XIII
So because people assembled at a meeting which was likely to disperse peaceably might at some future time (and this was conjecture) act less peaceably, they were to be charged and sabred; while their constitutional conduct neither at this nor at any other period could be of the least avail; heat of language was not even necessary to procure them the treatment of rebels; for if men met and were silent, if they met and never uttered a word, their very silence, under the classical authority of three Latin words, was to be considered full of awful treason. Jury after jury denounced the conduct of the Government by returning verdicts which were accusations against it. Still the same system was persevered in. Ministers went through the country with a drag net, hauling up—not one or two influential persons (such, indeed, they could not find)—but whole classes of men. Spies also, as it appeared from the different trials, acted as incendiaries, contributing in no small degree to the marvellous plots that they discovered. In one instance, a fellow of the name of Oliver had gone about to all whom he imagined ill disposed, presenting Sir Francis Burdett’s compliments; a circumstance the more remarkable, since the only decent colour ever attempted to be given to these notions of insurrection was, that the names of respectable persons had been used in connection with them. In another case a government creature, by the name of Edwards, actually advanced money to a gentleman who may be considered the arch-traitor of the epoch, since he was the author of that famous conspiracy which included in its programme cutting off all the ministers’ heads.
This conspiracy—of which Mr. Thistlewood, supported by the aforesaid Mr. Edwards, Mr. Davidson, a man of colour, and Messrs. Tidd and Brunt, two shoemakers, were the leaders—closed the series of those formidable plots for putting an end to King, Lords, and Commons, which for three years disturbed the country; the Ministers affecting to consider that the wisdom of the policy they pursued was proved by the folly of those wretched men whom they delivered to the executioner.
Another circumstance is to be remarked in reviewing these times, and attempting to portray their spirit. The Government had not only been tyrannical at home, it had afforded all the assistance in its power to foreign tyrants. First was passed the Alien Bill; a measure which might have been defended in 1793, when France was sending out her revolutionary apostles; which might, with a certain plausibility, have been asked for in 1814, when, if the war were concluded, peace could hardly be considered as established; but which in 1816 could have no other pretext than that of enabling the minister of the day to refuse a refuge to any unhappy exile from the despotism of the Continent.
Shortly afterwards (1819) came the Foreign Enlistment Bill. That which Queen Elizabeth refused to Spain when Spain was in the height of her power, was conceded to Spain, now fallen into the lowest state of moral as well as political degradation. It was true that during the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, and under the natural fears of Jacobite armies, formed on foreign shores, laws had been passed prohibiting British subjects, except upon special permission, from engaging in foreign service; and the pretext now put forward was insomuch plausible, that it pretended to place service in the armies of recognised and unrecognised states on the same footing—no law existing in respect to the last. But the law in existence had not been enforced. Spain, which had been hasty in recognising the independence of the United States, could not ask us to defeat rebellion in her own colonies. Those colonies had, in fact, been first instigated by us to revolt. The regulation, professing to be impartial, would only operate in reality against one of the parties; and with that party all our commercial interests were connected.