half, and had taken up the ques. tion on the ground which her partisans afterwards endeavoured to maintain; but he had no connexion or intimacy with her majesty, and could not, at that time, be regarded as holding a regular commission in the ranks of the Opposition.

No other business of importance was brought forward in this parliament. Having on the 28th of February been prorogued till the 13th of March, it was on the same day dissolved by proclamation, and the necessary steps for summoning a new parliament were immediately taken. The speech, which the lords commissioners, by the mouth of the chancellor, addressed to both to both Houses immediately before the prorogation, was in the following words:

-

"My Lords and Gentlemen ; "We are commanded by his majesty to inform you, that it is a great disappointment to his majesty, that on this first and solemn occasion he is prevented, by indisposition, from meeting you in person.

"It would have been a consolation to his majesty, to give utterance in this place to those feelings, with which his majesty and the nation alike deplore the loss of a sovereign, the common father of all his people.

"The king commands us to inform you, that in determining to call without delay the new parliament, his majesty has been influenced by the consideration of what is most expedient for public business, as well as most conducive to general conveni

ence.

66

My Lords and Gentlemen ;

"We are commanded to inform you, that, in taking leave of the present parliament, his majesty cannot refrain from conveying to you his warmest assur ances of the sense which his majesty entertains of the important services which you have rendered the country.

"Deeply as his majesty lamented that designs and practices such as those which you have been recently called upon to res press, should have existed in this free and happy country, he cannot sufficiently commend the prudence and firmness with which you directed your attention to the means of counteracting them.

"If any doubt had remained as to the nature of those principles by which the peace and happiness of the nation were SO seriously menaced, or of the excesses to which they were likely to lead, the flagrant and sanguinary conspiracy which has lately been detected must open the eyes of the most incredulous, and must vindicate to the whole world the justice and expediency of those measures to which you judged it necessary to resort, in defence of the laws and constitution of the kingdom."

THE conspiracy alluded to in

the conclusion of the speech of the lords commissioners, was one of the most atrocious, though extravagant, plots recorded in history. Its ultimate end was, to effect a revolution; its immediate object, the assassination of the ministers. The persons engaged in it were few in number, low in situation, without knowledge, resources, or foresight. They thought, however (and in this they were not mistaken), that twenty or thirty abandoned miscreants composed a force strong enough to murder the cabinet ministers; and the perverseness of their ignorant minds, blinded by envy and revenge, deluded them with the idea, that, if the work of murder was once completed, the career of power lay open before them.

The framer of this plot was Arthur Thistlewood. Born about the year 1770, he started in life originally with some fortune, and with a fair proportion of the ad

vantages of education.

He was

a subaltern officer, first, in the militia, and afterwards in a regiment of the line, stationed in the West Indies. After having resigned his commission, and spent some time in America, he passed into France, where he arrived shortly after the fall of Robespierre. There he seems to have inbibed all the opinions of which that unhappy country was the propagator and the victim, and to have adopted the belief, that the destruction of the institutions of his country was the only object worthy of the labours of a man. He had been deeply engaged in the wicked and absurd scheme of Dr. Watson. Having, like the Doctor, been acquitted, he thought proper, soon afterwards, to send a challenge to lord Sidmouth. His lordship had recourse to the laws of the land, and Thistlewood was punished by fine and imprisonment. Upon his liberation, in August, 1819, he found himself in circumstances which stimu

lated the natural violence and habitual corruption of his character. Ambitious, without any of those advantages of fortune or talent, by which, in the regular course of things, ambition can be gratified, he found himself excluded from every respectable class in society, without sources of present enjoyment, and without hopes of future improvement in his condition. He now associated only with the most degraded of the lowest and poorest class, spending his time in forming and maintaining connexions with men, whose poverty and profligacy fitted them for any enterprise, however nefarious.

Though he no doubt surveyed with pleasure the dissatisfaction which pervaded a large part of the community towards the latter end of 1819, he seems to have had little connexion with the tumults that were excited, or with the popular demagogues who created and fomented them. Seditious speeches and writings were of so little value with him, that he spoke of Hunt and Cobbett as mere tools of ministers in his eyes, bloodshed and murder were the only true tests of patriotism. Gradually he collected around him a number of individuals, equally desperate with himself, all bent on the destruction of the ministers, though the time and means were not yet determined on. Ings, a butcher-Tidd and Brunt, shoemakers-and a man of colour, of the name of Davidson, were his principal confidents. Meetings of these men and of their associates were frequently held in a room hired for that purpose, in a court adjacent to Gray's-Inn-lane. The conver

sation always turned on the necessity of murdering the ministers, and subverting the government. After the death of the king, the meetings were held twice a day, and began to take a more determinate aim. At one time it was proposed, that, availing themselves of the absence of the greater number of the troops, in consequence of the royal funeral, they should endeavour to get possession of the metropolis; but this scheme was rejected, as not involving the sure destruction of the ministers.

At last, on Saturday, the 19th of February, it was resolved, at one of their meetings, that poverty did not allow them to delay their purposes any longer, and that, therefore, on the next Wednesday, the ministers should be murdered separately, each in his own house. On Sunday they arranged their plans. Forty or fifty men were to be set apart for the work of murder; and whoever failed through any fault of his own, in performing the task assigned to him, was to atone for his failure with his life. Two separate detachments were at the same time to seize two pieces of cannon stationed in Gray's-Innlane, and six in the Artillery ground. The Mansion-house was to be proclaimed the palace of the provisional government; the Bank was to be attacked forthwith; and London was to be set fire to in different quarters.

Meetings were again held on Monday and Tuesday; and on the latter day, a conspirator, named Edwards, informed Thistlewood, that there was to be a cabinet dinner on the morrow. Thistlewood, doubting the information, sent for a newspaper, and

finding it announced, that a cabinet dinner was to be given at lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor-square on Wednesday evening, "As there has not been a dinner so long," said he, " there will no doubt be fourteen or sixteen there, and it will be a rare haul to murder them all together." According to the fresh arrangements now determined on, one of their number was to go with a note addressed to lord Harrowby; when the door was opened to him, a band of the conspirators were to rush in; and while some seized the servants, and prevented any one from escaping from the house, others, forcing their way into the room where the ministers were assembled, were to murder them without mercy. It was particularly specified, that the heads of lords Sidmouth and Castlereagh were to be brought away in a bag. From lord Harrowby's house two of their number were to proceed to throw fire-balls into the strawshed of the cavalry barracks in King-street, while the rest were to co-operate in the execution of the subsequent parts of the scheme.

In the mean time spies were dispatched to watch lord Harrowby's house, and to ascertain that no police officers or soldiers were concealed within it, or close to it. The next day was spent in preparations. Their weapons and ammunition were put into a state of readiness, and proclamations were written, which it was intended to fix to the houses that were to be set on fire. In the course of the day several of the infatuated wretches met, from time to time, at the old place of rendezvous; and, towards six in the evening, they assembled in

a stable, situated in an obscure street, called Cato-street, in the neighbourhood of the Edgwareroad. Besides the stable in the lower part, the building contained two rooms above, accessible only by a ladder, in the larger of which, a sentinel having been stationed below, the conspirators mustered, to the number of twenty-four or twenty-five, all busy in adjusting their accoutrements by the scanty light of one or two candles, and exulting in the near approach of the bloody catastrophe.

All their machinations, however, were known to the very men, whom they hoped within an hour to see lying butchered at their feet. One of the conspirators, Edwards, had, for some time, been in the pay of government, to whom he communicated every step that was taken. A man, too, of the name of Hidon, who had been solicited to enter into the plot, warned lord Harrow by of it, the day before that which was fixed for carrying it into execution. The ministers took no steps which might deter or alarm the ruffians; for it would have been the height of madness to have stopped them in their career of guilt. Interruption would have saved them from punishment, by rendering it impossible to procure evidence of the atrocious nature of the plot; so that they would have been let loose upon society, ready to enter into some new scheme of murder, which, by being intrusted to a smaller, or more select number, or by being attempted with less delay, might be followed by success. The preparations for the dinner went on at lord Harrowby's house till eight in the

evening, though, in fact, no dinner was to be given.

In the mean time, a strong party of Bow-street constables, under the direction of Mr. Birnie, proceeded to Cato-street, where they were to be met and supported by a detachment of the Coldstream guards. The police-officers reached the spot about 8 o'clock. They immediately entered the stable, and, mounting the ladder, found the conspirators in the loft, on the point of proceeding to the execution of their scheme. The principal officer called upon them to surrender. Smithers, one of the constables, pressing forward to seize Thistlewood, was pierced, by him, through the body, and immediately fell. The lights in the loft were now extinguished; some of the conspirators rushed down the ladder, and the officers along with them; others forced their way out by a window in the back part of the premises. At this moment, the detachment of the military arrived, somewhat later than the precise time fixed. Two of the conspirators, who were in the act of escaping, were seized by the joint exertions of the police and soldiers nine in all were taken that evening, and conveyed to Bow-street. This tlewood was among those who had escaped, but he was arrested next morning, in bed, in a house near Finsbury-square. Some others of them were seized in the course of the next two days.

On the 27th of March, true bills of indictment for high treason were found against eleven of the prisoners; and, on the 17th of April, Thistlewood was put upon his trial. The principal witness was a conspirator, of the

name of Adams, who having escaped from Cato-street, had been taken on the following Friday, and had remained in custody up to the time when he was produced in court to give evidence. After a trial which lasted three days, the accused was found guilty on those counts of indictment, which charged him with having conspired to levy and with having levied war against the king, Ings, Brunt, Tidd, and Davidson, were afterwards severally tried and convicted. The remaining six, permission to withdraw their former plea having been given, pleaded guilty. One of them, who appeared to have joined the meeting in Catostreet without being aware of its true purpose, received a pardon: the other five had their sentence commuted into transportation for life. Thistlewood, with the four whom we have named, suffered the sentence of the law, rather glorying in what they had attempted, and regretting their failure, than repenting of their atrocious guilt. [For the particulars of their trial and execution, we refer to the Appendix to the Chronicle, page 920.]

Some were found to complain of the use which government had made of spies on this occasion. But as the guilt of the prisoners was established by evidence altogether independent of Edwards, the case is free from the circumstance, which renders the use of spies most objectionable — the hazard of confiding in the testimony or information of men, who are professedly pursuing a system of deceit and treachery. If, indeed, Edwards had been the framer of the plot, and if the rest had only fallen into the snare