friends; shut many of them up in solitary cells, and forbade them the use of pen, ink, and paper; and never, from first to last, brought any man of them to trial, and never gave any man of them a hearing before any magistrate whatsoever. This law was adopted, with a very feeble resistance on the part of the Whigs; a sham resistance; for, while they opposed the measure as unconstitutional, they admitted that the parties against whom it was levelled were very wicked men. They abused them in terms still stronger than those made use of by the ministers; and, while they pretended to oppose the measure, this perfidious faction,-this base and detestable and cowardly and cruel faction, represented the persons against whom it was directed in such a light, and represented their designs as so full of horrible wickedness, that every one who read their speeches, and who believed what they said, must have regarded the measure as necessary to the safety of the country, though at the expense of the whole of the constitution. This was the uniform practice of this selfish, this greedy, this treacherous, body of men, who have made all the revolutions that England has known for the last two hundred years, and who have fattened on the spoil of every revolution.

393. To accompany this act, there was another, forbidding the people meeting together to discuss political matters; and authorizing the

magistrates so to interfere with publications as to destroy whatever there remained of the liberty of the press; and thus was every vestige of political liberty and of personal security taken away from the people of England. These bills were brought into the House of Lords by HENRY ADDINGTON, called Lord Viscount SIDMOUTH, who was an Englishman by birth; and into the House of Commons by ROBERT STEWART, called Lord CASTLEREAGH, who was an Irishman, and whom we shall by-and-by see cutting his own throat and killing himself, at NORTH CRAY, in Kent. These acts remained in force until 1818, when they were suffered to expire; and on the 17th of March in that year, an act was passed to indemnify, or bear harmless, every person, and all persons, who should have violated or gone beyond even these acts. So that, even if they had violated these acts on the persons whom they had seized and imprisoned, whatever they might have done to such imprisoned persons, they were by this act, chapter 6, 58th year of Geo. III., indemnified and borne harmless. Talk not to me of the cruelties and ferocity of those who destroyed the noblesse of France. After this, talk not to me of any such things. Talk not to me of constitution and order and the laws show me something equal to this, done by any other people in the world, calling themselves a government and legislative assemblies. Show me something equal to this before you call

upon me to listen to your alarms about an overthrow of order and the laws!

394. For my own part, the moment these acts were brought into the two Houses, I knew that there was no safety for me on this side of the sea. I took my flight to LONG ISLAND, where I remained, beating the boroughmonger monster with my long arm; fighting him, I myself being in a state of safety, and not quitting my retreat until, as we shall by-and-by see, the monster harpooned himself, in the year 1819, when he did that which has enfeebled him ever since; which has harassed him and tormented him night and day; and which will finally bring him to that end which he so richly merits, and which will fill with gladness every honest heart upon the face of this earth.

395. The boroughmongers had inflicted their vengeance on the innocent reformers; they had imprisoned them; they had ruined them: many they had reduced to complete beggary, and of many they had shortened the lives; but they had not raised the price of wheat; they had not enabled their tenants to pay rents; they had not had the courage to diminish the claims of the fundholder and the mortgagee; their estates were still dwindling away; and the curse of Scotland," poverty and pride, was still gnawing at those hearts upon which nothing else could make impression.

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396. In 1817 the princess CHARLOTTE died; and, in the next year, her grandmother, the old queen; events which are hardly worthy of notice, except that the former was followed immediately by a whole batch of marriages on the part of the uncles and aunts of the princess, which have since cost the country, and are still costing it, so many hundreds of thousands of pounds annually. With regard to the cause of the death of the princess I shall say nothing, because I know nothing. A great deal has been said, and is said, about it; but one should listen to all such stories with great caution, especially in cases where it is almost impossible that any person in common life can come at the truth, As to the consequences of the death of this young woman, those not personally acquainted with her could feel no personal sorrow; and, looking at the event in a national point of view, it must, by every reformer, be considered as a good, however amiable and good she might have been; because it multiplied the chances of frequent dissolutions of parliament, a thing for which we have always been praying.

397. The year 1818 produced a rioting in Derbyshire, instigated principally by atrocious miscreants, who took care to keep their own heads out of the halter. Three men, BRANDRETH, TURNER, and LUDLAM, furnished three heads to be added to the long, long list of those

which rolled from the scaffold in the reign of George the Third. These men were parlia mentary reformers: they were induced to commit illegal, and what the law now calls treasonable acts; but they died bravely, justifying their principles with their last breath: and not shuffling and equivocating, in imitation of the everlastingly-vaunted Lord WILLIAM RUSSELL.

398. The death of these men did not deter the reformers in the north from demanding parliamentary reform. There were meetings in all the considerable towns for this purpose. At last a sort of general meeting was held at MANCHESTER, in a large open space called ST. PETER'S-field. It was said that there were fifty thousand persons assembled, there being a hustings erected for the chairman, and the object being to make a declaration in favour of parliamentary reform. There was no riot; no violence of any sort; and there had been no riot and no violence; yet this multitude, thus peaceably assembled, for a lawful purpose, and that purpose amply made known beforehand, was attacked, without the smallest provocation, by a body of yeomanry cavalry; and, in the end, five hundred persons were wounded, and several of them were killed. So violent, so outrageous, an act as this, could not fail to fill the whole country with indignation and horror; yet the parliament would not agree even to the instituting