1816-1817 DISTRESS AND DISTURBANCE 877 slaves, and they themselves, if they got work at all, had to labour for exceedingly long hours for exceedingly small wages. When, as in 1816, large numbers failed to get any work whatever, the starving multitude threw all the blame on the employers. 4. The Radicals. 1816-1817.—Towards the end of 1816 riots broke out in many places, which were only put down by soldiers. In many places the rioters directed their violence against machinery, to the existence of which they attributed their misery. Some men of better education laid all the blame upon the existing political system which placed power entirely in the hands of the rich, and called for complete and 'radical' reform, sometimes asking that it should be effected by violence. These men were, in consequence, styled 'Radicals,' and were looked upon as inspired-as indeed they were-with the ideas of the French Revolutionists. In December, 1816, there was in London a riot, known as the 'Spafields riot,' which was, however, repressed without difficulty. In the beginning of 1817 a number of secret committees were formed, and the most extensive changes demanded. 1817-1818. 5. Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The Government was frightened. Its leading members were Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, who had been formerly Prime Minister as Mr. Addington (see p. 843). They had all been engaged in combating the French Revolutionary ideas, and, when they saw these ideas making head in England, they could not think of any way to deal with them other than forcible repression. They had sufficient influence to carry through Parliament Bills for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act till the following year, and for the prevention of seditious meetings, the penalty of death being imposed on those who being engaged in such a meeting refused to disperse. The Government ignored the part which physical distress played in promoting disturbances. In Manchester, indeed, the dissatisfied workmen contented themselves with the simple expedient of marching in a body on foot to present a petition to the Regent, and as each petitioner took with him a blanket to keep himself warm, the expedition has been known as the March of the Blanketeers.' The Blanketeers were, however, stopped on the way, and never even approached the Regent. There was a talk afterwards of a rising in arms, but such designs, whatever they may really have been, were frustrated by the arrest of the ringleaders. Only in Nottinghamshire did they actually 1817-1819 PROSPERITY AND DISTRESS 879 lead to violence. There a certain Brandreth, at the head of a party, seized arms, and shot dead a man who opposed him. Happily in 1817 there was a better harvest. The price of corn fell, and trade revived. Work was again to be had, and the spirit of insubordination was quieted for a time. On March 1, 1818, the Habeas Corpus Act again came into force, and has never since been suspended in England. 6. A Time of Prosperity. 1818-1819.-The return of prosperity was not confined to England. So marked were the peaceful tendencies of France that in 1818 a congress of the four Powers whose soldiers occupied French fortresses was held at Aix-laChapelle, and it was resolved to withdraw the garrisons. In England, in 1819, Mr. Peel, a rising member of Parliament on the Tory side, recommended the resumption of cash payments by the Bank of England (see p. 835), and, so much improved was the financial position of the Government, that a Bill embodying his suggestions was carried, and in 1821 the Bank of England ceased to refuse to change its notes for gold. 7. Renewal of Distress. 1819.-The prosperity of 1818 had given rise to speculative over-production of manufactures, with the result that more goods were produced than were needed by consumers. Production was therefore limited in 1819, and there was again great distress amongst the artisans. Large numbers of those who suffered had come to the conclusion that their condition would never be improved till power was placed in the hands of the masses by a sweeping measure of Parliamentary reform. Their cause had been advocated in the press by Cobbett, the author of hard-hitting, plain-spoken pamphlets, calling for a complete transference of political power from the landowners to the masses. This remedy for the evils of the time was supported on the platform by Hunt, usually known as 'Orator' Hunt, who, whilst stirring up his audiences to violence, took care to keep his own person out of danger, and in Parliament by Sir Francis Burdett, whose advocacy of a universal suffrage met with few supporters in the House of Commons. 8. The Manchester Massacre.' 1819. To support these views a vast meeting of at least 50,000 gathered on August 16, 1819, in St. Peter's Field in Manchester, where an address was to be delivered by Hunt. The magistrates ordered the arrest of Hunt in the midst of the vast crowd of his supporters. A party of mounted Yeomanry, attempting to effect his capture, was soon broken up, and the isolated soldiers were subjected to jeers and insults. The magistrates then sent Hussars to support the Yeomanry. The Hussars charged, and the weight of disciplined soldiery drove the crowd into a huddled mass of shrieking fugitives, pressed together by their efforts to escape. When at last the ground was cleared many of the victims were piled up on one another. Five or six deaths was the result, and the number of wounded was considerable. The 'Manchester Massacre,' as it was called, opened the eyes of many whose hearts had hitherto been callous to the sufferings of the discontented artisans. Men hitherto content to argue that social and economical difficulties could not be solved by giving power to the ignorant masses began to criticise the ineptitude of the magistrates, who might have avoided all violence by arresting Hunt either before or after the meeting, and to ask themselves whether a system could be justified which led to the dispersal of meetings of peaceable citizens by armed soldiers. 9. The Six Acts. 1819. The Government, on the other hand, took a harsh view of the conduct, not of the magistrates, but of the crowd. 66 Every meeting for Radical reform," wrote a distinguished lawyer, was not merely a seditious attempt to undermine the existing constitution and Government by bringing it into contempt, but it was an overt act of treasonable conspiracy against that constitution of Government, including the king as its head and bound by his coronation oath to maintain it." Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, and Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, warmly supported this view of the case, and, as soon as Parliament met, six measures, usually known as 'The Six Acts,' were rapidly passed. Of these some were harmless or even beneficial. The harshest was the one directed against public meetings. With the exception of such as were summoned by official persons, 'all meetings for the consideration of grievances in Church and State, or for the purpose of preparing petitions . . . except in the parishes where the individuals usually reside,' were forbidden. To prevent any attempt to introduce inflammatory appeals from celebrated persons brought from a distance the presence of strangers at these local meetings was prohibited. 10. Death of George III. and the Cato-Street Conspiracy. 1820.—On January 29, 1820, George III. died. As the new king, his son George IV., had for many years been acting as regent, the change was merely nominal. The same ministers remained in office, and the same policy was pursued. The attempt to make difficult the free expression of opinion gave rise to secret con 1820 ACCESSION OF GEORGE IV. 881 spiracies, and there were undoubtedly many discontented persons in the country ready to use violence to gain their ends. A certain Thistlewood, with about thirty other persons, proposed to murder the whole Cabinet when assembled at dinner on February 23. The conspiracy was betrayed, and the conspirators, who met in a loft in Cato Street, were seized, and their leaders executed. For a time the Manchester Massacre' was forgotten, and many who had felt George III. in old age: from Turner's mezzotint. for the victims of the soldiery now execrated all reformers as supporters of assassins. II. Queen Caroline. 1820-1821. In 1795 George IV. had married Caroline of Brunswick. From the beginning he had treated her shamefully, and the pair were separated after the birth of an only child, the Princess Charlotte. In 1816 this Princess, the heiress to the throne, was married to Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg, and in 1817 she died in child-bed. She had been very popular, and hopes had been entertained that when she came to |