LETTER VIII.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING POST.

SIR,

December 25, 1819.

THE Bill, to the consideration of which I shall devote this Letter, is that for preventing Seditious Meetings.

Lord Castlereagh, by modifying some clauses and supplying others, before going into a committee upon this Bill, has so completely overthrown the objections on which the opposition to it was founded, that, in the debates which succeeded the amendments he proposed, I can discover no argument against it plausible. enough to require refutation. To reason and to rant are two different things. The hysteric fits of Sir F. Burdett, and the tantarums of Mr. Lambton, engross time and space without arresting attention, and are worthy accompaniments to the eruptions of the harmless volcanilloes, Colonel Davies, Mr. Denman, and Douglas Kinnaird, the Judas jokes of Mr. Brougham, or the stormings of Sir Robert Wilson. The

pantaloon of a radical hustings, this latter gentleman is a beacon over the shoals of Universal Suffrage, and as such, a salutary appurtenance to a deliberative assembly. His supporters in the House are on a par with those out of it, and a Hunt and a Hutchinson equally defame with their applause. With such off-scourings of the Westminster Rump the dialect of Billingsgate is the only accredited weapon; and not being trained to wield it, I shall leave them unmolested to break the hearts of Market-garden women or Borough fish-fags.

To return to the Seditious Meetings Bill: I would be explicit, even to tautology, in the detail of its well-known provisions, as the Timesserving and the Jacobin press have of late made it a rule to seize on and exhibit that part of a whole, which, represented by itself as a whole, presents us with an object utterly mutilated and misproportioned. With this view, in their late lucubrations, they take no notice of the last and most important of the five ways and means protected to Englishmen of exercising their inviolate rights of Petition and Public Meeting. Not only have Lords Lieutenant, the majority of Grand Juries, High Sheriffs, or any five

Magistrates, the power of calling and convening assemblies, but any seven Householders also, on merely demanding the time and place for meeting of a Magistrate, who is bound, without the possibility of a refusal, to name both, within a certain number of days of the application. Who, but a man interested in simultaneous risings, with suitable vantage grounds, dare hazard an objection to this small reserve of control by which the Magistrate is authorised to appoint the day and the place where a public meeting shall be held? This fifth resource, which protects the vital principle of our right of public meeting, which, in comparison with the other four, is the Magna Charta against party purpose-this resource is entirely overlooked by the plotters of mischief, in order to gratify their followers with outcries against despots and subverters of the Constitution.

A certain Whig Lord, in opposition even to his own authority, in which the germs of this bill are developed, where protesting that, "holding sacred, as he does, the right of public meeting to petition or discuss grievances, he must declare, that nothing can be more mis

chievous than large masses of population moving on already agitated districts," now gives a practical lie to his theory, and, with a feeble whoop for power, scales the ladder of Radical annoyance, to be knocked on the head with his own argument. The present bill is nothing more than his theory adapted to practice-it is the remedy he suggests in the very declaration of the disease.

No one, a single remove from idiotcy, can assent to the predictions of half-witted men, who would have us believe that "this bill will reduce all public meetings to mere vestry rooms," or that "Addresses in future to Parliament or the Throne must be considered as the Addresses of Lords Lieutenant, Grand Juries, Sheriffs, or Magistrates." Supposing, however, this latter monstrous misrepresentation were true, common sense would again step in to point out members of Grand Juries, Sheriffs, and Magistrates, independent of the Crown, and most of them zealous to convey the voice of the people to Parliament and the Throne. I never heard of a vestry-room that could accommodate 19,000 parishioners, and yet seven householders, by this bill, are permitted to muster 19,900

individuals, if their parish contain as many, and they should all choose to attend.

To ascertain the salutary results that may be anticipated from this bill, let any man try it by the touchstone of reason. To do this, he need but ask himself, Shall I be able, if it pass into a law, to express my opinion in public? His answer will be the bill's best eulogy. Yes, I shall not only be able to express my opinion in public, but have a far better chance than heretofore of a hearing: instead too of being deterred from appearing among my fellow parishioners at local meetings, from respect to my character, and fear for my person, I may now go and add the weight of the former to their resolutions, in consistency with safety to the latter. The proposed limitation of popular meetings, by excluding orators who usurp others' birthrights, and mobs at whose head it is infamous to be, seen, will restore the respectable to their post, and lend their authority to guide and guard public opinion,

Another most constitutional effect of this limitation will put to shame the calumnies of the degenerate Whigs, who accuse Govern