The National Register.
London, England, 1817-03-17 00:00:00

'OrJL

No. 475.—V0t. X.

POLITICAL DISQUISITION.

BXECUTION OF CASHMAN. AND PROCEEDINOS AT

MANCHESTER.

THE death of •Cashman and his deportment at the
place of execution, give rise to various
Here was a man who had fought-the battles of his
country, anti contributed to its safety and renown.
The ignominious end of such -a man could never
have been foreseen : it was .beyoud the pale of all pro-
babilit,,. Yet, to this miserable and untimely end
limn: the poisonous doctrines of the present day, and the
.mischievous delusions set afloat by artful and unprin-
cipled men, brought. a fellow creature, .who, but for
them, instead of paying the finfeit of his lity on a gal.
lows, might have lived • many' years with credit anti
comfort to himself, his family and country. Should
this great and terrible example be thrown -away and
lost on those who are now running the same mid and
desperate career ? Should it be lost on those who are
exciting the people to anarchy and rebellion by false
statements and exaggerated representations of real or

imaginary grievances Here ;as a man, not in actual
want, but heated and misled by the inflaming topics
addressed to the passions of the multitude, who mixes
in a crowd ripe for mischief, and without considering,
perhaps, the guilt.be-is incurring, or the usual conse-
quences likely to result from it, impelled like the wave,
and encouraged by the numbers which surround him,
finds himarile'at once a rioter, a robber, and perhaps a
murthorer ! Though the evidence did not prove Cash-
man to have been the person who fired and wounded
Mr. Platt, abundant evidence proved him to have been
foremast in the work of plunder and desolation in Mr.
Beckwith's shop. It was impossible therefore for any
Gmernment which respected itself, or the lives and
properties of his Majesty's liege subjects, nut to make
an example of such a man—it would have been an act
of weakness and pusillanimity, a dereliction of public
duty not to have selected such a man for punishment,
that it might operate as a warning to others, and serve
as a warning and beacon to those who are likely to be
cngulphed in the vortex of revolutionary enterprises,
and who, under the mask of reform, and redress of
grievances, aim only at destruction of all order and le-
gitimate Government, and the commission of iudiscri.
minate plunder and confiscation.
In a general and religious point of view, nothing
certainly can be more lamentable than the state of
Cashman's mind seems to have been at the time of his
death. Though all the consolations of religion were
humanely offered to him, he refused them all; he seems
to have been wholly insensible to a future state of ex-
istence. Though standing on the confines of another
world, he seems to have been solely occupied with two
considerations—the disposition of his little property,
and the disgrace attending a public execution. It was
not unnatural indeed to emitrast the glory of fighting
his country's battles with the disgrace of suffering the
dreadful sentence of the law, and we can pardon him
lhr wishing that he had fallen keg ago on the bed of
honour; but we cannot see without shuddering such
levity as he displayed in his last moments—such total
insensibility to the concerns of filturity, at a time
when the curtain was finally closing on every thing
connected with mortality and the affairs of this life.
Let thoso who, under whatever mask, are in fisct
preaching and teaching sedition and rebellion, (fur
wherein we would ask does violent change and resist-
-since to authority differ from rebellion,) who are urging
and goading the people to desperate courses, pause
fur a moment, and reflect on Cashman4. fate. Let
them consider, it' thty arc not themselves accessary to
the ruin, possibly to the death of many future Cash-
mans. The 1,,00d sense of the Legislature has armed
Government with strong powers, and no doubt it will
make use of them, tior •

0 It btareth not the sword In vain."