published in 1875 by Edmondston & Douglas. Another edition appeared in
the United States in 1883.
Mrs. Fletcher had not only ability, but the subtler gift of sympathy.
She had an instinctive feeling for that which was beautiful alike in
the spheres of literature and morals.
Footnote 12:
An interesting account of this benevolent woman is given in
“Chambers’s Miscellany,” 1872, vol. iv., No. 50.
Manchester and the First Reform Agitation.
The reform agitation began in Manchester in 1792, and its history is
instructive and too little known by the present generation. The town,
which was heartily Republican in the Civil Wars, was as heartily
Jacobite in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and in its
closing years was dominated by the sworn friends of intolerance and
privilege. The vainly proposed repeal in 1789 of the Corporation and
Test Acts, by which the Nonconformists were excluded from all municipal
offices, led to the formation in Manchester of a “Church and King
Club,” whose members showed their loyalty by deep potations and their
piety by wearing buttons which bore a representation of the “Old
Church.” An era of bitter party feeling now set in. Those who were
Dissenters, those who were suspected of thinking that Manchester and
other important manufacturing towns should be represented in
Parliament, those who ventured to regard the sale of pocket-boroughs as
a scandal, those who hinted that any improvement was possible in the
constitution of a Parliament that was notoriously non-representative
and that included many members who owed their position to improper and
corrupt influences, were marked out for social ostracism and
persecution. The Liberals of that day banded themselves together and
formed the Manchester Constitutional Society, which in May, 1792, set
forth as one of its objects that “members of the House of Commons
should owe their seats to the good opinion and free suffrage of the
people at large, and not to the prostituted votes of venal and corrupt
boroughs.” The Government immediately issued a proclamation against
“wicked and seditious writings,” and called upon the magistrates to
take rigorous action. The King’s birthday was celebrated by
illuminations, and the partisans of the “glorious Constitution,” which
denied them the rights of citizenship, tore up a couple of the trees
growing in St. Ann’s Square, and tried to batter down the gates of the
Unitarian chapels in Cross Street and Mosley Street. The publicans were
warned that their licences would be forfeited if they allowed any
gatherings of the reformers upon their premises. No less than 186 of
them signed an agreement to that effect, and in some of the taverns was
a conspicuous announcement, “No Jacobins admitted here.” The war with
France was hailed with delight by the adherents to the old order, and
was deeply deprecated by the reformers. A man of great talent, Thomas
Cooper, issued an address on the evils of war, and this, with other
dissuasives, appeared in the _Manchester Herald_, a newspaper which the
reformers had started. Encouraged by the authorities of the town, a
drunken mob attacked the printing office and sacked it. The Rev. J.
Griffith declared that he would not act against the rioters if called
upon to do so, and a special constable offered the mob a guinea for
“every Jacobin’s house that they pulled down.” A friend of the
printer’s applied to the constable for help, and was answered by a
threat of being kicked out of the place. The leader of the reformers
was Mr. Thomas Walker, and his house also was selected for attack. He
and his friends defended the place with firearms. The conduct of the
rioters was defended by Wyndham in the House of Commons, and a
prosecution was instituted, not against the law-breakers, but against
Mr. Walker. He had firearms in his possession, and therefore he had
“obtained arms to wage war against the King.” The case came on at the
Lancaster Spring Assizes, but the principal witness proved himself to
be a shuffling perjurer, and Law, afterwards Lord Ellenborough, saw the
matter to be so hopeless that he threw up the case. Thomas Cooper left
the town for America, where he obtained high distinction as a chemist,
jurist, and political economist. The reformers were helpless and almost
hopeless. The war fever had seized the nation; the right of public
meeting and the freedom of the press were the subject of constant
attack. The law against seditious assemblies was used as a means of
prohibiting any public expression of disapprobation of the state of the
Constitution or the acts of the Government. It was denounced by Charles
James Fox, and a very whimsical protest was made against it in
Manchester, which is thus described in a newspaper of the time:—“On
Monday evening (28th December, 1796), the members of the Manchester
Thinking Club commenced their first mental operation by beginning to
think, or in other words, submitting themselves like good subjects to a
constitutional dumbness. The number of thinkers assembled was not less
than 300, and many of the thoughtful actually came from Liverpool,
Stockport, and other remote places to witness this novel spectacle. The
members were all muzzled, and such an imposing silence prevailed for
one hour as would have done honour to the best thinkers that ever
adorned assemblies of a more dignified nature. The word ‘Mum’ appeared
in large characters on every muzzle, and except a seditious sigh or a
treasonable groan that occasionally broke forth, ‘Mum’ was literally
the order of the night.” Here is an advertisement of the meetings of
the “Thinking Club”:—“The members of this truly constitutional Society
continue to meet for the intellectual purpose of silent contemplation
every Thursday evening, at the Coopers’ Arms, Cateaton Street, where
strong constitutional muzzles are provided at the door by Citizen
Avery, tailor to the swinish multitude. The questions still to be
thought of are: Is man really a thinking animal or not? and if he is,
as thinking is rather a troublesome operation of the mind, ought he not
to be thankful that his betters kindly think for him? The chair to be
taken at half-past seven. Thinking to begin precisely at eight.”
But war brought its usual concomitant of want, and the sufferings of
the people led to deep-seated discontent. The weavers called a meeting
for the 24th of May, 1808, to ask for the establishment of a minimum
rate of wages. The meeting was resumed on the following day, and
although it was quite orderly, the Riot Act was read, and the military
were ordered to clear the ground. One of the weavers was killed,
several were wounded, and several arrested. Colonel Hanson, the
commander of a local volunteer corps, tried to persuade the men to
disperse by a promise that their interests should be looked after. This
was giving “encouragement to the rioters,” and for this he was
sentenced to a fine of £100 and six months’ imprisonment in the King’s
Bench. Meanwhile the policy of the Government increased the distress of
the nation, so that in the cotton districts the people were
half-starved, and a scanty dinner of oatmeal and water was too often
the only meal in the four and twenty hours. A town’s meeting was called
for 8th April, 1812, to thank the Regent for retaining the Anti-Reform
Ministry of Castlereagh and Sidmouth. The reformers immediately issued
placards calling upon the public to attend. The promoters of the
meeting, alarmed at the thought of opposition, now announced that it
would not be held, as the staircase was too weak to sustain the
pressure of a crowd. People assembled for the expected meeting, and the
Exchange was soon surrounded. No authentic account of the beginning of
the riot has appeared, but the present writer was informed by an
eye-witness that the last touch was put to the anger of the populace by
a merchant who afterwards made himself an evil reputation. He was
standing at the door of the Exchange, and as a chimney-sweep passed by
he struck the lad’s black face with his walking-cane. The populace
forced their way into the room, the furniture was destroyed, the
windows broken, and the military had to be called out before the place
was cleared. This was followed during the next fortnight by food riots
and by machine breaking. The authorities, instead of seeing in the
existing discontent the symptoms of evils needing remedy, treated every
expression of a desire for reform as a crime to be punished with
merciless severity. Spies were actively at work fanning the
disaffection of the operatives in order to betray them if they could be
inveigled into illegality. In 1815, the Corn Law was passed whilst the
House of Commons was guarded by soldiers. The Manchester meeting held
to protest against its passage was presided over by Mr. Hugh Hornby
Birley, who was then Boroughreeve. In 1815, a number of the Radical
reformers, chiefly of the artisan class, resolved to adopt an address
to the Prince Regent and a petition to the House of Commons in favour
of peace and Parliamentary reform. They met at the Elephant, in Tib
Street, but hearing that the meeting was likely to be broken up they
adjourned to the Prince Regent’s Arms, in Ancoats. John Knight, who was
their recognised leader, had just concluded a speech when the room was
entered by the famous “Jo” Nadin with a blunderbuss in his hands, and
followed by a number of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The reformers
were arrested and marched, with their hands tied, to the New Bailey.
They were taken before the Rev. W. R. Hay, who, with the gross
partiality for which he was notorious, refused to allow Fleming, the
spy-witness, to be cross-examined. They were tried at Lancaster in the
following August, when Nadin, the constable, admitted that he had sent
Fleming as a decoy, and that the spy had asked to be “twisted in”—that
is, to be sworn as a member of a seditious society. All who were found
in the room were included in the common indictment, and thus could not
testify in each other’s behalf. Fortunately Nadin had been too
precipitate, and one man escaped his notice. He testified that no oath
had been administered, and it was further shown that the two men said
to have put the oath to the spy were elsewhere at the time. The
thirty-seven prisoners were defended by Brougham and Scarlett, and
triumphantly acquitted. They had, however, been in prison for three
months, they had been taken from their homes and daily avocations, and
it was by the merest good luck that they had escaped transportation.
The writings of William Cobbett had great influence upon the working
classes, and his incessant cry for reform met with sympathetic
response. The Sunday schools had given elementary instruction to the
stronger brains, and native shrewdness, tutored by suffering and
hardship, had made them into intelligent politicians. They knew where
the shoe pinched, and in spite of some errors of judgment had a clearer
conception than their “betters” of the remedy. Sam Bamford, the
weaver-poet, was the secretary of a political club at Middleton for
Parliamentary reform as a means of obtaining the repeal of the Corn
Laws and other desirable objects, and similar clubs existed all over
the county.
In 1816, the Ministers suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, and took other
measures for burking public discussion. At the “blanketeer” meeting,
held at St. Peter’s Fields, 10th March, it was decided that the men
should march to London to petition, each with a blanket on his shoulder
for protection from cold in the night. The meeting was dispersed by the
military, many were arrested, and those who had started on their way to
the Metropolis were pursued. The “blanketeers” were overtaken on
Lancashire Hill, Stockport, where more were arrested, more wounded, and
where one cottager was shot at his own door. It is only fair to the
military to state that they showed far more moderation than the
magistrates. A few of the “blanketeers” reached Derby. The spies were
now at work, and Bamford tells how one of these invited him to join in
making a “Moscow of Manchester.” The muddle-headed authorities accepted
without inquiry all that their infamous agents told them, and after the
arrest of Bamford and others at Ardwick, the Rev. W. R. Hay assured his
awe-struck hearers that when these men were tried “purposes of the
blackest enormity must be disclosed to the public.” After being taken
in irons to London—one of them being an old man of seventy-four—and
examined by the Secretary of State, they were discharged, and not even
put upon their trial. Yet this “plot” was the chief argument used by
Sidmouth for a further suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Castlereagh
cynically avowed that they had sent Oliver the spy “to see what was
going on.” The Lancashire men were warned in time, and Oliver, though
he tried hard, had no success here. In Derbyshire, however, he fomented
an “insurrection,” and those whom he had first incited to sedition he
afterwards betrayed to the scaffold. In 1818, the Manchester reformers
sent a petition to the House of Commons, in which they asserted that
there never had been in this neighbourhood any reason for the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, denounced the work of the spies,
and asked for an inquiry into the action of the magistrates at
Manchester. Bamford and others who had been arrested also petitioned;
but Mr. George Philips’s motion for an inquiry by a Committee of the
House of Commons was rejected by 162 votes against 69, and the Ministry
obtained an Act of indemnity for all their proceedings. Mr. John
Greenwood managed to exclude the name of Mr. J. E. Taylor from the list
of the Salford assessors because he was a moderate reformer, and
asserted that he had written a handbill leading to the destruction at
the Exchange in 1812. Mr. Taylor, unable to obtain any retraction or
explanation, denounced him as “a liar, a slanderer, and a scoundrel.”
For this an action for libel was begun. Mr. Taylor defended himself,
and the jury came to the conclusion that the plaintiff was “a liar, a
slanderer, and a scoundrel.” Mr. Taylor’s acquittal was chiefly due to
the foreman of the jury, Mr. John Rylands, of Warrington, who,
resolutely putting aside all legal cobwebs, declined to punish a man
for telling the truth.
The year 1819 was an important one for the cause of reform. There was a
meeting in St. Peter’s Fields in June, when the people, to embarrass
the Government, decided to abstain from excisable articles as far as
possible. Roasted corn was to take the place of coffee, sloe leaves to
be substituted for tea, and the use of spirits and ale was to be
abandoned. The “loyal” inhabitants placarded the town with incentives
to drinking, and an attempt was made to pay for this poster out of the
church rates. The people had lost hope of obtaining reform by petition,
and the notion was broached of appointing a representative to claim a
seat in the House of Commons. The reformers of Manchester therefore
called a meeting for the purpose of electing “a legislatorial attorney
and representative” for the town. This assembly was called for August
9th, but the magistrates declared that it would be illegal, and the
intention was abandoned. The reformers then presented a requisition,
signed by 700 householders, asking the Boroughreeve to call a town’s
meeting. He refused to do so, and it was then decided to hold an
open-air meeting in St. Peter’s Fields for the purpose of petitioning
for a reform in Parliament. The reformers from all parts of Lancashire
were expected to be there, and at Middleton and elsewhere they were
drilled into the proper method of marching so that there might be no
confusion. The authorities professed to regard these harmless marchings
with sticks and broom handles as the presages of revolution. The
procession that filed into St. Peter’s Fields on the morning of the
16th August, 1819, was largely composed of young men and young women of
the artisan class, dressed out in their Sunday best. They had many
flags with them. There were from sixty to eighty thousand people
present to give a welcome to Henry Hunt, whose handsome form and power
of speech made him at that time the idol of the Lancashire workmen.
Loud were the cheers of the multitude as he rode up to the
hustings—which had been placed where is now the south-east corner of
the Free Trade Hall. The white hats—then the symbol of Radicals—were
waved in the air, the men hurrahed, and the women smiled as the hero of
the hour approached. The magistrates, perhaps honestly alarmed, but
weak and vacillating, now determined to arrest the ringleaders in the
face of the assembled multitude. There was not the slightest occasion
to fear any riot or disturbance, and active precautions had been taken
to overawe the reformers. On the field, in readiness for action, were
six troops of the 15th Hussars, a troop of Horse Artillery with two
guns, part of the 21st Regiment of Infantry, some companies of the 88th
Regiment, above 300 of the Cheshire Yeomanry, and about forty members
of the Manchester Yeomanry—sworn foes of reform. As the immense
multitude listened in intense silence to the opening sentences of
Hunt’s speech, the Manchester Yeomanry, under the command of Mr. H. H.
Birley, appeared on the outskirts of the crowd, and were received with
shouts. Without one word of warning they set their horses in a gallop,
and with their bright swords flashing in the air, they dashed into the
crowd, striking right and left with their sabres with all the energy of
madmen. They became scattered over the field, and were literally wedged
into the palpitating mass of humanity which they were attacking. The
Hussars were now ordered to the attack, and for the most part drove the
people with the flat of the sword, but the edge also was used. When the
yeomanry were extricated they wheeled round and dashed again into the
crowd wherever there was an opening, cutting and slashing at all who
came before them. In many parts the panic-stricken crowd was literally
piled up in heaps. For attending a perfectly peaceable meeting to ask
for a reform in Parliament, which had then no representatives of the
great towns, and was largely filled by the owners of pocket-boroughs
and their nominees, for thus asserting their rights as Englishmen to
discuss their grievances, ten men and one woman were killed and 600
were wounded. The man chiefly responsible for this slaughter was the
Rev. W. R. Hay, who is said to have read the Riot Act from a
neighbouring window, but, if so, did it in such a manner that it was
never heard by the crowd. The peaceful nature of the assembly was shown
by the number of women and of old men who were in it. Poor old Thomas
Blinstone, at the age of 74, was rode over by the yeomanry, and had
both arms broken, and said he, “What is wur than aw, mester, they’n
broken my spectacles and aw’ve never yet been able to get a pair that
suited me.”
The “Peterloo Massacre” was a baptism of blood for the cause of reform,
and the Tory victory was worse than a defeat, for it excited the
indignation of all England against those who had caused the slaughter
of their fellow-subjects for demanding admission within the pale of the
Constitution.
The Rev. W. R. Hay wrote to Lord Sidmouth on the night of Peterloo
giving his version of the affair. At the same time Mr. J. E. Taylor and
Mr. Archibald Prentice each sent a plain account of the disgraceful
conduct of the magistrates and the yeomanry. These appeared in London
papers, and the accuracy of their narratives was amply confirmed by Mr.
John Tyas, the representative of the _Times_, whom blundering “Jo”
Nadin had taken into custody as one of the dreaded conspirators. The
effect was to rouse a storm of indignation before which even the obtuse
magistrates quailed. On the 19th, a hole-and-corner meeting was held in
their interests at the Star Inn, when thanks were awarded to the
justices and the yeomanry. This was responded to by a protest signed by
4,800 of the merchants, manufacturers, and others of the “respectable
classes,” in which the meeting just mentioned was described as a
private one, and those who had thus falsely claimed to speak for
Manchester were invited to call a public meeting. On the 27th, Lord
Sidmouth conveyed the thanks of the Prince Regent to the magistrates
and military “for their prompt, decisive, and efficient measures for
the preservation of the public peace.” Mr. Hay and his friends had need
of sympathy, for they were the objects of general execration. Meetings
all over the kingdom were held, at which their sanguinary interference
with the right of public meeting was denounced. The sympathy felt with
the working men reformers was not confined to one class. The Duke of
Hamilton subscribed to the fund for the relief of the sufferers. Earl
Fitzwilliam was dismissed from his post of Lord Lieutenant of the West
Riding for his energetic protest against Peterloo. Sir Francis Burdett
made a still more vigorous protest, and his letter to the electors of
Westminster led to his imprisonment for three months, and the
infliction of a fine of £2,000. Shelley, writing to Peacock, exclaims,
“What an infernal business this is of Manchester! What is to be done?”
What he did was to write his “Mask of Anarchy,” in which he made a call
to the nation:—
“Rise like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number;
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
Which in sleep had fallen on you;
Ye are many—they are few.”
The effect of Peterloo was to bring forth a greater disposition to
united action between the middle and the working classes on the reform
question. The authorities on their side strained the law to crush out
the reformers. An inquest was opened as to the death of John Lees, who
died from the wounds he had received on the field. The object of the
coroner was to avoid an unfavourable verdict, and this he accomplished
first by not putting in an appearance at all, and then by frequent
adjournments, so that the inquest, which opened 8th September,
continued until December, and was never concluded. When Parliament met
in November, Earl Grey moved an amendment to the Address in which the
Manchester massacre was denounced as illegal and unconstitutional, but
this was defeated by a large majority, as was a similar motion in the
House of Commons. Sidmouth carried the series of coercive measures
known as the “Six Acts,” and the powers of reaction were in full
triumph. Several efforts were made, but in vain, to bring the
assailants of the meeting to justice, and even as late as 1822 an
unsuccessful action was brought against Captain Birley and three others
of the yeomanry by one whom they had cut down.
Whilst the reformers were thus baffled in their endeavours to obtain
justice, the partisan magistrates and judges made short work of those
who fell into their power. Hunt and others who were arrested at
Peterloo were sent to Lancaster, and the trial was removed to York. It
was so plain that the Peterloo meeting was not illegal in itself, that
every effort was made to connect it with previous drillings on White
Moss, where a spy named Murray had been beaten by some of the reformers
assembled there. The banners, one of which had on it the words, “Equal
Representation or Death,” and others inscribed “No Corn Laws,” “No
Boroughmongers,” were also made the most of. Five of the accused were
acquitted, but Hunt, Johnson, Knight, Healey, and Bamford were found
guilty of seditious conspiracy. Hunt received sentence of two years’
imprisonment, whilst Bamford and the others were condemned to a year’s
imprisonment. Johnson was refused permission to visit, even in the
custody of an officer, the deathbed of his wife. The Government had
soon an opportunity of rewarding the Rev. Mr. Hay, and his appointment
soon after Peterloo to the rich living of Rochdale increased the
popular hatred which pursued him to the grave. An epigram of the time
reads:—