amount of exportation in expectation of the ports of the world being thrown open by the peace; but he declared that the people of the continent were too much exhausted by the war to be able to purchase, and that the bulk of these exported goods would have to be sold at a ruinous reduction - at almost nominal prices; and then would immediately follow a stoppage of mills, a vast population thrown out of employment, and bread and all provisions made exorbitantly dear when there was the least power to purchase. All this was speedily realised. English goods were soon selling in Holland and the north of Europe for less than their cost price in London and Manchester. Abundant harvests defeated in some degree the expectations of the agriculturists, and thus both farmers and manufacturers were ruined together; for, the check being given to commerce, the manufacturing population could purchase at no price, and, spite of the harvest, the price of wheat was still one hundred and three shillings per bread, but a prohibition of the sale of the labours of the people to foreign nations to the same extent. It was an enactment to destroy the manufacturing interest for the imagined benefit of land-owners; and it was done on this plea, as stated by Mr. Western, one of the leading advocates of the bill "That, if there is a small deficiency of supply, the price will rise in a ratio far beyond any proportion of such deficiency: the effect, indeed, is almost incalculable. So, likewise, in a surplus of supply beyond demand, the price will fall in a ratio exceeding almost ten-fold the amount of such surplus." The avowed object, therefore, was to prevent the manufacturing population reaping the benefit of that continental peace which they had purchased at such a cost, and consequently to repress the growth of their trade to the same degree. Mr Tooke, in his "History of Prices," confirms this view of the matter, asserting that "the price of corn in this country has risen from one hundred to two hundred per cent., and upwards, when the utmost computed deficiency of the crops has not been more than between one-quarter. Many farmers, as well as manufacturers, failed; sixth and one-third below an average, and when that deficiency has been relieved by foreign supplies." Mr. Western candidly showed that, to the farmer, years of deficiency were the most profitable, from this principle of enormous rise from a small cause; that if the produce of an acre of wheat in a good year is thirty-three bushels at six shillings, the amount realised would be only nine pounds eighteen shillings; but, if the produce were reduced by an unfavour able season one-sixth, and the price raised from six shillings to twelve shillings, the produce of twenty-seven and a half bushels would realise sixteen pounds ten shillings, the dif-surplus of all kinds of labour. In Suffolk and Norfolk, and ference being profit! The effect was immediately shown by a rapid rise of prices, wheat becoming one hundred and three shillings a quarter. But this did not satisfy the land-owners, and Mr. Western, in 1816, introduced no less than fourteen resolutions, to make more stringent the exclusion of foreign corn. It was openly declared "that excessive taxation renders it necessary to give protection to all articles, the produce of our own soil, against similar articles, the growth of foreign countries." Mr. Barham declared that "the country must be forced to feed its own population. No partial advantage to be derived from commerce could compensate for any deficiency in this respect. The true principle of national prosperity was an absolute prohibition of the importations of foreign agricultural produce, except in extreme cases; and on this ground it was proposed to exclude foreign rapeseed, linseed, tallow, butter, cheese, &c. country banks were broken, and paper-money was reduced The year 1816 was a most melancholy year. on the Isle of Ely, the agricultural labourers and fen-men destroyed the thrashing-machines, attacked mills and farms, pulled down the houses of butchers and bakers, and marched about in great bands, with flags, inscribed "Bread or blood!” In Littleport and Ely shops and public-houses were rausacked, and the soldiers were called out to quell the rioters, and much blood was shed, and numbers were thrown into prison, of whom thirty-four were condemned to death, and five executed. The colliers and workers in the iron mines and furnaces of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, as well as in the populous districts of South Wales, were thrown out of work, and the distress was terrible. The sufferings and consequent ferments in Lancashire were equally great. In Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire, the Luddites broke out again, as they had done in 1812, and by night demolished the stocking-frames, and the machinery in the cotton-mills. Great alarm existed everywhere, and, on the 29th of July a meeting was called at the City of London Tavern, to consider the means of relieving the distress, the duke of York taking the chair, and the dukes of Kent and Cambridge, the archbishop of Canter Some of the most eminent land-owners were clear-sighted and disinterested enough to oppose these views with all their power. The dukes of Buckinghamshire and Devonshire, the lords Carlisle, Spencer, Grey, Grenville, Wellesley, and many members of the commons, voted and protested ener-bury, the bishop of London, the chancellor of the exchequer, getically against them; and the additional restrictions were not carried. But enough had been done to originate the most frightful sufferings and convulsions. We shall see these agitations every remaining year of this reign. The prince regent, in his opening speech, in 1816, declared "manufactures and commerce to be in a flourishing condition." But Mr. Brougham at once exposed this fallacy. He admitted that there had been an active manufacturing and an unusual &c., attending, where many palliatives were proposed; but where lord Cochrane and other reformers declared that the only effectual remedy would be the abolition of the Corn Law. Soup-kitchens were recommended; but in Scotland these were spurned at as only insults to the sufferers; at Glasgow the soup-kitchen was attacked, and its coppers and materials destroyed; and at Dundee the people helped themselves by clearing a hundred shops of their provisions. A.D. 1816.j FORMATION OF CLUBS TO OBTAIN REFORM. 531 Watson into the City, and ransacked the shop of Mr. Beckwith, the gunsmith, on Snow Hill, of its firearms. A gentleman in the shop remonstrated, and young Watson fired at him, and severely wounded him. Young Watson then made his escape, but his father was secured and im persed the mob on Cornhill, and took one of their flags and several prisoners. Watson the elder was afterwards tried and acquitted; but a sailor, who was concerned in the plunder of the gunsmith's shop, was hanged. Only a week after this riot the corporation of London presented an address to the throne, setting forth the urgent necessity for parliamentary reform. During the whole of these scenes the attitude of govern- at which they only laughed. The mob then followed young ment was not merely indifferent, but absolutely repulsive. At no time had so cold and narrow-spirited a ministry existed. The names of Castlereagh, Liverpool, Sidmouth, and lord Eldon as lord-chancellor, recall the memory of a callous cabinet. They were still dreaming of additional taxation when, on the 17th of March, they were thunder-prisoned; and the lord mayor and Sir James Shaw disstruck by seeing the property-tax repealed by a majority of forty. The prince regent had become utterly odious by his reckless extravagance and sensual life. The abolition of the property-tax was immediately followed by other resistance. On the 20th of March a motion of disapprobation of the advance of the salary of the secretary to the Admiralty, at such a time, from three to four thousand pounds a-year was made, but lost. On this occasion Henry Brougham pronounced a most terrible philippic against the prince regent, describing him as devoted, in the secret recesses of his palace, to the most vicious pleasures, and callous to the distresses and sufferings of others! Mr. Wellesley Pole described it as "language such as he had never heard in that house before." Not only in parliament, but everywhere out of doors the cry for reform rose simultaneously with the distress. Hampden clubs were formed in every town and village almost throughout the kingdom, the central one being held at the Crown and Anchor, Strand, its president being Sir Francis Burdett, and its leading members being William Cobbett, major Cartwright, lord Cochrane, Henry Hunt, &c. The object of these clubs was to prosecute the cause of parliamentary reform, and to unite the reformers in one system of action. With the spirit of reform arose, too, that of cheap publications, which has now acquired such a vast power. William Cobbett's "Political Register," on the 18th of November, 1816, was reduced from a shilling and a halfpenny to twopence, and thenceforward became a stupendous engine of reform, being read everywhere by the reformers, and especially by the working-classes in town and country, by the artisan in the workshop, and the shepherd on the mountain. The great endeavour of Cobbett was to show the people the folly of breaking machinery, and the wisdom of moral union. It is only too true, however, that many of the Hampden clubs entertained very seditious ideas, and designs of seizing on the property of the leading individuals of their respective vicinities. Still more questionable were the doctrines of the Spenceans, or Spencean Philanthropists, a society of whom was established in London this year, and whose chief leaders were Spence, a Yorkshire schoolmaster, one Preston, a workman, Watson the elder, a surgeon, Watson the younger, his son, one Castles, who afterwards turned informer against them. Mr. orator Hunt patronised them. They sought a common property in all land, and the destruction of all machinery. These people, with Hunt and Watson at their head, on the 2nd of December, met in Spa Fields. The Spenceans had arms concealed in a wagon, and a flag displayed declaring that the soldiers were their friends. The crowd was immense, and soon there was a cry to go and summon the Tower. Mr. Hunt and his party appear to have excused themselves from taking part in this mad movement. The mob reached the Tower, and a man, supposed to be Preston, summoned the sentinels to surrender, These events were a little diversified by the storming of Algiers on the 27th of August. In 1815 the government of the United States of America had set the example of punishing the piratical depredations of the Algerines. They seized a frigate and a brig, and obtained a compensation of sixty thousand dollars. They do not appear to have troubled themselves to procure any release of Christian slaves, or to put an end to the practice of making such slaves; and, indeed, it would have been rather an awkward proposal on the part of North Americans, as the dey might have demanded, as a condition of such a treaty, the liberation of some three millions of black slaves in return. But at the congress of Vienna a strong feeling had been shown on the part of European governments to interfere on this point. It was to the disgrace of Great Britain that, at the very time that she had been exerting herself so zealously to put an end to the negro slave trade, she had been under engagements of treaty with this nest of corsairs; and lord Cochrane stated in parliament this year that only three or four years before it had been his humiliating duty to carry rich presents from our government to the dey of Algiers. But in the spring of this year it was determined to make an effort to check the daring piracies of Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli. Lord Exmouth was sent to these predatory powers, but rather to treat than to chastise; and he effected the release of one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two Christian slaves. From Tunis and Tripoli he obtained a declaration that no more Christian slaves should be made. The dey of Algiers refused to make such concession till he had obtained the permission of the sultan. Lord Exmouth gave him three months to determine this point, and returned home. A clause in the treaty which he had made with Algiers ordered that Sicily and Sardinia should pay nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the ransom of their subjects, and they paid this accordingly. This clause excited just condemnation in England, as actually acknowledging the right of the Algerines to make Christian slaves. But this matter was not to be thus peacefully ended. Before lord Exmouth had cleared out of the Mediterranean, the Algerines-not in any concert with their government but in an impulse of pure fanaticism-had rushed down from their castle at Bona on the Christian inhabitants of the town, where a coral fishery was carried on chiefly by Italians and Sicilians, under protection of a treaty made by us, and under that of our flag, and committed a brutal massacre on the fishermen, and also pulled down and trampled on our flag, and pillaged the house of our vice- father! and the English admiral who has delivered us consul. from this second hell!)" home. Scarcely had lord Exmouth reached home when he was We must return from victory abroad to discontent at ordered forth again to avenge this gross outrage, and he On the 28th of January the prince regent pro sailed from Plymouth on the 28th of July with a fleet of ceeded to open the fifth session of parliament. In his twenty-five sail of large and small ships. At Gibraltar he speech he expressed indignation at "the attempts which was joined by the Dutch admiral Van Cappellan with five had been made to take advantage of the distresses of the frigates and a sloop, to which were added a number of gun- country for the purpose of exciting a spirit of sedition and boats of our own. On the 27th of August lord Exmouth violence;" and he declared himself determined to put down sailed right into the formidable harbour of Algiers, and these attempts by stern measures. The seconder of the dispatched a messenger to the dey, demanding instant and address in the commons had the good sense to believe ample recompense for the outrage; the delivery of all that the demagogues and their acts would die of themselves. Christian slaves in the kingdom of Algiers; the repay- Certainly, if the demagogues had no cause on which to base ment of the money received by the dey for the liberation their efforts, those efforts must have proved fruitless; and of Sicilian and Sardinian slaves; the liberation of the the wisdom of government consisted in seriously inquiring British consul-who had been imprisoned-and of two whether there were such causes. To attempt to insure boats' crews detained; and peace betwixt Algiers and peace by smothering distress is the old remedy of tyrants, Holland. The messenger landed at eleven o'clock, and and is like heaping fuel on fire to put it out. Whilst this two hours were given the dey to make his answer in. The debate was proceeding, a message arrived from the lords to messenger remained till half-past two o'clock, and no answer announce that the regent, on his return from the house, had arriving, he came off, and lord Exmouth gave instant orders been insulted, and some missile thrown through the windows for the bombardment. The attack was terrible. The firing of his carriage. The house agreed upon an address to the from the fleet, which was vigorously returned from the regent on this event, and then adjourned. batteries in the town and on the mole, continued till nine in the evening. Then most of the Algerine batteries were knocked literally to pieces, but the firing did not cease till about eleven. During that time the English commander and his Dutch allies had burnt eighteen tons of gunpowder, and thrown five hundred tons of shot and shell. The Algerines declared that hell itself had opened its mouth upon them. No sooner was the assault over than a land wind arose and carried the fleet out of the harbour, so that the vessels were all out of gunshot by two o'clock in the morning. A wonderful spectacle then presented itself to the eyes of the spectators in the fleet. Nine Algerine frigates, a number of gun-boats, the storehouses within the mole, and much of the town were in one huge blaze, and by this they could see that the batteries remained mere heaps of ruins. Scarcely had the fleet anchored when it had to endure a terrible storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The loss on the part of the assailants was very severe, and showed the dogged courage of the Algerines. There were killed and wounded, of the English, eight hundred and fifty-two, including a considerable number of officers, and of the Dutch sixty-five. The next day the debate was resumed. It appeared that the prince had been hooted, and a stone, or something of the kind, flung through the window of the carriage. The ministerial party endeavoured to raise the occurrence into an attempt on the prince's life, the opposition hinted, as the expression of public disgust with the tone which government was assuming towards the distresses of the people, and called zealously for stringent reductions of expense, and they moved an amendment to that effect. But the government had yet much to learn on this head; and lord Sidmouth announced that the prince regent in three days would send down a message on the disaffection of large masses of the people. It would have been wise to have added to this measure a recommendation of serious inquiry into the causes of this disaffection, for disaffection towards a government rarely exists without a sufficient cause; but the government had carried on inatters so easily whilst they had nothing to do but to vote large sums of money for foreign war, and had been so much in co-operation with arbitrary monarchs, that they had acquired too much of the same spirit; and they now set about to put down the people of England as they, by the people of England, had put down Buonaparte. It was their plan to create alarm, and, under the influence of that alarm, to pass severe measures for the crippling of the constitution and the suppression of all complaints of political evil. In the debate on this subject, George Canning, who on many occasions had shown himself capable of better things, breathed the very language of toryism. He declared the representation of parliament perfect, and treated the most The next morning lord Exmouth sent in a letter to the dey with the offers of the previous day, saying, "If you receive this offer as you ought, you will fire three guns." They were fired. The dey made apologies, and signed fresh treaties of peace and amity, which were not of long endurance. But within three days one thousand and eighty-three Christian slaves arrived from the interior, and were received on board and conveyed to their respective countries. The scene of their going on board was most strange and affect-moderate proposals for reform as only emanations from the ing. They were beside themselves with wonder and joy, and, mad theories of the Spenceans. The message of the prince when the English boats put off from the shore with them, regent came down on the 3rd of February, ordering certain they simultaneously took off their hats, and shouted in papers to be laid before the house, "concerning certain Italian, "Viva il ré d'Ingliterra, il padre eterno! e practices, meetings, and combinations in the metropolis, l'ammiraglio Inglese che ci ha liberato da questo secondo and in different parts of the kingdom, evidently calculated inferno! (Long live the king of England, the eternal to endanger the public tranquillity, to alienate the affections A.D. 1817] SUSPENSION OF THE HABEAS CORPUS ACT. 533 of his majesty's subjects from his majesty's person and parliamentary reform, under the auspices of Sir Francis Burgovernment, and to bring into hatred and contempt the dett, major Cartwright, lord Cochrane, Cobbett, and others. whole system of our laws and institutions." Lord Sid- Most of these persons had large properties to be sacrificed by mouth endeavoured to guard the house of peers against the the propagation of any such principles, and the great topics belief that the insult to the regent had any share in the of Cobbett's "Register," the organ through which he comorigination of this message, but the house of lords, in its municated with the people, were the necessity of refraining address, directly charged this event as an additional proof from all violence, and of rising into influence by purely of the public disaffection. So far as the prince regent was political co-operation. But these reports answered the concerned, Machiavelli long before had described his mental purposes of the government, and they proceeded to introcondition, in that of "princes who, neglecting all virtuous duce, and succeeded in passing four acts for the suppression actions, began to believe that they were exalted for no other of popular opinion. The first was to provide severe purpose than to discriminate themselves from their subjects punishment for all attempts to seduce the soldiers or sailors by their pomp, luxury, and all other effeminate qualities, from their allegiance; the second to give further safeguards by which means they fell into the hatred of their people, to the person of the sovereign, but did not include the most and, by consequence, that fear increasing, they began to effectual of all-that of making him beloved; the third was meditate revenge." Unfortunately, the regent had two to prevent seditious meetings, and gave great power to the houses of parliament only too much disposed to make them- magistrates and police to interfere with any meeting for the selves the instruments of such vengeance. The message most mild reforms; the fourth was the old measure of was referred to a secret committee in each house, and on suspension of the habeas corpus act, which armed the magisthe 18th and 19th of February they respectively made their trates with the fearful authority to arrest and imprison at reports. Both went at great length into the affair of the pleasure, without being compelled to bring the accused to Spa Fields meeting, and the proceedings and designs of the trial. The last of these acts was not passed till the 29th of Spenceans were made to represent the designs of the March, and it was to continue in force only till the 1st of working classes all over the kingdom; that such men as July. But in the meantime events took place which Thistlewood, who not long after suffered for his justly odious occasioned its renewal. conduct, were conspicuous among the Spenceans, and that there had been an affray in Spa Fields were circumstances to give ample colouring to the reports of these committees. That of the lords stated—" It appears clear that the object is, by means of societies, or clubs, established, or to be established, in all parts of Great Britain, under pretence of parliamentary reform, to infest the minds of all classes of the community, and particularly of those whose situation most exposes them to such impressions, with a spirit of discontent and disaffection, of insubordination, and contempt of all law, religion, and morality; and to hold out to them the plunder of all property as the main object of their efforts, and the restoration of their natural rights; and no endeavours are omitted to prepare them to take up arms, on the first signal, for accomplishing their designs." The country societies were pointed out "as principally to be found in, and in the neighbourhood of Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, Mansfield, Derby, Chesterfield, Sheffield, Blackburn, Manchester, Birmingham, Norwich, Glasgow, and its vicinity; but," it added, "they extend, and are spreading in some parts of the country, to almost every village." The report of the commons went much over the same ground, dwelling particularly on the Hampden clubs, as avowed engines of revolution. It dwelt on the acts and activity of the leaders, of the numbers which they had seduced and were seducing, the oaths which bound them together, the means prepared for the forcible attainment of their objects, which were the overthrow of all rights of property and all the national institutions, to introduce a reign of general confusion, plunder, and anarchy. 66 Within a few days after the first passing of this act-that is, in the first week of March-a body of weavers, said by the government to amount to ten thousand men, but by a more competent authority, Samuel Bamford, the author of the "Life of a Radical," not to have exceeded four or five thousand, met in St. Peter's Field, at Manchester, and commenced a march southward. The intention was to proceed to London, to present to the prince regent, in person, a petition describing their distress. Bamford had been consulted, and had condemned the project as wild, and likely to bring down nothing but trouble on the petitioners. He believed that they were instigated by spies sent out by government, in order to find an opportunity of justifying their arbitrary measures. Suspicious persons had been trying him. But the poor, deluded people assembled, many of them," says Bamford, "having blankets, rugs, or large coats rolled up, and tied knapsack-like on their backs. Some had papers, supposed to be petitions, rolled up, and some had stout walking-sticks." From their blankets, they afterwards acquired the name of Blanketeers. The magistrates appeared and read the riot act, and dispersed the multitude by soldiers and constables; but three or four hundred fled in the direction of their intended route, and continued their march, pursued by a body of yeomanry. By the time that they reached Macclesfield, at nine o'clock at night, they amounted to only one hundred and eighty; yet many of them persisted in proceeding, but they continually melted away, from hunger and from the misery of lying out in the fields on March nights. By the time that they reached Leek they were reduced to twenty, and six only were known to pass over the bridge at Ashbourn. Now, though in some obscure and ignorant parts of the country there were clubs which contemplated the foolish This was an attempt as constitutional as it was ignorantly idea of seizing on neighbouring properties, the committees and hopelessly planned by suffering people; but more must have been very ill informed to have drawn any such con- criminal speculations were on foot. A second report of the clusion as to the Hampden clubs, which were organised forlords' secret committee, recommending the renewal of the |