Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine | Page 5

sufferings, almost without a parallel, were borne with patience and resignation. Despair there might be in the hearts of thousands, but those thousands were mute and passive in their misery; all was dark, all was hopeless; the wintry wind of penury blew untempered, keen upon them, but still they cried not; hunger preyed upon their very vitals, but they uttered no complaint. Let us not, even now, refuse a passing tribute of honour and respect to the passive heroism which in many an instance marked the endurance of the hopeless misery of those dreadful times. At length, however, evil and designing men came among the sufferers--remedies for the pressing evil, and means of escape from the wretchedness of their condition, were darkly hinted at; redress was whispered to be near, and they, the hungry fathers of famished children, lent a greedy ear to the fair promises of men whom they deemed wiser than themselves. The tempter's seedtime had arrived, the ground was ready, and the seed was sown. Day by day, nay, hour by hour, was the bud of disaffection fostered with the greatest care; and, day by day, its strength and vitality increased. When, at length, the people were deemed ripe for action, the mask was thrown off, treasonable schemes and projects were openly proclaimed by the leaders of the coming movement, and echoed, from a hundred hills, by vast multitudes of their deluded followers. Large meetings were daily held on the neighbouring moors, where bodies of men were openly trained and armed for active and offensive operations. At length the insurrection, for such in truth it was, broke forth. Then living torrents of excited and exasperated men poured down those hillsides; the peaceful and well-affected were compelled to join the insurgent ranks, busy in the work of destruction and intimidation; when each evening brought the work of havoc to a temporary close, they laid them down to rest where the darkness overtook them. The roads were thus continually blockaded, and those who, under cover of the night, sought to obtain aid and assistance from less disturbed districts, were often interrupted and turned back by bodies of these men. Authority was at an end, and a large extensive district was completely at the mercy of reckless multitudes, burning to avenge the sufferings of the past, and bent on preventing, as they thought, a recurrence of them in future. The very towns were in their hands; "in an evil hour" a vast body of insurgents was "admitted" into one of the largest mercantile towns of the kingdom, where they pillaged and laid waste in every direction. In another town of the district a fearful riot was put down by force, some of the leaders of the mob being shot dead while heading a charge upon the military. The ascendancy of the law was at length asserted; many arrests took place; the jails were crowded with prisoners; and the multitudes without, deserted by those to whom they had looked up for advice, their friends in prison, with the unknown terrors of the law suspended over them, probably then felt that, miserable and lost as they had been before, they had now fallen even lower in the scale of human misery. Criminal proceedings were quickly instituted. Several commissions were sent down to the districts in which these disturbances had take place, in order that the offenders might meet with speedy punishment. The law officers of the crown, with many and able assistants, in person conducted the proceedings. Temperate, mild, dignified, and forbearing was their demeanour; in no case was the individual the object of prosecution; it was the _crime_, through the person of the criminal, against which the government proceeded. No feelings of a personal nature were there exhibited; and a mild, but firm, as it were, a parental correction of erring and misguided children, seemed to be the sole object of those who then represented the government. Conviction was heaped upon conviction--sentence followed sentence--the miserable tool was distinguished from the man who made him what he was--the active emissary, the secret conspirator, also received each their proportionate amount of punishment. True, a few of the more cautious and crafty, all included in one indictment, eventually escaped the penalty due to their crimes; but, among the multitude of cases which were then tried, this was, we believe, the only instance even of partial failure. In spite of this single miscarriage of the government, the great object of these proceedings was completely answered; the end of all punishment was attained; the vengeance which the law then took had all the effect which the most condign punishment of these few men could have accomplished; the constitutional maxim of "_poena ad paucos, metus ad omnes_," has been amply illustrated by these proceedings; Chartism has been