too highly the admirable conduct pursued by this excellent, active, and judicious Magistrate, affording so remarkable a contrast to that followed elsewhere with such lamentable effects.

'I sincerely hope the strong attitude we have taken in this respect, without hitherto interfering with the proceedings of the reformers, will have due weight with them, and deter them from going to the dangerous lengths they have in Lancashire; and which, I am quite satisfied, is the object of their leaders. I am most anxious to avoid any contact with them, until they commit themselves by some breach of the peace, when I might be warranted in a decisive interference. I have a strong objection, which I think it right to name to your Lordship, to make use of the yeomanry, except as an auxiliary force, and in case only of emergency. I perceive a strong hatred exists against this force, which is carefully cherished by all the reformers; and if, unfortunately, we should require their services, the probability is, that in discharging their duty they would lay the foundation of perpetual heartburnings and animosity.' p. 37.

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This meeting passed off in perfect peace and quiet. (p. 38.) And another, much more numerous, was announced for the 20th of September. At one time 20,000 persons were present; but the Mayor observed, that as these consisted, of the idle + and curious, as well as the mischievous,' they, not finding attractions for them, began, with the women and children, early to retire; and, before the business was despatched, the numbers were reduced as low as at the last meeting, not exceeding 4 or 5000.' It is important to observe, that the account of this assemblage most closely resembles that of the famous Manchester meeting. Large bodies came from a distance; they marched in regular order; and they had bands and flags: But the Mayor was satisfied with having the constables, watch and patrole in readiness; he desired the troops to remain close in their quarters until they were wanted; and the day was passed in perfect tranquillity.

Another Magistrate, who appears by exaggerating the numbers to be a great alarmist, states that the Halifax meeting, held on the same subject, October 4th, dispersed without any further disturbance than three or four of the ale-houses being full of people drinking after eight o'clock, the hour at which his Worship had ordered them to be closed, so that he was obliged to have them cleared by the constables by force.' (p. 40.) the people (adds he) showing the worst possible spirit;'-of which the cause is pretty manifest. According to this sagacious gentleman, more than 50,000 were assembled,

This word is, by an odd mistake, suppose, which many an alarmist builds

printed

upon

vile-a word, we in his argument.

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and all, except a few thousands, from a distance :-but he did not see and count as the Mayor of Leeds did, who thereby reduced his estimate to two-fifths of the Rumours. This place the concludes) seems to have been well selected, being destitute of defence.' (p. 41.) Then it will naturally be asked, what operations did the Enemy undertake? The place had been happily selected; there were no means of resistance but a few constables; and these were engaged in the very obnoxious and irritating work of clearing the alehouses, by force of this Magistrate's Curfew Law. Never could the Radical army be expected to muster in greater force than 50,000 on one point, and in more advantageous circumstances. Why then did they gain no victory? Of course they must at least have made some attempt, and been defeated by a special providence, where 'human means were none. No such thing-They all dispersed quietly; and the only reason given for their not overpowering the constables, is a heavy rain which fell most fortunately, and drove home those who came from the country, that is, between forty and fifty thousand Radical troops! Truly, if that force yields to such resistance, our powder and shot may well be saved for more stubborn antagonists. Now, it is not a little remarkable, that the Magistrate who gave this alarming account, and whose terrors were communicated so rapidly to others, without any pause being allowed for reason to operate, was far from being a person of the highest consideration; he had been liberated from the County Jail, under the Insolvent Act, and had been sued, successfully, for the penalties, in consequence of having acted without having the qualifications required by law,-circumstances, no doubt, unknown to those who acted upon his written information, but which must have come out before any Committee that examined him, and which certainly would have somewhat shaken his credit.

The evidence relating to Cheshire, presents few points for consideration. It consists almost entirely of very general Reports from the Magistracy, expressive of their apprehensions for the peace of the county, from the discontents prevailing there and in the neighbouring districts; together with a letter from the Postmaster of Macclesfield, describing a riot two nights after the Manchester Meeting, and one from the Clerk of the Peace, shortly stating the atrocious attempt to kill Birch the Constable-an act worthy of all detestation, but plainly the deed of some desperate individual, and not shown, or even alleged, to have been the result of any concert whatever, much less to have had the least connexion with the Reform Meetings. The men tion of it in these Papers, however, was sure to have some ef

fect of this sort with careless readers, who regard principally the juxtaposition of things, and conclude, that a murder being found in the company of documents relating to the Radical schemes, it must have had something to do with those schemes. The evidence relating to Cheshire, however, is worthy of notice from two circumstances. The first of these is the change admitted to have taken place after the 16th of August. The Foreman of the Grand Jury transmits to the Secretary of State, together with public Resolutions of that body, a statement (dated 3d September), which he terms a private communication' (p. 30) from them; and the principal information contained in it is, that within the last fourteen days, the danger, from active measures of terror and intimidation employed, had assumed a more formidable character.' The other particular deserving of attention, is the statement respecting attempts made to poison the minds of the rising generation, by inculcating pernicious principles at the schools. We believe no one of the assertions so rashly hazarded in the course of these discussions, produced, and very naturally, half as much alarm and even hórror as this; and the history of the tale affords so remarkable a specimen of the progress of all such reports from nothing to maturity, that we must be excused if we trace it minutely.

Its origin, at least the earliest mention of it, is to be found in a Resolution passed at the Cheshire Quarter-sessions, August 9th, in the very heat of the alarm, which had indeed then attained its height. A month before, the same Magistrates had passed a resolution, expressing their abhorrence of the attempts made to disturb the peace of the county, and had incidentally made mention of blasphemous and seditious doctrines' as circulating among the ignorant and unwary. But the latter resolution makes a far more definite charge. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Court, that meetings are held in this and the neighbouring counties, for the purpose of training to arms and seditious purposes; and also, that there are schools consisting of some thousands of young persons, in which principles of a most dangerous tendency to the community at large are in• dustriously disseminated; which facts can be verified on oath. And it is the decided opinion of this Court, that these meetings and schools ought to be suppressed; and if the existing laws are not sufficient for that purpose, that other laws should be immediately framed for their prevention.' (p. 23.) Now, under such circumstances, could any thing be more obvious than the duty of those Magistrates to pursue an instantaneous and rigorous inquiry into these alarming particulars?-except perhaps the facility of performing satisfactorily so urgent a duty! The meet

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ings to drill may have been secret; and spying out such plots might be attended with danger; but schools where some thousands of young persons' were taught, whatever the lessons were, never could in the nature of things be concealed: This must have been an operation carried on in the face of day; and the more dangerous' the principles thus inculcated, the more impossible was it to teach them in secrecy. Yet what do these active Magistrates? They content themselves with saying, or rather with Resolving,' that this most appalling fact can be verified on oath: But they call no witnesses to make oath; they give no particulars; they avoid the subject as soon as they broach it; and the Secretary of State directs no further investigation of the matter to be made. Yet the Papers are full of anonymous affidavits about training and arms, while any one of the Magistrates could, in half an hour, have satisfied himself openly as to the lessons taught at the schools. He had only to knock at the door: :--If he was refused admittance, there was a case of grave suspicion; and he had only to confirm it or remove it, by conversing with any of the children, if the teachers refused to communicate with him. If he was allowed access, he must either have seen what lessons were taught, or something must have been hastily put out of the way, and the lessons changed. We ask any reasonable man, what possibility is there of such things being concealed, when the whole plot, concealment and all, must be known to thousands of children'? Now, as the proof by witnesses of such facts as are here only generally alleged, would have been most essentially useful to the cause of the Alarmists who prepared these documents, we are entitled to conclude that no such proof could be procured; and that is only saying, in other words, that no such facts existed. But again, the resolution of August 9th says nothing whatever of blasphemy; it only mentions dangerous principles;' and there can be no doubt that the authors of it had political doctrines alone in their eye, otherwise they who, at their last meeting, had generally mentioned blasphemy,' would have been too happy to furnish so remarkable an instance of the pains taken to spread it.

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After the 16th, when men's minds on both sides were ripe for believing any thing, we find another body, the Grand Jury, only four of whom had been at the Quarter-sessions, declaring their 'disgust and horror at the odious and blasphemous publications poured forth throughout the country, in which the Holy Scriptures are held up to derision, reviled and scoffed at, and 'audaciously denounced as false.' And they add, that they 'contemplate with the most serious and peculiar anxiety and ' detestation, the unremitting exertions to poison the minds of

new evidence before them, merely intended, in this one resolu tion, to embody the two statements of the Magistrates at Sessions; the first mentioning the prevalence of blasphemous as well as seditious publications generally; the second, a month after, asserting that principles of a dangerous tendency (without an iôta of blasphemy) were taught in the schools. Four of the Magistrates being on the Grand Jury, had communicated, from an indistinct recollection, the two statements; and thus, in the eager credulity of the moment to swallow any thing alarming, a new statement very different from either of the former was produced, charging the schools at once with teaching the most pernicious blasphemy. But this is not the end of the progress which the tale was fated to make. Both Magistrates and Grand Jury keep entirely to the safe generalities already mentioned. But Mr Plunket, whose Speech will be read by thousands who can never see the evidence, thinks fit, in the fervour of his eloquence, to say that blasphemies have been fashioned by miscreants into Primers for the education of children-to inoculate, with this pestilence, those helpless beings, while receiving the first elements of knowledge! Now, is there any one who reads this, without knowing the actual amount of the evidence by which it is supported, who would not imagine that it had been proved, that little bocks had actually been composed and printed, in which the elements of Atheism were set forth in short words and large characters, and infidelity accommodated to the most tender capacities, in the way of question and answer, or by short apologues and fables? And yet the only evidence on which this rhetorical statement has to rest, is that which has just been abstracted from the Resolutions' of the Justices and Grand Jury of Cheshire.

With regard to the state of the North of England, and of the county of Northumberland especially, we do not know if any one item in this strange tale of terror, and of the panic to which it gave rise, was half so operative, for the short time that it lasted, as the memorable statement of a Noble Lord who has the particular charge of that district, when he asserted, in his place in Parliament, that he had positive information that 100,000 men were actually in arms against the Government, between the Wear and the Tyne.' This, it must be confessed, was a truly alarming communication: and the terror which it naturally excited was such as not to be immediately allayed by the consolatory reflection, that the whole population of the district alluded to could not possibly afford any thing like that