The Sun. — 1848-08-22 (London, England)

STATE OF THE MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS.  ASUTON, MONDAT.--The authorities here have spent another anxious and harassing night. The military have been under arms, divisions of county police and special constables have been held in readiness at the Town-hall, and armed patrol, both foot and mounted, have sceirred the borough and its environs from hour to hour. The nature of intelligence in the hands of the magistrates, It is said, will justify the same precautions and the same harassing vigils again to-night. It is said that on Saturday night, after all the precautions taken, and all the watching, the Chartists ur Confederates held a midnight meeting, but it was beyond the  mere precincts of the towil. According to the information received of it, the meeting took place near Droylsden, about three miles from Ashton, and the same distance from Manchester. Shots were heard from time to time in various directions again last night, and it is conjectured that these, and rockets which are occasionally thrown up, are used by the virties as signals. The policemen who were bound over to give evidence against M'Douall, the Chartist leader, and against the four men in custody as implicated in the outrage of Monday night, the 14th instant, have received summonses to appear this afternoon before the grand jury at Liverpool assizes, and their :removal to Liverpool for a few days will take away from the sympathisers with 111•Douall the temptation to revenge, and their power to destroy the evidence, which was said to have been their incitement to the murder. At Manchester the Confederates continue to hold meetings, and at several of them the men apprehended on Tuesday night, and liberated on bail, addressed the audience. At a meeting in the Heyrod-street Institution, a building of their own, on Sunday night, one of those parties, an IriAman, named Donovan, repeated a story he had very humorously told several nights before, about his apprehension, and the collision between the police and his wife, which, he assured his audience, was about the warmest engagement he bad ever entertained any idea they should witness in their struggle for the charter. The police, he said, told him they wanted his arms. His reply was that he had a wife and family, and his arms were necessary to earn bread for them. They en explained that it was the fire-arms they wanted. "Oh, the fire-arms," was his rejoinder, "if it was the tongs or poker they were after, they belonged to his wife's department of the household business," and sure enough the wife was not inclined to capitulate without making them rather hot to handle. He denied that either he or his associates were in any way implicated in or had any knowledge of what was going to take place at Ashton. They had not counselled physical force, nor been privy to its use. He did not deny that the parties to that affair were Chartists, and fools would always be found in any agitation. The Manchester authorities, however, had missed their way —there seemed to be a conspiracy amongst the magistrates and not amongst the Chartists, and it was a conspiracy against all the moral force men they could lay their hands upon. He assured his friends that so soon as Wednesday's examination before the magistrates was over, and they were set at liberty--as set at liberty they assuredly would be—not a moment's time would be lost in taking steps for an action against their prosecutors for false imprisonment.—Up to yesterday evening all was quiet in Manchester, nor was any disturbance apprehended.