was cheering. This exhibition was calculated to harden the distressed
inhabitants of the metropolis who witnessed his execution, and thousands
felt and exclaimed that it was much better and easier to encounter death
in such a way than to endure the lingering torture of being starved
to death. The multitude did not fail to shower down their deepest
execrations against all those who were concerned in this affair, and the
public were so exasperated at what was justly called the murder of this
man, that, had the poor fellow shewn any disposition to avoid that death
which he appeared rather to court, there is little doubt but he would
have been rescued, in spite of the host of constables and police
officers that attended the execution.

A system of terror was now the order of the day. The reader will bear in
mind that a Bill had passed both Houses of Parliament, and only waited
for the Royal Assent, to make it death to attend any seditious meeting;
at least to make it death not to disperse when ordered by any Magistrate
or public officer. It was under such auspices that a public county
meeting for Wiltshire was called, and appointed to be held at Devizes.
This meeting was called, as in Hampshire, by the great aristocratical
leaders of both the Whig and Tory factions. It will be remembered that
I had given Mr. Cobbett a freehold, to enable him to take part in the
Wiltshire county meetings, all of which, that had been subsequently
held, he had attended with me, and at all these Wiltshire county
meetings the resolutions and petitions proposed by myself and Mr.
Cobbett had been invariably carried. The meeting now in question was to
be convened the latter end of March, or the beginning of April. On my
leaving London, Mr. Cobbett had promised to meet me at Devizes, on the
day appointed. I went to Devizes, with my friend Mr. William Akerman, of
Potney, at whose house I had slept the preceding night. When we arrived
at the Castle Inn, the place of rendezvous, I was surprised to find