it must be admitted that he condemned the use of
physical force, and pointed to parliamentary reform as the legitimate
cure for all social evils. Reform, however, in Cobbett's meaning
included universal suffrage with annual parliaments, and the Hampden
clubs, all over the country, agitated for the same objects in less
guarded language. Still, looking back at these democratic agencies by
the light of later experience, we can hardly adopt the opinion expressed
by a secret committee of the house of commons that their avowed objects
were "nothing short of a revolution".

It was on December 2, 1816, that the extreme section of reformers, now
for the first time known as radicals, in alliance with a body of
socialists called Spenceans, first came into open collision with the
forces of the law. A meeting was announced to be held on that day in Spa
Fields, Bermondsey, and was to be addressed by "Orator" Hunt, Major
Cartwright, the two Watsons, and other demagogues. Hunt was a gentleman
of Somerset, and had stood for Bristol in 1812. Though a prominent
speaker, he in no sense directed the movement. Burdett and Cochrane, the
orthodox leaders of London reformers, were not concerned in this
demonstration, which, according to an informer who gave evidence, was to
be the signal for an attack upon the Tower and other acts of atrocity.
As it was, before Hunt chose to appear, the mob, headed by the younger
Watson, broke into gunsmiths' shops, not without bloodshed, and marched
through the Royal Exchange, but were courageously met by the lord mayor,
with a few assistants, and very soon dispersed. The alarm produced in
the whole nation by this riotous fiasco was quite out of proportion to
its real importance, and was reawakened by an insult offered to the
prince regent on his return from opening parliament on January 28, 1817.
Even Canning, a life-long opponent of reform, did not scruple to magnify
these and similar evidences of popular restlessness into proofs of a
deep-laid plot against the constitution, and committees of both houses
urged the necessity of drastic measures to put down a conspiracy against
public order and private property. These measures took the form of bills
for the suppression of seditious meetings, and for the suspension until
July 1 of the _habeas corpus_ act, which had been uninterruptedly in
force since its suspension by Pitt had expired in 1801. This last bill
was passed on March 3, and, before the other became la