"That your petitioner, who had met with every demonstration of public good-will and approbation in the said city, was surprised to see in the public newspapers an account of a boy having been sent to gaol by certain Police Officers and Justices, for having pulled down a posting-bill, which alleged your petitioner to have been hissed out of the City of Bristol, and containing other gross falsehoods and infamous calumnies on the character of your petitioner, calculated to excite great hatred against your petitioner, and to prepare the way for his ruin and destruction.
"That your petitioner, who trusts that he has himself always acted an open and manly part, and who has never been so base as to make an attack upon any one, who had not the fair means of defence, feeling indignant at this act of partiality and oppression, came to London with a view of investigating the matter, and this investigation having taken place, he now alleges to your Honourable House, that the aforesaid posting-bills, containing the infamous calumnies aforesaid, were printed by J. Downes, who is the printer to the Police; that the bill-sticker received the bills from the said Downes, who paid him for sticking them up; that the bill-sticker was told by the said Downes, that there would be somebody to watch him to see that he stuck them up; that Police Officers were set to watch to prevent the said bills from being pulled down; that some of these Bills were carried to the Police-office at Hatton Garden, and there kept by the officers, to be produced in proof against persons who should be taken up for pulling them down; that Thomas Dugood was seized, sent to gaol, kept on bread and water, and made to lie on the bare boards from the tenth to the twenty-second of January, 1817, when he was taken out with about fifty other persons, tied to a long rope or cable, and marched to Hicks's Hall, where he was let loose, and that his only offence was pulling down one of those bills; that a copy of Dugood's commitment was refused to your petitioner; that your petitioner was intentionally directed to a wrong prison to see the boy Dugood; that the Magistrate, William Marmaduke Sellon, who had committed Dugood, denied repeatedly that he knew any thing of the matter, and positively asserted that Dugood had been committed by another Magistrate, a Mr. Turton, who Mr. Sellon said, was at his house very ill, and not likely to come to the office for some time.
"That your Honourable House is besought by your petitioner, to bear in mind the recently exposed atrocious conspiracies carried on by officers of the Police against the lives of innocent men, and your petitioner is confident that your Honourable House will, in these transactions, see the clear proofs of a foul conspiracy against the character and life of your petitioner, carried on by persons in the public employ, appointed by the Crown, and removable at its pleasure, and that this conspiracy has been also carried on by means of public money.
"And, therefore, as the only mode of doing justice to the petitioner and to the public in a case of such singular atrocity, your petitioner prays your Honourable House that he may be permitted to prove (as he is ready to do) all and singular the aforesaid allegations at the Bar of your Honourable House, and that if your Honourable House shall find the allegations to be true, you will be pleased to address his Royal Highness to cause the aforesaid Magistrate to be dismissed from his office.
"And your petitioner shall ever pray.
"H. HUNT."
The day of the third Spafields meeting arrived, and I drove to town in my tandem, and put up at the British Coffee-house livery-stables, in Cockspur-street, where I had for several years before gone with my horses. My trunk was, as usual, taken into a bedroom, where I meant to change my dress previously to my going to the meeting. I had first to walk into Fleet-street on business, and when I got there, I saw nine pieces of artillery drawn over Blackfriars-bridge, which proceeded up Fleet-market towards Spafields, attended by a regular company of artillery men from Woolwich. I had called on Major Cartwright as I drove into town, and he informed me that he had heard, from good authority, that a Cabinet Council had been held on Saturday, and that LORD CASTLEREAGH had proposed to disperse the intended meeting by military force, but that the other Cabinet Ministers had opposed this measure, and that at length CASTLEREAGH retired, muttering vengeance, and adding that he would take the responsibility upon himself. The Major spoke with great earnestness and feeling, while, if I recollect right, I treated his information rather lightly, saying, that if they killed me I hoped the Major would write my epitaph. When, however, I saw the artillery pass up Fleet-market, in a direction for Spafields, the place of meeting, I began to think more seriously of the matter; but, as I was about to do that which my conscience approved of, and as I knew that I should not violate any law, I returned towards my inn, certainly in a serious mood, yet determined to do my duty. Not one man that I knew in the whole metropolis would or did accompany me. I called at Cobbett's lodgings, in Catherine-street, and asked the young ones, rather sarcastically, if they meant to attend the meeting? to which they answered, that their father had left positive orders that they should not go over the threshhold of the door that day. When I got to my inn, in Cockspur-street, I ordered my servant to get my horses ready, and I went to my bedroom to put on a clean shirt, but I was surprised to find that my trunk had been removed. I rung the bell several times before any one came; at length the Boots appeared, instead of the chambermaid, and I demanded the reason of my trunk being removed. He either knew or pretended to know nothing of the matter, but said he would inquire. After he had been absent for some time, I rung again, upon which a stranger appeared, a person whom I had never seen before. He said he was the master of the house, and he had ordered my trunk to be removed; to which he added, that I should not sleep in his house, as it would drive away his best customers. I told him I had slept there occasionally for many years, and was always treated with civility; and drawing out my purse, I said that as he was a stranger I would immediately pay him whatever he might demand for the use of the room. He still, however, persisted that I should leave his house. I demanded my trunk, and declared I would dress there first; he swore I should not, and made an effort to hustle me out of the room. I then told him to keep his hands off, or I would thrash him; upon which he put himself into a boxing attitude, and offered to fight me. He was a little insignificant creature, and I was just upon the point of kicking him out of the room, when I saw a fellow peeping round the corner of the door. It immediately struck me that this was a trap to get me into a scrape, and I paused and drew back in consequence. I told the little gentleman, who said his name was Morley, that I would meet him and talk over the matter at any other time; but, as I was at present engaged, I asked him as a favour to let me have my trunk to dress, and I would leave his house in ten minutes. It was agreed that we should meet at Mr. Jackson's rooms, some day in the following week. Thither I went at the time appointed, with perhaps the worst second in the world, Mr. Cobbett. When I got there each told his story, and Jackson proposed that we should go into the fields to settle the dispute, but this was not assented to by either Mr. Morley or myself, and Mr. Cobbett was vehement against my having any thing to do with my antagonist. The affair, therefore, terminated with some smart words, without either of us offering to fight. This affair was, however, blazoned forth in all the morning papers, which, in utter defiance of truth, asserted that I had behaved ill to a man of the name of Morley, who kept the British Coffee-house in Cockspur-street; that we had met by appointment at Jackson's, and that I had refused to fight him. Supposing that I had done so, I should, under all the circumstances, have been perfectly justified; but it was no such thing, the fellow never offered to fight me at any other time but in his own house, where, if I had struck him, I am thoroughly convinced that a police-officer was in attendance, to take me into custody for assaulting a man in his own house; consequently, I should have been detained till the time of the meeting in Spafields had passed; and it would have been made a pretty handle of in the papers the next day, when the public would have been told that, instead of my attending the meeting in Spafields, I had been taken to Bow-street, and detained in custody, for assaulting the landlord of the inn at which I had put up. All that I shall add upon the subject is, that on no occasion in my life did I ever turn my back upon two such men as Mr. Morley.
At the time appointed I arrived at the meeting, which was much larger than either of the former meetings. Resolutions were passed, and a petition was unanimously agreed to, praying for Reform, &c. which petition was placed the same evening in the hands of Lord Folkestone, by Mr. Clarke, who had been for the third time our chairman; and which petition was presented to the House of Commons the same night, by his Lordship. I was accompanied by the people to Hyde-Park Corner, where I took my leave of them, and returned to my house at Middleton Cottage; the whole of these three meetings in Spafields having been held in the most peaceable and orderly manner, without the least disturbance, or one single breach of the peace having been committed by any person that attended it, notwithstanding all the infamous falsehoods that were published in the newspapers to the contrary. The truth is, that I have seen ten times more disturbance, disorder, and tumult, at one Common-Hall, in the city of London, where the Lord Mayor presided, than there was at all these meetings put together.
While these things were going peaceably on out of doors, and petitions were daily and numerously pouring in from all parts of the kingdom, particularly from the North of England, and from Scotland, the two Houses of Parliament were in their way not inactive. The committees that were appointed made their report, and bills were immediately brought in to suspend the Habeas-Corpus Act, and to prevent seditious meetings; which bills were, with very faint opposition, agreed to. It ought not to be forgotten, that on this occasion the Whigs took a most prominent part against the people, and that they were quite as loud and as violent against the Reformers as the Ministers were. To be sure the people had committed one inexpiable crime. They had by their steady, peaceable, and persevering conduct, frightened the Whig leader, Mr. Ponsonby, out of his sinecure of 4,000_l_. per annum, which he held in consequence of his having been Lord Chancellor of Ireland, during the Whig administration, in the year 1807. The cunning Scotchman, Erskine, who had been for the same short period Lord Chancellor of England, was also pressed very hard to follow the example of his Irish friend; but Sawney was of a more tenaciously grasping nature, and he stuck to the ship, determined to partake of the plunder as long as she would swim. It was for this that the Whigs wreaked their malice upon the Reformers, and that Mr. Brougham and his confederates appeared to run a race every night which should most abuse and calumniate them.
The plot being ripe, Watson, Thistlewood, Preston, and Hooper, were committed to the Tower for high treason. On the other hand, meetings were held in Westminster, and in the city of London, to petition against the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The following petition of mine was also presented to the House of Lords, by Lord Holland. I was below the bar at the time his Lordship presented it, immediately before Lord Sidmouth rose to move the passing of the Seditious Meetings Bill, and I shall never forget the look that his Lordship, the Secretary of State, gave me; for I stood right in front of the bar, and within a few yards of him.