The Age of George III

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The Gag Acts (1817)

After the end of the French Wars, it became increasingly clear that England was suffering from great social, economic and political upheavals. These problems collectively became known as the 'Condition of England Question'. Many of these problems would have occurred eventually but had been speeded up by the effects of the French Wars on the country. Most of the major changes were the direct result of the French Wars. Others came from natural growth and change. The distress and discontent caused by these enormous changes were manifested in a series of events in the period 1811-19. In response to the Luddite riots, Spa Fields Riots and attack on the Prince Regent's carriage, the government

• suspended Habeas Corpus on 3 March (until 1 July, initially)
• prohibited Seditious meetings (Pitt's 1795 Act) and
• on 27 March, Sidmouth ordered the Lords Lieutenant to apprehend all printers, writers and demagogues responsible for seditious and blasphemous material.

The suspension of Habeas Corpus was illistrated by George Cruikshank in a cartoon showing Castlereagh "suspending" Liberty

Click on the image for a larger view

Sidmouth justified these measures in the House of Lords on 24 February 1817:

In many parts of the country, proceedings were still carried on of a most dangerous nature, and which could only come to the knowledge of ministers through the medium of persons who could not be brought into a court of justice... He required the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, in pity to the peaceable and loyal inhabitants of the country; he required it for the protection of the two Houses of Parliament, for the maintenance of our liberties, and for the security of the blessings of the constitution... To suspend the Habeas Corpus Act at the present moment would be to obstruct the commission of the most flagrant crimes, and check the hands of the sacreligious despoilers of the sacred fabric of the constitution. (Parliamentary Debates, 1st Series, vol.35, (1817) cols. 557-558)

Lord Grey, the leader of the Whigs in parliament, opposed the measures:

Perhaps, my lords, under so great an accumulation of misery, such exemplary patience, forbearance, resignation and confidence in the existing constitution and government of the country, were never before exhibited... . I think it is a most unfortunate circumstance, a most lamentable necessity, that, at this period of distress and misery, when no measure of relief has been adopted, when no one efficient measure of reduction and retrenchment has been carried into effect... a measure should be proposed which... may lead to some invasion or infringement of the people's rights. (Parliamentary Debates, 1st Series, vol.35, (1817) cols. 199-200).

Eight opposition peers entered a protest against the Seditious Meetings Bill on the grounds that

... it appears to us that this statute, in inflicting the penalty of death, is unjustly severe; that it gives to magistrates a formidable and unnecessary power, improperly controlling the general expression of opinion, and interfering both with the public and private meetings of the people, in times of which we consider the danger to be much exaggerated, and which we think call for measures of conciliation and relief, and not for coercion. (Parliamentary Debates, 1st Series, vol.35, (1817) col.1270)