Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
All that I
shall add upon the subject is, that on no occasion in my life did I ever
turn my back upon _two_ such men as Mr. Morley.
At the time appointed I arrived at the meeting, which was much larger
than either of the former meetings. Resolutions were passed, and a
petition was unanimously agreed to, praying for Reform, &c. which
petition was placed the same evening in the hands of Lord Folkestone,
by Mr. Clarke, who had been for the third time our chairman; and which
petition was presented to the House of Commons the same night, by his
Lordship. I was accompanied by the people to Hyde-Park Corner, where I
took my leave of them, and returned to my house at Middleton Cottage;
the whole of these three meetings in Spafields having been held in the
most peaceable and orderly manner, without the least disturbance, or
one single breach of the peace having been committed by any person that
attended it, notwithstanding all the infamous falsehoods that were
published in the newspapers to the contrary. The truth is, that I
have seen ten times more disturbance, disorder, and tumult, at one
Common-Hall, in the city of London, where the Lord Mayor presided, than
there was at all these meetings put together.
While these things were going peaceably on out of doors, and petitions
were daily and numerously pouring in from all parts of the kingdom,
particularly from the North of England, and from Scotland, the two
Houses of Parliament were in their way not inactive. The committees that
were appointed made their report, and bills were immediately brought in
to suspend the Habeas-Corpus Act, and to prevent seditious meetings;
which bills were, with very faint opposition, agreed to. It ought not to
be forgotten, that on this occasion the Whigs took a most prominent part
against the people, and that they were quite as loud and as violent
against the Reformers as the Ministers were. To be sure the people had
committed one inexpiable crime. They had by their steady, peaceable, and
persevering conduct, frightened the Whig leader, Mr. Ponsonby, out
of his sinecure of 4,000_l_. per annum, which he held in consequence
of his having been Lord Chancellor of Ireland, during the Whig
administration, in the year 1807. The cunning Scotchman, Erskine, who
had been for the same short period Lord Chancellor of England, was also
pressed very hard to follow the example of his Irish friend; but Sawney
was of a more tenaciously grasping nature, and he _stuck to the ship_,
determined to partake of the plunder as long as she would swim. It was
for this that the Whigs wreaked their malice upon the Reformers, and
that Mr. Brougham and his confederates appeared to run a race every
night which should most abuse and calumniate them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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