fellow-countrymen to _preside_ at a public meeting, was on the SIXTEENTH
OF AUGUST, 1801; and, for my zeal and devotion for the welfare and
safety of my country on that day, I received the approbation of Lord
Pembroke, the Lord Lieutenant of the county of Wilts. On the SIXTEENTH
OF AUGUST, 1819, that day eighteen years afterwards, my readers all
well know, and they will never forget it, that I was presiding at as
peaceable, as laudable, and as constitutional a public meeting, held at
Manchester, for the purpose of taking into consideration the best and
_most legal_ means of obtaining "a reform in the peoples' or Com- mons'
House of Parliament." But, instead of then receiving the thanks of the
Lord Lieutenant of the county, I was assaulted by a military force,
imprisoned, sentenced to be incarcerated in the worst, the most
unwholesome, and the most infamous county gaol in the kingdom, for
TWO YEARS and SIX MONTHS; while the butchers who murdered fifteen or
sixteen, and maimed upwards of six hundred of their peaceable and
unresisting fellow creatures, received the thanks of the King for their
services.

This is a very extraordinary coincidence of circumstances, that the
_first_ and the _last_ public meeting at which I ever presided, should
have been on the SIXTEENTH OF AUGUST; and that they should have been
attended by such different results is equally worthy of notice. I am
quite sure, that I was actuated by the very same feeling, the same love
of country, the same anxiety for the well being of my fellow countrymen,
and the same self-devotion, at both these meetings; my great leading
object being to promote, as far as my humble means would permit, the
welfare, the freedom and the happiness of my fellow countrymen.

It will not, I think, be uninteresting to my friends, who honour me
by reading these memoirs, to state how I came by this letter of Lord