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ONE:[See larger version]Refused in this quarter, the people proceeded to hold a meeting without such sanction, and invited Mr. "Orator" Hunt to go down and take the chair. Perhaps they could not have selected a more unsafe guide on the occasion, for personal vanity was Hunt's besetting sin. Hunt, instead of encouraging the very constitutional object of the meeting��to petition Parliament for the repeal of the obnoxious law��treated the petitioning that House as ridiculous, and persuaded the excited people to put their sentiments into the form of a remonstrance to the Prince Regent. The meeting then dispersed quietly; but Hunt found occasion to keep himself in the public eye there a little longer. Some officers of the 7th Hussars, who were posted at Manchester, treated him rudely as he appeared at the theatre, asserting that when "God Save the King" was called for, he hissed. Whether he did so or not, the conduct of the officers answered his purpose of making political capital; he wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York, and then sent his letter to the newspapers. Still more, he wrote to Samuel Bamford to support him in a scheme which was particularly calculated to produce riot and bloodshed, and in this case Bamford did not exercise his usual good sense. At Hunt's suggestion��to select a dozen stout fellows, and appear on the evening of the following Monday in the pit of the theatre, armed with stout cudgels, to inflict a summary chastisement on the officers in case of a second demonstration of their feelings��Bamford appeared at the time appointed with ten stout, picked fellows, with knotty cudgels, marching along the streets to the theatre. The object was immediately perceived by the people, who crowded to the door of the theatre, completely filling the space in front. But the manager was too prudent to open his theatre in such circumstances. He announced[148] that there would be no performance that evening. Hunt was, therefore, disappointed of a catastrophe in the theatre; but he drove up in a carriage, mounted the box, and addressed the crowd in very exciting tones, declaring that the magistrates desired nothing so much as an opportunity of letting loose the bloody butchers of Waterloo upon them��meaning the 7th Hussars. It was not his fault that all went off quietly. ONE:On the 11th of March, 1768, the Parliament, having nearly lived its term of seven years, was dissolved, and the most unprecedented corruption, bribery, and buying and selling of the people's right to their own House, came into play. The system originated by Walpole was now grown gigantic, and the sale and purchase of rotten boroughs was carried on in the most unblushing manner by candidates for Parliament, particularly aristocrats, who had managed to secure the old boroughs as their property, or to control them by their property. The Mayor and Aldermen of Oxford wrote to their members, long before the dissolution, to offer them the renewal of their seats for the sum of seven thousand five hundred pounds, which they meant to apply to the discharge of the debts of the corporation. The House arrested the Mayor and Aldermen, and clapped them in Newgate for five days; but on their humbly begging pardon at the bar of the House, they released them again to continue their base contract. Nay, whilst in prison, these corporation officials had sold their borough to the Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Abingdon. Well might Chatham say this rotten part of the constitution wanted amputating. Where the people of corporations had votes, they were corrupted beyond all hope of resistance by the lavish bribes of the wealthy. The Earl Spencer spent seventy thousand pounds to secure the borough of Northampton for his nominee. There were attorneys acting then as now for such boroughs and such corrupt constituents, and they went about offering them to the highest bidders. One Hickey was notorious amongst this tribe; and above all, the borough of Shoreham distinguished itself by its venality, which assumed an aspect almost of blasphemy. The burgesses united in a club to share the proceeds of bribery equally amongst themselves, and styled themselves "the Christian Club," in imitation of the first Christians, who had all things in common! In the train of all this unprincipled corruption followed riots and tumults amongst the people, who were at once starving from the scarcity and dearness of bread, and infuriated with the drink with which they had been plied to serve the views of these base candidates. From the centre of this unholy chaos again rose the figure of John Wilkes, as the reputed champion of liberty.Before the re-assembling of Parliament the new Ministers had done all in their power to arouse a "No Popery!" cry in the country, because they intended to advise a dissolution of Parliament��although this had only sat four months��in order to bring in a more anti-Catholic and anti-Reform body. On the 9th of April, the day following the meeting of Parliament, Mr. Brand moved a resolution, that it was contrary to the first duties of the confidential advisers of the Crown to bind themselves by any pledge to refrain from offering the king such counsel as might seem necessary to the welfare of the kingdom. The new Ministers, who had entered office without any such pledge being demanded, for their sentiments were too well known to the king, yet, seeing that this resolution was the first of a series intended to end in a vote of want of confidence in them, at once opposed it, and threw it out by two hundred and fifty-eight to two hundred and twenty-six. The Marquis of Stafford made a similar motion in the Lords, and Sidmouth now spoke and voted against his late colleagues, to whom he must have been throughout opposed on all points; but the strangest thing must have been to hear Erskine, whilst supporting the motion, avowing his great repugnance to the Catholics, as people holding a gross superstition, the result of the darkness of former ages, and declaring that he never thought of encouraging them, but rather that they might feel inconvenience, though suffering no injustice; as if this were possible; for if they suffer no injustice they could feel no inconvenience. And this, after assuring the king that he would never again enjoy peace if he dismissed his Ministers for[535] desiring to encourage them! The Marquis of Stafford's motion was rejected by a hundred and seventy-one against ninety.

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