ned at
the Public Office, and the remainder was to be kept in reserve for
emergencies. The sittings of the magistrates were to be continuous day
and night, and other precautionary measures were resolved upon.

The town, the next morning, presented a most dismal appearance. The
shops in all the principal streets were closed, and remained so during
the day. Prom Moor Street to about a hundred yards beyond New Street
there was scarcely a pane of glass left entire. Most of the doors and
shutters were literally in splinters; valuable goods, in some of the
shops from which the owners had fled in terror the night before, were
lying in the smashed windows, entirely unprotected, and of the still
smoking and steaming ruins of the premises of Messrs. Bourne and Mr.
Leggatt nothing was left standing but the walls. The west side of the
Bull Ring, from "The Spread Eagle" to New Street, was in a similar
condition, but there had been no fires there. The whole area of the
Bull Ring was strewn with a strange medley of miscellaneous items.
Some one of the specials or police who had been on guard there during
the night, in a spirit of grim humour, had stuck up a half-burnt
arm-chair, in which they had placed, in imitation of a sitting figure,
one of the large circular tea-canisters from Messrs. Bourne's, which,
in its battered condition, bore some rough resemblance to a human
form. They had clothed it with some half-burned bed ticking; had
placed a shattered hat upon its summit; and, having made a small hole
in that part which had been the neck, had stuck therein a long clay
pipe. It had a very droll appearance. Feathers were flying about,
and fragments of half-consumed furniture were jumbled up with smashed
tea-chests and broken scales. The ground was black with tea, soaked by
the water from the fire-engines. The railings of St. Martin's Church
were in ruins, and Nelson's Statue was denuded of a great portion
of its handsome iron fence. The whole place looked as though it had
undergone a lengthened siege, and had been sacked by an infuriated
soldiery.

There is good reason for thinking that the riots were premeditated,
and had been arranged by some mysterious, secret conclave in London
or elsewhere. On this morning--the day _after_ the riots, be it
remembered--a letter was received by Messrs. Bourne, _bearing the
London post-mark of the day before_, of which the following is a copy,
in matter and in arrangement: