This scarcity of food, and the heavy burdens, both in taxation, the levying of men, and the pressgangs, fell sorely on the poor, who murmured loudly,--a fact which was duly taken advantage of by the demagogues for their own seditious purposes. They agitated for universal suffrage and annual parliaments, and the movement gathered strength. On the 26th October, the Corresponding Society held a mass meeting in Copenhagen Fields, and the inflammatory speeches there delivered, no doubt, bore their fruit three days afterwards, when the mob stoned the King. As the _Times'_ account of this assault is very meagre, compared with that in the _Annual Register_, I copy the latter _verbatim_. "_29th October._--On the occasion of His Majesty's going to the House of Lords, the Mall and the Parade of St. James's Park, and Parliament Street, were completely choked up with spectators. The crowd was by no means so great at the Coronation, and, to see the King go to the House, there never were before more than a tenth part of the numbers of this day; for they, at least, amounted to 200,000. Several noblemen and Cabinet Ministers passed through the Park from Buckingham House about two o'clock. The Earl of Chatham, Duke of Gloucester, &c., were hissed, and the Duke of Portland was very much hooted. "About twenty minutes afterwards the King left Buckingham House, and was violently hissed and hooted and groaned at the whole way; but no violence was offered till he arrived opposite the Ordnance Office, when a small pebble, or marble, or bullet, broke one of the windows. In returning, the moment His Majesty entered the Park the gates of the Horse Guards were shut, for the purpose of excluding the mob who followed the carriage; at which, as it passed opposite Spring Gardens Terrace, another stone was thrown, but it fortunately struck the woodwork between the windows. "The crowd now pressed closely round the coach, and His Majesty, in considerable agitation, signified, by waving his hands to the Horse Guards on each side, his anxiety that the multitude should be kept at a distance. In this way he passed on through the Park, and round by the Stable Yard, into St. James's Palace, at the front gate, the bottom of St. James's Street. A considerable tumult took place when His Majesty was about to alight, and one of the horses in the state coach took fright, threw down an old groom of the name of Dorrington, and broke one of his thighs, but it proved, fortunately, a simple fracture; his other thigh was considerably bruised, but not dangerously.