and Ings.
Thistlewood, the best known of them, was a brave soldier, and had served
with distinction as an officer in the French service; he was one of the
excellent swordsmen of Europe; had fought several duels in France, where
it is no child's play to fight a duel; but had never unsheathed his sword
for single combat, but in defence of the feeble and insulted--he was kind
and open-hearted, but of too great simplicity; he had once ten thousand
pounds left him, all of which he lent to a friend, who disappeared and
never returned a penny. Ings was an uneducated man, of very low stature,
but amazing strength and resolution; he was a kind husband and father,
and though a humble butcher, the name he bore was one of the royal names
of the heathen Anglo-Saxons. These two men, along with five others, were
executed, and their heads hacked off, for levying war against George the
Fourth; the whole seven dying in a manner which extorted cheers from the
populace; the most of then uttering philosophical or patriotic sayings.
Thistlewood, who was, perhaps, the most calm and collected of all, just
before he was turned off, said, "We are now going to discover the great
secret." Ings, the moment before he was choked, was singing "Scots wha
ha' wi' Wallace bled." Now there was no humbug about those men, nor
about many more of the same time and of the same principles. They might
be deluded about Republicanism, as Algernon Sidney was, and as Brutus
was, but they were as honest and brave as either Brutus or Sidney; and as
willing to die for their principles. But the Radicals who succeeded them
were beings of a very different description; they jobbed and traded in
Republicanism, and either parted with it, or at the present day are eager
to part with it for a consideration. In order to get the Whigs into
power, and themselves places, they brought the country by their
inflammatory language to the verge of a revolution, and were the cause
that many perished on the scaffold; by their incendiary harangues and
newspaper articles they caused the Bristol conflagration, for which six
poor creatures were executed; they encouraged the mob to pillage, pull
down and burn, and then rushing into garrets looked on. Thistlewood
tells the mob the Tower is a second Bastile; let it be pulled down. A
mob tries to pull down the Tower; but Thistlewood is at the head of that
mob; he is not peeping from a garret on Tower Hill like Gulliver at
Lisbon. Thistlew