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legal instruments , and , therefore , we may fairly suppose that the conduct of the police must have been brutal in the extreme , to draw forth such energetic expressions . But let the Whig agents have the fall benefit of their evidence . John Jeffery , a cabinetmaker , testified that the orator who Was so careful about his wife
and children , harangued the people in language calculated to excite the worst passions of such an indiscriminate assembly . This language , upon cross-examination , turned out to be , * I thank the Government for having published the meeting , and exhort you tto be peaceable . The orator said be peaceable , for the spies of Government are about you ; be peaceable , but firm /
But the principal coadjutor of Major de Roos , the person who swore hardest , though as it would seem without gaining credit , was Mary Hamilton , servant at the Magpie and Stump , Fetter Lane . So barefaced was it , that one of the jurors immediately declared in answer to some improper remark of the Coroner . 4 If I must
speak my mind , I don ' t believe one iota of what she has stated . ' The only other positive evidence was that of a little girl , some thirteen years of age , and the remarks of the Foreman on her are quite conclusive . i We are all of opinion that if the police had acted with moderation , the deceased would not have been stabbed . The woman who swears otherwise we do not believe .
It is plain she was tutored , and the little girl who was brought up to tell us that she saw the stab given , young and ignorant as she was , was still artful enough to keep back the important fact , that the man who stabbed the policeman was violently assaulted first , as she acknowledged when I pressed her on cross-examination /*
The officers of the army should certainly congratulate Major de Roos , quaere Ruse , on the worthy colleagues he has fallen in with , in his capacity of a Government witness . c Ye shall know him by the company he keeps' is an ancient and true proverb . I should here mention , that these extracts from the evidence are
taken from the report of the Times , which will not be supposed too favourable to the side of the people . The following is the verdict of the jury : — 4 We find a verdict of Justifiable Homicide on these grounds : —that no Riot Act was read , nor any proclamation advising the people to
disperse ; that the Government did not take the proper precautions to prevent the meeting from assembling , and that the conduct of the police was ferocious , brutal , and unprovoked by the people ; and we moreover express our anxious hope that the Government will in future take better precautions to prevent the recurrence of such disgraceful transactions in this metropolis . '
Let it not be forgotten , that this dignified , just , and manly verdict was given , by seventeen of the ordinary tradesmen of the metropolis , whom it is the fashion to look down upon , and to regard as unfitted to hold any situation of responsible power . There is much hope for England , even though the Whigs should
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 432, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/72/
