Then came the straggle between Right and Might; and, by means of what was called the strong arm of the law,’ the right was baffled for the time, albeit not beaten. To add strength to ‘the strong arm’ in question, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and six Acts were passed. These were enactments avowedly framed to prevent the expression of public opinion, whether at public meetings or by the medium of the press. The anti-press ordinances of July 1830, which were the means of hurling the Bourbons from the throne of France, were scarcely more tyrannic than the gagging Acts in question. They drove Cobbett to America. We believe that they were especially levelled against him and his plain-speaking ‘Register.’ They nearly drove the multitude into insurrection. They did resist, but the resistance was in vain; for the Government, believing that ‘strong measures’ were necessary, did not hesitate to take them. The manner in which the expression of public opinion was sternly and ruthlessly ‘put down’ at Manchester on the too famous 16th of August, 1819, showed that the Government would have quiet at any cost. “At this crisis the late Mr. William Hone, who felt warmly in politics, and had a particular antipathy to Castlereagh, Canning, Sidmouth, and Wellington, determined to try what might be done by bringing the Fine Arts against the Ministry. At that time Canning was chiefly known as a flashy, clever speech-maker, who, after having fought a duel with Castlereagh, had finally returned to the Government, and held a place under him, whose want of capacity he had formerly denounced. Castlereagh himself, with an unhappy notoriety as one who had used unscrupulous means to effect the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland, was the most unpopular man in the kingdom, not only on that account, but because, scorning the people, he had never concealed his feelings towards them, and had denounced their ‘ignorant impatience of taxation.’ Lord Sidmouth, to whom Canning had given the ‘sobriquet’ of ‘The Doctor’ (from his father, Dr. Addington), was peculiarly hated, as Home Secretary, and the ostensible person on whom devolved the ungracious task of employing ‘the strong arm of the law’ against the multitude; and ‘The Duke,’ though only Master-General of the Ordnance, and (if we remember rightly) not in the Cabinet, was disliked at that time, from a general belief that he had recommended that all disaffection should be summarily dealt with, as he had dealt with the French, by cannon-ball and bayonet. The four thus named were the principal members of Lord Liverpool’s Cabinet. The Premier himself was a nobody. His fitness for the high and responsible office may be judged from the fact that, some time before he was seized with paralysis, which ended in utter prostration of mind and body, he mentioned to a friend that ‘for years he had not opened an official despatch without apprehension and alarm.’