The National Register. — London, England, 1819-10-11 00:00:00

In A h / 1- No. 218—VoL. XII.] Valitical iletrospect. THE great mass of evidence, furnished by a host of witnesses, on the Coroner's Inquest still sitting on the body of John Leo', we sincerely hope has been attentively read by every man in England; and it' there be any man who has read it, and can still approve the foul deeds of blood with which it is connected, that man deserves no more the name either of Briton or of Christian, but ought to be doomed to wear the chains he loves, and if he mur. mur at the ignominy or weight of such a burden, to be instantly etastised by the sabre of some Loyal Yeoman. The Foreman of the Jury has already expressly declared his satisfaction, and that of his brethren, unless the evidence already brought for ward shall be refitted, that " the Riot Act had not been publicly read, and that the Meeting was quiet and peaceable until the Cavalry charged." Day by day thus goes on confirming their enormity, as it also does adding fresh details of horror and cruelty to these transactions, till pity and indignation scarcely find any • limits in the breast of every re flecting and impartial person. Yes truth and justice are mighty in strength, and we hope will still pre vail. lint whilst we thus go on more and mere eacouragod by that sense of wrong, wrong of the blackest and most atrocious character, having been committed, becoming every hour stronger and more Universal, we turn round with a melancholy pang of reflection to see part of the County, not we trust careless and indifferent upon such a sub ject, but yet sliming none of those open and avowed manifestations of abhorrence which are so loudly called for. No question has arisen of so notch im portance since the days of the Revolution, no attack so shameless and daring upon the most sacred rights of a free people has been made for more than 100 years past, and yet, on a point, and at a moment, which threatens to level at once the proudest barrier of the Constitution, and to place the life of every man at the disposal of a relentless military despo tism, we sit as if all were peace and harmony and joy. The battle is not yet at our doors, Manches ter is two or three hundred miles from us, and the whirlwind and the storm we seem to think can never reach us. But beware, we yet implore you, how you leave others to suffer unpitied and unre vengcd. The cause we plead is yours. Can rLlnks‘a.e cruelty and iniquity stalking with gigantic strides, their laws trampled under foot, and the very semblance of their Constitution no longer left them, and yet lift up no voice against these mon. strous doings! ! ! If so, then farewell freedom and fir( wc:l hope, farewell every blessing which sweet . . ens the cup of life. The lethilrgy of death is indeed upon us, ail we hasten on the crisis by our own ::q.inettess. Is anarchy and revolution your dread? if the perpetrators of foul murders arc to go un punished, if a lawless banditti are to attack a peaceable and unofFentling people, anarchy and re volution are begun already, and we call on you not to join in but to stop its madness. If a spirit of delicacy towards your Rulers, and a blind confidence io their integrity be your feelings, remember they have shewn no delicacy towards you. Remember with what breathless haste they ran to approve the s:aughter cf your fellow-sotjects, and to sanction by st..eh approval any similar attack which may be ationat 1‘ taitittr+ Our Sing, Sing, ConiStitution an abni• s • L 1 " 14 ;4 71C36"11111) ' - ,S MONDAY, OCTOBER n, 1819. made upon yourselves. Nay, have you nut brought even to your own doors alresay the influence of such an example'? The important fact already recorded cannot, we trust fail to &hew to the peor:e what is prepar ing for them, if their own firmness, and such an appeal to the Throne and the Legislature, as can not be resisted, do not speedily stop its career, and rescue us from a system of Councils, which are rapidly marching en towards our complete ruin. But a few years more of such policy as has been •lately acted on, and the fame of what Old England once was, will be all that will remain to her of her greatness. "A DEFENCE OP TIIE IVIIIGS." Sonne time since Lord Erskine published a very able pamphlet, under the above title, in answer to which a publication appeared under the title of " A Defence of the People." It was front one of the Il.tutc.tt.s, from one of those men 'who anathematize all those who arc not mad enough to carry their ideas of RijOrm us far us Revolution, from one of those, who, having nothing to lose, are eternally abusing those whose "states arc not so desperate." --- A new edition of his Lordship's pamphlet has just ap peared, in the preface to which he expresses himself as follows'— " My object, from my very beginning of public' life," says Lord Erskine, " lies never varied; it has bees, and always must be, to obtain such a I louse of Commons as I have uniformly described. My change of opinion, repeat edly avowed, and, unfortnninely, too strongly confirmed by every thing passing around us, was only as to the best and most probably successful MCIIII4 of effecting an un ehangealtle purpose under circumstances that have changed. Declaimer', who look only to thepopularity of the hour, when the multitude are in a state of irritation, have only to flatter and infi ante them ; -bort they, who ho nestly contemplate the prosperity and happiness of their couutry, I, though they continue stedfast in the pur suit of their original object, assiontlate their exertions to the means that are safely in their hands. The scenes, (o ctet rl,which have so lately convulsed some of the most populous and indostrions parts of the kingdom fa repeti lieu nearly of those-which immediately followed and dis appointed she original exertions of the Whigs, when the society-alike Friends of the People was instituted), render any other answer to this-author stiperfittons and useless. TIMMe amongst the Whigs, who at any time supported a Reform in Parliament, have not, that I know of, departed Iran their declared opinions, that an extension of the re. presentation is must desirable, and is a jest expectation 011 the part of the people; brit in my opinion, and speak Mg fur myself, they never can rationally act with those who defense them.—They ought for eser to stand aloof front all such Reformers; not from reseritmesit, nor esen trine a decent pride, however natural and justifiable. but because the defamation proves their views to be ditfrierai, and that their defamers are seeking nothing like au im• plovrinent of theatinse of Commons, by a wisely adjaiteil halaae of represeitt.stion, but, on the contrary, counter ailing es try prospect of it by chtiminz tig'its in defiance of the establidied laws; and, instead of promoting Peti tion-, encouraiiing their billuert rs to revile-lite Legislature of their country. •' Nothing certainly could be more iinfortitnate, if this system were rountenance .1 by members in general estima tion, but happily there 3VCIIIS to be but one prevailing sentiment r.;eienst it. •• 'Serertlieles", if, in the repretetinn of any sleetings of !lie pe,ipie fur any object of };.tuna, wise ur inspraolea ble, tileir bight" have been iuf.ing rl , ur any .rungs to intik i.inal" have been co 11111 l itit•4l, I shotilll be aininii;,t the iii•t to vindicate evil, re , ires" "%inch Our law" eau Lion, and shall be foitinl at all times really to re ti.t t h e "lightest enertetellinent upon ti,n public Ii ; lint holding ,nerrd , it" I do, the nevvr to he surrendered priri lege of Ltiiiittli oiltjeet• to aswinltlc peaceably, to express to itch Whet and to the Cluviirutuebt of the cutiV',Qt their fyaicE 91'l. opinions autl complaints, I kel no ditheulty in sayite:. that nothing can he more obviously useless and Inhales ons than the assembling of immerse multitudes, not its their own communities or neighbourhoods, bit moving upott other thronged and agitated districts. Ruch Meet_ ingot, however legal they may be, cannot hot be clungerotis to the indust►ious poor, collected at a distance front their own homes only to disturb the industry of others, aggra vating the sufferings of poverty by the interruption of employment, by the hazard of fatal accideuts, and tint probable temptation to crime.. " Nothing Ind procesdiugskf this ill-advised description can bring the immemorial and invisinable rights of this People into question. They tender the calm and diguilie•el cakse of keforin an object of terror to many, who would otherwise • Anprort it, and furnish its adversaries wills plau•ible stigmata.; moiust •LL popular eat Lion, how ever well intended they may be. " The real interests of the People might not, however, on any account, to be compromised nor neglected. The privations and distresses of thousands in every populous district are at this moment so grievous as to demand the most indulgent consideration; audit*, instead of claiming rights to which the laws - are strangers, they were advised by those they bust in to subunit the expediency of an ex tended Representation to the wisdom and justice of Par. lianicat, their illra tenee could not but be powerful its the opinion of all reasonable oleo. " If indeed the visionary claim of Universal Suffrage and Annual Parliaments, or other extrema change., were entertained and acted upon by ninarbers of enlightened mass of any description, it mien then be thought hazard. ous (as has Iness often alleged) to withdraw the high sane. tion of antiquity from the present forms of election, le4 when a breach had been made in them by the liberality et Parliament, the Radice/Reformers might break in like a Roods but curb en apprehension is stow surely at ars end. This claim of right has no supporters who can give It dee. gerona, or even plausible effect I and every other theory' having been happily swallowed up by it, Parliament it . thus left the undistarbed masters of the field. " Let Par Urania then avail itself of this crisis. • I ran. slot but think, that if the elective franchise were now fatly and judiciously extended, without 'Res ins the character of the House of Commons, or violating any psinciple of the ancient Conseihnion,tunsults could not easily be raised: the orators of sedition would be silent, ts lien their tories of invective were destroyed. " I consider the present time also as a crisis in another respect—Representative Governments, thongb certainly neither contemplated nor wished fur by than, who first interfered wills the French Revolution, areal, begin to be looked for throughout Europe—. France, at our very door., has obtained one, and England, by too rigid an adherence to the forms of the . fendal world, should not remain en exception herself to the principles she has taught the world. When the civenmstanres which I have been AIWA to dwell upon are actively considered, the dirty of the .Aristocracy seems tionmestionalsie. Placed an airy urn bow ern the Crown mud the People, they onebt at this moment to exert the inflnences of rank and property, wideli, when wisely, honestly, and srasun..bis exerted, are of incalculable value in every State.-I look forward. therefore, *Oh a +irons' intetest so the tratilt of Lord John 12.,ass :I's prorii.ition on tl ia seamen:ons subjr et in the -ensuing fles.ion i f Parlh,,sient Htt a Auk and chi. tater ought to be accepted as hreltlitie4 ay (invent:new, and the ptiticipleo of la. 1 . 411111 y aura awSco.nt pledge to the People.' These truly consti:itional sentiments, expressed so wurt!.ily of their noble promulgator, are so appo site to the present state of affairs, that we should have accused ourselves of u dereliction of duty had we not given them a diAinguishcl place in our columns. 'lle letter of rouJolence written by his Nlajestr the King of Prussia to the Princess Blucher, A ‘Valilstadt, is rs received with grc.tt I.OTTOW the news of the death of yam bu.hzut 1, f'rt.)ce lllueher, Of Watillstadt. I unwiliingly rent:re your gi-:.4 . 1)y ti., mentiou of the great lose whiz!' you have sit ;. rent unable to sapprra the expre,sion of my ono t int-tiripetion in it. T . ..e country ntourns wide us out the loss of M.o.:mated commander. It will glatef.dly hold blot in eremal rsmensbr.mee. To otrer you consulatioa, the want of which 1 my..ell feel, I can only wish that tittle ituy allevisne y 042 110 POW, and add ills: •lIONITAOCC of unalterable nwsol. (Signed) "1:111:D EMI': IC W IL/A.IM." • " Balla, Supt. li s 1819. '`-..i.irf 4;. - , 71_ , f , • • 4- x • , ,1