HC Deb 23 February 1818 vol 37 cc589-90
Mr. Bennet

presented a Petition from George Bradbury; setting forth,

"That the Petitioner was always a distinguished loyal man, and he never learnt that petitioning the House was contrary to strict loyalty; the petitioner begs of the House to remark, that, for the exercising this lawful privilege, a warrant was granted against him by lord Sidmouth, and he was persecuted from his home and business for six weeks, and then arrested, heavily ironed, and conveyed to London like a murderer; the petitioner knew it could be proved that the character of reform had attempted to be changed into rebellion by police plots; on the petitioner's first examination before lord Sidmouth, he desired his lordship to send his warrants for two men of the names of Lomax and Waddington from Lancashire, and he pointed out fifteen evidences in the country who could prove their wicked attempts, and desired his lordship to send for these to prove Lomax and Wadding-ton's guilt, that they might be constrained to inform who employed them; his lordship excused himself by saying he knew the characters of Lomax and Waddington, these men had been employed to plot the burning of Manchester, and had got a number of men arrested on that charge to hang them: the petitioner begs to assure the House, that after his discharge in May he was applied to by Oliver and his agents to assist in leading three thousand men armed from Manchester to Chats-worth, in Derbyshire, the seat of the duke of Devonshire, to assist in a rebellion of the counties of Derby, Nottingham, and York; the petitioner rejected these attempts with disdain, and he warned the reformers to have nothing to do with these wicked men, and he desired the magistrates to stop them; the petitioner begs of the House to remark, that he afterwards offered himself as witness for the men who were hanged at Derby, to prove that Oliver had attempted to get Manchester to join them; but the petitioner could not be admitted; and he begs to assure the House, that he has suffered loss of character, ruin of business, and much personal injury; and he begs the House to show reform unnecessary, by loading with reprobation, rather than indemnifying those who have created so much misery, which will prove the House to study the interests of the people, its constituents."

Ordered to lie on the table, and to be printed.