Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/134

 I2O History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [i Sis- Nothing further happened, and without much force, but by the exercise of a little judicious firmness on the part of the lord-mayor and a few other gentlemen, the outbreak was suppressed. In the mean time, the other part of the meeting in Spa Fields went on, Hunt declaiming and the people shouting in favour of Parliamentary reform. That the reformers and the rioters were separate bodies was at the time well known. The " Annual Register " for the year says, " It seems certain that this insurrection, as it may be called, had no connection with the political meeting ; " * and the lord- mayor who had helped to suppress the riot, within a fortnight afterwards petitioned in favour of Parliamentary reform. In other parts of the country the same confused, and in many cases conflicting, agitations were being carried on. There were in every district men who, suffering intensely from existing distress, rushed blindly after some immediate remedy such as the Spencean and other social theorists had to offer ; and there were others who felt, and were taught by their political leaders, that it was only by the reform of the instru- ment of legislation that better government could be obtained. It has been found easy, by critics living in later and better times, to judge harshly of both sides of this movement ; to look down with an air of superiority on Major Cartwright and others, who saw in reform a possible cure for all the evils of the State ; and to condemn as visionaries and revolution- ists the advocates of a forcible settlement of social questions. We are able to see that some union of the two processes forms the true basis of political life ; that the people must acquaint themselves with the causes of the evils which exist, and with the means by which they can be removed, and must create such a machinery of government as will honestly use the means when they are discovered. At the end of 1816, how- ever, the Radicals were right in making Parliamentary reform their first and greatest object. They were in the presence of a Government to whom changes of any sort were equally detestable, and all who sought for change were equally revo-
 * "Annual Register," 1816, p. 191.