Houses of Parliament were in their way not inactive. The committees that
were appointed made their report, and bills were immediately brought in
to suspend the Habeas-Corpus Act, and to prevent seditious meetings;
which bills were, with very faint opposition, agreed to. It ought not to
be forgotten, that on this occasion the Whigs took a most prominent part
against the people, and that they were quite as loud and as violent
against the Reformers as the Ministers were. To be sure the people had
committed one inexpiable crime. They had by their steady, peaceable, and
persevering conduct, frightened the Whig leader, Mr. Ponsonby, out
of his sinecure of 4,000_l_. per annum, which he held in consequence
of his having been Lord Chancellor of Ireland, during the Whig
administration, in the year 1807. The cunning Scotchman, Erskine, who
had been for the same short period Lord Chancellor of England, was also
pressed very hard to follow the example of his Irish friend; but Sawney
was of a more tenaciously grasping nature, and he _stuck to the ship_,
determined to partake of the plunder as long as she would swim. It was
for this that the Whigs wreaked their malice upon the Reformers, and
that Mr. Brougham and his confederates appeared to run a race every
night which should most abuse and calumniate them.

The plot being ripe, Watson, Thistlewood, Preston, and Hooper, were
committed to the Tower for high treason. On the other hand, meetings
were held in Westminster, and in the city of London, to petition against
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The following petition of mine
was also presented to the House of Lords, by Lord Holland. I was below
the bar at the time his Lordship presented it, immediately before Lord
Sidmouth rose to move the passing of the Seditious Meetings Bill, and I
shall never forget the look that his Lordship, the Secretary of State,
gave me; for I stood right in front of the bar, and within a few yards
of him.