18] ANNUAL REGISTER, 1817. 



to be listed, and receive a secret 

 card with the words " Be Ready, 

 Be Steady." 



The habits and manners of 

 these persons seem entirely chang- 

 ed : they already calculate upon 

 the siiare of land which each is 

 to possess, and point out the de- 

 struction of the churches, as the 

 necessary consequence of their 

 success. It appears that piepara- 

 tions are in progress, in several 

 places, for providing arms ; the 

 demand upon gunsmiths, for every 

 species of fii-e-arms, has been be- 

 yond all former example ; the in- 

 tention is professed, of having le- 

 course for a still larger supply to 

 those towns where arms are ma- 

 nufactured, and where they are to 

 be obtained at a very low rate, 

 from the general cheapness of la- 

 bour at this time ; or in case of 

 necessity they aie to be seized by 

 force. The facility of converting 

 implements of husbandly into of- 

 fensive weapons, has been sug- 

 gested ; and persons have been 

 sent to observe the state of parti- 

 cular places, where depots of arms 

 for the public service were sup- 

 posed to have been formed. 



Your committee find that a sys- 

 tem of secret association has been 

 exter.ded to the manufacturing po- 

 pulation of Glasgow, and some 

 other populous towns of Scotland ; 

 and although these societies have 

 availed themselves of the same 

 pretext, of parliamentary reform 

 on the broadest basis, your com- 

 mittee are firmly persuaded, from 

 the infovmation which has been 

 laid before them, that their ulti- 

 mate object is the overthrow by 

 force of the existing form qf go- 

 vernment; that the time for at- 

 tempting tiiis enterprise was to 



depend on the simultaneous rising 

 of the disaffected in England, with 

 some emissaries from whom occa- 

 sional intercourse appears to have 

 taken place ; and that some provi- 

 sion of weapons has been made by 

 this association. 



Your committee have now sub- 

 mitted to the House, what they 

 conceive to be a fair, and not ex- 

 aggerated statement of the result 

 of their investigation. They have 

 thought themselves precluded from 

 inserting, in an Appendix, the in- 

 formation from which it is drawn, 

 by the consideration, that unless 

 it were extremely partial and in- 

 complete, they could not make it 

 public without hazarding the per- 

 sonal safety of many useful and 

 many respectable individuals, and 

 in some instances without preju- 

 dicing the due administration of 

 public justice. 



On a review of the whole, it is 

 a great satisfaction to your com- 

 mittee to observe, that, notwith- 

 standing the alarming progress 

 Avhich has been made in the sys- 

 tem of extending disaffection and 

 secret societies, its success has 

 been confined to the principal ma- 

 nufacturing districts, where the 

 distress is more prevalent, and 

 numbers more easily collected ; 

 and that even in many of these 

 districts, privations have been 

 borne with exemplary patience 

 and resignation, and the attempts 

 of the disaffected have been dis- 

 appointed ; that few if any of the 

 higher orders or even of the mid- 

 dle class of society, and scaicely 

 any of the agiicultural population, 

 have lent themselves to the more 

 violent of these projects. Great 

 allowance nmst be made for those 

 who, under the pressure of ur- , 



gent I 



