It was on December 2, 1816, that the extreme section of reformers, now for the first time known as radicals, in alliance with a body of socialists called Spenceans, first came into open collision with the forces of the law. A meeting was announced to be held on that day in Spa Fields, Bermondsey, and was to be addressed by "Orator" Hunt, Major Cartwright, the two Watsons, and other demagogues. Hunt was a gentleman of Somerset, and had stood for Bristol in 1812. Though a prominent speaker, he in no sense directed the movement. Burdett and Cochrane, the orthodox leaders of London reformers, were not concerned in this demonstration, which, according to an informer who gave evidence, was to be the signal for an attack upon the Tower and other acts of atrocity. As it was, before Hunt chose to appear, the mob, headed by the younger Watson, broke into gunsmiths' shops, not without bloodshed, and marched through the Royal Exchange, but were courageously met by the lord mayor, with a few assistants, and very soon dispersed. The alarm produced in the whole nation by this riotous fiasco was quite out of proportion to its real importance, and was reawakened by an insult offered to the prince regent on his return from opening parliament on January 28, 1817. Even Canning, a life-long opponent of reform, did not scruple to magnify these and similar evidences of popular restlessness into proofs of a deep-laid plot against the constitution, and committees of both houses urged the necessity of drastic measures to put down a conspiracy against public order and private property. These measures took the form of bills for the suppression of seditious meetings, and for the suspension until July 1 of the _habeas corpus_ act, which had been uninterruptedly in force since its suspension by Pitt had expired in 1801. This last bill was passed on March 3, and, before the other became law, the so-called march of the Blanketeers took place at Manchester. The march was the ridiculous sequel of a very large meeting got up for the purpose of carrying a petition to London, and presenting it to the prince regent in person. The meeting was dispersed by the soldiers and police, after the riot act had been read, and a straggling crowd of some three hundred who began their pilgrimage, carrying blankets or overcoats, melted away by degrees before they had got far southward. [Pageheading: _SIDMOUTH'S UNPOPULARITY._]