§ Mr. Bennetsaid, he held in his hand a petition from a person of the name of Samuel Bamford, of Middleton, in the county palatine of Lancaster. It was drawn up in a manner extremely decorous in every point of view, and furnished one of the most singular specimens of the talents and good sense which were to be found among persons in the petitioner's rank of society. The petitioner set forth that he was one of those who conducted a large body of individuals to the meeting at Manchester of the 16th of August. He stated that he was intimately acquainted with the motives which induced individuals to attend that meeting, that he was perfectly cognizant of the propriety of the means which they intended to use to accomplish their objects, and that he was most solicitous to appear at the bar of that House to 510 be examined. As he (Mr. Bennet) had had two long conversations with the petitioner, he had no hesitation in saying that the information which it was in his power to give was of the highest importance, and he should like nothing better than to have the petitioner examined at the bar in order to demonstrate what he thought the petitioner capable of demonstrating, that many of the accusations brought forward against the people were very highly coloured, if not altogether unfounded. As the petition would be read, it was not his intention to enter into any detail of its contents. The petitioner, as far as he had been able to learn, bore the reputation of being an honest, moral, well-meaning man. As to his political opinions, they certainly were dissimilar from those which he held; but he was yet to learn that there was any thing treasonable or seditious in his entertaining sentiments which had, at different times, been upheld and avowed by the great and powerful in this country, and, amongst others, by the duke of Richmond. Under these circumstances, he begged leave to offer his petition to the consideration of the House and he sincerely hoped the House would grant the prayer, of the petitioner, and hear what he had to say on the different points which the petition embraced.
The petition was then read, setting forth.
"That the petitioner having read the papers relative to the internal state of the country, presented to, both houses of Parliament by command of the Prince Re-gent, and printed at the London Gazette Office, and which papers, the petitioner is informed, have been delivered to the members of the House as the foundation of certain legislative measures, tending to alter the laws and constitution of this realm, and a bridge the rights and liberties of the people, and knowing that many of the allegations contained in those papers are untrue, and many off the circum-stances described as facts are grossly misrepresented, while the proceedings and intentions of the people are unfairly discoloured and distorted in many of the documents contained in the said, papers: the petitioner hum by requests, that, for the purpose of disproving the allegations and representations contained in the said papers, he may be examined at the bar of the House, and confronted in person, or, by evidence, with the persons who have thus traduced a large body of his majesty's 511 loyal subjects, whose sole design, as must be well known to the petitioner, was to address his Royal Highness, humbly to represent their various grievances, and petition for such reforms as might have a tendency to remove them; that the petitioner, from an honest conviction that the greater part of the grievances under which the people labour might be removed by such a reform as would restore to the people their right of suffrage, and diminish the amount of taxation, by lessening the expenses of the state, and conceiving that he was amply protected by the laws in exercising all those rights of a freeman which the constitution has conferred upon him, has never hesitated to unite with is neighbours in furthering every measure which tended in a legal manner to bring about the said reforms, and nothing further has ever been in the contemplation of the petitioner, nor, he believes, in that of his neighbours, although the petitioner freely acknowledges that he has been a willing and active participator, from a sense of public duty, in most of the measures which are so grossly misconstrued and perverted, in the papers which have been so presented to the House; that, in regard to the system of pretended training for military purposes, to the preparation of flags, to the marching in a body from Middleton to Manchester, and to all the legitimate and justifiable objects of such measures the petitioner is prepared to speak at large, and to demonstrate by his own, and various evidence, that, so far from their involving any design to break the public peace, they were instituted for the very purpose of its preservation, and of giving that unity of action and feeling to every individual as should most effectually secure the harmony and good order of the great meeting of the friends of reform then meditated at Manchester; all which explanations of the petitioner would, if made at the bar of the House, fully satisfy its members, and the nation at large, that the friends of reform in Lancashire have been basely traduced and calumniated in the papers so presented as aforesaid: that the petitioner humbly trespasses further on the time of the House, to state, that he attended, with great numbers of his fellow townsmen and inhabitants of the adjacent villages, at the meeting held at Manchester on the 16th of August, for the sole and lawful purpose of giving their personal vote and countenance to an 512 address to the Prince Regent for redrese of grievances, and for certain reforms tending thereto; that the petitioner, and his neighbours as aforesaid, walked in procession to the said meeting, after the manner in which the procession of benefit clubs and other associations take place in Lancashire and other parts of England, and, to enable the said parties to move with due decorum, a couple of flags were provided, in accordance with the manners and customs of the people of England from time immemorial for purposes of the like nature, whether for elections or any other peaceable and lawful object, which flags were provided with such inscriptions or mottoes as, in the humble judgment of the persons who directed their construction, were suitable, and as are to be found in the works of the best moral and political writers; a band of music being also provided to aid in the purposes of the flags, and to confer cheerfulness and hilarity on the people; all which appurtenances usually characterise similar processions for every variety of peaceable or social design in that country, and are in like maner believed by the petitioner to-be characteristic of the peaceable manners and customs of the entire population of these realms; which several circumstances have been unfairly and unjustly described in the papers alluded to as aforesaid; that the petitioner and his neighbours arrived at the proposed place of general meeting at Manchester, for the purpose aforesaid, in the greatest hilarity and good order, intending mischief to none, and suspecting none towards themselves, therefore wholly unprepared with means of offence or defence, and many of them affording an indubitable plege of their sincerity and sense of security, by taking in their company their wives and female relatives; and that after they had been on the ground half an hour, and within ten minutes after the chairman had taken his station on the hustings, without any previous notice, riot, tumult, or disturbance, the assembly, consisting as is supposed of above a hundred thousand men, women, and children, who, as the petitioner believes, had been collected under similar circumstances, with similar views, to those which directed the petitioner and his neighbours, found themselves suddenly assaulted by a charge of the Manchester yeomanry cavalry, who sabred, rode down, and trampled upon every individual who could not escape them; by which, as the petitioner be- 513 lieves, several hundred unoffending persons were severely wounded, and some killed on the spot, while, owing to the endeavour of so many thousand persons to escape from this continued, persevering, and unrelenting outrage, they were driven one upon another, so as, in some cases, to press each other to death, break the limbs of others, and occasion many to be trampled upon, thereby producing a scene of complicated horrors, of which no powers of language possessed by the petitioner can convey to the House an adequate notion; that the petitioner beheld the whole of this frightful scene with feelings which can never be erased from his mind, and the impression of which would render it highly criminal if he forbore to do his duty to the unhappy sufferers, to his country, to the cause of justice, and to the House, by thus solemnly impeaching the veracity of the various statements made by parties implicated, and criminal in those unparalleled atrocities; that the petitioner, for the reasons above stated, and that the House may not be taken by surprise, by ex parte statements, and may not be led to adopt measures derogatory of its honour and dignity, but may, on the other hand, be induced to institute such rigorous and solemn inquiries as may, through the means of its power, bring the criminal authors who appear to be above the reach of the ordinary tribunals, and above the humble means of the sufferers, to condign punishment, humbly prays, that he may be permitted to prove all and every of the allegations contained herein at the bar of the House."
§ Ordered to lie on the table, and to be printed.