A Hundred Years Ago
THE " SPECTATOR," NOVEMBER Eth, 1831.
• NEWS OF THE WEEK.
The great city of Bristol, since our last publication, has been t.ho scene of a series of disturbances unparalleled in the modern history of England. Several hundred individuals have been killed. or wounded in the riot and its suppression. The Customhouse, the Excise Office, the Bishop's palace, the public gaols, and more than forty private houses, have been burned down ; property to the amount of half a million has been plundered and destroyed. We give the melancholy and disgraceful details of these outrages else- where ; we notice them here only for the purpose of pointing the moral that belongs to them.
MARCH OF ROGUERY.
A fellow, suspected to be a thief, was stopped on Monday morning at Barnet, by the officers there. When questioned, he declared-, with great appearance of earnestness, that he was bearer of an express from Tamworth to London, to announce that Sir Robert Peel had committed suicide. Of course, he was immediately per- mitted to go on. The story was just as true as that the Reformers sacked Bristol.
ENERGETIC MEASURES.
On Saturday last, a couple of workhouse boys were sent, by order of one of the dignitaries of the Church, round the town of Dereham with a mop and pail, to wash from the walls the ominous words " Reform," " Pay no tithes," " Downwith the Bishops." [We do not know what farther steps are meditated, but one mop, one pail, and two whole boys, against the people of England, indicate something very serious.]
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