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Untitled Article
his destruction , —we will drop the personification a while in tracing their operation . The scenes which occurred at Bristol presuppose for their existence , —first , a strong and wide-spread feeling of political discontent ; second , the aggravation of that discontent into a state of
violent excitement ; and third , the existence of a number of dissolute and desperate characters , ready to take advantage of any temporary confusion for purposes of plunder . All these facts are attributable to that species of misrule which has just been spoken of under the designation of the spirit of aristocracy . If a long course of oppression and heavy taxation had not convinced the people that their affairs would thrive better in the hands of their
own nominees , than in those of the nominees of a privileged class ; if when the measure of reform was at length brought forward , with the concurrence even of royalty , it had not been pertinaciously and vexatiously delayed ; if gross insult had not been offered to feelings irritated by that delay , and the ermined robe paraded as a flag of party triumph ; if that education which is the universal right of man , born in a Christian community , had not been
withheld by society from its poor and outcast children , destined by its criminal neglect to grow up vagabonds , wretches , and thieves ; and even if this evil had not been aggravated by that training to drunkenness , violence , and outrage , which , at Bristol especially , has been profusely and systematically bestowed by electioneering corruption : —why then the Mansion-house , the Custom-house ,
and the Gaol , might have been standing at this moment with not a stone dislodged nor a window broken ; Queen-square would have remained in its entirety ; and those whose doom has been the flames , the hulks , or the gibbet , might have been gazing with friendly eyes on Colonel Brereton , as he paraded along the streets in peaceful pageantry .
Nor can there be any reasonable doubt , that , notwithstanding the provocation given , and the existence of materials ready for an explosion , had the magistracy of Bristol been intelligent , active , familiar with the people , and possessed of the people ' s confidence , as all magistracy ought to be , that the riot might have been promptly and easily suppressed . Towns and cities can only be permanently safe from tumult , by means of popular municipal institutions .
The military cannot always be at hand in sufficient force for the suppression of local disturbances ; and if they could , the end would be a costly attainment by such means . The police can only be proportioned to ordinary circumstances . But let the magistracy emanate from the people , be in frequent and friendly contact with the people , and a mutual good understanding and confidence subsist between them , and there is no riot , however
sudden , extensive , or violent , that may not be at once put down . On the first symptoms of such disorder as the common constabulary could not deal with , individuals would turn out , in ahpir
Untitled Article
132 tvho killed Colonel Brereton . ?
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 132, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/60/
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