the best and most legal means of obtaining a reform in the Commons House
of Parliament."_ This meeting was no sooner assembled to the number of one
hundred and fifty thousand persons, young and old of both sexes, in the
most peaceable and orderly manner, than they were assailed by the
Manchester yeomanry cavalry, who charged the multitude, sword in hand, and
without the slightest provocation or resistance on the part of the people
(as was clearly proved by the trial at York), aided by two troops of the
Cheshire yeomanry, the 15th hussars, the 81st regiment of foot, and two
pieces of flying artillery, sabred, trampled upon, and dispersed the
unoffending and unresisting people, when 14 persons were killed and
upwards of 600 wounded. I, and eleven others, having, by a mere miracle,
escaped the military execution intended for us, were seized and confined
in solitary dungeons in the New Bailey, for eleven days and nights, under
a pretended charge of high treason. At the end of that time, upon a final
examination, I was sent under a military escort, upwards of fifty miles,
to Lancaster Castle, although bail was ready, and waiting to be put in for
me. After this sentence was passed, I was sent to the King's Bench Prison,
where I was confined till four o'clock on the Wednesday following, when I
was conveyed in a chaise to this prison, where I arrived at ten o'clock
the same night, being a distance of 120 miles. Thus, after having been
confined in _three separate jails_ since the 16th of August--the New
Bailey, at Manchester, Lancaster Castle, and the King's Bench, I am doomed
finally to be incarcerated in a dungeon of this, the _fourth jail_, for
two years and six months, while _Hulton_ of _Hulton_, and those benevolent
gentlemen of the Manchester yeomanry cavalry, are at large, without even
the chance of any proceedings, that might lead to the punishment of their
crimes, being instituted against them. Yet, we are gravely told from the
bench, that the laws are equally administered to the _rich_ and to the
_poor_; of the truth of which assertion, the above will, in future ages,
appear as an unexampled specimen.