The Annual Register

THE

ANNUAL REGISTER,

OR A VIEW OF THE

HISTORY,

POLITICS ,

AND

LITERATURE,

For the YEAR 1819.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY;
J. OTRIDGB; S. CUTHELL; LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN;

E. JEFFERY AND SON; LACKINGTON AND CO.; J. BELL; J. ASPERNE; AND
SHERWOOD, NEELEY, AND JONES.

Printed by T. C. Havsard, Peterborough-Court, Fleet-Street, London.

PREFACE.

The domestic annals of the year 1819 are replete with subjects of deep, but, on the whole, of painful interest. Pecuniary distress has been nearly universal: the agricultural, the commercial, and the manufacturing interests, have all labored under depression and embarrassment seldom equalled, and none of them yet appear to have attained the crisis of their difficulties.

That portion of the people engaged in the labors of husbandry, little susceptible, from their dispersed habitation and rustic manners, of political excitement, endured the evils of their lot without audible murmurs, or any expression of hostility against the established order of society, or the conduct of government. In some manufacturing districts also, severe distress was sustained with mute resignation ; in others the case was widely different: Political agitators, taking advantage of the general misery to gain the attention of the laboring class, went about industriously disseminating their doctrines through the great centres of manufacture in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Warwickshire, and the south-west of Scotland; and field-meetings of hundreds and thousands were repeatedly assembled to listen to harangues on the abuses of government, and on the necessity of a radical reform of the House of Commons as a first step towards the alleviation of the distresses of the country. A spirit was thus excited among the people which was contemplated by the administration, and by the higher classes in general, with jealousy and alarm. The Prince Regent issued a proclama

а tion against seditious meetings, and soon after, an assemblage at Manchester, summoned to petition for parliamentary reform, was dispersed by military force. This act of power, followed up by various strong measures on the part of vernment, and especially by the enactment of five new bills, restricting in several important points the liberty of the subject, put a sudden check upon the active measures of the

reformers ;

reformers; but not without the dangerous effect of re-
kindling throughout the country, the flame of political
animosity.

Some efforts were made to disburthen the country of a

population felt to be redundant, in the present depressed

state of commerce and manufactures, by affording encou-

ragement to emigration. In the first session of the year a

parliamentary grant of 50,0001. was voted, for the purpose

of establishing settlers on the eastern border of the colony

of the Cape of Good Hope. Means were also taken to

invite public attention to the advantages promised to free

settlers on the shores of the great Austrasian continent, and

a second exploratory journey undertaken by direction of the

governor of New South Wales, has discovered a large tract

of fertile and uninhabited land ready to become an addi-

tional province of the future British empire in the southern

hemisphere.

The poor-laws, with the influence exerted by them on the con-
dition moral and political, of the lower classes;—the state of
prisons andof prison discipline ;-and the state and actual

ope-
ration of that portion of the criminal laws under which capital
punishment is denounced ;-all subjects of high importance,
and bearing upon each other by several points ;-have under
gone the laborious and able investigation of parliamentary
committees; and copious extracts from their reports and
minutes of evidence will be found in this volume. These
documents, which are not regularly accessible to the public
at large, will, it is hoped, be regarded as a valuable addition
to the contents of an Annual Register; at a period, espe-
cially, when the sciences of legislation and of political eco-
nomy are cultivated with an ardor absolutely unprecedented,
and when the active benevolence so long characteristic of
the English nation, is daily becoming, under their guidance,
more reflecting, and more enlightened.

CONTENTS.