Part 17

"That this House has taken a view of the public proceedings throughout the country, by those persons who have met to petition for a Reform of this House, and that, in justice to those persons, as well as to the people at large, and for the purpose of convincing the people that this House wishes to entertain and encourage no misrepresentation of their honest intentions, this House, with great humility, beg leave to assure his Royal Highness, that they have not been able to discover one single instance, in which meetings to petition for Parliamentary Reform have been accompanied with any attempt to disturb the public tranquillity; and this House further beg leave to assure his Royal Highness, that in order to prevent the necessity of those rigorous measures, which are contemplated in the latter part of the speech of his Royal Highness, this House will take into their early consideration the propriety of abolishing sinecures and unmerited pensions and grants, the reduction of the civil list, and of all salaries which are now disproportionate to the services, and especially, that they will take into their consideration the Reform of this House, agreeably to the laws and constitution of the land, this House being decidedly of opinion that justice and humanity, as well as policy, call at this time of universal distress, for measures of conciliation, and not of rigour, towards a people who have made so many and such great sacrifices, and who are now suffering, in consequence of those sacrifices, all the calamities with which a nation can be afflicted."

It is a melancholy subject for reflection, that there was not ONE man to be found in the House that would even SECOND this amendment, which was neither more nor less than a true account of the proceedings of the Reformers throughout the country; and in consequence of this, the motion fell to the ground without a division. Lord Cochrane continued night after night to present these petitions, brought up by the delegates; and the most remarkable event of these times was, that the very night that Lord Cochrane presented the petition from Bath, which especially pointed out the enormous sums annually received by their Recorder, Lord Camden, and which prayed for the abolition of his enormous sinecures; that very night a message was brought down to the House, and it was announced by one of the Ministers that Lord Camden had actually resigned his enormous sinecure of Teller of the Exchequer, which did not amount to less than thirty-five thousand pounds a year. No one will doubt that this act of his Lordship was occasioned solely by the resolutions and the petition passed at the Bath meeting. He well knew that Lord Cochrane had presented the Bristol petition, and had stated in the House that he had several other petitions to present; and amongst the number that from Bath, signed by upwards of twenty thousand persons. To prevent, therefore, the discussion which was likely to arise from the presentation of this petition, he anticipated the prayer of it, by resigning his sinecure of Teller of the Exchequer. How often have we been asked by the tools of corruption, what good was there in holding public meetings! We have been everlastingly told that these great public meetings, and the violent petitions passed at them, did a great deal of harm, but that they never produced any good. What these knaves mean by this is, that the House of Commons never attended to the prayers and petitions of the people, and that therefore it was of no use to persevere in petitioning. This, as far as it goes, is very true; the House of Commons never did attend to the petitions of the people for Reform; but yet I boldly answer, that petitioning has done some good; that the petition of the first Spafields meeting obtained four thousand pounds from the droits of the Admiralty, for the suffering poor of Spital-fields and the metropolis. This was some good. Again, I say, that the petition and the resolutions passed at the Bath meeting, caused Lord Camden to surrender thirty-five thousand a year to the public. This alone was some good. Nor must we stop here. Almost all the petitions in which I was ever concerned, petitioned for the abolition of all sinecure and useless places, and unmerited pensions; and I always particularly denounced the sinecures of the late Marquis of Buckingham, the other Teller of the Exchequer, and prayed and petitioned for its abolition. At the death of the old Marquis it was abolished. Does any man of sense and candour believe, for a moment, that this would have ever been done to this hour, if it had not been for the prayers, petitions, and remonstrances of the people? Here, then, is another saving of upwards of thirty thousand pounds a year.--Therefore, I say, that the great public meetings have done a great deal of good; and those who promoted them have rendered very considerable service to the country, although they have themselves been the victims of that system of tyranny and oppression, which, in these two instances alone, has had its plunder curtailed in more than sixty thousand pounds a year. Add to all this, that the Prince Regent surrendered fifty thousand pounds per annum to the public exigencies. Will any man say that the Regent would have done this, had it not been for the great public meetings held in Spafields and other places? and was this nothing? Again, Mr. Ponsonby resigned his Chancellor's pension of four thousand pounds a year. Is this nothing? Here I have shown that, within three months of the great meeting first held in Spafields, and between the second and third meeting which was advertised, no less a sum than NINETY THOUSAND POUNDS A YEAR was surrendered for the public exigencies; and was this doing nothing? To be sure, five persons had been found guilty of rioting on the day of the second Spafields meeting, and Cashman was sentenced to death; but this had nothing to do with the meeting itself, which met only for the purpose of petitioning Parliament, and peaceably separated, after agreeing to a petition, which was signed by twenty-four thousand persons, praying for Reform, and the abolition of all sinecures, and a reduction of the public expenditure; which petition had been presented, and received by the House of Commons, before these surrenders and resignations of these large sums were made. To be sure, Lord Sidmouth had delivered in the House of Lords a message from the Prince Regent, laying before Parliament the famous green bag, full of precious documents, got up to prove that sedition, conspiracy, and rebellion were close at hand; and that treasonable practices existed in London, and in various parts of the kingdom: upon which a committee was appointed by the Ministers, in both Houses of Parliament, to examine and report upon the contents of the said bag. The result of this was, that Mr. Evans, of Newcastle-street, the Spencean, and his son, were arrested on a charge of high treason!

About this time I received a letter from the Reformers of Portsmouth, requesting me to attend and preside at a public meeting, which they wished to hold in or near that town, to petition for Reform. I showed this letter to Mr. Cobbett, who said, "I know these people; I will answer that letter for you, and arrange with them all about their meeting. As you are so much engaged in other matters at this time, I will take this trouble off your hands, and you will have nothing to do but to attend the meeting when the day is appointed." This offer I cheerfully accepted, and I thought no more of the business till I saw it publicly announced that a meeting would be held on Portsdown-Hill, on the 10th day of February, the very day that was fixed for holding the third Spafields meeting; and that was done without consulting or saying a word to me upon the subject, although I was the only person written to by the people of Portsmouth. It did certainly strike me at the time, that there appeared to be a good deal of trickery and management made use of to keep me from this meeting. As, however, I was never jealous of any one myself, I had no suspicion that my friends were jealous of me, and I took no notice of it, though I was sorry to find that to the people who met on Portsdown, no apology or explanation was made for my absence, or at least for the meeting being held on the day that I was at Spafields; and I have reason to think that the people of Portsmouth, who first invited me, were very much disappointed at my not being present, and that they felt themselves slighted by me, which, I assure them, was the farthest thing in the world from my wish or intention.

While my friends were acting in this manner, my enemies were not idle, and the agents of Government, in order to injure me in the opinion of the public, not only vilified and abused and libelled me from day to day, in the public newspapers, but they actually caused a placard to be printed and posted all over the metropolis, which was headed "Mr. Hunt hissed out of the City of Bristol," and contained all sorts of infamous falsehoods and scurrilous abuse. It appeared from the newspapers that a boy, of the name of Thomas Dugood, had been committed to prison, by a Police Magistrate, for having pulled down one of these posting-bills. I immediately set about an inquiry, to find out the poor boy, to endeavour to relieve him from his imprisonment, and to gain him some redress for the persecution which he had suffered. To discover where the boy was, I went to the Police Office, and, after a great deal of shuffling, I was directed to Coldbath-fields Prison, which, as I subsequently found, was the wrong gaol, the boy having been committed to the New Prison. In the mean time, however, finding that I was resolved to go to the bottom of the business, they had released the boy. At length I found him out at his lodgings, and learned from him that he had been confined for several days among the vilest felons. I took him to the Police Office, to identify the Magistrate that committed him, and there I caused the police officer, Limbrick, to be placed at the bar, for robbing the boy of his books and money at the time he was apprehended. The inquiry ended in the said police officer returning the boy his books and money, and confessing that he was ordered to attend the posting of the said bills, and to protect them from being pulled down after they were posted. The bills were printed at the office of the Hue and Cry, near Temple-bar, and an agent of the Government paid the bill-sticker a large sum for the posting of them in the night. Finding that I could get no redress for the boy at the Police Office, I took him into the Court of King's Bench, and appealed to the Judges. But Lord Ellenborough could do nothing for him. By the stir which I made, however, the case got into all the papers, and the conduct of the Government was completely exposed. I then caused a petition from Dugood to be presented to the House by Lord Folkestone, and another petition of my own, by Lord Cochrane. The Under Secretary of State, Mr. Hiley Addington, promised that the conduct of the Police Magistrate should be inquired into; but ultimately it was ascertained that Lord Sidmouth had no power to interfere. The Magistrate, Mr. Sellon, who had committed the boy, was not a Police Magistrate, but a Magistrate of the county of Middlesex; therefore his Lordship could not interfere, and the boy must, forsooth, proceed at law against the Magistrate. I shall here insert the petitions that were presented to the House, which will place this transaction in a clear point of view before my readers, and will show them to what meanness the Government submitted, in order to injure my character with the public, and to destroy the influence which they discovered that I had over the people. This transaction will speak for itself without any further comment of mine. "To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled.

"The Petition of Thomas Dugood, of the Parish of St. Paul, Covent-Garden, in the City of Westminster,

"HUMBLY SHEWETH,

"That your petitioner is a parentless and friendless boy, seventeen years of age, who, until lately seized by two Police Officers and sent to prison by the police, obtained the honest means of living by the sale of Religious and Moral Tracts, which he used to purchase of Mr. Collins, of Paternoster-row.

"That your petitioner has, for more than four months last past, lodged, and he still lodges, at the house of Keeran Shields, who lives at No. 13, Gee's-court, Oxford-street, and who is a carter to Mr. White, of Mortimer-street, and who is also a watchman in Marybone parish.

"That your petitioner has never in his life lived as a vagrant, but has always had a settled home, has always pursued an honest and visible means of getting his living, has always been, and is ready to prove that he always has been an industrious, a peaceable, sober, honest, and orderly person.

"That, on the 10th of January, 1817, your petitioner, for having pulled down a posting bill, entitled, "Mr. Hunt hissed out of the City of Bristol," was committed by Mr. Sellon to the New Prison, Clerkenwell, where he was kept on bread and water and compelled to lie on the bare boards until the twenty-second of the same month, when he was tied, with about fifty others, to a long rope, or cable, and marched to Hicks's Hall, and there let loose.

"That your petitioner has often heard it said, that the law affords protection to the poor as well as to the rich, and that, if unable to obtain redress any where else, every subject of his Majesty has the road of petition open to him; therefore your petitioner, being unable to obtain redress in any other manner for the grievous wrongs done him by the Magistrate of the police, most humbly implores your Honourable House to afford him protection and redress, and to that end he prays your Honourable House to permit him to prove at the bar of your Honourable House all and several the allegations contained in this his most humble petition.

"And your petitioner will ever pray.

"THOMAS DUGOOD.""To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled.

"The Petition of Henry Hunt, of Middleton Cottage, in the County of Southampton,

"HUMBLY SHEWETH,

"That your petitioner, being ready to prove at the bar of your Honourable House, that there has been carried on a conspiracy against his character, and eventually aimed at his life, by certain persons, receiving salaries out of the public money, and acting in their public capacity, and expending for this vile purpose a portion of the taxes; and there being, as appears to him, no mode of his obtaining a chance of security, other than those which may be afforded him by Parliament, he humbly sues to your Honourable House to yield him your protection.

"That your petitioner has always been a loyal and faithful subject, and a sincere and zealous friend of his country. That, at a time, during the first war against France, when there were great apprehensions of invasion, and when circular letters were sent round to farmers and others to ascertain what sort and degree of aid each would be willing to afford to the Government in case of such emergency, your petitioner, who was then a farmer in Wiltshire, did not, as others did, make an offer of a small part of his moveable property, but that, really believing his country to be in danger, he, in a letter to the Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Pembroke, freely offered his all, consisting of several thousands of sheep, a large stock of horned cattle, upwards of twenty horses, seven or eight waggons and carts with able and active drivers, several hundreds of quarters of corn and grain, and his own person besides, all to be at the entire disposal of the Lord Lieutenant; and this your petitioner did without any reserved claim to compensation, it being a principle deeply rooted in his heart, that all property, and even life itself, ought to be considered as nothing, when put in competition with the safety and honour of our country. And your petitioner further begs leave to state to your Honourable House, that, at a subsequent period, namely, in the year 1803, when an invasion of the country was again apprehended, and when it was proposed to call out volunteers to serve within certain limits of their houses, your petitioner called around him the people of the village of Enford, in which he lived, and that all the men in that parish (with the exception of three) capable of bearing arms, amounting to more than two hundred in number, immediately enrolled themselves, and offered to serve, not only within the district, but in any part of the kingdom where the enemy might land, or be expected to land, and this offer was by your petitioner transmitted to Lord Pembroke, who expressed to your petitioner his great satisfaction at the said offer, and informed him, that he, would make a point of communicating the same to his Majesty's Ministers.

"That your petitioner, still actuated by a sincere desire to see his country free and happy, and holding a high character in the world, has lately been using his humble endeavours to assist peaceably and legally in promoting applications to Parliament for a Reform in your Honourable House, that measure appearing to your petitioner to be the only effectual remedy for the great and notorious evils under which the country now groans, and for which evils, as no one attempts to deny their existence, so no one, as far as your petitioner has heard, has attempted to suggest any other remedy.

"That your petitioner, in pursuit of this constitutional, and, as he hopes and believes, laudable object (an object for which, if need be, he is resolved to risk his life against unlawful violence) lately took part in a public meeting of the City of Bristol, of which he is a freeholder; and that though a large body of regular troops and of yeomanry cavalry were placed in a menacing attitude near the place of our meeting, the meeting was conducted and concluded in the most peaceable and orderly manner, and the result of it was a petition to your Honourable House, voluntarily signed by upwards of twenty thousand men, which petition has been presented to, and received by, your Honourable House.

"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 4,000l. 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.