which it was forcibly dissolved by the cavalry; that the petitioners, in common with an immense majority of the country at large, and, as they fondly hope, of the House, are fully convinced that transactions evincing such a total disregard for the safety of an immense multitude of their fellow citizens, involving the infliction of so much severe personal injury, so much loss of life, and constituting such a complete infraction of the inalienable right of Englishmen to assemble, in order to petition for the redress of grievances, real or supposed, peremptorily and imperiously require the most rigid, extensive, and impartial investigation; that, accordingly, with a view thereto, and to obtain justice for the sufferers, at the last assizes for the county of Lancaster bills of indictment were presented against certain individuals, who were identified as having inflicted severe wounds upon the people in the course of the dispersion of the meeting; that, notwithstanding the positive testimony by which these indictments were supported, the grand jury did, for some reason unknown to the petitioners, and of which they can form no conception, think proper to return the said bills Ignoramus;' that application was afterwards made to the magistrates acting in and for the division of Manchester, by or on behalf of persons who were wounded on the 16th of August, for warrants against certain individuals on charges of cutting and maiming, such application comprehending not only those persons against whom indictments had been presented at Lancaster, but others whose cases had not previously come before any court of justice, and that the said magistrates positively refused to hear the evidence upon which this application was founded, or to grant the warrants, notwithstanding they were informed that the cases which had been presented at Lancaster were supported by additional evidence, whilst the testimony as to the others was distinct, positive, and complete; that on the 7th day of September, one of the persons who had been wounded on the 16th of August, named John Lees, died at Oldham, and that in the course of the inquest held on the occasion, the reception of evidence necessary, as the petitioners conceive, to the full elucidation of the case, was repeatedly refused by the coroner, who did afterwards, in a manner totally unprecedented, and which was calculated, as the petitioners believe, and intended to obstruct the course of public justice, adjourn the proceedings of the said inquest (without assigning any reason for his conduct) to a distant period; that the petitioners regret the necessity which has obliged them to call the attention of the House to matters cognizable by the esta blished courts of law, but that all the avenues of public justice having been hitherto found so unaccountably closed, they can only look to the House for a full investigation of the affair; that the petitioners feel it necessary to remind the House, that on the 9th of February 1818, a petition from certain of the inhabitants of Manchester was presented to the then House of Commons, setting forth various arbitrary, illegal, and unconstitutional acts, which the petitioners pledged themselves (if so permitted) to prove by evidence at the bar, to have been exercised by the magistrates of that district in the early part of the preceding year; that the House of Commons not only refused to inquire into the truth of the allegations of the said petition, but in conjunction with the other branches of the legislature passed a bill, giving impunity, and even full indemnity to the persons by whom the illegal acts were stated to have been committed, although not one single statement contained in the said petition was ever disproved or shaken; that the impunity and protection then granted to acts contrary to the law of the land, and subversive of individual liberty, have, as the petitioners apprehend naturally emboldened the magistrates, or at least those amongst them by whom the proceedings of the 16th of August were conceived, advised, and directed, to commit that more flagrant violation of the rights and liberties of Englishmen, and that more alarming outrage on the lives of his majesty's subjects, of which the petitioners have now felt it their duty to complain; that the petitioners, appealing to their uniform respect and obedience to the constitutional laws under which they live, in proof of their own constant loyalty, are anxious that the dignified supremacy of the law should be fully and effectually maintained; that its protective powers should be extended equally to the poor as to the rich; and that any breach of it, by whomsoever, or under whatever pretence committed, should be duly yet temperately punished; that the petitioners deeply lament the fact too notorious to admit of denial, that the labouring part of their fellow townsmen and neighbours have upon many recent occasions been treated by the magistrates of that district in a manner utterly unwarrantable and illegal; that, in proof of this statement, the petitioners would inform the House, that on or about the 16th of August last many persons were taken into custody on charges of a political complexion, and that for a period of nearly eleven weeks those persons were detained in prison, whilst they were ultimately discharged from custody on the 30th of October last, not only without trial, but without any bills of indictment, or even articles of the peace having ever been presented against them; that as the poverty of these unfortunate victims of capricious tyranny, prevents them from seeking legal redress, the petitioners conceive that unless the House interfere to procure them justice the protection of the law will be virtually withdrawn from them, whilst, to assert the practical equality of the enactments of law, its administration here remaining unchanged, will only be adding the cruelty of insult to the injustice of oppression; having therefore a deep sense of the importance of the circumstances which they have herein stated, knowing their momentous consequence with reference to the future liberties of Englishmen, anxious for the speedy rendering of strict and impartial justice, and that the magistrates and soldiery, if guilty, may be punished, if innocent absolved from blame, the petitioners do most earnestly request and intreat, that the House will be pleased to institute a prompt, public, impartial, and full inquiry into the transactions of the 16th of August, and those which have resulted therefrom." On the motion, that it be laid on the table, Mr. Bootle Wilbraham said, he was desirous of expressing his firm conviction, that the statements made by the hon. gentleman and the gallant general were not at all likely to be proved. He was convinced that the statement he had made on a former evening was the just one. The speech of the hon. gentleman was calculated to make an impression on the House which the petition itself did not warrant. He here begged to make an observation respecting the sharpening of the swords. About the middle of July an order was given for sharpening them, and the swords which were sharpened in (VOL. XLI.) the end of July and the beginning of August belonged to those members of the corps who had forgotten to send in their weapons originally, for no order was given subsequent to the first. Mr. Bennet, in moving, that the petition be printed, said, the hon. gentleman who had recently spoken was rather too harsh in his censure on all the persons who had been examined before the coroner. Of the facts, he (Mr. B.) certainly had no personal knowledge; but he would pause much before he condemned all the persons who attended at the meeting of the 16th of August, as being tainted with the doctrines of Paine, and converted to the principles of infidelity and blasphemy. He, for one, thought those sweeping censures did a great deal of harm. They tended to widen the unfortunate breach which existed between parliament and the people. Whatever the opinions of gentlemen might be with respect to individual guilt, they ought not to cast a general slander on large bodies of men, about whom they knew nothing. He would tell the hon. gentleman who had uttered this censure, that there were amongst those who gave evidence, per. sons of sober, calm, and religious habits. One of them had come up to town on a journey of philanthropy, to propose to the House those measures for the protection of children in factories, which were carried last year. He knew that individual, and his object was, to protect not only him, but all those persons who had given evidence, from the charge that had been made against them; because it was most unfair to make those general accusations in the absence of all proof. Mr. Mansfield said, he had not meant to make so sweeping an assertion as was attributed to him. He felt, however, that he had a right to make a strong assertion, because one of those persons who gave evidence against the magistrates, admitted that he had himself marched a large party from Leeds to that meeting. The petition was then ordered to be printed. PETITION OF MR. HUNT COMPLAINING OF MISREPRESENTATION OF HIS CONDUCT.] Mr. Alderman Wood said, he had been requested to present a petition which he had previously read, and which contained nothing disrespectful towards the House. It complained of (2 B) The petition was then brought up, and read. It purported to be the petition of Henry Hunt, esq. of Middleton Cottage, Hants: and sat forth, the Manchester magistrates of the ju-ragraphs: You will meet on Monday ries of the officers-and more pointedly next, my friends, and by your steady, and strongly of his majesty's ministers. firm, and temperate deportment you will Attached to the petition there had origi- convince all your enemies you feel that nally been five affidavits respecting the you have an important and an imperious intention of the petitioner to institute public duty to perform, and that you will proceedings in the court of King's-bench, not suffer any private consideration on which he had been prevented from doing earth to deter you from exerting every on the ground of his not being a profes- nerve to carry your praise-worthy and sional man; but as the forms of the patriotic intentions into effect; the eyes House did not allow such documents to of all England, nay, of all Europe, are be presented, he had removed them. fixed upon you, and every friend of real After what he had said, the House would reform, and of rational liberty, is trembnot be surprised when he told them that lingly alive to the result of your meeting the petitioner's name was Henry Hunt. on Monday next; our enemies will seek He stated generally the nature of the every opportunity, by the means of their transactions at Manchester, declared that sanguinary agents, to excite a riot, that the papers laid on the table of the House they may have a pretence for spilling our were entirely false, and prayed that he blood, reckless of the lawful and certain might be called to the bar to prove his retaliation that would ultimately fall on allegations, which he confidently pledged their heads; every friend of real and efhimself to do, not by his own testimony fectual reform is offering up to Heaven a alone, but by the testimony of nume- devout prayer, that you may follow the rous respectable characters, totally un- example of your brethren of the metropoconnected with the reformers. lis, and by your steady, patient, perse. vering, and peaceable conduct on that day, frustrate their hellish and bloody purpose; come then, my friends, to the meeting on Monday, armed with no other weapon but that of a self-approv ing conscience; determined not to suffer yourselves to be irritated, or excited by any means whatsoever to commit any breach of the public peace; our opponents have not attempted to show that our reasoning is fallacious, or that our conclusions are incorrect, by any argument but the threat of violence, and to put us down by the force of the sword, the bayonet and the cannon; they assert that your leaders do nothing but mislead and deceive you, although they well know that the eternal principles of truth and justice are too deeply engraven on your hearts; and that you are at length become (unfortunately for them) too well acquainted with your own rights, ever again to suffer any man, or any faction to mislead you; we hereby invite the boroughreeve, or any of the nine wise magistrates who signed the proclamation declaring the meeting to have been held on Monday last illegal, and threatening at the same time all those who abstained from going to the said meeting; we invite them to come amongst us on Monday next; if we are wrong, it is their duty, as men, as magistrates, and as christians, to endeavour to set us right by argument, by reason, and by the mild "That the petitioner having been invited to preside as chairman at a public meeting proposed to be held at Manchester on the 16th day of August last, for the purpose as expressed by the requisitionists, and by the advertisements and placards published for calling the same, of taking into consideration the most legal and effectual means of obtaining a reform of the Commons House of parliament; and the petitioner approving of such intention, and considering the objects to be perfectly legal and constitutional, as well as necessary, without any hesitation accepted, and attended the same as an act of public duty towards his distressed and suffering fellow countrymen; that on the petitioner's arrival in Lancashire on finding that considerable irritation had been excited among the people by an interference of the magistrates to prevent a previous meeting which had been announced, the petitioner with a view to tranquillize the public mind, secure the public peace, and exhibit the true objects of the meeting beyond the possibility of successful misrepresentation wrote, and caused to be printed and circulated, an address to the inhabitants of Manchester and its neighbourhood, of which the following are the principal pa it must always be the case in police establishments; the petitioner and ten other persons, whose political rights had been violated, and whose persons had been outraged, had, and can have no chance of obtaining redress or justice in the said district under such influence; and therefore the petitioner and his fellow-sufferers not only found themselves insolently baffled in every attempt which they made to obtain legal redress, but the said criminal parties, for the purpose of giving colour to their errors or crimes, conspired to invent, fabricate, and sustain criminal charges against the petitioner and his friends, and had the hardihood to commit them to solitary dungeons in the local prison, on charges of high treason; which impotent and malignant charges they afterwards abandoned, but for the pretence aforesaid, still persisted in charging the outraged, injured, and insulted petitioner and his friends with a misdemeanor and conspiracy, demanding excessive bail of them, and in a vexatious and wanton manner sending the petitioner and others upwards of fifty miles through the country to Lancaster castle, under the parade of military escort, and accompanied by every circumstance calculated to wound the feelings of the petitioner and his friends and fellow sufferers: and as it happened that the assizes were held about ten days afterwards the said criminal parties hoping to take advantage of the excessive and irresistible precepts of persuasive truth; we promise them an attentive hearing, and to abide by the result of conviction alone; but once for all we repeat, that we despise their threats, and abhor and detest those who would direct or control the mind of man by violence or force: I am, my fellow countrymen, your sincere and faithful friend, Henry Hunt:' that several affidavits were on the second day of the present term tendered by the petitioner to the judges of the court of King's-bench at Westminster, for the purpose of obtaining a criminal information against the bench of magistrates of Manchester, for the criminal acts and wrongs therein described; which affidavits were not however permitted to be read, on the novel ground that no one could be allowed to move in a proceeding which merely tended to establish a criminal prosecution except through his majesty's attorney or solicitor general, or other counsel; although this new rule of court is obviously contrary to the principle, which permits every man in person to accuse before a grand jury, and is in direct violation of Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights: the petitioner therefore immediately applied to the public law officer of the crown, the attorney general, and offered to lay his whole case, and the affidavits before him, that he might move the court on behalf of the public, which the attorney general refused; the petitioner is therefore compelled to sub-irritation which all the circumstances mit his case to the consideration of the House, as the only means which the constitution now appears to present, and which at the same time is commensurate with the power and influence of the offenders, particularly after they had received the countenance of his majesty's ministers by the official thanks of his royal high-violence which had misled their brother ness the Prince Regent; the petitioner respectfully submits to the consideration of the House, that as the persons guilty of the outrages described in those affidavits, consisted of ten magistrates acting in the vicinity, having extensive local and family connexions, and as the officers and privates of the yeomanry cavalry who perpetrated the cruelties therein described were in like manner intimately connected with all or most of the persons exercising juridical and magisterial authority in the County of Lancaster, and were supported by a numerous train of dependents, unprincipled and desperate characters connected with the police, as it is notorious above described had created in the county, and of the influence which they necessarily possessed over the prejudices of many of the grand jurors, who consisted wholly of persons in the magistracy of the said county, and who therefore were unavoidably actuated by the very same party magistrates of Manchester in committing those crimes which it was now become necessary, under colour of law, to screen from inquiry and punishment; that is to say, the said magistrates and yeomanry of Manchester, through the agency of their friends, connexions, and relatives, who composed the grand jury aforesaid, and aided by the solicitor of his majesty's treasury, proceeded to act the unworthy farce of presenting indictments against the petitioner and his friends for a pretended conspiracy, for acts committed by them in the open face of day, in presence of the whole world, and in which they were supported by the immemorial rights, customs, and usages of the English peo- and the names of the said Platt and Derple, and by the laws and constitution of byshire appeared as witnesses on the back the realm as exercised by their ancestors, of the said indictment, the said grand jury and secured by acts of parliament, by the refused to proceed further in the invescommon law of the land, and by the coro- tigation of the three indictments before nation oath of the sovereign; the peti- them, one of which they had found, but tioner who profoundly respects all the le- proceeded to investigate the indictments gitimate arrangements of the jury system, against the petitioner and his friends, acis nevertheless persuaded, that his suspi- tually receiving the evidence of the said cions, in regard to the purity of the pro- Platt and Derbyshire in support of the ceedings at Lancaster, will not be consi- same, and then, after finding on such evidered either as light or frivolous; and he dence, and that of three or four other ventures to suggest that so palpable was similar dependents of the police true bills the connexion of the magistrates and yeo- against the petitioner and his friends for a manry with the grand jury at Lancaster, conspiracy as aforesaid, the said grand that nothing but the consciousness of the jury ignored the indictment against the necessity of shielding themselves under witnesses Platt and Derbyshire, although the colour of a form of law, could have they had found a true bill for the very stimulated them to adopt the gross mea- same fact, on the very same evidence, sure of appealing for their justification to against Owen; that these facts, of which a grand jury of such men so situated; but the petitioner has made affidavit in the although the petitioner formally protested humble judgment of the petitioner, prove against some of the jurors, who he had beyond the possibility of doubt or equivobeen able to discover were relations, and cation, that although there were honournotoriously connected with the parties able men on the said grand jury, yet that against whom he had better reason to the number of twelve required by law to complain, and who were implicated in the determine a bill were influenced in their atrocities committed on the 16th of Au- judgments by passions and feelings of gust at Manchester, and against whom which men are too frequently the patients bills of indictment for capital felonies and therefore it cannot be a matter of the petitioner was prepared to present: surprise, that a true bill was found against yet these objections of the petitioner were the petitioner and his friends, for acts overruled by the judge before whom the which, it is palpable, were as notorious as said parties were about to be sworn as the sun at noon day, and which, till it grand jurors; and the said grand jury, suited their purpose, had always been composed as aforesaid, proceeded to en- considered as meritorious duties of Britertain the said charges against the pe- tons and freemen, while the bills for untitioner and his friends, and actually laid paralleled and cruel outrages were igaside certain indictments which the peti- nored; nevertheless, as the petitioner tioner and his friends had previously pre- respectfully submits to the House, it must ferred against three persons who had com- be obvious, that against so powerful a mitted palpable perjury before the magis- conspiracy of local authorities countetrates at Manchester, and who, as after-nanced as they have been by his majesty's wards appeared, were witnesses on the indictment against the petitioner and his friends; and to this, and the following circumstances, the petitioner most earnestly invites the attention of the House; viz. that the said grand jury had found a true bill for perjury against one Owen, and they had before them other indictments against two wretches of the names of Platt and Derbyshire, who had falsely sworn to the very same facts as the said Owen, and against whom the very same evidence was ready to be adduced; but as soon as the indictments against the petitioner and his friends for the said pretended conspiracy were carried before the said grand jury, composed as aforesaid, ministers, and aided by the law officers of the crown, who are supported by the public treasury of the United Kingdom, the petitioner has no rational ground of hope for justice and redress but in the power and authority of the House; that besides the application above described, to the court of King's-bench, and to the attorney general, the petitioner brought witnesses from Lancashire at a heavy cost, for the purpose of presenting indictments before that grand inquest, which, as appertaining to the court of King's-bench, may be supposed to have co-extensive jurisdiction with its court, which jurisdiction it unquestionably had before the judges were made itinerant, and which has been |