The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎99r] (202/244)

1892
NOTICEABLE
687
down the rocks of tlie mountain side, is noisy and obstreperous ; but
when it has grown to be a river, traversing the plains below, it moves
calmly as in the consciousness of strength. So it is with the Platform.
Its earliest manifestations were not always such as it can own with
credit. The disgraceful Gordon riots in 1780 may be said to have
taken their origin from a public meeting held on May 29, with Lord
George himself in the chair; and the pulpit, 3 which is essentially of
the Platform's kin, had in the preceding year blown its trumpet, and
had given rise to very serious disturbances in Glasgow and Edinburgh,
intended by their authors to procure the repeal of the first Eoman
Catholic Relief Act, passed in 1778.
Even, however, at that early period, the Platform had made good
its title to be deemed an instrument of good. In 1745, the county
of York met to support the Government. The choice between
Hanoverianism, as it then stood, and the House of Stuart, was a
somewhat sorry one; still, this was an effort on behalf, if not of the
greater good, yet of the lesser evil. The Platform also played a
creditable part in that resistance to aggressions on British freedom
which is rather incongruously associated with the name of Wilkes,
and in the promotion of the few reforms, which preceded the adminis
tration of Mr. Pitt.
In principle, it was fully recognised by the Constitution under two
well-known forms : those of the county meeting convened by the
sheriff, and of the hustings at elections, first made classical and
famous by Mr. Burke at Bristol. As public order was gradually
consolidated, voluntary association and assemblage grew up by a
thoroughly natural process around these older forms; for it is in the
light of a security for order that the intervention of the sheriff
in the matter of county meetings should be regarded. As, however,
the power and the practice grew, so did the jealousy of privileged
classes and of statesmen in power. The Platform was silenced during
the second and descending period of the statesmanship of Mr. Pitt.
With far less excuse, our legislation assumed under Lord Sidmouth a
character almost ferocious; and the slaughter of eleven persons at a
meeting in Manchester in 1819 denotes the high-water mark of
insolent repression. And not until the Eeform Bill of 1832 do we
reach the epoch, from which dates the rapid and continuous growth
of the Platform in its use and in its power.
As three F's were the watchword of the Irish tenant with refer
ence to Irish land, and three R's are supposed to supply the basis of
an education for the people, so, in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, three P's have denoted the instruments, by which British
freedom has been principally developed and confirmed. These three
P's are Petition, Press, and Platform. Immediately after the Reform
Act, the first of these was chiefly in vogue; and the Act for the
3 Jephson, i. 121. *
3 A 2