As might be naturally expected, the movements and disorderly spirit spreading from the centre (Manchester) are appearing in remote points; but when peace and confidence are thoroughly restored at Manchester, the example will quickly tell in the circumjacent districts.
Birmingham is tranquil and well-disposed. The accounts from Scotland are favourable.
Footnote 73: A Leicester Chartist, who was afterwards tried for sedition.
Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria.
PARLIAMENT PROROGUED
South Street, 17th August 1842.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He is going down to-day to Brocket Hall with Lord and Lady Beauvale. Lord and Lady Palmerston are coming down to-morrow, and Lord and Lady Cowper will probably come over from Panshanger.
Your Majesty read extremely well in the House of Lords on Friday last.74 Lord Melbourne can judge better of this from the body of the House than he could when he stood close to your Majesty. Nothing can be more clear and distinct, and at the same time more natural and free from effort. Perhaps if your Majesty could read a tone louder it would be as well. Charles Buller, who was amongst the House of Commons, told Lord Melbourne that, where he stood, the voice, although well heard, sounded somewhat weak. But this should not be attempted unless it can be done with perfect ease. Nothing injures reading so much as the attempt to push the organ beyond its natural powers.
Lord Melbourne hopes that these tumults in the manufacturing districts are subsiding, but he cannot conceal from your Majesty that he views them with great alarm—much greater than he generally thinks it prudent to express. He fears that they may last in the form of strike, and turn out much longer than is looked for, as they did in 1832 and 1833.
There is a great mass of discontented feeling in the country arising from the actual state of society. It arises from the distress and destitution which will fall at times upon a great manufacturing population, and from the wild and extravagant opinions which are naturally generated in an advanced and speculative state of society.