THREE:It was thought time to put a stop to such[559] proceedings, and several of the leaders were arrested, namely, Messrs. Ernest Jones, John Fussell, J. Williams, A. Sharpe, and Y. Vernon. They were committed for sedition, but bail was accepted. At Ashton-under-Lyne, Birmingham, Liverpool, and other places, Chartist and confederate disturbances took place. The police hunted up their leaders, and in some towns seized the papers of the clubs as well as the pikes and fire-arms which they had concealed. There had, in fact, been an extensively ramified conspiracy, the headquarters of which were in the metropolis. On the 11th of August the police, acting upon information they had received, assembled at the station in Tower Street, 700 strong, and suddenly marched to the Angel Tavern in Webber Street, Blackfriars. Surrounding the house, Inspector Butt entered, and found fourteen Chartist leaders in deliberation. In a few minutes they were all quietly secured, and marched to Tower Street. On searching the place the police found pistols loaded to the muzzle, swords, pikes, daggers, and spear-heads, also large quantities of ammunition. Upon one man were found seventy-five rounds of ball cartridge. Some of the prisoners wore iron breastplates. Similar visits were paid to houses in Great Ormond Street, Holborn, and York Street, Westminster, with like results. In the last place the party got notice and dispersed before the police arrived. One man, leaping out of a window, broke his leg. Tow-balls were found amongst them; and from this and other circumstances it was believed they intended to fire the public buildings and to attack the police in every part of London. The whole of the military quartered in London were under arms on the night of the threatened attack, and an unbroken line of communication was kept up between the military and the different bodies of police. Twenty-five of the leaders were committed for felony, bail being refused; their principal leader being a man named Cuffey.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Aliquam aut tenetur, amet earum quia eligendi obcaecati. Repudiandae id illum, vero iste enim reprehenderit quaerat, harum pariatur ipsa nulla tempora ex ratione illo assumenda libero ea, delectus vitae, expedita optio porro.
ONE:Gilbert's Act, (22 Geo. { 12 unions 200Government, not content with expelling Wilkes from the House of Commons, had commenced an action against him in the Court of King's Bench, where they succeeded in obtaining a verdict against him for a libel in the North Briton. Temple paid the costs, and the City of London[183] turned this defeat into a triumph, by presenting its freedom to the Lord Chief Justice Pratt, for his bold and independent conduct in declaring against the general warrants. They ordered his portrait to be placed in Guildhall; and the example of London was followed by Dublin and many other towns, who presented their freedom and gold snuff-boxes to Pratt. The City of London also gave its thanks to its members for their patriotic conduct.
ONE:ST. JUST. (After the Portrait by David.)Whilst these movements had been progressing, very different ones had been in development in the north. The British Government, with the fatality which distinguished nearly all its counsels in this war, had thought proper to take the command of the army destined to operate by way of Canada on the northern colonies, from Sir Guy Carleton, and to confer it on General Burgoyne. The campaign had been plannednot by experienced military men on the spot, capable of estimating the difficulties of the enterprise, but in the Cabinet at home, directed by defective maps, and still more defective information.
ONE:But, sorrowful as the sight itself was, the news of it in Great Britain excited the strongest condemnation in the party which had always doubted the power of Wellington to cope with the vast armies of France. They declared that he was carrying on a system that was ruining Portugal, and must make our name an opprobrium over the whole world, at the same time that it could not enable us to keep a footing there; that we must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy. But not so thought Wellington. Before him were the heights of Torres Vedras, about twenty-four miles from Lisbon. These, stretching in two ranges between the sea and the Tagus, presented a barrier which he did not mean the French to pass. He had already planned the whole scheme; he had already had these heights, themselves naturally strong, made tenfold stronger by military art; he had drawn the enemy after[606] him into a country stripped and destitute of everything, and there he meant to stop him, and keep him exposed to famine and winter, till he should be glad to retrace his steps. Neither should those steps be easy. Floods, and deep muddy roads, and dearths should lie before him; and at his heels should follow, keen as hornets, the Allied army, to avenge the miseries of this invaded people.
