The Sun.
London, England, 1817-11-19 00:00:00

" REFLECTIONS.

" With Brandreth, the ptiLlcipal criminal, the
Potdic will reel les, sympathy than with the others.
The crone of actual murder haS, in his case, been
added to Treason, and in his former habits of life,
be appears to have been an active Luddite. Be-.
t wren manufacturing and political LuddiSmi we
have often said, there is an intimate. connexion ;
the one has, in initty cases, produced the other,
and (desperate ainl sanguinary as the Luddism 'of
same of the manufacturing districts has been, it
has been, in its worst forms, adopted into theno-
litical Laddisut which has been nooriibed and ma-
lt:led by the acts of the reforming faction. Bran•
depth the Luddite was easily converted into a re-
former, and the reformers with whom he asso-
ciated were easily induced to adopt the measures
of Luddism to accomplish their purposes. To•
wards the other unhappy culprits, gryat pity was,
unquestionably, excited They- were ignorant
men, corrupted in moral and political principles
by the writings and speeches of violent reformers,
by llanipden Clubs, awl that base class of men,
who, in almost every considerable town, have been
scattering the seeds of disaffection, and who have
made use of the pressure of the times to extend
its influence through every district where that
pressure was most severely felt. Of these meat
the toifortonate culprits were the victims, and if
it can yield the demagogues any satisfaction to
have conducted those to a shameful end, who, but
for their arts, might have remained holiest, in-
dustrious, and happy, they have had the full en-
joymeut of it.
" What else could have been expected to result
from the labours of Messrs. Hunt, Cobbett, and
other persons, writers, climb-organizets, and
specchilyers, who have assiduously endeavoured
to enforce their seetiments in different places. It
is in vain that these men attempt to hide their
shame, under the pretence that Government agents
had excited the Derbyshire insurrection. Besides
the total want of evidence that Oliver, or any
other person vested with a similar mission, had
any connexion at all with the seditious persons
who have sod red,—no agency of this kind, had
it even been exerted, could have effected the pur-
pose, had not every aoo,l principle been broken
down, and the most malignant passions excited,
by the writings and harangues of the disaffected.—
, The process seems to have been something like
the f A few omen in the British Nadia-
mem, toflaeoceil by stt ong and petulant temper;
or disappointed in their hopes ; or led by a passion
fo, to h popularity, make inflammatory and un-
guarded speeches ;—these are re-echoed with still
stronger comments in Newspapers which make a
market of the idle and dissolute populace. These
sentiments are again taken up by that party, in
different parts of the kingdom, who, ever since the
French Revolution, have been jacobittized, and
have omitted no opportunity to spread violent re-,
publican notions, and to assail the establishments
of the country, with a sarcasm and libellous ca-
lumny which they knew best adapted to produce
impressions upon the ; then have come
forth front the forums and circulating libraries of
the day, a swarm of impertinent smatterers in po-
litics, . w.tlm just enough of learning to make them
dangerous iu troubled times, confident -declaim-
ers, noisy sprinters at clubs and public meetings,
every man with his nostrum for the diseases of
the body politic, and all, and singly, able to pro-
ject Constitutions, and to conduct nations to per-
fection. These have spread the poison into ma-
nufactories and workshops, organized the clubs of
'faction ; furnished 'every ale-bench with' an ora-
tor ; and whilst, on the one hand, Government
has been held op to hatred ; on the other, the
people have beets urged to assert their rights, and
claim, by general effort, the ideal good thus ex-
hibited to their hopes. Petitioning for Reform
was the first manceuvre ; applying " physical
force" the second. The Derbyshire rioters acted
Ivor) their advice, and they have suffered the ven-
geance of the violated laws.
" It is melancholy'to trace the pernicious effects
of the doctrines and artifices of the radical re-
formers upon the minds of the lower-classes as de-
veloped in the histOry of the affair lo Derbyshire.
The passions excited appear to have prothiced
there, as in Spa-fields and other places, the most
extravap.nt hcipes. The absurdity of expecting
to overturn Government, has been argued in their
favour ; but when the fact, the proved fact, is,
that' these insurrectionary movements were wholly
and simply political ; not a striking for wages, nor
a rising against corn-dealers and meal-sellers ; but
a rebellion against the existing Government, the
absurdity of the plot can argue nothing, but the
dep, h of the delusion, and the extent to which the
passion for Revolution had operated. They had
delegates from other places, intelligence from every
qaarter of the kingdom was communicated to them
of similar dispositions being felt, and similar plans
intended. These were, indeed, facts ; and their
mistake did not so mucb lie in estimating the extent
of the disaffection, as its depth. They mistook
the disaffected minority for the greater number,
and the noise of their own clnbs for the voice of
the nation. The reforming Newspapers told them
that the nation, the people, were on their side;
that the friends of corruption were a small faction,
to be in a moment crushed by the energies of pa-
triotism, and, in the excitement or their passions,
they helwved them, and Pitt themselves in motion.,
afraid only that they should be behind the zeal
of other places, and lose the glory of liberating
their country.
Another of the deteriorating effects of this po-

litical mania, observable in the case, is, that they
were taught to withhold their allegiance to Go-
vernment, and even endeavour its overthrow, in
Case its conduct did not meet their approbation.
This is in the true spirit of .rroiical reform ; it
'summonses Government to the bar of a mob ;
_it instructs that mob to demand, at pleasure,
compliance with its mandates ; and in case of
refusal, it gives the signal for revolt. This was
the doctrine enjoined upon the Spa-fields mob,
and which it attempted to carry into effect.—
This was the -principle assumed in the barn of
Boterler, where the Derbyshire rioters met.—
Bacon anti Hayes, the Nottingham delegates, met
them, and it was determined, that, as no redress
could be hoped for from Government, it most be
overthrown. Such is the 'mischievous principle
introduced by the reformers, a principle before
which no Government, no order of society ‘vhat-
ever, can stand, and which, had it been re-
ceived to the extent hoped for and predicted by
the faction, must have. plunged us into endless
anarchy.
The worst view of the case, however, is, that
reforming politics should so retpidly have fami-
liarised men who, Brandreth excepted, seem
.to have been otherwise previously harmless and
peaceable, into ruffians and morderers ; for,
though murder was but perpetrated actually by
Brandreth, the seizure of :irms, and the pre para.,
lion of pikes, with the acknowledged neces-ity of
" killing the vermin" in every parish, sufficiently
prove that they all had a murderous inteut.
their perverted minds those violenees would not
then appear murder. Radical reform, as we have
often said, converts crimes into virtues, aed hal-
lows murder itself by the name of patriotism.
Here is its danger. Here is the proof of its de-
vastating effect upon all moral feeling, all huma-
nity, and all good feeling. But the storm, we
hope, is blown over, and it is happy that, partly
from the vigilance of Government, and more from
• the quantum of uNSELIKEN PUBLIC VIRTUE in the
country, which Jacobioism itas attempted in vaio
to destroy, the victims of this saugninary debt-
sio,t have not been more numerous. Let" the vio-
lent politicians of democracy reflect upon the fate
of the unhappy criminals executed, of whose blood
they are guilty, and let the nathinking, who have
been deceived by them, recollect that they have
been the tools of men who have attempted to
make an experiment against Government with
their temerity, to acco!nplish their own purposes,
and think themsdves- happy that no more of thew
have been left to suffer a pnnishment which others
would have more truly deserved, could time law have
awarded it."

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

COURT OF CITANCERY, Nov. lE.

PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.

This morning the Lord Chancellor intimated,
that in consequence of the funeral of the much la-
mented aiid ever-to-he-regretted Princess Char-
lotte, the Court would not meet to-morrow. Of
the propriety of this arran4ement, under the pre-
sent melancholy circumstances, he was sure the
Gentlemen at the Bar were fully aware.