m through the mob, and enabled him to
reach Carlton House in safety.

The first effect of these outrages was to damage the cause of Reform
itself, even such uncompromising reformers as Lord Grey denouncing
"meetings at which extensive schemes of Reform were submitted to
individuals incapable of judging of their propriety." The second
consequence was to compel the ministers to take steps to prevent a
recurrence of such tumults and crimes. At first they were contented with
a temporary suspension of the _Habeas Corpus_ Act; but, even while that
suspension was in force, it did not entirely prevent meetings, at some
of which the language of the speakers certainly bordered on sedition;
and when the suspension was taken off, fresh meetings on a larger scale,
and of a more tumultuous character than ever, were held in more than one
rural district; finally, in July of 1819, the whole kingdom was thrown
into a violent state of excitement by a meeting held at Birmingham, at
which the leaders, assuming the newly-invented party name of Radicals,
not only demanded the remodelling of the whole system of government,
but, because Birmingham as yet sent no members to the House of Commons,
took it upon themselves to elect Sir Charles Wolseley, a baronet of
respectable family, as their representative to the Parliament, and
charged him to claim a place in the House of Commons in the next
session, by the side of those elected in obedience to the royal writs.
Sir Charles was at once arrested on the charge of having at this meeting
used seditious language calculated to lead to a breach of the peace; but
the Radical leaders, far from being intimidated by this demonstration of
vigor on the part of the government, immediately summoned a similar
meeting in Manchester, announcing their intention to elect a
representative of that great town likewise, which, though the largest of
all the manufacturing towns, was also unrepresented in the Imperial
Parliament. The magistrates prohibited the meeting. It was only
postponed for a week, when the people assembled in such formidable
numbers (no estimate reckoned them at fewer than 60,000), that the
ordinary civil authorities deemed themselves unequal to dealing with it,
and called in the aid first of the Yeomanry and then of a hussar
regiment. The soldiers behaved with great forbearance, as soldiers
always do behave on such occasions; but they were bound to execute the
orders which were given them to arrest s