Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert PeelAnonymous
History
Cassell's History of England, Vol. 5 (of 8): From the Peninsular War to the Death of Sir Robert Peel
Anonymous
Great Britain -- History
In May the gingham-weavers of Carlisle and that neighbourhood held a
similar gathering, and in June meetings were held on Hunslet Common,
near Leeds, at Glasgow, Ashton-under-Lyne, and other places. The
meeting at Glasgow, on the 16th of June, was held on the Green, and
amounted to thirty or forty thousand people. They complained of the
low wages for cotton-weaving, and proposed a petition to the Prince
Regent, praying that he would enable them to get over to Canada,
promising that all such as received that favour should repay the
outlay by yearly instalments. But the bulk of the assembly protested
against emigration, asserting that the remedy for their distresses
lay in annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and the consequent
reduction of taxation; and they proposed that they should march up to
London in a body, and present their petition to the Prince Regent in
person. At Ashton the chair was taken by the Rev. Joseph Harrison,
and the strange creature called Dr. Healey, of whom Bamford gives an
extraordinary account in his "Life of a Radical," made a most wild and
seditious harangue. At a great meeting at Stockport, on the 28th of the
same month, a very different personage presided. This was Sir Charles
Wolseley, of Wolseley Park, in Staffordshire. Sir Charles said that
he had been engaged in the outbreak of the French Revolution, and had
assisted in the taking of the Bastille, and that he would spend his
last drop of blood, if it were necessary, in destroying the Bastilles
of his own country. The acquisition of such an advocate of Reform was
not likely to be received with apathy. Sir Charles was invited to
preside at a similar meeting at New Hall, near Birmingham, on the 12th
of July. At this meeting he was elected "legislatorial attorney and
representative" for that town. This was a circumstance that excited
the alarm of Government. They immediately issued warrants for the
apprehension both of Sir Charles and of Dr. Harrison for seditious
expressions used at the Stockport meeting. Sir Charles was arrested at
his own house, at Wolseley Park; and Harrison was taken on the platform
of a public meeting, at Smithfield, in London, on the 21st of July,
at which Hunt was presiding. On conveying Harrison to Stockport, the
constable who arrested him was attacked by the mob, and a pistol was
fired at him, the ball of which lodged in his body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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