When the particulars of this bloody tragedy became known, strong feelings of indignation were expressed all over the country. The Manchester magistrates, alarmed at the tone of public opinion in London, had a meeting hastily convened on the 19th of August at the Police Office, which was adjourned to the Star Inn, where resolutions were passed thanking the magistrates and the soldiers. I happened by accident to be present at the meeting. A young man with whom I was acquainted, a clerk in the office of the Clerk to the Magistrates, happening to meet me in the street on his way to the meeting, took me by the arm and said: "Come with me." I asked where he was going, and when I learned, declined to go. He replied: "Nonsense, you will hear what is going on," and so I somewhat reluctantly went with him to the Star Inn. On our arrival we found the room pretty full and I took a seat. The Chairman, Mr. Francis Phillips, rose and said: "If there be any persons present who do not approve of the objects of this meeting they are requested to withdraw." I thought he looked at me, and felt a little uncomfortable. He sat down again and rose to repeat his request. I thought that as I should know better what the object of the meeting was after I had heard it explained, I would sit still, and so I remained to the end. After the meeting I told some of my Reform friends how I came to be present at the meeting, and they wished me to write out an account of the proceedings. I did so, and with a few alterations and the omission of names it was inserted in _Cowdroy's Gazette_. This statement created great alarm among those who got up the meeting to thank the magistrates, and they denounced it as a false statement, but another letter to _Cowdroy's Gazette_ affirmed the truth of the account of the meeting to thank the magistrates, and threatened to make public the names of the speakers if its correctness was again called in question. [Illustration: THE PETERLOO MEDAL Note the women and children, and the cap of Liberty held aloft in the centre _To face page 71_] The dispersion of a legally convened meeting by military force aroused a general indignation, and the smuggled passing of thanks to the magistrates so dishonestly sent forth occasioned an expression of public feeling and opinion such as had never been manifested in Manchester before. A "Declaration and Protest" against the Star Inn resolutions was immediately issued, stating that "We are fully satisfied by personal observation on undoubted information that the meeting was _perfectly peaceable_; that no seditious or intemperate harangues were made there; that the Riot Act, _if read at all_, was read _privately, or without the knowledge of a great body of the meeting_, and we feel it our bounden duty to protest against and to express our utter disapprobation of the unexpected and unnecessary violence by which the assembly was dispersed.