Men, hopeless of reform by any means but
force, who could sign such an oath, were quite
ready to burn Bristol, or to plot with the Cato–
street conspirators. That wise minister of Henry
Quatre, Sully, speaking from the depth of his
long life's experience, and in an age of
revolutions, said, profoundly: "The people never
revolt from fickleness or the mere desire of change.
It is the impatience of suffering that alone
produces revolutions." Looking back now, we can
all see clearly the misery that gave rise to the
troubles of 1816–1830, and we can deplore the
violence that so long delayed the irresistible
advance of reform.

Narrow–minded, severe men, like Lord Sidmouth,
supposed all the Radicals of that period
were incendiaries and Jacobins. But there
were many strands to the rope by which
reform was slowly dragged up from the bottom of
the Dead Sea of Chinese conservatism. There
were shrewd honest sincere, though embittered
and virulent men, like Gobbet; calm tiresome
enthusiasts, with one idea, like old Major Cartwright;
selfish blustering glib demagogues, like
Orator Hunt; dignified condescending persistent
men of the people, like Sir Francis Burdett;
dangerous revengeful malignant adventurers,
like Thistlewood; and bluff disappointed
venturous politicians, like dauntless Lord Cochrane.

The ministers fervently believed that the
reformers intended to overthrow the government,
to plunder the City, to subdivide land, to throw
open the prisons, to fire the barracks, to attack
the Tower and the Bank, and to barricade
London–bridge in order to stop the artillery
coming from Woolwich. According to the
reports of their spies, soldiers were to be bribed
with a hundred guineas each. The wild talk of
a few starving desperate men was represented
to Lord Sidrnouth as the deliberate plans of all
the radical clubs in England. The informers had
disclosed that the five commanders of the people
were to be Thistlewood, then a subaltern in the
Marines; "Dr." Watson, a quondam surgeon,
his son, Castle (the spy), and Preston, a lame
operative. Pikes and arms were already
provided, and points of attack selected. The army
once bought over, the Committee of Public
Safety was to consist of such true patriots as
Sir Francis Burdett, Alderman Wood (the Lord
Mayor), Lord Cochrane, Orator Hunt, Major
Cartwright, Gale Jones (a chemist), Roger
O'Connor, Mr. Fawkes (a Yorkshire squire),
Sam Brookes, Thompson of Holbom–hill, the
Watsons, and that indefatigable plotter,
Thistlewood.

The Spenceans were great workers in these
agitations. These theorists were disciples of a
Yorkshire schoolmaster who had been
prosecuted in 1800 for an absurd plan of making the
government farm all the land in England, and
divide the produce among the people. The
high–flown speculators in moonshine held their
meetings in humble places at the Cock in
Grafton–street Soho, at the Mulberry Tree in
Moorfields, the Nag's Head in Carnaby Market,
and a public–house in Lumber–street, Borough.

It was to a conglomeration of such dupes,
dupers, speculators, fanatics, and madmen,
that London was indebted for the Spafields
riots. Quiet reformers were the gulls
of the violent and the sanguine; and the
violent were the gulls of the infamous spies,
who urged and goaded them to immediate
action, and exaggerated the sympathy and
support with which their outbreak would be
received. Many credulous men, rendered
impatient by hunger, believed that any change
must be for the best, and that the mob had only
to rise and seize their rights from a paralysed
ministry.

In the mean time, Cobbett (who, a year
later, had to fly to America to avoid
prosecution) sowed his Weekly Register broadcast
over the country, rousing the people to
claim their privileges, and teaching them many
bitter but wholesome lessons. The whole country
was in a state of effervescence like a seidlitz–
powder glass when the powder of the white
packet meets the powder of the blue: over
London, especially, the air seemed heavy with
thunder–clouds. The rat–catcher was watching,
with his dogs ready in leash, eager for an overt
act which would enable him to pull the slips.
Great must have been the alarm and yet delight
of Lord Sidmouth when he heard that Orator
Hunt had convened a great reform meeting in
Spafields, on the 15th of November, 1816.
Now he should have them. The Guards soon
received their orders how to act, to prevent the
anticipated plunder and conflagration of the city.

Spafields—so called from the chalybeate
springs between that district and Sadler's Wells,
popular with London citizens about the reign of
George the Second, and since neglected—consisted,
in 1816, of a large unenclosed space, with
Coldbath–fields prison (erected in 1794) on one
side, frowning down on it with its dismal spiked
walls. It was accessible from Smithfield on the
south, the City–road on the east, Islington on
the north, Pentonville on the west. The
Merlin's Cave public–house, being adjacent, was
convenient for men thirsty with bawling and
huzzaing, and the forbidding sooty bulk of the
prison was most useful as an object of
denunciation for the speech–makers.

When a government is oppressive, and the
people are starving, demagogues spring up
as surely as the yellow leather fungus starts
from rotten timber. They are glib men, who
trade on public grievances. Their business
is to natter and to inflame. The more sincere
they are, the more dangerous. Hunt was
probably, in his way, honest, seeing that he died a
quiet member of parliament, and a peaceful
vendor of roasted corn and blacking. It was his
profession to agitate, and his inordinate vanity
required the incessent applause of the mob.

This Hunt, whom Thistlewood afterwards
denounced as a secret spy, whose name would
be found first in the Whitehall ledger, was an
Essex farmer, a tall stout healthy fair
man, rather handsome, but with an irritable
and spiteful mouth. He had fair hair, a double