Foreign Enlistment Bill.
Several divisions in Parliament clearly showed the growing weakness of Government. The Foreign Enlistment Bill, to prevent English subjects from serving in a foreign service or fitting out ships of war for foreign countries, was carried by a majority of thirteen only, the ground of opposition being that the Bill was in fact directed to the injury of the revolted colonies of Spain in America, in whose ranks many Englishmen were serving. Like the Alien Act of the preceding session, the Bill was considered as a proof of that legitimist and absolute tendency of which the Government was accused. Again, in the great Catholic emancipation rejected. May 3. question of Catholic emancipation, which was brought forward by Grattan in the best speech he ever made in the House, the Government were victorious by a majority of two only in a very full House; while it was actually defeated by Reform of Scotch burghs. May 6. a majority of five on the question of the reform of Scotch burghs, which it had got rid of in the last session. The system in those burghs had been in existence ever since the fifteenth century, and so acted as to perpetuate the administration in the hands of one party, often of one family only, as the retiring members of the corporation had the right of electing their own successors. For years the burghs had been bent upon ridding themselves of this exclusive government; as in the case of other reforms, their efforts had passed out of sight during the tumult of the French wars, again to be called into existence on the resumption of peace. In 1817 certain irregularities of form in the burgh of Montrose had caused the elections to be set aside by the law courts. The Crown had been compelled to give a new charter, in which a certain popular element was admitted. Other burghs at once began to clamour for similar changes. To their petitions, however, the Government turned a deaf ear. When the elections in Aberdeen were quashed by the law courts, as those at Montrose had been, the old constitution had been re-established, and Lord Archibald Hamilton now took up the cause of the burghs. He demanded a copy of the new warrant, and was defeated by five only. Pressing his success, he demanded that the petitions of the burghs should be referred to a select committee. A large majority of the burghs themselves were loudly calling for reform. The population of those who desired it amounted to 420,000, as opposed to 60,000, the population of those who had not petitioned. The proof of the wish of the people most interested was too strong for the House; in spite of the Government opposition, Lord Archibald's motion was carried in a House of nearly 300 by a majority of five. As the ground of opposition had been avowedly that a change in the burghs was but the beginning of parliamentary reform, this victory shows how the opposition to that measure was gradually breaking down.
In spite of these signs of weakness, the ministers were upon the whole well satisfied with the session. They believed in the success of their repressive measures in the year 1817, and thought that the state of the country was both quieter and more prosperous than it Chronic sufferings of the poor. had been. Complaints of the depression of agriculture, and poverty and suffering among the agricultural poor, were indeed chronic; they depended upon causes over which the immediate action of Government had little control. Exaggerated rents were seeking their natural level; over-cultivation, especially of corn, was giving place to more rational agriculture, and the enormous prosperity enjoyed by the agriculturists during the war was shrinking to modest and hard-won profits; the change could not but be attended with some depression and many painful contrasts. At the same time the action of the Poor Law as then administered, the injudicious fostering of the population which had gone on during the war, and the law of settlement which prevented free competition of labour, of necessity caused misery among the labourers. It was when the manufacturing and mercantile interests were also touched, when, under the action of restrictive corn laws, prices rose, while work was not to be had, that the social dangers of the country became from time to time great.
The prosperity of the year 1818 had been rather apparent than real; there had been much over-trading; a more healthy spirit appears to have arisen in the beginning of 1819, but the effects of the preceding folly were now to be felt. In the first half of the year the number of bankruptcies were almost double the average, the price of corn was still as high as 75s., work was scarce, and wages fell, and before the year was over the ministry found upon their hand difficulties even greater than those they had experienced in the Political meetings. gloomy year of 1817. For again the political question was ready to start to life, again leaders of a higher class were ready to take advantage of the sufferings of the people, and men of more extreme views among themselves were eager to lead them into desperate and revolutionary designs. There had been great meetings near Leeds, Glasgow, and at Ashton-under-Lyne, in June. On the 28th of that month, Sir Charles Wolseley and the Rev. Joseph Harrison had made violent speeches at a great assembly at Stockport, and Sir Charles had been elected the "legislatorial representative" for Birmingham. At the same time the reformers were found to be engaged in drilling. No arms were seen, and it is asserted by one of their leaders that the only object of their drilling was to secure order and regularity and the better appearance at a forthcoming great meeting at Manchester. On the other hand, it was held by those who dreaded popular movements that the drilling had been long and secretly continued, and was a part of a great plan for an exhibition of physical force. The object of the Manchester meeting, which was to be held on the 9th of August, was to choose a representative as Birmingham had already done. The meeting was declared illegal; a requisition was therefore sent to the proper officials, begging them to call it legally. On their refusal, it was determined to hold it, legal or not, on the 16th, in St. Peter's Field. Thither, on the day appointed, large bodies of men, well dressed and without arms, but in something like military array, marched from all The Manchester Massacre. Aug. 16, 1819. the neighbouring towns, and collected round a hustings, from which Hunt was to address them. Their number perhaps amounted to about 80,000, all pressed together in a space of not more than three acres. The magistrates had formed no very definite notion of what to do. They had assembled a considerable military force, of which a troop of Manchester yeomen about forty strong and six troops of the 15th Hussars formed a part. A warrant was out against Hunt, and with extreme imprudence it was determined to execute it while he was on the hustings, as had been done in the case of Harrison on a previous occasion. Just as Hunt was beginning to speak, a strange pressure made itself visible to the crowd. The magistrates had come to a house overlooking the field; they had intrusted their warrant to the chief constable; he had declared he could not execute it without military aid, and the yeomen had pressed into the crowded space. As was natural, they had been separated and brought to a complete standstill. Upon this the magistrates seem to have lost their presence of mind, to have believed that the yeomanry were in danger, and to have ordered the 15th Hussars to extricate them. The consequence was a fearful charge, which swept everything before it, and, as one of the officers says, "by the time they had reached the other side of the field the fugitives were literally piled up to a considerable elevation above the level of the ground." The effect of the panic on so closely-packed a multitude, among whom the soldiers were using the sword, sometimes the flat and sometimes the edge, was fearful; about thirty wounded persons were carried to the infirmary, and forty more found their own way there in the course of the day. The actual wounds given by the soldiers do not appear to have been very many. Hunt and some of his followers were apprehended; the charge of high treason against them was subsequently dropped, and they were obliged to find bail to stand their trial for misdemeanour.
Culpability of the Government.
The Manchester Massacre, as it was called, was the result of accident and the bad management of the magistrates, but the Government seemed to make the act entirely their own when they lavished approbation on the conduct of the authorities, and when they induced the Prince Regent himself to write an approving letter. As usual in England, the employment of the military except in the very last necessity excited the anger of very many even of the wealthier classes. Among those who had suffered from it its effect was simply to exasperate; for the time the temper of the people seems to have been really dangerous. The point, on the other hand, which struck the ministerialists was the weakness of the existing laws for the suppression of sedition, and in accordance with their view it was thought necessary to hold an autumnal session, which met on the 23rd of November, and which passed by large The Six Acts. majorities a series of enactments known as "The Six Acts." These were respectively entitled, "An Act to prevent delay in the administration of justice in cases of misdemeanour;" "An Act to prevent the training of persons in the use of arms and the practice of military evolutions;" "An Act for the prevention and punishment of blasphemous and seditious libels;" "An Act to authorize justices of the peace, in certain disturbed counties, to seize and detain arms;" "An Act to subject certain publications to the duties of stamps upon newspapers, and to make other regulations for restraining the abuses arising from the publication of blasphemous and seditious libels;" and "An Act for preventing the assembling of seditious assemblies." Having passed these repressive measures, the Parliament was again prorogued (Dec. 29) till February 1820. In the interval, on the 29th of January, the old King died, in his eighty-second year.
GEORGE IV.
1820-1830.