The National Register.
London, England, 1819-09-13 00:00:00

No. 2111—Vo:

Political lActroopta.

Mr. Pitt himself, before the , .of office had
corrupted him, of the Law and ( titution ? The
Liverpool Courier has exercised ingenuity upon
a fancied distinction between NUNRERII and ottumes,
and the Ministerial Papers fusee 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
Constitution, 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, have any thing to. do with
overturning the principles of the Constitution as
unw established. It is not less idle ti talk of the,
authority given to the Yeomanry forteginning this
work of blood by the reading of' the Rick Act, unless
it can first be shown, 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, lkath that the
Manchester meeting was unlawful, and that
the Manchester Yeomanry cavalry we xcectlingly
merciful in not having glutted their *ords in a
more extensite 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 prasumed to
stigmatize those barbarous transactione ;.-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•eperative
wistlorn of Government, a term beautifully borrowed
from the loom, would gradually and completely re-
move it ; and lastly, that "the Bench of Magistrates
most exactly did neither too much nor too little, nei-
ther exceeded nor fell short of the limits of theirpub-
lie duty.' Now, as we are necessarily include in this
charge of ignorance, calumny, and misrepreslatation,
we shall endeavour not to apologise for *4., but
still further to elucidate and insist on truth, and we
can, we trust, fairly prove, that not only is our
doctrine constitutional, but our facts cornet. But
we will even, for argument sake, admit don the
Manchester Reformers are very irreligious, ;At this
.is surely the first time that any one ever thought of
making his, irrelieon a plea for hewing a allow-
creature to pieces ; and allowing them to •belediti-
ous also, yet does the law of England provide a very
ditrerent•renhily for that crime then the slashing of
sabres and the trampling to death by the hoofs of
horses. As to the operative wisdom of his Majesty's
Ministers, how long have the eefFerings of these
miserable men been borne, and the :r complaints
poured forth unheeded ! When a relief from taxation
was pleaded for can we forget the trunts of an
" ignorant impatience ?" When any Ileform what-
ever in Parliament liar been proposed, even such
as Lord Chatham, and Mr. Pitt, and Sir W. Jones,
and Mr Fox, all proclaimed to b" essential
to public tranquillity anti the security of the
the Constitution, can 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, anti fatten upon
public misery ? Whilst Ohl Sarum is permitted to
enjoy her lierresentatives, and Ministerial Patron-
age, over other rotten Boroughs, to controul the
House of Commons and consequently the whole
dispensation of public freedom, can it be hoped that
Manchester, and Leeds, and Birmingham will be io-

sensible to their own comparative degrs
the affections be conciliated or the re
whilst these things are thus administer
People of England should ever become

The crud, and, until an honest Judge and an im-
,partial Jury shall have decided the contrary, what
we shall not hesitate•to consider the illegal and un-
constitutional outrages of the Manchester Magis-
trates and Yeomanry upon an unarmed and de-
fenceless multitude, and the deaths and injuries
thereby sustained, seem entirely, and very justly, to
absorb every other topic of political discussion : and
we are glad to observe that they do so, because the
-more they arc discussed and argued, the more will
their importance be felt, and their character and
tendency appreciated. When the accounts of the
valiant deeps of these northern Hotspurs, as they
have bena very aptly called, were tint published,
eveL :he servile and hired band of Ministerial scrib-
blers were astonished and alarni2l. They talked of
the " venial excesats of unsulli loyalty," and ne-
ver ventured to do more than strive to palliate what
they could not defend. Their wise masters, how-
ever, have since taught them another lesson, viz.
that through thick and through thin, " per fas '
Tie ?iglus" the whole transaction must be upheld,
and that what they have to do is to reconcile the
good People of England•to abandon quietly their
liberties, and give up their lives whenever an ire-
rant Magistracy, backed by a hot-headed soldiery.
shal deem it, in the plenitude of their authority,
right to demand their surrender. And in this task
we must de them the justice. to say, they are labour-
ing with no ordinary 'seal. In the meantime it
svculd ill become the friends of humanity, loyalty,
and of equal law, to abandon the field of argument,
or to desist from setting before the publia, in its
proper light, a subject, than which one more weighty
never was submitted to the consideration of a free
people. 'Without being friends either to mobs or
demagtvuea, every man must fed that not wily the
general right of expression of public feeling upon
public uflitirs, 'but that his own personal security
from lawless attack, and the right of resistsuce to
arbitrary rever, under any circumstances, arc un-
fortwas,ciy but inseparably blended with this ques-
tion. 11. n . ing that Universal Silfrage, and Elec-
tion by Ballot, iind Annual Parliaments, are theories
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 discuss them as
much and us often us they please. Even the most
sanguinary and relentless tyranny will .find it vain
ns well as wicked to commit! opinion ; and every
wise Government, and more especially our own
laws, necessarily require some distinct and oven act
transgression, befiire they inflict a penalty. rtso-
ciatinns exist for the ohject of promoting Refiirm,
enrolling amongst their numt*.irs the greatest and •
best men that adorn the age we live in, and Meet-
ings are held in every direction for the some avowed
object; petitions upon Morin in every shape, and
almost every variety gradation, both as to t 6•
duration of Parliament and as to the extent of Suf-
frage,•have been proposed, agreed to, and presented

and indifferent on ouch subjects, wl

and lament it infinitely more dm

of turbulence and excitement vs'

shewn. The Court r sgai has

the numbers killed and wounded

flict as not exceeding forty, bo
published trite the very nainci

injuries received atneontiog to I
and twenty women by sabre and

only, independent of those wounded
cheons of constables and the tramp&
Though, if but a single life had been

gle wound inflicted, the principt
contend would be just as sound,
equally well founded ; namely, t 1
Land has been most grossly violan

stitution endangered by those whose
it was to prove themselves its guardi
they have presumed to do that, upon
which even plain and positive sob

Treason could not have justified.

of England knows nothing of it
ordered t) be cut to pieces for any
nor in any other mode but in hom
warfare. A soldier may perhaps

• ployed, in certain cases, for the caption of offenders,
land for the purpose of bringing them to justice, but'
he can never bc•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 Reformers struck the horses and men with
dangerous missiles. We had jest before been told
•that they were armed with bludgeons, but the
offensive weapons are easily by a fertile fancy n.
verted into stones awl 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, yet if they were first
ant 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 Nil.
tilers as by the people, aid every effort to meet and
oppose it, wherever that is the case, has been esta-
blished as the great law of society, and the fiist
principle of civil government. Whoever," sa. s
Locke, " uses force without right, us every one
does in society who does it without law, pots
self into a state of war with those against whom he
uses it, awl in that state all former ties are cancel-
led, all other rights cease, and every one has a right
to defend 'dare:Wand resist the oppressor." Lastly,
that the conduct of the Manchester magistratcs
should have met the taste of the Courier may
b.: easily imagined, but if any other reflecting
man in this,ln any other country, tan be li,utm t,
whit can conscientionsly ray that he has w•ttched
mid approved the conduct of that venerable Bench,
that he has first watched and approved the mode
adopted tin securing their wretched victims, their
consignment to chains and solitary confinement,
their examination and re-committal day after day
for eleven days successively, under the charge of
Murder and 'High Treason, crimes which Gunn
alone, it' fay proved, justify their treatment ; and
then has watched and approved also the sneaking
abandonment of that charge tin the silly one of
a conspiracy to do God knows what, and the dilem.
mn in which they have involvedlhoth the Executive
Government and themselves, if, we repeat it, there
be such a mail, we will not dispute either Lis taste or
constitutional knowlesige„ but we will both rymp.►.
thize in his stupidity and pity the unfeeling inejta.
dice of his heart.

both to the Throne and the Legislature; and we
heard, not even Mr. Canning himself, question the
right and lawfulness of snch proceedings. Again
we should beg those who pretend that the object of
Universal Suffrage is of itself an illegal object, to
infor►n 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 I louseholders in general should be allowed
so exercise that right? If so, how ignorant v. at

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