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Untitled Article
ful > till you looked in people ' s faces , and heard their voices . And then it was not violence that you perceived , but high excitement and deliberate resolve . There was no need , as so often , on former occasions , to fence aud guard the avenues to the Houses of Lords and Commons . There was no throwing of stones , nor breaking of windows . Thirty years ago , we remember the presence of
John Thelwall in Norwich , as a lecturer on Roman History , furnishing excuse to a Tory mob for a far greater amount of outrage than has been occasioned in London by all the agitations and disappointments connected with the Reform Bill ^ from its introduction into the legislature fifteen months ago . We doubt whether at any of the recent meetings , at some or other of which a very large majority of the inhabitants of the metropolis have
probably been present , any exhortation to outrage would not have put the orator himself in more personal peril than any body else . He would infallibly have been set down for a spy . This is a fact worth remarking . The more so as it is coupled with another as unprecedented , we mean the strong language held at many of these meetings as to existing institutions , arrangements , and offices , even the oldest and the highest . Some of the journals
have attempted to manufacture ^ with the aid of misrepresentation , out of language of this description , grave accusations against individuals and bodies , which can only be grave to those who are not aware of the absurdity of the perversion . But it is not worth while to embalm the lies of the day , even for contradiction . No art can falsify the broad fact of the admirable behaviour of the people ; nor should it be unremembered that the great merit of this conduct belongs to the poorer , the less educated , the working
classes . And the merit is the greater , inasmuch as they will gain little or nothing from the Bill , as to the direct and immediate bestowment of the suffrage . They are not to be raised by it into the dignity of citizenship ; and it is not yet conceded that they ever shall . They have the virtue to co operate for the extension of the rights of the middle classes , and the erection , by their means , of a better constituency , though on themselves is to remain the ban and the brand of exclusion . Their day will come , and
they deserve it . Their peaceful and yet determined demeanour throughout this season of storm and peril shows a degree of intelligence which is surely adequate to the task of choosing a trustworthy representative in the House of Commons . On some occasions , the feelings of assembled multitudes , so far from degenerating towards brute violence , ascended into
something of a solemn , and even of a religious character . We have inserted a Reform Song , which might rather be called a hymn , written , we believe , for a local Union by a well-known correspondent of ours , which well harmonizes with the spirit of many of the jmeetings that have taken , place , and which , if produced at an , earlier period , would probably have come into general uset
Untitled Article
396- The Recent Political Crisis *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 396, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/36/
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