4IO History of the English Landed Interest. 



cipation in tlie revolutionary remarks of his comrades.^ But 

 it was only natural for Parliament to see in this incident a 

 second step towards ultimate civil war, of which Corn Law riots 

 and disturbances elsewhere had been the first. The Seditious 

 Meetings Bill, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and 

 Lord Sidmouth's circular of 1817, were the arbitrary measures 

 taken by the Government to check the progress of popular 

 agitation. The supporters of these stringent precautions 

 argued their justification from evidence of an insurrection- 

 ary nature subsequently discovered. Their opponents saw 

 in the march of the Blanketeers, and the disturbances at 

 Derby and Nottingham, only the natural consequences of pro- 

 scribing all means of constitutional agitation. But that the 

 country as a whole was alarmed by an approach, however 

 slight, to a violence which had recently gone to such extreme 

 lengths across the Channel, is evident from the results of the 

 Greneral Election of 1818, in which only two advocates openly 

 professing democratic principles were returned to Parliament.^ 

 Then, on the 16th August, 1819, an event commonly known 

 as the Manchester tragedy counteracted the effects of the Spa 

 Fields incident, and swayed public opinion to the other side. 

 In spite of the new Act, a meeting was announced by the 

 Radical leaders as about to take place in St. Peter's Fields, 

 in order to promote Major Cartwright's plan of parliamentary 

 reform. The local landed gentry, in the persons of the neigh- 

 bouring justices of the peace, determined to exercise their lately 

 bestowed powers, and suppress the whole business by armed 

 force. A strong body of police and military was got ready 

 beforehand, and at the proper moment the arrest of the leaders 

 was to be effected. Unexpectedly the meeting was attended 

 by deputations from all the surrounding towns. St. Peter's 

 Fields became a seething mass of humanity, and into this 

 packed multitude the yeomanry were ordered to charge. Six 

 lives were thus sacrificed, and some three hundred people in- 

 jured by the fearful pressure which ensued. For some time 

 after this the organs of the Radical press were filled with such 



' Annual Register', 1816, p. 191. 



2 The Radical Party in Parliament, p. 127. W. Harris. 



