ss, and his
object was, in fact, to make it out that the leading members of his
Majesty's Government were just as much inclined to countenance violence
as he was when such a piece of work might happen to suit their
political purposes. The stroke, however, did not produce much effect
in this case, for Lord Brougham's evidence, which in any case would
have been {157} unimportant to the question at issue, would have been
rather to the disadvantage than advantage of the prisoner if it had
been fully gone into, and Cobbett relieved Brougham from further
attendance; while Chief Justice Tenterden, the presiding judge, decided
that the testimony which Cobbett said he intended to draw from the
other noble witnesses had nothing to do with the case before the jury.
The whole question, in fact, was as to the nature of the article in the
_Political Register_. The jury could not agree upon their verdict, and
after they had been locked up for fifteen hours, and there seemed no
chance of their coming to an understanding, the jurors were discharged
and there was an end of the case. When the result was announced
Cobbett received tumultuous applause from a large number of the crowd
in court and from throngs of people outside. He left the court even
more of a popular hero than he had been when he entered it.

Now, in studying the article itself as a mere historical document, the
reader who belongs to the present generation would probably be disposed
to come to the conclusion that, while it was indeed something like a
direct incentive to violence, it also pointed to evils and to dangers
which the wisdom of statesmanship would then have done well to fear.
For the main purpose of the article was to emphasize the fact that, in
the existing conditions of things, nothing was ever likely to be done
for the relief of the hungry sufferers from bad laws and bad social
conditions, unless some deeds of violence were employed to startle the
public into the knowledge that the sufferings existed and would not be
endured in patience any longer. It is unfortunately only too true
that, at all periods of history, even the most recent history of the
most civilized countries, there are evils that legislation will not
trouble itself to deal with until legislators have been made to know by
some deeds of violence that if relief will not come, civil disturbance
must come. The whole story of the reign of William the Fourth is the
story of an age of reform, al