Another eye-witness says: "The shrieks of
women and the groans of men were to be heard
at some distance. Every person who attended
out of curiosity immediately fled. The crush
was so great in one part of the field that it
knocked down some outbuildings at the end of a
row of houses, on which there were at least
twenty or thirty persons, with an immense
crash. As I was carried along by the crowd,
I saw several almost buried in the ruins.
Others, in their anxiety to escape, had fallen
down, and had been trampled on by the populace."
The frightened people, helpless as scared
sheep, were pursued at full gallop by the sabrers
through all the avenues leading to St. Peter's
Field; and even the distant parts of the town
rang with the echoes of the hoofs of the
pursuers' horses. It was a cruel and brutal carnage.

That night the infirmary was crowded with
wounded and dying persons, gashed, trampled,
crushed, and bruised, their limbs fractured by
sabre blows or by the feet of the hussar horses.
Five or six were dead; thirty dangerously
wounded; forty much injured. A special
constable, Mr. Ashworth, landlord of the Bull's
Head, was killed; one of the Manchester
yeomen was beaten off his horse by a brickbat,
and had his skull fractured. No soldier appears
to have been even bruised, and only this one
yeoman, who, some said, was really injured by a
fall from his horse. About thirty of the
unfortunate wounded persons had been slashed with
sabres on the heads, hands, and shoulders.

That night, even though roused by this
cruelty, the Manchester people broke out into
no considerable riot. At half-past four the mob
again assembled at St. Peter's Church, and was
soon dispersed. They then gathered at New
Cross, a place inhabited by the lower Irish,
and broke open a shop. The military fired,
killed one man, and dangerously wounded
several others. The soldiers paraded the
streets all that night. All the roads leading
from that town to Middleton, Leigh, Royton,
presented a distressing spectacle of men,
women, and children, all hurrying homeward in
the greatest disorder, some with their clothes
torn, others lamed by the wounds they had
received in the affray. On Tuesday morning
several hundreds of persons were seen within
fourteen miles of Manchester still lying in the
fields by the roadside, overcome with fatigue, or
unable, from the injuries they had received, to
reach their homes.

Hunt and his friends were brought up
before the magistrates on the Friday following,
but were remanded till that day week, by
which time Bamford, Moorhouse, and others
were arrested. They were then again brought
up, and informed that government had, for
the present, abandoned the charge of high
treason, and that they would be only detained
till they should find bail to be tried for the
misdemeanour of having conspired to alter the
law by force and threats.

The Tories tried very hard to appear still
alarmed. The grand jury of the county of
Lancaster threw out all the bills against
individual Manchester yeomen for cutting and
maiming. An inquest sat at Oldham for nine
days on one of the sufferers, but the proceedings
at last grew confused and irregular, and were
quashed by the Court of King's Bench. The
more violent Tories even affected great satisfaction
at "the decisive and effective measures to
preserve public tranquillity" taken by the
Manchester magistrates. These were Lord
Sidmouth's own words in his letters to the lord-
lieutenants of Lancashire and Cheshire. The
attorney- and solicitor-general thought the
conduct completely justified. Lord Eldon was
blandly delighted. He pronounced the meeting
an overt act of treason, as "numbers
constituted force, force terror, and terror
illegality." He pressed very hard to arraign Hunt
for high treason, but was overruled. The orator
was eventually sent to Ilchester jail for two
years and a half. Sympathisers with the
sufferers were sharply rebuked. The Regent
himself majestically reproved the common council
of London for their address to him upon the
subject. Westminster, Norwich, York, Bristol,
Liverpool, and Nottingham, undaunted by this
awful reproof, sent in addresses, however,
condemning the magistrates and the weak but
coercive government. For attending a meeting at
York of twenty thousand persons, and signing a
requisition to the high sheriff, Earl Fitzwilliam
was deprived of the office of lord-lieutenant of
the West Riding. Sir Francis Burdett, for
fervently protesting, was proceeded against for
libel. The Duke of Hamilton, lord-lieutenant
of the county of Lanark, nevertheless sent fifty
pounds for the relief of the Manchester sufferers.

Many of the Tories loudly insisted that the
magistrates had acted rightly, and talked of "the
necessary ardour" of the troops. Lord
Redesdale even stupidly contended that all reform
meetings were overt acts of treasonable conspiracy.
Lord Eldon cried aloud for more
stringent acts of parliament, as there was
"nothing to be done now" but to let the meetings
take place, and reading the Riot Act if there was
a riot at any of them. That warm-hearted and
wise father (or rather stepfather) of his people,
the Regent, was also charmed with the Manchester
magistrates. He expressed his "approbation
and high commendation of the conduct of the
magistrates and civil authorities at Manchester,
as well as the officers and troops, both regular
and yeomanry cavalry, whose firmness and effectual
support of the civil power preserved the
peace of the town on that most critical occasion."

Calmly, it must be allowed that the magistrates
had done nothing illegal. But the wicked
folly was to send forty yeomen to break
through from fifty to eighty thousand people;
the cruelty was, before even a stone was
thrown, to proclaim the meeting a riot, and
to launch soldiers on a helpless mob, packed
together too close to be dangerous, even if it
had shown the slightest wish to be so. The
ground could have been occupied beforehand,
the meeting prevented by turning back the