defense, many of them persons of recognized standing and influence. They concurred in the peaceable conduct of the great mass of the people, of their non-resistance to the yeomanry, and of the absence of those mis siles which the crown witnesses had said were flying about when the militia appeared. None of them saw any cause for alarm while the meeting was in progress. Justice Bayley's able charge was a model of fairness. He cited Sergeant Hawkins' well-known defini tion of an illegal meeting: "A great number of people meeting under such circumstances as cannot but endanger the public peace and raise fears and jealousies among the king's subjects is an unlawful assembly, as no one can foresee what may be the event of such an assembly." But -mere numbers, he told the jury, did not make a meeting illegal; a num ber of persons might meet under such cir cumstances as were 'not calculated to raise terrors, fears or jealousies in the minds of the people of the neighborhood. But in an assembly so constituted, and met for a per fectly legal purpose, if any individuals intro duced themselves illegally in order to give to the meeting an undue direction, which would produce terror, then they would be guilty. He was not prepared to say that the appear ance of immediate danger was necessary to constitute the offense, and therefore, if, from the peaceable demeanor of the people, and the presence of women and children, the meeting was not calculated to produce a feeling of immediate danger, he recom mended that the jury find a special verdict to that effect. Notwithstanding this charge the jury, after long deliberation, found Hunt and three others guilty, as charged. Hunt was sentenced to twenty-nine months' imprison ment. One curious incident of this interesting trial may be mentioned. In the debates in Parliament following the meeting, Scarlett had been foremost in denouncing the con duct of the authorities. "What was the un
avoidable inference," he said, "but that opin ions, however absurd or preposterous, were to be put down by the bayonet, and that ministers intended to act on a system of mili tary coercion?" At the trial, Hunt was much incensed when Scarlet quoted from Hunt's prior speeches, not connected with the Man chester meeting. In retaliation he proposed to cite Scarlett's speech in Parliament as a basis for asking a witness whether he thought such a speech likely to incite vio lence. Justice Bayley admitted his right to do so, but requested, as a matter of delicacy, that the question be not put. Hunt there upon withdrew it. The Cote street conspiracy of 1820 was a more serious affair. It apparently involved the murder of the ministers, the seizing of the Bank and the Tower, and the setting up of a provisional government. But with all its horrors, the conspiracy was really con fined to a few ignorant men, and it is by no means certain that the plot would have so far matured had it not been accelerated by government spies. The leading conspirator was Thistlewood. After his acquittal along with Watson, in 1817, he had sent a challenge to Lord Sidmouth, for which he was impris oned a year. Released during the excite ment over the Peterloo Massacre, he fell in, according to his own story, with Edwards, the government spy, and became a willing instrument in the latter's hands. At all events, Edwards actively participated in the plot, and then exposed the result of his ef forts to the government. Thistlewood was convicted and executed (33 St. Tr. 681). Meanwhile, the government prosecutions in Scotland and Ireland had, as usual, sur passed those at home. In Scotland, M'Laren, a weaver, and Baird, a grocer, were tried in Edinburgh, in 1817, for sedition. The weaver had made an intemperate speech in advocacy of parliamentary reform, which the grocer had been concerned in printing. Although it was shown that petitions ex
