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Untitled Article
several ' streets , parishes , and wards , — -each knowing his place , his neighbour , and his leader , —a spontaneous army called into exist * ence by the occasion for its existence , and presenting the extended front of all who had anything to lose , against those who should attempt to take anything by violence . This is what might be , but what cannot be , while municipal authority , instead of being a public institution for the public security , is a private monopoly , a club property , a vested interest . Bristol is a close corporation ; and it might be expected , as was evidently the fact , that its magistrates , as a body , and in their
official capacity , had no hold on the minds of the inhabitants generally , who , in turn , were distrusted by them . Dr . Carpenter has shown ( see p . 842 of our last volume ) that had the magis-r trates , at the outset , fairly thrown themselves upon the people , the whole might have been prevented . And again ( p . 847 ) , that had such confidence existed , had it not been that ' on the part of the authorities all was uncertainty and indecision , ' an end
might have been put to the not on Sunday morning , when comparatively little mischief had been effected . We blame not the men ; it was the close-corporation-system which blinded them , which paralyzed them , which led them , after the irritating conflict of their hired special constables with the multitude , to cry out , as their only resource , for Colonel Brereton to save them by instant military execution . No such responsibility should have been cast upon any military man , so situated . The unfortunate commander was now in toils from which there was no escape . His proper post was at the back of the civic authorities with their
civic force . But everything was devolved upon him and his little band . His conduct does credit to his heart ; and the soundness of his judgment is yet to be disproved . He could not , at the first , have put down the multitude by military attack without a great effusion of blood ; and it is far from clear that he could have put them down at all . The employment of the troops , before the political excitement had subsided , might have transformed the riot into an insurrection , and his little corps might have been speedily annihilated . The peril to which soldiers are
exposed in the streets of a city has ceased to be a secret . No inference can be drawn from the fact that the troops did stop the havoc on the Monday morning . They had then been reinforced . The inhabitants had rallied , and they had only to contend with the drunken remnant of a gang of thieves . This was easy work . And even this was not done without the loss of innocent blood .
The city was in a verydifferent state from that which it presented on the evening of Saturday . If Colonel Brereton really erred—which is not yet proved—it was no dishonourable error for a soldier to commit ; it was on the side of humanity . There was positive fault in that which placed Jiim in his most unaccustomed , difficult , and perilous position .
Untitled Article
Who kitted Colonel Brereton ? ? 133
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 133, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/61/
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