Some time in the early part of September, I received a letter from London, signed A. Thistlewood, requesting me, when I came to town, to do him the favour of a call, as he had to communicate to me matters of the highest importance, connected with the welfare and happiness of the people, to promote whose interest he had always observed that I was most ready and active, &c. &c. As Mr. Thistlewood was a perfect stranger to me, and as I was a stranger even to his name, I wrote to a Mr. Bryant, a quondam attorney, and Clerk of the Papers at the King's Bench; a man who was said to know every body and every thing that was going on in London, both in high and low life;—I wrote to this gentleman, and requested him to inquire at such a number for Mr. Thistlewood, and let me know who and what he was, as I had received rather a mysterious letter from him, and I wished to know something of him before I gave him any answer. The answer which I received from Mr. Bryant was such that I never replied to the letter of Mr. Thistlewood, or took any further notice of it.
Some time, however, in the beginning of November, I received a letter from London, signed Thomas Preston, Secretary, to say that a public meeting of the distressed inhabitants of the metropolis was advertised to be held in Spafields, on Monday, the 15th of November, and that he was instructed by the Committee to solicit my attendance. This letter was dated from Greystoke-place, and the writer requested an answer, which I gave him by return of post, desiring to be informed what was the object of the meeting. I received a reply, stating, that the object was to agree to a memorial to the Prince Regent, setting forth their grievances, and praying for relief. I instantly wrote, to say that I accepted their invitation, and I would attend the meeting at the time appointed.
On the next day I rode over to my friend Cobbett, at Botley, to consult with him what was best to be done. When I mentioned the circumstance to him, he looked very grave, and said it was a dangerous experiment, and he scarcely knew how to advise me, whether to go or not. "Oh," said I, "make your mind quite easy upon that point; there is no difficulty in it, I have accepted the invitation, and I mean to attend the meeting. The moment that I ascertained that it was for a legal purpose, that of addressing the Prince Regent upon the distressed state of the people, and praying for redress, I no longer hesitated, but accepted the invitation, and promised to be there in time. All that I want you to do, therefore, is, to assist me in drawing up some resolutions, and preparing a proper address to be presented to his Royal Highness upon the occasion." "That," said he, "I will do with great pleasure." After due consideration the resolutions and the address were agreed upon, and drawn up by him. Mr. Cobbett never mentioned one word to me that he had been invited by the same party to attend this said meeting; but he said he should be at his lodgings in London at the time.
I arrived in London the Saturday before the intended meeting, and called at Graystockplace, to inquire for Mr. Thomas Preston. I found no one there but two or three dirtily dressed, miserable, poor children, who told me that I should find their father at some house in Southampton-buildings, Chancery-lane. Thither I repaired, meditating as I went along on the wretched emblem of the distresses of the times, which I had just witnessed in the family of Mr. Thomas Preston. When I reached Southampton-buildings, I knocked at the door, and inquired for Mr. Preston. The servant said there was no such person there, but she would go and inquire of Mr. Thistlewood and the Doctor. She then desired me to walk in, and I was shewn into a very neat and well-furnished dining-room. I could not avoid observing to myself the contrast between the elegant apartment I was now in and that which I had just quitted in Graystock-place; the name of Thistlewood was still tinkling upon the drum of my ear, I having quite forgotten where I had heard it before.
In a few minutes two gentlemen walked in; the one dressed in a handsome dressing-gown and morocco slippers, the other in a shabby-genteel black. The former addressed me very familiarly by name, saying, that he was Mr. Thistlewood, and he begged to introduce his friend Dr. Watson. They at once informed me that they were part of the Committee, for whom Mr. Preston acted as Secretary; that they had called the meeting, and directed their Secretary to invite me to attend it, and that they had also written to invite Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, Mr. Waithman, Mr. Cobbett, and several other political characters. I then inquired what was the nature of the memorial or address which they meant to submit to the Prince Regent? They answered, that they had it not then by them, but that, if I wished it, they would procure me a sight of it before I went to the meeting. To this I replied, that I certainly did not wish merely for a sight of it, but for something more; as, if I attended the meeting to take any part in it, I should choose to have time to peruse the memorial very minutely before I undertook to give it my support. This they promised I should have an opportunity of doing, and the Doctor appeared anxious to have my opinion upon it. I could, however, see that Mr. Thistlewood had set his heart upon this memorial as it stood, and he slightly intimated that the Committee had made up their minds on the subject, and that it was finally settled that the memorial was to be submitted to the meeting. I inquired who the Committee were composed of, and I soon found that Mr. Thistlewood and Dr. Watson, the two gentlemen before me, were in reality the Committee; young Watson, Preston, Hooper, Castles, and one or two others, who formed the remainder of the Committee, being merely nominal members. I informed them that I was staying at Cooper's Hotel, in Bouverie-street, which makes part of the Black Lion Inn, in Water-lane, where they promised to wait upon me in the evening with the memorial, that I might look it over.
Mr. Thistlewood and the Doctor came at the appointed hour, and brought the document with them. It was very long, and filled several pages closely written upon foolscap paper. As soon as I had read the first resolution, I was satisfied in my own mind as to how I ought to act with respect to this voluminous production; but when I had read to the bottom of the first page I closed the book, and very seriously informed my visitors that it evidently contained treasonable matter, and that nothing more than the overt act of holding the meeting, to carry the scheme into execution, was required to make all that were concerned in it liable at least to be indicted for high treason. I certainly should not, I told them, countenance any such measures as were proposed even in the first page, and the project of marching in a body to Carlton House, to demand and enforce an audience of the Prince Regent (which formed a part of their design), was quite preposterous, as well as unjust and unreasonable. As a private gentleman, I myself would not submit to be intruded upon in such a manner, and it was very unreasonable to expect that it could be endured by the Chief Magistrate of the country. I found, in fact, that the whole affair was made up of Spencean principles, relating to the holding of all the land in the kingdom as one great farm belonging to the people, or something of that sort. I told them my ideas upon the subject, which were, that the first thing the people had to do, in order to recover their rights, was to obtain a Reform of the Commons' House of Parliament. When once the people were fairly and equally represented in that House, such propositions as were contained in their memorial might then be discussed, but for one set of people to dictate to any other what should be the law, I maintained to be arbitrary and unjust. The Doctor very readily concurred with me, and he asked my advice as to what was best to be done. I replied, that the only course to be pursued was, to pass certain resolutions, pointing out the distressed state of the country, and the absolute necessity of Reform, to save the wreck of the constitution, and declaring that the only Reform that would be of any avail must be upon the principles of Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and Vote by Ballot. They both at once agreed to the propriety of my suggestions, and requested that I would prepare some resolutions, and an address to his Royal Highness, which they also begged me to propose to the meeting, and they would support them. I asked them if they did not expect the attendance of any other of the public characters to whom they had written? To this they replied, that I was the only person who had accepted the invitation. The Doctor and Mr. Thistlewood promised to take care about the hustings being erected in Spa-fields, and the former was to call on me on Monday morning, to prepare and transcribe the resolutions and the petition which were to be submitted to the meeting.
The Doctor came at the time appointed, and he copied the resolutions and the petition which I had drawn up, which, with some few alterations and additions, were the same as were agreed upon by Mr. Cobbett and myself at Botley. Before we had finished these, a messenger arrived, to say that an immense number of persons were assembled in the front of the Merlin's Cave public-house, in Spa-fields, and that they were impatient for our arrival. Upon this, the Doctor and myself got into a hackney-coach, and drove immediately to the spot, which was covered by much the largest concourse of people I had ever seen together in my life. We were hailed with the most deafening shouts, and, with some considerable difficulty, we were driven to the summit of the hill, surrounded by the multitude. Upon inquiry where the hustings were, I found that nothing had been done or thought of towards the erecting of them. In this dilemma I mounted upon the top of the hackney-coach, and was immediately followed by the Doctor and another person, which person, without further ceremony, hoisted a tricoloured flag, red, white, and green! The bearer of this flag was no less a personage than the notorious Mr. JOHN CASTLES, a gemman that I had never seen before. I soon found that it was impossible to address such an immense multitude from such a situation as that of the top of a coach, and as the wind blew very sharp, our birth was a very disagreeable one. While we were looking round for a better situation, we were hailed by some gentlemen from the window of a house in the neighbouring row, and a young person, whom I afterwards found to be Mr. William Clark, having made his way to the coach, invited me to enter the house opposite, and to address the multitude from the window; and, as the party who were assembled in that room still kept beckoning me to join them, I readily assented. We dismounted and followed Mr. Clark, who led us up stairs into the front room of the Merlin's Cave public-house, which I afterwards found had been taken by, and was partly occupied by, the Magistrates, accompanied by a number of the officers of the police and the reporters of the public press. The sashes were immediately removed from the window, and I presented myself to the assembled multitude amidst universal shouts of applause. I found myself surrounded by strangers, there being scarcely a man in the room I had ever before seen, with the exception of Mr. Clark and some of the reporters of the public press. I proposed that Mr. Clark should take the chair, which proposal was seconded, and carried by acclamation. I was the only person present who was known to the multitude as a public man. I had often appeared before the people at Palace-yard, and at the Guildhall of the city of London, and I was instantly recognized by them. In fact, I believe that it had been publicly placarded and advertised that I had accepted the invitation to attend, which had been sent to me by the Committee, and I was, therefore, expected. The Chairman having, in an appropriate speech, briefly opened the meeting, I stood forward to move the resolutions, which I prefaced by a speech of about an hour in length. I pointed out the enormous sums paid by the public for what is called the Civil List, amounting in the last year to 1,038,000£; and in the same year, on account of deficiencies of the said Civil List, 584,713£ more; and for the Civil List for Scotland, 126,613£ additional, making in the whole, for the Civil List of that year, ONE MILLION SEVEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX POUNDS. I showed that the expense of keeping up the army, including the ordnance, was 26,736,017£; that the additional allowance to the Royal Family that year was 366,660£; that the secret service money was 153,443£; and that the sum voted for the poor clergy of the Church of England was 100,000£. I also read a list of some of the most profligate sinecurists and pensioners, male and female, in which I included a sufficient sprinkling of ladies and gentlemen belonging to both the great factions of Whigs and Tories, taking as nearly as I could an equal number from each of them. Among those whom I specified were the Marquis of Buckingham and Lord Camden, the two Tellers of the Exchequer, whose sinecures at that time were about thirty-five thousand a-year each; Lord Arden, the elder brother of Perceval, thirty-eight thousand a-year; Lords Grenville and Erskine, &c. &c. &c. Amongst the number of lady pensioners I noticed Lady Auckland, Lady Louisa Paget, Mrs. Hunn, the mother of Mr. Canning, &c. &c. I represented these persons as contributing to the distresses of the country, by taking such large sums out of the taxes, without doing any thing for it. I contended that the enormous weight of taxation alone produced the misery under which the people were groaning, and that the sole cause of such heavy impositions being placed upon the people, arose from the corrupt state of the representation in the Commons' or people's House of Parliament; and I laboured strenuously to convince them that the high price of bread and meat did not originate with the bakers and butchers, as was falsely asserted to be the case by the corrupt conductors of the daily press. I demonstrated to them the folly of wreaking their vengeance upon unoffending tradesmen, who were suffering from the weight of taxes nearly as much as themselves; and I endeavoured to convince them of the superiority of mental over physical force; contending that it would be an act of injustice, as well as folly, to resort to the latter while we had the power of exercising the former. Above all things, I took the greatest pains to promote peace and good order, as the only means by which they were likely to obtain any redress for their grievances, or any alleviation of their miseries, and to convince them that to commit acts of violence was to prove themselves unworthy of relief. I concluded by reading and recommending to their adoption the four following resolutions. These resolutions were received with long continued shouts of approbation:
Resolved 1st, That the country is in a state of fearful and unparalleled distress and misery; and that the principal immediate cause of this calamity, which has fallen upon all classes of persons, except that class which derive their incomes from the Taxes, is, that enormous load of taxation, which has taken, and which still takes, from the Farmer, the Manufacturer, and the Tradesman, the means of maintaining their families, and paying their debts, and of affording, in the shape of wages, a sufficiency to employ and support their Labourers and Journeymen.
Resolved 2d, That the causes of this intolerable burden, are, 1st, the amount of a Debt contracted by Boroughmongers for the purposes of carrying on a long, unnecessary, and unjust War, the main objects of which now appear to have been to stifle Civil, Political, and Religious Liberty, and to restore Despotism and Persecution; 2d, The maintenance of an Army in France, in order to uphold the restored Despots and Priests in opposition to the express wishes of the whole French Nation; 3d, The keeping up of an enormous Standing Army in these Kingdoms, with a view of overawing the People, and compelling them to submit to War Taxes in time of Peace; 4th, A lavish and profligate expenditure of the Public Money on innumerable men and women, who are the holders of Sinecures, Pensions, Grants, and Emoluments of various descriptions, without having ever performed the smallest service to their Country.
Resolved 3d, That the sole cause of these desolating measures and practices, is the want of the People being represented in the Commons' House of Parliament, and the return of Members to that House by those base and corrupt means, which were by the Members themselves shamelessly confessed to be "as notorious as the sun at noon-day."