Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. — Volume 2

by Henry Hunt

I was at that time a complete novice in electioneering matters, neither had I the least idea of offering myself, or indeed any ambition to be a Member of Parliament. I was, however, so completely disgusted with the conduct of the Sheriff, the factions, and their tool, Sir John Jarvis, that I addressed the enraged multitude, who felt that they had been cheated and tricked out of an election, and I promised them that, whenever there was another vacancy or a dissolution of Parliament, I would pledge myself to come forward as a Candidate, or bring some independent person, who would stand a contest for the representation of their city. The people were excessively indignant at the treatment which they had received, and they hooted, hallooed, and even pelted Mr. Bragge and his partizans out of the Hall, and with considerable difficulty the latter reached the White Lion, where a gaudy gilded car was provided, as usual, in which the Candidate was to be chaired. I left the scene in disgust, and returned to my house at Clifton. Before, however, I had taken half my dinner, which was waiting for me when I reached home, a messenger arrived, either a Mayor's or Sheriff's officer, to inform me that the populace had hurled Mr. Bragge Bathurst out of his car, and that he had escaped with great difficulty into a house, which the mob were pulling down, and had nearly demolished; and that Mr. Bragge's life would certainly be sacrificed if I did not come down to Bristol and save it, by interfering with the populace to spare him.

The event which occasioned me to be called back to Bristol was not wholly unexpected; for when I left the Guildhall I had overheard some of those who appeared to take the lead, and to have influence over the populace, solemnly declare their determination to have an election, even if it were at the expense of the life of Mr. Bathurst, against whom they vowed vengeance in such a tone and manner that I thought it proper to warn his friends; and, accordingly, before I left the town, I penetrated on horseback through the crowd in Broad-street, and with considerable pains and risk gained access to the White Lion, amidst the conflicts of the populace and the constables, or, more correctly speaking, bludgeon-men, employed by the White Lion club. The blood was streaming from their broken pates, and amongst the number of the wounded Mr. Peter Clisshold, the attorney, stood conspicuous, with his head laid open, his skull bare, and the blood flowing in streams down upon the pavement, as he stood under the archway of the White Lion gate. (He will recollect it if he should read this.) I desired to see some of the Committee, who came to me immediately. I communicated to them what I had overheard, and I strongly recommended, on the score of policy, that they should not attempt to chair their friend Mr. Bathurst, for, if they did, it was my decided opinion that some serious mischief would happen. They, however, informed me that they had determined at all hazards to have Mr. Bathurst chaired immediately; and, I shall never forget the exulting manner in which Mr. Clisshold declared that they had five hundred bludgeon-men sworn in as constables, and, as they would act in concert and in a body, they were more than a match for five thousand of the mob. I replied that I had done my duty, in communicating that which came accidentally to my knowledge, and if they had not prudence enough to benefit by the information, it was their business and not mine. I then retired through the immense multitude, mounted on my beautiful grey horse, Model, the populace making way for and cheering me as I passed. As I have before stated, I no sooner arrived at home, and was seated at my dinner, than a message was brought, requesting my interference with the populace, who were demolishing the house into which Mr. Bragge Bathurst had retreated, after he had been handled so unceremoniously by the enraged people. If I had done by them as I know they would have done by me, I should have taken my dinner very quietly, and left the fury of the multitude to be quelled by those who had created it. But, actuated by the sublime precept, "do as you would that others should do unto you," I ordered my horse to be instantly re-saddled and brought to the door; and having mounted him I was in High-street, the scene of action, in a few minutes. There I found the people assembled, in immense numbers. Having broken in the windows and window frames of the house in which the hapless member, Mr. Bathurst, had concealed himself, they only waited for a cessation of throwing brick-bats and stones to rush into the house; which, if they had once done, his forfeited life would have been the inevitable price of the temerity of his friends.

The moment I galloped up there was a partial suspension of hostilities, and the multitude received me with three cheers. No time was to be lost; one moment's indecision would have been the death-signal of the Right Honourable Bragge Bathurst. I did not hesitate an instant; but, taking off my hat, I addressed them in a tone of expostulation, condemning their folly; and I then declared that I had a measure of much greater importance to communicate to them than that of wreaking their vengeance upon Mr. Bathurst, and if they would follow me, I would instantly, upon reaching Brandon Hill, communicate it to them. This was said by me with so much confidence, that they instantly assented to my proposition by three cheers. "Come, follow me, then, my Lads," I firmly rejoined, as I wheeled my horse round, and the whole crowd, consisting of many thousands, instantly began to move after me up High-street, down Clare-street, over the draw-bridge, through College Green, and upon Brandon Hill, over the high gate of which I leaped my horse. As soon as I got upon the center of the gravel walk that leads across the hill, I halted and began to address them. My only object was, to draw them from the victim of their intended vengeance. But having, by a bold and decisive effort, effected this purpose, I had now a painful and rather a dangerous duty to perform, that of satisfying the enraged multitude that I had not duped them. I therefore boldly censured their hasty and indiscreet conduct, in proceeding to such a violent measure as that of seeking the life of one who was merely the agent of a corrupt system. This was received with partial murmurs; but I, nevertheless, continued successfully to combat the indiscreet violence of the most sanguine, and, I soon found that, by dint of reason and argument, I had prevailed upon the great majority to agree with me. I then took occasion to dilate upon the consequences that must have followed the taking the life of a fellow creature, without the intervention of judge or jury. I was instantly answered, that their opponents had taken the lives of a great many, without judge or jury, some years before, when the Herefordshire militia, with Lord Bateman as their Colonel, had fired upon the inhabitants during the disturbances on Bristol bridge. I was obliged to admit the truth of this, and urge the folly of following so bad and murderous an example. I then informed them who I was, and told them that I would pledge myself to come forward, on the very next election, and give those who had votes an opportunity of exercising their franchises for a Candidate who would not betray and desert them, as Sir John Jarvis had that day done. This proposition was received with cheers. I also told them I would immediately form some plan, to enable the freemen to take up their freedom, by means of a voluntary weekly subscription amongst themselves; which plan should be carried into execution without delay. And as they had done me the kindness of patiently listening to, and acting upon, my recommendation to give up the desperate project which they had formed, I begged to offer them a drink of my genuine beer, not as a bribe, but as an earnest of my intention to carry my promise into execution.

Pointing now to my brewery at Jacob's Well, at the bottom of the hill, I said, once more, with confidence, "follow me, my Lads!" Till this time I was not even known by name to one in twenty of the multitude. This proposition was received with applause, and they followed me to the door of my brewery, where I ordered three hogsheads of strong beer to be rolled out and divided amongst them. This, together with my promise of future attention to their rights of election, restored them to good humor; and, upon my addressing them again, they promised to return to their homes as soon as they had finished their beer, which they did, almost to a man, without even the slightest disturbance taking place afterwards that night. I had no sooner drawn the people from the house in which Mr. Bathurst was concealed, than he took the opportunity of escaping out of the city, in a return post-chaise, to Bath. Thus did I save the life of a man whose partizans would have put me to death, without the slightest remorse, if they had had it in their power. Many liberal-minded persons, of all parties, applauded my conduct and presence of mind; but I was informed that one of the leaders of the White Lion club said, when he was told of the means that I had used to draw the people from their premeditated victim, that he only wished the mob had broken into my cellar, and turned into the streets all my beer, amounting at that time nearly to three thousand barrels; and this was the only thanks I ever received from any of the faction, from that day to this. As for Mr. Bathurst, he never had the manliness nor the candour to acknowledge the service in any way. But the Right Honourable Gentleman possibly may have thought of the circumstance when he was sitting as one of the Privy Council, who advised the thanks that were given, in the name of the King, to the Manchester Yeomanry and Magistrates! What must have been the feelings of this Right Honourable Privy Councillor when, as one of that immaculate body, he advised the prosecution against me for attending the Manchester meeting; and advised it, that a sort of blind might be obtained for the deeds that had been committed by the military bravoes on that day! What must have been the feelings of this gentleman, if the recollection that I had saved his life came across his mind, at the time when in all probability he was one of the same Cabinet who advised the length of the imprisonment that the Judges of the Court of King's Bench should impose upon me! Ah, Mr. Bragge Bathurst! what will be your feelings when you read this? When your life was in jeopardy, the power of saving that life was accidentally placed in my hands; I hesitated not to save that life, at the imminent risk of my own; and how grateful has been the return! But, Mr. Bathurst, I am a million times happier a man in my dungeon than you are in a palace. It was reserved for Mr. Bragge Bathurst, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, to reward Parson Hay for his deeds on the 16th of August 1819, at Manchester; to reward him with the living of Rochdale, with, it is said, two thousand five hundred pounds a year! But I am a much happier man in my dungeon than Parson Hay, or his relation, Mr. Bragge Bathurst, is; though the one is the Rector of Rochdale, and the other Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with all its revenue and patronage.

The news soon after this reached Bristol, that Sir Francis Burdett had been returned at the head of the poll for Westminster, by a large majority. This gave new life and spirits to the friends of liberty all over the kingdom, and no one participated more warmly than I did in the general joy which this news created, for I was one of the Baronet's most enthusiastic admirers. I immediately proposed a public dinner in Bristol, to celebrate the joyful event; but I could get no one to join me. There were several who said that if the dinner took place they would attend it, but they would not take upon themselves any of the responsibility of ordering such a dinner, nor of the risk and expense attending the getting of it up. There was, for one, a Mr. Lee, a surgeon, who was very ready to join in the dinner to commemorate the Westminster victory, but he shrank from bearing any part of the onus of setting it on foot, either in purse or in person. But, having once proposed a measure, I was not to be foiled in that way. I therefore, after some considerable difficulty in finding any one to take the order for a dinner for such a purpose, took the whole expense and responsibility upon myself, by ordering dinner for a hundred persons, at the large room in the Trout Tavern, Stokes' Croft.

The dinner was now advertised and placarded, myself to be in the chair. In the mean time, every effort was used to run down the dinner, and to intimidate persons from attending it; and on the morning of the day that was appointed for our meeting, the walls of the city were placarded with the following notice, from authority—"DANGER to be apprehended from the proposed dinner to be held this day at the Trout Tavern," &c. &c. The word DANGER was printed in letters six inches long. The soldiers were ordered to be upon duty, and every species of threat and intimidation was resorted to, in order to deter people from attending the much-dreaded dinner. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, a hundred persons sat down together, not ten of whom had ever seen each other's faces before. I took the head of the principal table, and Mr. Lee that of the other. We spent a most gratifying day, in the greatest harmony, and parted with the same good humor; every one being pleased with his entertainment, which had proved "the feast of reason and the flow of soul;" in the fullest sense of that phrase. The authorities used every laudable endeavour to make a disturbance, and create that danger which they pretended to apprehend; and the time-serving despicable editors of the Bristol Newspapers joined in the cry. Nay, some of them bellowed aloud and declared that this dinner meeting, to celebrate the triumph of the electors of Westminster over the two corrupt factions, the Whigs and Tories, was the forerunner of a revolution; and they insinuated that I, who was the promoter of this dinner, was the instigator of the riots which occurred on the day of the election, and that the fellows who met to dine were the very same who assembled and threatened the life of their amiable and patriotic member, Mr. Bragge Bathurst.

These falsehoods did not, however, either prevent or disturb our dinner. The infamous hand-bill did indeed produce what its manufacturers called a mob, for the people assembled in the street, opposite the Trout Tavern, in great numbers: but upon their being addressed by me, and cautioned not to suffer themselves to be caught in the trap laid for them by their enemies, but to retire peaceably to their homes, they gave us three cheers and dispersed immediately. It was very fortunate that they did so, for it was ascertained that the tender-hearted authorities were so excessively anxious to preserve the peace which they had sworn to keep, that they had called out the military, in order to disperse, at the point of the bayonet, that multitude which they had themselves collected together by their ridiculous and evil-disposed hand-bill of "Danger, &c." My timely advice and admonition to the people had, however, deprived them of their prey, and thus the sacrifice of human blood was prevented; for when the troops marched by, with bayonets fixed, there were not ten persons more than usual in the streets. This was a great disappointment to those who had got up the precious hand-bill of "Danger to be apprehended;" and, because I had the prudence to foresee and to frustrate this brutal and sanguinary scheme of the authorities, I was set down as a most dangerous fellow, and an enemy to the Government.

I might now, in fact, be considered to have fairly entered the field of politics; for I was completely identified with this meeting and dinner, at which we passed several spirited resolutions, approving the conduct of the electors of Westminster, and strongly urging the freemen of Bristol to follow their example. Votes of thanks were passed to Joseph Clayton Jennings, Esq., and to the Westminster Committee, and a congratulatory address was voted to Sir Francis Burdett, which I, as chairman of the meeting, was desired to communicate to him. This I did immediately, which, for the first time, gave me an opportunity of opening a correspondence with the Baronet. The votes and resolutions, as well as the toasts drank, and the speeches delivered, were published; I forget now whether by Mr. Lee or myself, but I rather think by him, as he had been in the habit of publishing a great deal before on the local politics of Bristol.

I received a very polite answer from Sir Francis Burdett, who professed to be highly flattered with the compliment we had paid him at Bristol. I likewise received an answer from Mr. Jennings, and the chairman of the Westminster Committee, expressing great pleasure at this mark of the union of sentiment existing between the people of Bristol and Westminster. On the other hand, I sent copies of our proceedings to Mr. Cobbett, who lived at that time at Botley, expressing a wish, if he approved of them, that he would insert them in his Political Register; he, however, neither inserted them nor gave me any answer, but, as it since appears, he wrote the famous letter to his friend Wright, who was a sort of hanger-on at the Westminster committee, which letter, at the last general election for Westminster, was read upon the hustings by one Cleary, an attorney's clerk, or rather a pettyfogging writer to an attorney in Dublin, who had left his native country for the same cause that had prompted many others of his countrymen to leave it before him. This person was hired by the committee of Sir Francis Burdett to do this dirty office, to shew that Mr. Cobbett entertained a different opinion of me in the year 1808, before he knew me, from that which he entertained of me in the year 1818, after he had known me and had acted with me for so many years.

What induced Mr. Cobbett to write this letter, or what were his motives, are best known to himself. But, the contents of the letter were as false, as the stile and language were gross, and the sentiments it contained illiberal and unmanly. Mr. Cobbett had at that time spoken to me but once; and as I was never in the habit of flattering any one, or disguising my opinions, I can easily conceive that he had, from this first interview, formed personally as unfavourable an opinion of me as I had of him. But he knew nothing of me or my connections. All that he could have known of me was, that I was a zealous advocate of that cause which he then professed to espouse. Therefore, what were his motives for writing this letter must remain with himself. However, Mr. Jennings, and the gentlemen who then composed the Westminster committee, treated his advice with that contempt which such a malignant and unmanly act deserved; for they opened a communication with me immediately. As to the letter, however, it was of such a nature, that they thought it advisable to lay it by, to be produced upon some future occasion, and that occasion was the one which I have named. Now I must intreat the reader to give me credit when I say, that I never suffered the production of this letter to operate upon me, so as to shake the private friendship I had with Mr. Cobbett. What he wrote of me, or whatever opinion he entertained of me, ten years back, and previously to his knowing any thing of me, however unjust that opinion might have been, however coarsely or illiberally that opinion might have been expressed, and however basely that circumstance might, after a lapse of ten or eleven years, have been used by a contemptible hired agent of Sir Francis Burdett, upon the public hustings at an election, I never suffered it for one moment to have the slightest influence upon my public or private conduct towards Mr. Cobbett. But what I was grieved and hurt at, was, that Mr. Cobbett should have made me his dupe, by writing home to me from America, to assure me, that the letter read by Cleary upon the hustings at Westminster was a forgery; and not only sending me a copy of the New York paper, wherein he had declared this letter to be a forgery, but authorizing ME, nay, urging ME to pronounce it to be a forgery, which, upon the faith of his word, I did, at a meeting at the Crown and Anchor, where Cleary produced the letter. At this treatment I was hurt; I had good reason to be offended; but I never complained of it. The shyness and the dispute which has arisen between Mr. Cobbett and myself has arisen from a very different cause. But, for my own part, I am happy that this shyness did not happen while Mr. Cobbett was in prison, but while Henry Hunt is incarcerated in his dungeon. Although I cannot accuse myself of having ever done any thing to merit this conduct from Mr. Cobbett, yet I shall never cease to lament it, as an injury to that cause in which we had so long drawn together. But, as is generally the case in such differences between friends, there may be faults on both sides; and I am not so presumptuous as to believe that I am exempt from error. It is a lamentable truth, however, that the strongest mind is not always proof against the insinuations of false friends, of go-betweens, and the eternal workings, and worryings, and sly malignant hints, of the low pride and cunning of those who are always at a person's elbow. The reader must excuse this digression; it is, in fact, no more than I owed to the subject, and an early explanation which is due to those who honour me by reading these Memoirs.