ASSASSINATION OF MR. PERCEVAL.
During this session, as the continuance of outrages in several of the manufacturing counties continued, a severe law was enacted, which made the breaking of frames and administration of oaths a capital felony. These commotions were generally attributed to the operation of our orders in council, diminishing the demands for articles of British manufacture; and petitions were presented to both houses for a revocation of these edicts. In compliance with the general wish, a formal inquiry was instituted; but while it was depending, its leader was suddenly cut off by a tragical death. As Mr. Perceval, on the 11th of May, was entering the lobby of the house of commons he was shot through the heart, and after uttering a slight exclamation and staggering a few paces, he expired. The assassin, whose name was Bellingham, made no attempt to escape, and he was immediately arrested. Apprehensions were at first entertained that there might be a conspiracy; but it was soon discovered that no other person had been concerned with him, and that there was no mixture of political feeling in his motives. Bellingham had been a merchant; and in a commercial visit to Russia some time before he had met with serious losses, which he attributed to violence and injustice. He had repeatedly addressed Lord G. Leveson Gower, who had been our ambassador at Petersburgh, and he had presented memorials to the treasury, soliciting a compensation for losses; but these losses not having been incurred in the course of any public service, were considered as affording him no title to compensation. Mr. Perceval had rightly refused to listen to his applications; but Bellingham was enraged at his refusal, and resolved to sacrifice his life. He was found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey, and he underwent the extreme sentence of the law within one week of his perpetration of the fearful deed. Two days after the assassination parliament voted £50,000 for the children of the sacrificed minister, and £2000 to his widow for life. Subsequently another pension was voted to his eldest son, as was also a monument for the deceased in Westminster Abbey. The talents of Mr. Perceval were not splendid, but as chancellor of the exchequer he displayed considerable skill in augmenting the public burdens at a time when the war was conducted on a scale of unprecedented expenditure. His advancement seems to have been owing to his inflexibility on the Catholic question, at a time when a majority of the talented members of parliament was in favour of some concession. But if Mr. Perceval’s talents were not of the highest order, in private life few persons were more deservedly respected, and whose death was in consequence more lamented. Sir Samuel Romilly, in his “Diary of Parliamentary Life,” remarks that he could hardly have accompanied his refusal to listen to Bellingham with any harshness, for few men had ever less harshness in their nature than he had. A recent writer also says:—“We remember well walking through the populous streets and suburbs of the capital on that afternoon and evening, and seeing the mixed feelings of horror and pity expressed on almost every countenance.”