The National Register. — London, England, 1819-09-12 00:00:00

ttfri . k 4. I A zi No. !is —VoL. XII.] voitticat uttrompta. The cruel, and, until an honest Judge and an im partial Jury shall have decided the contrary, what we shall not hesitate to consider the illegal end un constitutional outrages of the Manchester Megis trates and Yeomanry upon an unarmed and de fenceless multitude, and the deaths and injuries thereby sustained, seem entirely, and very justly, to aisorb every other topic of political discussion : and we are glad to observe that they do so, because the ' snore they ore discussed anti argued, the more will their importance be felt, and their character and tendency appreciated. When the accounts of the • valiant deeds of these northern Hotspur*, as they lave been very aptly called, were first published, • 'even the servile and hired band of Ministerial scrib blers were astonished and alarmed. They talked of the " venial excesses of unsullied loyalty,' and ne- Ner ventured to do more than strive to palliate what they could not defend. Their wise masters, how ever, have since taught them another lesson, via. that through thick and through thin, " per far al que lulus" the whole transaction must be upheld, and that whet they have to do is to reconcile the good People of England to abandon quietly their liberties, and give up their lives whenever an ;gem rant Magistracy, backed by a hot-headed soldiery. shall deem it, in the plenitude of their authority, right to demand their surrender. And in this task we must do them the justice to say, they are labour ing with no ordinary !zeal. In the meantime it would ill become the friends of humanity, loyalty, and of equal law, to abandon the field of argument, cr to desist from setting before the pubis, in its proper light, a subject, than which one more weighty never was submitted to the consideration of a free pt'.ple. Without being friends either to snobs or t.,lgogues, every man must feel that not only the getteral right of expression of public feeling upon public UniiirS, but that his own personal security from lawless attack, and the right of resistance to arbitrary power, under any circumstances, arc un fortunately but inseparably blended with this ques tion. A I low ing th a lin;nersal Stfrege, and Elec.' I;un by Itallul, and Annual Parliaments, are theorios as wild and visionary as you please, yet they have nothing in them which can forbid the People of England to deliberate on and to rhymes them as much and as often as they please. Even the most eenguinary and relentless tyranny will find it vain as well as wicked to cantroul •opinion ; and every wise GOVCrlita , .!lll, and inure especially our own laws, necessarily require some distinct and open act transgression, before they inflict a penalty. Asso ciations alist E,r the object of promoting Reform, enrolling amongst their numbers the greatest and hest men that adorn the age we live in, and Meet inn are held in every direction for the same .owed object; petitions upon Reform in every shape, and almost every variety e4f gradation, both as to the duration of Parliament mod as to the extent of Suf frage, have been proposal, agreed to, and presented bath to the Throne and the Legislature; and we heard, not even Mr. Craning himself, question the right and lawfulness of sneh proceedings. Again we should beg those who pretend that the object of Universal Suffrage is of itself an illegal object, to iuform us what is the precise limit to which we may lawfully go. Is it unlawful to petition that Copy holders should be admitted to vote ? Is it unlawful to say that Householders in general should be allowed to exercise that right? If so, how ignorant was ,ortirtill AitoriOttr+- Our Etna, Conattutfon anb aim% SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 181 N Mr. Pitt himself, before the possession of office had corrupted him, of the Law and Constitution ? The Liverpool Courier has exercised its ingenuity upon a fancied distinction between NUMRERS and ORDERS, and the Ministerial Papers hate appealed to the doc trine as extremely wise and good. We can only say that either we do not understand it, or it is neither more nor less than compleat nonsense, — The only Political Orders acknowledged by the Constituti'm, are King, Lords, and Commons, and the latter are the whole People of England. Neither the abridgment nor the extending of the elective franchise can, therefore, haye any thing to do with overturning the principles of the Constitution as unw established. It is not lees idle to talk of the authority given to the Yeomanty for beginning this work of blood by the reading of' the Riot Act, unless it can first be shewn, which we contend it cannot, that the Riot Act may be read and acted on where there is no riot. But the Government Press still assure us that they can easily prove, both that the Manchester !meting was unlawful, and that the Manchester Yeomanry cavalry were exceedingly merciful in nut having glutted their swords in a more extensive slaughter. They have boldly ven tured to tell us that ignorance, and misrepresenta tion, and calumny, have been the foundation of all the reports and comments which have presumed to stigmatize those barbarous transactions; that irre ligion and sedition were the real sources of the mischief; that though distress has long prevailed among the assembled people, yet that the operative wisdom of Government, a term beautifully borrowed from the loom, would gradually and completely re. move it ; and lastly, that "the Bench of Magistrates must exactly did neither too much nor too little, nei ther exceeded nor fell short of the limits of their pub lic duty." Now, as we are necessarily included in this charge of ignorance, calumny, and misrepresentation, we shall endeavour not to apologise for error, but still further to elucidate and insist on truth, and we can, we trust, fairly prove, that not only is our doctrine constitutional, hut our facts correct. But we will even, fur argument sake, admit that the Manchester Reformers are very irreligious, yet this is surely the first time that any one ever thought of making his irreligon a plea fir hewing a fell,w creature to pieces ; ued allowing them to be sediti ous also, yet does the law of England provide a very different remedy for that crime than the slashing of sabres and the trampling to death , by the hods of horses. As to the operative wisdom of his Majesty's Nfinisters, how long have the suffaitigs of these miserable men been borne, and their complaints poured forth unheeded ! NWhen a relit ef. on' mud , n was pleaded fur can we tiirget the tsunts of an " ignorant impatience ?" When any Reform what ever in Parliament has been proposed, even such as Lord Chatham, and Mr. Pitt, and Sir W. Jones, and Mr. Fox, all proclaimed to be essential to public tranquillity and the Lmurity of the the Constitution, car. we firget how it has been met by every unseemly jeer and mountebank joke which could be supplied from the budget of those who riot in the fruits of their profligacy, and fatten uron public misery ? Whilst Old Serum is permitted to enjoy her Representatives, and filinhterial harm:- lige, over other rotten Boroughs, to controul the House of Commons and ooseequently the who's: dispensation of public freesAfpn, can it be hoped that Manchester, and Leeds, and 13irotinetara will be in- [Puck: 94d. -AB sensible to their own comparative degradation ! Can the affections be conciliated or the reason satisfied whilst these things are thus administered ! If the People of England should ever become really torpid and indifferent on such subjects, we should both dread and lament it infinitely more than we do any degree of turbulence and excitement which has yet been 'hewn. The Costrirt again has a:aerate!, eta•el the numbers killed and wounded in this nuble con flict as not exceeding forty, but a list Las been published nith the very names and description of injuries received amounting to sinety nine men and twenty women by sabre and gtm-shot wounds only, independent of those wounded by the trun cheons-of constables and the trampling of horses.-- Though, if but a single life had been lost, or a sin gle wound inflicted, the principle for which we contend would be jug us sound, and our charge equally well founded ; namely, that the Law of the Land has been most grosily violated, and the Con• stitution endangered by those whose office and duty it was to prove themselves its guardians, and that they have presumed to do that, upon opinion only, which even plain and positive acts of Riot and Treason could not have justified. The Constitution of England knows nothing of its subjects being ordered to be cut to pieces for any crime whatever, nor in any other mode but in honourable and open warfare. 4 dier may perhaps be lawfully em ployed, in ee ases, for the caption of offenders, and fur the purpose of bringing them to justice, but. he can never be lawfully employed as an instrument for the execution of that vengeance which belongs; to a widely different tribunal. But it is also said that the Rethrrners struck the horses and men with dangerous ►uissiles. We had jut before been told that they were armed with bludgeons, but the offensive weapons are easily by a fertile fancy con• vested into stones and brickbats. But granting that they used with every possible energy both the sticks they brought with them, and whatever means of defence accident could supply, y. :t if they were first and illegally assaulted, any resistance, however violent, was not only justifiable but becoming the situation they were placed in. Riot and Rebellion may be as easily committed by magistrates and sal. dier► as by the people, and every etthrt to meet and oppose it, wherever that is the case, bas been esta blished as the great law of society, and lie first principle of civil government. 4' Whoever," says Locke, " uses force without right, as every one does in society who dues it without law, puts him self into a state of war with those against whom he uses-it. and in that state all former tics are cancel led, all °the• rights cease, and every one has a right to defend hirnself and resist the oppresnor." Lastly, that the conduct of the hlanchester magistrates should have met the taste of the Conner maw be a oily imagined, but if any other reflecting man in this, or any other country, can be thong, who can conacientionsly Nay that he has watched and appaived the conduct of that venerable Bench, that he has first watched and approved the mode adopted f►r securing their wretched victims, their consignment to chains and solithry confinement, their examination and re-committifl day utter slay fi►r ele►•en days successively, nuclei the charge of Alt.rder and High crimes which could alone, if tudy pruved,•justity thlft tteatmeut ; then has watched arid approved also the sneaking '` abandonment of that charge thr the silly one of a conspiracy to do God knows what, and the dilem ma in which they have invulvetliboth the Executive Government and themselves, it', we repeat it, there be such a man, we will not dispute either his taste or constitutional knowledge, bat we w•iil both sympa thize in his stupidity and pity the unreeling pre.;tia ►lice of his heart. \i t %' ‘4O : 19 e ; X . t 6, i ~~