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Untitled Article
and which nothing they can do , in the course of their short-lived future political existence , can alleviate . The occurrences which have taken place at the ' National Convention' of Spa Fields , (almost induce the suspicion , that the matter had been connived at by the Government , with a view to get upareaction * against the assessed-tax resisters ., after the fashion of Louis Philippe . The transaction is almost a second edition of the Manchester massacre ,
with the difference that the agents were the police force , and the instruments , bludgeons , instead of master tradesmen setting upon their poor workmen with drawn swords . But in both cases , the circumstances have been alike . The avenues to the place of meeting were carefully blocked up to prevent escape , and a brutal and wanton attack was made upon defenceless people . Many attempts have been made to set the middle classes at variance
with their poorer brethren , by the proposition of a National Guard for the protection of' property , ' but hitherto without success , and the Times has seized the present opportunity , once more to revive it , but it has cried * Wolf ! ' too often , and it is suffering the fate of most violators of truth , in earning only contempt , which is daily more widely extending . Whenever it now puts forth an opinion , people are in the habit of looking round to ascertain what sinister
interest it wishes to serve , or at best which party it considers strongest . As for giving it any credit for honesty or magnanimity , that is wholly out of the question . At the period of the Manchester massacre , it turned round equally ready to take part with either side , the oppressors or the oppressed , and it was decided to the latter as soon as it found the tide of public opinion setting strongly in their favour . Those who have watched it on the present
occasion , have remarked the indecision of its tone , the careful putting forth of two separate reports in the first instance , the malignant endeavours to misrepresent the injured , under the specious semblance of perfect fairness , and the constant indications of a disposition to side with the ruling power if possible , unless the current should be too strong against it . And such is the instrument , which the * Taxes on Knowledge * help to maintain , as a specious organ of public opinion .
As ' a political matter , this * National Convention , ' on which the Times lays so much stress , was more contemptible than the famous plan of the Watsons to take the Tower , by dint of making speeches to the sentinel on duty . Scarcely any one had heard of it , previous to the coming forth of the Proclamation , with the usual quantity of bad grammar furnished by the government offices on such
occasions , and many of the proclamation bills were only posted on the evening previous to the meeting ; nay , one of the jurors on the coroner ' inquest gave evidence , that many were posted after the meeting was over . Was not this an evidence of sinister design on the part of those in power ? Seventeen hundred policemen were placed in ambush near the epot , the crowd was allowed to assem * 2 112
Untitled Article
On the Conduct of the Police * 427
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 427, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/67/
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