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

Azi

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