The National Register.
London, England, 1819-09-26 00:00:00

No. 214—V0i... XII.]

Voliticat netroopect.
.1411.•

Meetings continue to be Kehl on the subject of
the Manchester atrocities, and we doubt not but
that they will be held by every body corporate, by
every county, city and town in the kingdom, until
the general voice of execration shall he heard
throughout the country. We this day give the
proceediegs at the Meeting in the Borough of South-
wark, hcldo Thursday, over which the high Bailiff
presided. The Meeting of the city of 1-ink was pe-
culiarly respectable, and its Resolutions, which were
consonant with those of the city of Loudon, will
derive weight from the fact, that the Lord Mayor
of York was in the Chair, that one of the Counsel
to the City moved the Resolutions, that one of the
Aldermen seconded them, and that they were sup-
ported by a most able and constitutional speech from
Mr. Dundas, one of the Members fur the City. A
Requisition flit a County Meeting, we understand,
is preparing in Essex, and we cannot but lament the
hike-warm spirit that allows it to be asserted that
no other County Meeting has yet been applied for.
Why is the Metropolitan County yet silent ? Why
have we not Requisitions from the Freeholders of
every County ?—The panders of corruption will
hail such apatb as a victory ; and we would gladly
Lave such a feeling of exultation prevented by a ge-
neral promptitude equal to that which by setting in
action the willing swords of the Manchester Yeo-
manry, renders silence a crime, and will cause every
one who does not declare loudly his detestation of
the illegality, as well as brutality of the memorable
16th of August, to be fairly looked upon as "
au
accessary after the filet." The widows and father-
less of the slain, the pauperized dependants on the
mutilated, join in imploring justice on those who
have so irreparably injured them, and such a call,
seconded by every feeling of humanity, cannot be
disregarded by Englishmen. Our readers have ob-
served, no doubt, the covert attempts whiA have
recently been made to strike at the root of the liberty
of the press, attempts which, bad they succeeded,
would have more effectually achieved what their
infamous originators had in view, than any penal
enactment against the author, printer, or original
and legitimate publisher of any work—we mean, of
clone, that Bromdinagian stride of police power
which has dared to hold to bail as the puldishrtn,
persons for selling books and pamphlets, of the con.
tents of which they must be ignorant. Had success
attended this effort, it would have necessarily been
incumbent on every newsman to wade through six-
teen or twenty columns of each newspaper before
he ventured to sell one copy ; but the Middlesex
Grand Jury is not a Lancashire one—it will find
or throw out bills by the facts of the case ; it will
act from motives of rectitude, and in observance of
the oath taken by its members ; it will not be
wheedled to find bills, nor intimidated to throw
them out...it is above all personal considerations.
In proof of the verity of this well-merited tribute to
a Middlesex Grand Jury, we have heartfelt joy
in announcing that every one of the bills of the
nature we have alluded to, has been ignored without
hesitation. This is however insufficient—an ul-
terior proceeding is requisite to set the question
entirely at rest, and the only way to do this, we
presume to be, by instituting actions for false im-
prisonment against every Magistrate who shall have
servilely lent himself to so illegal, so unjust a men-