were ignorant of the cause of their distresses, and they wreaked their
vengeance upon the knitting frames, machinery in general, and destroyed
the property of their employers. These excesses they were, no doubt, led
to in consequence of the delusions and deception practised upon them
by the venal hirelings of the public press, under the influence and
controul of the Government. Every particle of the real liberty of the
press was nearly destroyed; almost every liberal writer in the kingdom
had been prosecuted by the _ex-officio_ informations of the vindictive
and remorseless tyrant, Sir Vicary Gibbs, the Attorney-General,
encouraged by the equally cruel and remorseless Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Spencer Perceval. Mr. Cobbett, Messrs. Hunts, of the
_Examiner_, Mr. Drakard, of the _Stamford News_, Mr. Peter Finnerty,
and other literary characters, were incarcerated in the dungeons of
the borough-mongers. Under this system eight persons were executed at
Manchester for rioting, and many others suffered death in various parts
of the country.

While Napoleon in person had been successful in every battle that he
fought, and had penetrated even to the Russian capital, his Generals in
the south had been much less successful, probably in consequence of
the main energies of the empire being directed to the great object of
subduing the powerful Autocrat. The French armies in Spain sustained
several signal defeats. Ballasteros defeated the French, and the grand
combined army, under Wellington, stormed Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos.
This army also took Salamanca on the 16th of June. On the 1st of July
it was ascertained that the number of prisoners of war in England was
54,517. Another battle was fought at Salamanca, on the 23d of July, when
the French were again defeated by Wellington's army. On the 11th of
August, Lord Wellington entered Madrid, and on the following day the
French evacuated Bilboa. On the 19th of August, Soult abandoned the