And this was only an approximation to the whole truth, for of the numbers of poor creatures who had refused to apply for parish or surgical aid, lest their wounds should be made witnesses against them, many kept back even from the relief committee. One hundred and forty, fourteen of

* All who have used or looked into Cobbett's English Grammar, remember that he selects exercises in the correction of bad English from the royal and ministeiial speeches and documents of this period. Here is a specimen of cabinet composition which dashed with amusement the indignation prevalent at the time it was issued:

"Whitehall, November 6, 1819.

"My Lord,-Having been informed that there are laying about throughout the kingdom, especially in the maritime part of it, a great number of cannon, which are private property, a considerable part of which were formerly used in merchant's ships, I beg leave to call your lordship's attention to this subject; and to request that you will direct the magistrates under your lordship's charge, to make the necessary inquiries within their respective districts, and if any gun of this description should be found therein, that they will cause immediate steps to be saken, with the consent of their owners, for rendering them useless, or for removing them to a place of security. I have the honour to be, &c. &c,

"H. H. Lieutenant of--”

"SIDMOUTH."

whom were women, had received severe sabre cuts; and a hundred and thirteen other women had been severely bruised by sabre or hoof. Upwards of twelve hundred pounds were distributed among the wounded and their families, and nearly two thousand were expended in the defence of other victims. The three thousand pounds then raised are a pleasing indication of the sympathy existing at the time between the moderate and the radical reforming classes. The gentle forbearance of the cruelly outraged people, whose numerical might was after all overwhelming, and whose vengeance no amount of physical force could have suppressed, was a keen reproach on those who vilified and oppressed them even unto blood. It is infinitely to the honour of the working classes of that day, that their six hundred killed and wounded were smitten down unarmed, and were not avenged by midnight burnings nor private assassinations.

The Government followed up its first resolution by prosecuting Hunt and his fellows; by an ex officio proceeding against Sir Francis Burdett, for the letter which he addressed to his constituents immediately on hearing of the affair; by rebuffing with an answer characterised by Earl Grey as "impertinent and flippant” an address from the corporation of London; and dismissing Earl Fitzwilliam from the Lord-Lieutenantship of the West Riding for having taken part in the Yorkshire county meeting. The verdict of a coroner's inquest, which had sat nine times, at Oldham, upon one of the sufferers, was quashed by the Court of King's Bench; and the Lancaster grand jury threw out the indictments preferred against the yeomanry. A meeting at Paisley, in the month of September, was forcibly broken up, and involved that town and Glasgow in a three days' riot. We may add here, that Hunt was put upon his trial, with nine others, at York, in the following March, for sedition-the graver charge of high treason had been first imputed, but was abandoned. Five were acquitted, five found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment for various terms-Hunt for two years and a half, Bamford and others for one year. The convicted had good cause, however, to congratulate themselves on the failure of the evidence adduced to prove more than indiscretion in their proceedings on the fatal sixteenth of August ;-a dagger-painted banner, for instance, on which much stress was laid, was proved to have taken its device and colour from the inconsiderate haste of its artist. Some of them got, as later victims have done, this great unintended good from their sufferings-they learnt to distrust vain, pompous, loud-mouthed agitators, and to separate themselves from folly when they could neither control nor neutralize it. Sir Francis was fined £2,000, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Sir Charles Wolseley and a Rev. Mr. Harrison received eighteen months' imprisonment each for their harangues at Stockport and Ashton-under-Lyne.

Nor were Ministers content to rest here from their policy of unmiti

gated repression. Lord Sidmouth took advantage of the declarations o. his most unscrupulous supporters to press on the unwilling Premier the immediate assemblage of Parliament, for the adoption of laws that should absolutely suppress the agitation that grew in spite of all attempts to retard iit. The Houses were accordingly summoned for the 28th of November. There were immediately laid before them the measures that have become obnoxious by the name of "the Six Acts." They were-the first, "An Act to prevent delay in the administration of justice in cases of misdemeanor;" the second," to prevent the training of persons to the use of arms, and to the practice of military evolutions and exercise;" the third, "for the more effectual prevention and punishment of blasphemous and seditious libels;" the fourth, "to authorize justices of the peace, in certain disturbed counties, to seize and detain arms collected and kept for purposes dangerous to the public peace;" the fifth, "to subject certain publications to the duties of stamps upon newspapers, and to make other regulations for restraining the abuses arising from the publication of blasphemous and seditious libels ;" and the sixth, "for more effectually preventing seditious meetings and assemblies." The arbitrary provisions of these measures may be conjectured from their descriptive titles. They destroyed or suspended every privilege on which Englishmen were accustomed to plume themselves. They introduced the punishment of banishment for libel, and bound down the most moderate political writers under heavy burdens and onerous securities; disarmed the people, and subjected their previously sacred homes to midnight visitations; restricted the right of petition to the narrow bounds in which it could be exercised without that of public meeting; and necessarily invaded personal liberty as well as political. The Whigs, except the Grenville section, united with the generally-hated Radicals in opposing, at every step, from the Prince Regent's speech to the third reading, these extraordinary measures, but they were passed by majorities of two to one. It is impossible for the Liberal politician of to-day not to echo aloud the deep, indignant groans of the people on whom this yoke of iron was bound.

Having thus provided, as it was supposed, for the increased security of the throne, Parliament adjourned for a few weeks; but within that short interval the aged monarch of the throne had passed away. On the evening of Saturday, January 29, 1820, at Windsor Castle, died King George the Third, in the eighty-second year of his age, and the sixtieth of his reign. Though the event was regarded as quite without political importance-since blindness and insanity had for ten years deprived him of all but the name of King, and his son would but add the title to the power of the sovereign -it could not fail to create a sensation of solemnity; especially as it had been preceded but a week before [the 23rd] by the death of the Duke of

K

Kent-the fourth son of the old King, and the father of our present Sovereign-in the fifty-third year of his age. The succession, however, was no longer in danger ;-on the 25th of March previously, the Duchess of Cambridge had given birth to a son; on the 27th, the Duchess of Clarence to a daughter (who died in a few hours); on the 24th of May, the Duchess of Kent to the Princess Victoria; and on the next day, the Duchess of Cumberland to a son. Of the public and personal character of George the Third, it is necessary to speak somewhat at length. On any theory of kingship, it is impossible to award him praise. To be destitute of the "governing faculty," is perhaps rather an advantage than otherwise to a modern constitutional monarch; but for him at the same time to possess strong notions of the royal prerogative, and an exaggerated sense of responsibility, is a great misfortune to himself and his people. It was this combination of qualities and circumstances which rendered the reign of George the Third disastrous beyond any since that of Henry the Sixth. With no direct power but the negative one of obstruction, he never used that power but to prevent just and conciliatory concessions; while the indirect influence inseparable from his station was always used against the peace of the world and the amelioration of his own people. The loss of the American colonies is universally attributed to his obstinate persistence in a policy condemned by his wisest councillors and the highest constitutional authorities. Twenty years of almost incessant war were owing greatly to his personal animosities, fear, and pride. The protraction over twenty-eight years of the Catholic struggle, with the consequent embroilment of Ireland, and occasional outbursts of vehement bigotry in England, is as directly traceable to his superstitious immobility. Sincerity may justify a man to his Maker, but it cannot avert the complaints and condemnations of a nation from its ruler. It is customary, however, for the eulogists of George the Third to take refuge from these facts in his supposed personal excellences. It is but lately that Parliament was called upon to vote the more readily an extravagant dotation to the family of the Duke of Cambridge, on the ground that he was the son of "the good King George;" and historians are singularly unanimous in testifying, that " as a monarch he was endeared to his people by his private virtues." Comparatively, this is true; but only comparatively. It is generally supposed that he was a model of domestic morality; whereas, he was either a seducer or a bigamist. When Prince of Wales, he abducted one Hannah Lightfoot, a Quakeress; and it is asserted, that he was married to her at Kew, by Dr. Wilmot, in the presence of the elder Pitt. It is certain that he had several children by this unhappy young woman, and that he abandoned her on his marriage with Charlotte. The law which forbids members of the royal family marrying with subjects, or without the consent of the reigning sovereign, was passed subsequently, and at his own instigation.

"The aoméstic history of George the Third," says a writer in the "Eclectic Review". '—a faithful authority on questions of English history-" is one of the most awful that ever befel a monarch. The consequences of concealing his first marriage were ttrrible to his peace of mind, and to that of more than one of his children; and in this fact we are to seek for the true causes of the overthrow of his intellect. It is not common for virtuous parents to bring up a whole family of licentious profligates; and yet what family ever exhibited such a troop of the most shameless and sensual ones as that of George the Third? He saw his sons seduced an abandon one woman after another, and he could not reprimand them; for he knew his own story better than they who now act the historian seem to do. It is high time, however, that history should speak the truth; and the highest praise that can be allowed to George the Third is, that having married two wives, and living before the nation as a bigamist, he was at least faithful to one of them. But he set before his children a fatal example, which they only too carefully followed." It is from no pleasure in disinterring the vices of kings, from no splenetic delight in showing rottenness where men have agreed to honour comeliness, that we reproduce here these generally forgotten facts; but from a deep conviction that kings are as much wronged as nations by the system which hedges about the former with temptations, and holds up to the latter false ideals, while it imposes on them oppressive burdens. We shall have to look presently on the King of England arraigning his wife for crimes for which himself was infamous, and persecuting her to the very death; it is but just even to him to show, that his vices were not all his own, as it is due to public morality to illustrate from the life of George the Third, that the sins of youth are visited on the hoary head, and transmitted even with a crown.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CATO-STREET CONSPIRACY-RETURN OF THE QUEEN TO ENGLAND-HER RECEPTION BY THE KING AND PEOPLE-SECRET COMMITTEES ON HER CONDUCT ABROAD-HER TRIAL, ACQUITTAL, DEATH, AND BURIAL-PARLIAMENTARY AND CRIMINAL-LAW REFORM-MR. BROUGHAM'S EDUCATIONAL SCHEME-THE CONSTITUTIONAL ASSOCIATION-THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

THE reign of George the Fourth opened with an alarming, disgusting event. On the 5th of January [1820], the Duke of Wellington wrote that he "had just heard that Sidmouth had discovered another conspiracy." There was so little of the unusual in this, that Sidmouth's colleagues might well pass