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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
ble , and then , the avenues being blocked up , a most brutal assault was made upon the people , not merely upon those who attended the meeting for the purpose of taking part in the proceedings , but
upon strangers and passengers , who had casually approached the spot . There was not merely a wish to disperse the crowd , but a ferocious determination to maltreat them . In former days , when a furious riot was raging in London , Chief Justice Holt dispersed the crowd by a simple harangue , only promising to see justice done upon the objects of public hatred . In the present case , Colonel Kowan and Mr . Mayne , the directors of the police , skulked in the neighbouring buildings with military officers in their company , while their subordinates were sent forth with staves to work
their unrestrained will , as though it were intended to get up a riot , for the purpose of an excuse in bringing forth the soldiery to make a slaughter of the populace . There was nothing in the meeting of a disorderly character . Illegal it might be , but if so it might fairly be presumed that most of those present were not aware of the fact . Had Colonel Rowan gone upon the ground at the head of a few
of his men , and harangued the meeting , it is probable that the crowd would quietly have dispersed . That there was nothing very desperate in their intentions , might have readily been gleaned from one of the orators talking about his wife and children , and their means of maintenance , should he get into trouble . Men do not think of wives and children when seriously bent on mischief . But the policemen were most blamably left to themselves , some of them probably in liquor , and they forthwith enacted a scene of the most disgusting brutality . The people are not stocks and stones , and such of them as could , resisted . The attack was wanton , retreat was cut off , and innocent passengers were threatened , with not merely broken limbs , but with what is still more painful to the generous mind , the degradation of blows from hireling staves . Such an injury might have made a dumb man speak , might have changed a benevolent man into a homicide ; such an injury would have stirred the blood of a slave , how much more then that of a freeman ! Whoever could submit to it unresistingly , would be
unworthy the name and attributes of a free citizen of the community . Not so much the pain inflicted on the body as the quick consciousness of the degradation inflicted on the mind , would be the result , with every man whose reasoning or thinking powers were above those of a brute . It would be better far to perish ; it would be better far to live in a state of utter anarchy than to live in a country where such things were done and submitted to , under the name and sanction of law . Quiet
submission to such things , would argue a state of moral degradation , from which there could spring up no hope ; but from this degradation we are at present rescued , by the verdict of a jury , of as noble a character as is to be found in the pages of English history . I am in no way upholding the propriety of breaking down the bar-
Untitled Article
428 On the Conduct of the Police .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 428, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/68/
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