ixteenth century--they were very commonly
spoken of as Lord Sidmouth's Six Acts, that noble lord being the
Home-secretary, to whose department they belonged. It is not necessary
here to do more than mention the general purport of five of them. One
prohibited military training without the sanction of the government;
another empowered magistrates to search for arms which they had reason
to believe were collected for illegal purposes; the third authorized the
seizure of seditious and blasphemous libels; the fourth subjected
publications below a certain size to the same stamp as that required for
a newspaper; the fifth regulated the mode of proceeding in trials for
misdemeanor of a political character. But these enactments were regarded
as little more than arrangements of detail or procedure involving no
principles, and some of them were admitted even by the most steadfast
opponents of the ministers to be necessary. But the sixth, designed to
restrain the practice of holding large open-air meetings--not, indeed,
forever, but for a certain period, fixed at five years--was strongly
resisted by the greater portion of the Whig party in both Houses, as a
denial to the people of one of their most ancient and constitutional
rights.[179]

Its principal clauses enacted that "no meeting exceeding the number of
fifty persons (except a meeting of any county or division of any county,
called by the Lord-lieutenant or sheriff of such county, etc., or by
five or more acting justices of the peace for such county, or by the
major part of the grand-jury; or any meeting of any city, borough, etc.,
called by the mayor or other head officer of such city, etc.) should be
holden for the purpose or on the pretext of deliberating upon any public
grievance, or upon any matter relating to any trade, manufacture, etc.,
or upon any matter of Church or State, or of considering, proposing, or
agreeing to any petition, address, etc., etc., unless in the parish or
township within which the persons calling any such meeting usually
dwell;" and it required six days' notice of the intention to hold such
meetings, with their time, place, and object, to be given to a
magistrate. It empowered the magistrate to whom such notice was given to
alter the time and place. It forbade adjournments intended to evade
these prohibitions. It forbade any one to attend such meetings except
freeholders of the county, or parishioners of the parish, or members of
the corporation o