SIDMOUTH'S UNPOPULARITY.
A far more serious outbreak at Manchester seems to have been clumsily planned soon afterwards, but it ended in nothing, and the enemies of the government freely attributed this and other projects of mob violence to the instigation of an agent-provocateur, well known as "Oliver the Spy". This man was also credited with the authorship of "the Derbyshire insurrection," for which three men were executed and many others transported. Here there can be no doubt that a formidable gang, armed with pikes, terrorised a large district, pressing operatives to join them in overt defiance of the law, and killing one who held back. Being confronted by a Nottinghamshire magistrate named Rolleston, with a small body of soldiers, they fled across the fields, and the bubble of rebellion burst at a touch. Whether they were legally guilty of high treason, for which they were unwisely tried, may perhaps be doubted, but it would certainly be no palliation of their crime if it could be shown, as it never was shown, that Oliver had led them to rely on a jacobin revolution in London. What does appear very clearly is that Sidmouth was greatly alarmed by the reports of his agents on the disturbed state of the country, but that he was highly conscientious in his instructions and in the use of his own powers. The great majority of those imprisoned for political offences at this time were liberated or acquitted, but the suspension of the habeas corpus act was renewed at the beginning of July.
Moreover, a circular was addressed by Sidmouth to the lords-lieutenant of counties, for the information of the magistrates, intimating that, in the opinion of the law officers, persons charged on oath with seditious libel might be apprehended and held to bail. No act of Sidmouth called forth such an outburst of reprobation as this; yet it is not self-evident that instigations to outrage, being criminal offences, should be treated by magistrates differently from other offences for which bail may be required, with the alternative of imprisonment. On the other hand, it is hardly becoming for a home secretary to interpret the law, and, since the forensic triumphs of Erskine, it had been declared by an act of parliament that in cases of libel, as distinct from all other criminal trials, both the law and the fact were within the province of the jury. At all events, William Cobbett, feeling himself to be at the mercy of informers and the crown, took refuge in America in December, 1817. Hone, an antiquarian bookseller, was thrice prosecuted for blasphemous libels, in which the ministers had been held up to contempt. All these ill-judged, if not vindictive, prosecutions ended in signal failure. Ellenborough, the chief justice, before whom the two last trials were held, strained his judicial authority to procure a conviction of Hone, but the prisoner, with a spirit worthy of a martyr, defied the intimidation of the court, and thrice carried the sympathies of the jury with him. His triple acquittal led to Ellenborough's resignation, and perceptibly shook the prestige of the government.
In the year 1818 there was a temporary improvement in the economic condition of the country. The depression of the preceding year was followed in this year by a rapid increase of revenue. The importance the ministry attached to finance was emphasised by the admission to the cabinet in January of Frederick John Robinson, afterwards prime minister as Lord Goderich, who had been appointed president of the board of trade and treasurer of the navy. The chancellor of the exchequer and the master of the mint were already members of the cabinet. The suspension of the habeas corpus act having expired, the reform agitation revived, but assumed a less dangerous character, and no serious outbreak occurred. A bill of indemnity was passed to cover any excesses of jurisdiction in arresting suspected persons or in suppressing tumultuous assemblies. A parliamentary inquiry showed both that the disorders of the previous year had been exaggerated, and that, after all, the extraordinary powers of the home office had been used with moderation. Nevertheless, the early part of the session was largely occupied by party debates on these questions, the employment of spies, and apprehensions for libel. Parliament was dissolved in June, and the general election which followed resulted in a gain of several seats to the opposition.[65] The ministry was strengthened in January, 1819, by the appointment of Wellington to be master-general of the ordnance, in succession to Mulgrave, who remained in the cabinet without office.
THE "MANCHESTER MASSACRE".
Before the end of the year 1818, a strike of Manchester cotton-spinners was attended by the usual incidents of brutal violence towards workmen who refused to join in it, but a few shots from the soldiers, one of which killed a rioter, proved effectual in quelling lawlessness. Manchester, however, remained the centre of agitation, and during the summer of 1819 a series of reform meetings held in other great towns culminated in a monster meeting originally convened for August 9, but postponed until the 16th. The history of this meeting ending in the so-called "Manchester" or "Peterloo massacre," has been strongly coloured by party spirit and sympathy with the victims of reckless demagogy no less than of blundering officialism. It is certain that drilling had been going on for some time among the multitudes invited to attend the meeting of the 9th; that its avowed object was to choose a "legislatorial representative," as Birmingham had already done, and that, on its being declared illegal by the municipal authorities, who declined to summon it on their own initiative, its organisers deliberately resolved to hold it a week later, whether it were legal or not.
The contingents, which poured in by thousands from neighbouring towns, seem to have carried no arms but sticks, and to have conducted themselves peaceably when they arrived at St. Peter's Fields, where Orator Hunt, puffed up with silly vanity, was voted into the chair on a hustings. Unfortunately, instead of attempting to prevent the meeting, the county magistrates decided to let the great masses of people assemble, and then to arrest the leaders in the midst of them. They had at their disposal several companies of infantry, six troops of the 15th hussars, and a body of yeomanry, besides special constables. The chief constable, being ordered to arrest Hunt and his colleagues, declared that he could not do so without military aid, whereupon a small force of yeomanry advanced but soon became wedged up and enclosed by the densely packed crowd. One of the magistrates, fancying the yeomanry to be in imminent danger, of which there is no proof, called upon Colonel L'Estrange, who was in command of the soldiers, to rescue them and disperse the mob. Four troops of the hussars then made a dashing charge, supported by a few of the yeomanry; the people fled in wild confusion before them; some were cut down, more were trampled down, and an eye-witness describes "several mounds of human beings" as lying where they had fallen. Happily, the actual loss of life did not exceed five or six, but a much larger number was more or less wounded, the real havoc and bloodshed were inevitably exaggerated by rumour, and a bitter sense of resentment was implanted in the breasts of myriads, innocent of the slightest complicity with sedition, but impatient of oligarchical rule, and disgusted with so ruthless an interference with the right of public meeting.
It would have been wise if Sidmouth and his colleagues had recognised this widespread feeling, had seen that famine and despair were at the bottom of popular discontent, and had admitted error of judgment, at least, on the part of the Lancashire magistrates. On the contrary, they felt it so necessary to support civil and military authority, at all hazards, that they induced the prince regent to express unqualified approbation of the course taken, and afterwards defended it without reserve in parliament. Even Eldon expressed his opinion privately that it would be hard to justify it, unless the assembly amounted to an act of treason, as he regarded it; whereas Hunt and his associates were prosecuted (and convicted in the next year) not for treason, but only for a misdemeanour. At all events, the storm of indignation excited by this sad event, and not confined to the working classes, powerfully fomented the reform movement. Large meetings were held over all the manufacturing districts, and a requisition to summon a great Yorkshire meeting was signed by Fitzwilliam, the lord-lieutenant, who attended it in person. For these acts he was properly dismissed, but, in spite of inflammatory speeches, nearly all the meetings passed off quietly and without interference. Nevertheless, the government thought it necessary to hold an autumn session, and strengthen the hands of the executive by fresh measures of repression. These having been passed in December after strenuous opposition, were afterwards known as the six acts, and regarded as the climax of Sidmouth's despotic régime.
Two of the six acts, directed against the possession of arms and military training for unlawful purposes, cannot be considered oppressive under the circumstances then prevailing. Nor can exception be taken on the ground of principle to another for "preventing delay in the administration of justice in cases of misdemeanour," which, indeed, was amended, by Holland, with Eldon's consent, so as to benefit defendants in state prosecutions. Two were designed to curb still further the liberty of the press. One of these made the publication of seditious libels an offence punishable with banishment, and authorised the seizure of all unsold copies. When we consider the extreme virulence of seditious libels in those days, this act does not wear so monstrous an aspect as its radical opponents alleged, but happily it soon became a dead letter, and was repealed in 1830. The other, imposing a stamp-duty on small pamphlets, only placed them on the same footing with newspapers. The last of the new measures—"to prevent more effectually seditious meetings and assemblies"—was practically aimed against all large meetings, unless called by the highest authorities in counties and corporate towns, or, at least, five justices of the peace. It was, therefore, a grave encroachment on the right of public meeting, and the only excuse for it was that it was passed under the fear of a revolutionary movement, and limited in duration to a period of five years.
SOCIAL LEGISLATION.