tion of whose name would now, prone as we still are to alarm, excite a smile in the most loyal company in the land: Yet three years have not elapsed since they formed the principal features in the Plot of the Season; their reveries were cited in Ministerial Speeches; their tenets, equally hostile to landholders and stockholders, were held up by committees to the intimidation of both; a grave and solemn statute was passed to put them down; and the dread of them actually formed the main ground of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act for a year. The attack on the Prince Regent's person was carefully connected by the same Reports with the general conspiracy; and the courtiers represented it as made with a pistol and slugs, until the most positive demonstration proved the physical impossibility of a bullet making two holes, by rebounding on the perpendicular glass of a carriage. But a truly remarkable circumstance was, that the Rebels of 1817 seemed to have no arms, nor ammunition, nor drilling, nor other military organization; a tumultuous meeting at Spafields, and a riot in some gunsmiths' shops, were their only tactics; so that the armies, the magazines, the treasure, the excellent discipline both of horse and foot, which had rendered the Land of Lud so formidable to the neighbouring powers in 1812, had entirely disappeared; and this mighty state had sunk into total oblivion, so as not even to be commemorated by the Secret Reporters-a melancholy example of the vicissitudes of Empire! This military commonwealth, however, had been, it seems, melted into a civil community of many hundreds of thousands, all linked in secret associations, and moved at will by the power of a London Committee. They were even represented as beginning to arm themselves, though no explanation whatever was given how they had come to lose their former equipments. But a formidable, though not a very unexpected enemy, soon began his operations against this confederation, in the shape of a plentiful harvest; and, before the end of the year 1817, no more was heard of plots, armings, central bodies, combined operations, and Spencean schemes, than if Select Committees had never been.

Here let us pause, to mark the strange passion for political alarm that seems so deeply rooted in the people of this country, excited almost at the will of their rulers; again and again agitating them to acts of violence, blinding them to the grossest impostures, beguiling them of all regard to their dignity or their interest; changing only its object or its direction, but always ready to rise at the call of those who can serve their own ends by reproducing it; and so entirely independent of reason, that no experience of its groundlessness one year, seems to cure the

general predisposition to indulge in it the next. We might naturally imagine, that when the stories of 1812 were so completely exposed-when the mere lapse of time had shown the im possibility of the plots then reported to be ripe for execution→→→ the people, thus undeceived, would have been more slow to believe in similar fictions five years after; and, when this second delusion had been dispelled, it might well have been deemed a hopeless task to attempt the revival of it, under a new name, in three years more. The fable of the wolf represents most men as apt to feel too great security after having been deluded with false alarms; but, however unfounded our national panics may prove, the oftener they prevail, and the more groundless they turn out, we seem only the more prone to be seized with them time after time, and to act under the influence of each succeeding terror, as if all the former had been found to proceed from the rational apprehension of real perils. This pecu liarity of our character, is perhaps in some degree owing to the free constitution, which makes every man more or less a politi cian; and thus enlisting the feelings of all in the discussion of each question, subjects the operations of the publick mind to something like the agitations of a multitude, or a popular assembly. Yet more is required to account for such a succession of delusions; for certainly, though the people may err once or twice, and during a season persist in their mistake, they correct themselves if let alone, and become wise and rational by experience, unless pains are taken to keep them in error. But when the great influence of Government in all its departments throughout the country, is considered, we shall understand the facilities which the Ministers of the day always possess, when they are desirous of propagating a temporary delusion. Not only the avowed agents of power are everywhere at work, speaking the same language, and using their direct authority to enforce their doctrines; not only the press is at work weekly and daily to repeat, with every gross exaggeration, and even all the resources of the most shameless fabrication, the tale of terror which its patrons wish to have borne round the land; but all the adherents of the system, from expectation, or recollection, or mere vanity and love of importance, are eternally echoing the cry proceeding from above. It serves to silence their honest but annoying adversaries-it is better than a thousand argumentsit enables them to triumph for the moment, by hunting down as disaffected all who are slow to believe; and experience tells them how little risk they run, of being discredited at any one time by former convictions of falsehood or of folly.

We are now to see the application of these remarks to the

late alarm, closely resembling the former panics in all its essential particulars, except the more dangerous purposes to which it has been made subservient. We must premise, that nothing can be further from our intention than to deny that a general discontent has for some years prevailed through the country; that it has been on the increase of late; that it especially infects populous districts, like those where manufactures are spread; that it is ready to be turned by factious and unprincipled demagogues to dangerous purposes; that when distress prevails, it is always most to be dreaded; and that, to secure the peace of the State against its effects, demands the vigilant care of the Executive Government. Whatever be the more remote origin of this spirit, we conceive the load of taxation under which the community labours, to be the chief proximate cause of its increased diffusion, to which we may add, the generally prevailing distrust of the Government, from the alternate harshness and feebleness of its measures, and their consistency only in one point, a resolute, unfeeling, insulting denial of all redress of grievances, all economical reform, and all improvement, however moderate, in the representative system. That the old law of the land was amply sufficient to cope with the disaffected, had it been administered by steady hands, and accompanied with the spirit of conciliation, we hold to be equally manifest; and the folly of believing in any conspiracies beyond the one which we have been describing, must appear plain, if we only attend to the proofs on which, in an evil hour for their own case, and contrary to the sounder advice of Lord Grenville and Mr Plunket, the Ministers have choosed to rest it.

At the beginning of last July, the acting magistrates for the Manchester district, appear to have announced to the Government their apprehensions that some alarming insurrection was in contemplation. They distinctly state the existence of great distress; and justly observe, that when the people are oppressed with hunger, they do not wonder at their giving ear to any doctrines which they are told will redress their griev ances: -a circumstance very much overlooked both by Lord Grenville and Mr Plunket, who assert, that the disaffection is unconnected with distress, and whose view of the subject would, therefore, have been materially aided by proceeding upon the notoriety of the facts,' and producing no documents at all. The same magistrates add their expectations of a general rising at no distant period,' and mention two meetings as in preparation: But it is important to remark, that they speak of distress, and the harangues of demagogues, as the only grounds of

their apprehension; advert to no combination or secret plots; and make no use whatever of the word conspiracy.' In a fortnight after this, they adopted the excellent precaution of forming an armed association, to aid the civil power in keeping the peace; and, when the Manchester meeting on the 9th of August was advertised, for the purpose of chusing a Member of Parliament, or Logislatorial Attorney, they wisely gave warning to the people that such a proceeding was illegal. This prudent measure too had the desired effect; a notice was issued that no such meeting would be held; and another meeting, on the subject of reform only, was called for the 16th, after a formal requisition had been given in to the Borough Reeve to summon one, and he had declined. (Papers laid before Parliament, PP. 5, 9, 10.)

About ten days before this fatal day, we find the Magistrates communicating to Government the information that drilling was going on very extensively,' and at the same time that flags and caps of liberty' were provided in the neighbouring towns, evidently for adorning their processions. Soon after, depositions are transmitted respecting the system of drilling; and these testimonies deserve our most serious attention. They are thirty-seven in number, of which nine only are given with the names of the informants, the remaining twenty-eight being distinguished only by the letters of the alphabet; and of the nine which appear in their real names, four are the examinations of persons taken in the act of drilling, and the other five seem to have been spies sent by the Magistrates. But it is most material to observe how differently the nameless witnesses speak, and how much more strong these statements are. The persons with names, all, with one exception, speak of drilling in small bodies, and either at seven in the morning, or in the evening before nightfall. The anonymous deponents speak of meetings in the dead of the night, and in great numbers, and with a degree of discipline of which no mention is made by the others. Thus B. C. (Papers, p. 19.) describes an assemblage early in the morning at Tandle Hill thus;-we give it as a specimen.

'There was a concourse of two or three thousand; of which number there were upwards of seven hundred who were drilling in companies, by marching both in slow, quick, and double quick time, and in every other respect went through the usual evolutions of a regiment; that each company might contain from fifty to sixty men, and were commanded by a person in the character of a captain; that when they were ordered to fire, it was immediately followed by a clap of hands throughout the line; that, out of the number who were met, I knew a few persons who reside in Crompton and its neighbourhood; but,

of the men who were acting as drill-serjeants, or officers of com panies, I know nothing; yet, from my knowledge of military discipline, I am satisfied they were persons capable of organizing a regiment; that, whilst I was on the ground, I heard persons say, that they (meaning the parties in drill) were fit to contend with any regular troops, only that they wanted arms; and, in the evening of yesterday, a man told me who had been at Tandle Hill, and who said he had been drilled that day, that a similar meeting would take place next Sunday, but that would be the last; that the persons remained on the ground until about seven o'clock, having been there upwards of three hours; and the whole of this time was devoted to drilling.

p. 19.

Now, we entreat the reader who may have recovered his sober senses, as well as him who never lost them, to remark two very material things in this willing and even zealous informant's story. The drill meeting which was to take place next Sunday was to be the last, says B. C.; and he intends that his employers should conclude (nor did they disappoint him), that the time for taking the field was then to come, and all this discipline to be turned to account in actual campaign with the regular troops. But next Sunday' was the 15th of August, the jurat of the affidavit being the 9th; and the day after that was the Manchester Meeting; so that the plain meaning of the whole was, that these drillings were intended to teach the parties from the villages and neighbouring towns to form their procession in a more orderly and magnificent manner on that day, when all further occasion for such discipline would cease. Again, B. C. says, that only 700 of the 2000 or 3000 persons present, were engaged in drilling; therefore, the conspirators who were planning and preparing their traitorous designs, were actually levying war against the King, before a crowd of near two thousand spectators. Surely such kinds of High Treason are not very likely to overturn a State. If such overt-acts (we may well call them) should be laid with a proditorie, the term would seem applied rather to a betraying of the plot, than the duty of allegiance.

Passing over such discrepancies between the anonymous gentlemen, as that one could count 400 or 500 men at drill in the dark, at the same time that another could see nothing (p. 21.); and such improbabilities, as that a person should, in giving his first account of a nightly meeting, leave out almost all the most remarkable particulars, and then make a supplementary affidavit of them two days afterwards (p. 22.), we may take notice of the depositions of three unknown persons (p. 21.), who all describe a night drill in such a manner as can leave no manner of doubt in any one's mind that the object of those concerned in it was innocent, according to their notions, and that it was to prepare them for bearing part in a procession on the 16th;-the