WE PITY THE PLUMAGE, BUT FOEGET

THE DYING BIED."

AN

ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE

ON

The Death of the Princess Charlotte.

BY

Cfie permit of JWarloto.

 AN ADDRESS, &c.'

I. THE Princess Charlotte is dead. She no longer

moves, nor thinks, nor feels. She is as inanimate as the

clay with which she isabout to mingle. It is a dread-

ful thing to know that she is a putrid corpse, who but a
few days since was full of life and hope a woman young, ;

innocent, and beautiful, snatched from the bosom of

domestic peace, and leaving that single vacancy which
none can die and leave not.

II. Thus much the death of the Princess Charlotte has

in common with the death of thousands. How many
»
This work is constantly spoken MacCarthy {Shelley's Early lAfe^
of as being entitled We Pity the p. 394) points out that
Shelley may
Plumage but Forget the Dying Bird. probably have adopted the words
That this is not the title is evident from the following passage in The
from the fact that the opening of "
It was
Rejlector (Vol. I, p. 17) :
the address is headed An Address, pertinently said of the pathetic
dkc. ; and in the setting of the title- language which Mr. Burke, in his
page by which alone we know
the later writings, occasionally held on
tract, that of the reprint, there is constitutional topics, that he pitied
nothing to justify the supposition the plumage, but neglected the
that the words employed as a motto wounded and suffering bird."
were meant for the title. Mr.
102 AN ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE ON THE

women die in childbed and leave their families of

motherless children and their husbands to live on,

blighted by the remembrance of that heavy loss ? How

many women of active and energetic virtues ; mild,
affectionate, and wise, whose life is as a chain of happi-
ness and union, which once being broken, leaves those
whom it bound to perish, have died, and have been
deplored with bitterness, which is too deep for words ?

Some have perished in penury or shame, and their

orphan baby has survived, a prey to the scorn and

neglect of strangers. Men have watched by the bedside
of their expiring wives, and have gone mad when the
hideous death-rattle was heard within the throat, regard-
less of the rosy child sleeping in the lap of the unob-

servant nurse. The countenance of the physician had

been read by the stare of this distracted husband, till the
legible despair sunk into his heart. All this has been
and is. You walk with a merry heart through the
streets of this great city, and think not that such are the
scenes acting all around you. You do not number in
your thought the mothers who die in childbed. It is the

most horrible of ruins :

—
In sickness, in old age, in battle,
death comes as to his own home ;
but in the season of

joy and hope, when life should succeed to life, and the
assembled family expects one more, the youngest and the
best beloved, that the wife, the mother she for whom —
each member of the family was so dear to one another,

should die !
—Yet thousands of the poorest poor, whose

misery is aggravated by what cannot be spoken now,

suffer this. And have they no affections ? Do not their
hearts beat in their bosoms, and the gush from their
tears

eyes? Are they not human flesh and blood ? Yet

none weep for them —
none mourn for them —none when
 DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 103

tlieir coffins are carried to the grave indeed the parish

(if

furnishes a coffin for all) turn aside and moralize upon

the sadness they have left behind.

III. The Athenians did well to celebrate, with public

mourning, the death of those who had guided the re-
public with their valour and their understanding, or illus-
trated it with their genius. Men do well to mourn for
the dead : it proves that we love something beside our-
selves ;
and he must have a hard heart who can see his

friend depart to rottenness and dust, and speed him with-

"
out emotion on his voyage to that bourne whence no
traveller returns." To lament for those who have
benefitted the state, is a habit of piety yet more favour-
able to the cultivation of our best affections. When
Milton died it had been well that the universal English
nation had been clothed in solemn black, and that the
muffled bells had tolled from town to town. Tlie French

nation should have enjoined a public mourning at the

deaths of Eousseau and Voltaire. We cannot truly grieve
for every one who dies beyond the circle of those

especially dear to us yet in the extinction of the objects

;

of public love and admiration, and gratitude, there is

something, if we enjoy a liberal mind, which has departed

from within that circle. It were well done also, that

men should mourn for any public calamity which has

befallen their country or the world, though it be not
death. This helps to maintain that connexion between
one man and another, and all men considered as a whole,
which is the bond of social life. There should be public
mourning when those events take place which make all

good men mourn in their hearts, — the rule of foreign or

domestic tyrants, the abuse of public faith, the wresting
104 AN ADDEESS TO THE PEOPLE OX THE

of old and venerable laws to the murder of the innocent,

the established insecurity of all those, the flower of the

nation, who cherish an unconquerable enthusiasm for

public good. Thus, if Home Tooke and Hardy had

been convicted of high treason, it had been good that
there had been not only the sorrow and the indignation
which would have filled all hearts, but the external
symbols of grief. When the French Eepublic was ex-

tinguished, the world ought to have mourned.

IV. But this appeal to the feelings of men should not

be made lightly, or in any manner that tends to waste,
on inadequate objects, those fertilizing streams of sym-
pathy, which a public mourning should be the occasion of
pouring This solemnity should be used only to
forth.

express a wide and intelligible calamity, and one which

is felt to be such by those who country and
feel for their

for mankind ;
its character ought to be universal, not

particular.

V. The news of the death of the Princess Charlotte,

and of the execution of Brandreth, Ludlam, and Turner,
arrived nearly at the same time. If beauty, youth, inno-

cence, amiable manners, and the exercise of the domestic

virtues could alone justify public sorrow when they are

extinguished for ever, this interesting Lady would well

deserve that exhibition. She was the last and the best
of her race. But there were thousands of others equally

distinguished as she, for private excellencies, who have

been cut off in youth and hope. The accident of her

birth neither made her life more virtuous nor her death
more worthy of grief. For the public she had done
nothing either good or evil ;
her education had rendered her
 DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 105

incapable of either in a large and comprehensive sense.

She was born a Princess ; and those who are destined to
rule mankind are dispensed with acquiring that wisdom
and that experience which is necessary even to rule
themselves. She was not like Lady Jane Grey, or Queen
Elizabeth, a woman of profound and various learning.
She had accomplished nothing, and aspired to nothing,
and could understand nothing respecting those great
political questions which involve the happiness of those
over whom she was destined to rule. Yet this should
not be said in blame, but in compassion : let us speak no

evil of the dead. Such is the misery, such the impotence

of royalty.
— Princes are prevented fromvthe cradle from

becoming any thing which may deserve that greatest of

all rewards next to a good conscience, public admiration

and regret.

VI. The execution of Brandreth, Ludlam, and Turner,

is an event of quite a different character from the death
of the Princess Charlotte. These men were shut up in
a horrible dungeon, for many months, with the fear of a
hideous death and of everlasting hell thrust before their

eyes and at last were brought to the scaffold and hung.

;

They too had domestic affections, and were remarkable for

the exercise of private virtues. Perhaps their low station

permitted the growth of those affections in a degree not
consistent with a more exalted rank. They had sons,
and brothers, and fathers, who loved them, it
sisters, and
should seem, more than the Princess Charlotte could be
loved by those whom the regulations of her rank had held
in perpetual estrangement from her. Her husband was to
her as father, mother, and brethren. Ludlam and Turner
were men of mature years, and the affections were ripened
106 AN ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE ON THE

and strengthened within them. What these sufferers felt

shall not be said. But what must have been the long and
various agony of their kindred may be inferred from
Edward Turner, who, when he saw his brother dragged

along upon the hurdle, shrieked horribly and fell in a fit,

and was carried away like a corpse by two men. How
fearful must have been their agony, sitting in solitude on
that day when the tempestuous voice of horror from the

crowd, told them that the head so dear to them was

severed from the body ! Yes — they listened to the mad-
dening shriek which burst from the multitude :
they
heard the rush of ten thousand terror-stricken feet, the

groans and the hootings which told them that the mangled
and distorted head was then lifted into the air. The
sufferers were dead. What is death ? Who dares to say
that which will come after the grave ?^ Brandreth was
calm, and evidently believed that the consequences of our
errors were limited by that tremendous barrier. Ludlam
and Turner were full of fears, lest God should plunge them
in everlasting fire. Mr. Pickering, the clergyman, was
evidently anxious that Brandreth should not by a false
confidence lose the single opportunity of reconciling him-
self with the Euler of the future world. None knew
what death was, or could know. Yet these men were
presumptuously thrust into that unfathomable gulf, by
other men, who knew as little and who reckoned not the
present or the future sufferings of their victims. Nothing
is more horrible than that man should for cause shed
any
the life of man. For all other calamities thereis a remedy

or a consolation. When that Power through which we

live ceases to maintain the life which it has conferred,

^ " Your death lias eyes in his head

—
mine is not painted so,"
Cymbeline. [Shelley's I^ote.]
 DEATH OF THE PEIXCESS CHAELOTTE. 107

then is grief and agony, and the burthen which must be

borne : such sorrow improves the heart. But when man
sheds the blood of man, revenge, and hatred, and a long
train of executions, and assassinations, and proscriptions,
is perpetuated to remotest time.

VII. Such are the particular, and some of the general

considerations depending on the death of these men. But
however deplorable, were a mere private or customary
if it

grief, the public, as the pubKc, should not mourn. But it

is more than this. The events which led to the death of
those unfortunate men are a public calamity. I will not

impute blame to the jury who pronounced them guilty of

high treason, perhaps the law requires that such should
be the denomination of their offence. Some restraint

ought indeed to be imposed on those thoughtless men who

imagine they can find in violence a remedy for violence,
even if tlieir oppressors had tempted them to this

occasion of their ruin. They are instruments of evil, not

so guilty as the hands that wielded them, but fit to inspire
caution. But their death, by hanging and beheading,
and the circumstances of which it is the characteristic
and the consequence, constitute a calamity such as the
English nation ought to mourn with an unassuageable
grief.

VIII. Kings and their ministers have in every age

been distinguished from other men by a thirst for expen-
diture and bloodshed. There existed in this country,
until the American war, a check, sufficiently feeble and
pliant indeed, to this desolating propensity. Until America
proclaimed itself England was perhaps the
a republic,
freest and most glorious nation subsisting on the surface
108 AN ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE ON THE

of the earth. It was not what is to the full desirable that

a nation should be, but all that it can be, when it does
not govern itself. The consequences however of that
fundamental defect soon became evident. The govern-
ment which the imperfect constitution of our represent-
ative assembly threw into the hands of a few aristocrats,

improved the method of anticipating the taxes by loans,

invented by the ministers of William III, until an
enormous debt had been created. In the war against the
republic of France, this policy was followed up, until now,
the mere interest of the public debt amounts to more than
twice as much as the lavish expenditure of the public

treasure, for maintaining the standing army, and the royal

family, and the pensioners, and the placemen. The effect
of this debt is to produce such an unequal distribution of

the means of living, as saps the foundation of social union

and civilized life. It creates a double aristocracy, instead
of one which was sufficiently burthensome before, and

gives twice as many people the liberty of living in luxury

and idleness, on the produce of the industrious and the
poor. And does not give them this because they are
it

more wise and meritorious than the rest, or because their

leisure is spent in schemes of public good, or in those
exercises of the intellect and the imagination, whose crea-
tions ennoble or adorn a country. They are not like the

old aristocracy men of pride and honour, sans peur at sans

tache, but petty piddling slaves who have gained a right

to the title of public creditors, either by gambling in the
funds, or by subserviency to government, or some other
"
villainous trade. They are not the Corinthian capital
of polished society," but the petty and creeping weeds
which deface the rich tracery of its sculpture. The effect

of this system is, that the day labourer gains no more now
 DEATH OF THE PKINCESS CHARLOTTE. 109

by working sixteen hours a day than he gained before by

working eight. I put the thing in its simplest and most
intelligible shape. The labourer, he that tills the ground
and manufactures cloth, is the man who has to provide, out
of what he would bring home to his wife and children, for

the luxuries and comforts of those, whose claims are re-

presented by an annuity of forty-four millions a year

levied upon the English nation. Before, he supported the
army and the pensioners, and the royal family, and the
landholders ;
and this is a hard necessity to which it was
well that he should submit. Many and various are the
mischiefs flowing from oppression, but this is the repre-
sentative of them all ; namely, that one man is forced to
labour for another in a degree not only not neceSiSary to
the support of the subsisting distinctions among mankind,
but so as by the excess of the injustice to endanger the

very foundations of all that is valuable in social order, and

to provoke that anarchy which is at once the enemy of
freedom, and the child and the chastiser of misrule. The
nation, totteringon the brink of two chasms, began to be
weary of a continuance of such dangers and degradations,
and the miseries which are the consequence of them the ;

public voice loudly demanded a free representation of the

people. It began to be felt that no other constituted

body of men could meet the difficulties which impend.

Nothing but the nation itself dares to touch the question

as towhether there is any remedy or no to the annual
payment of forty-four milKous a year, beyond the neces-
sary expenses of state, for ever and for ever. A nobler

spirit also went abroad, and the love of liberty, and

patriotism, and theself-respect attendant on those glorious
emotions, revived in the bosoms of men. The government
had a desperate game to play.
110 AN ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE ON THE

IX. In the manufacturing districts of England discon-

tent and disaffection had prevailed for many years ;
this

was the consequence of that

system of double aristocracy

produced by the causes before mentioned. The manufac-

turers, the helots of our luxury, are left by this system
famished, without affections, without health, without leisure
or opportunity for such instruction as might counteract
those habits of turbulence and dissipation, produced by
the precariousness and insecurity of poverty. Here was
a ready field for any adventurer who should wish for
whatever purpose to incite a few ignorant men to acts of
illegal outrage. So soon as it was plainly seen that the
demands of the people for a free representation must be con-
ceded some intimidation and prejudice were not conjured
if

up, a conspiracy of the most horrible atrocity was laid in

train. It is impossible to know how far the higher members

of the government are involved in the guilt of their infernal

agents. It is impossible to know how numerous or how

active they have been, or by what false hopes they are
yet inflaming the untutored multitude to put their necks
under the axe and into the halter. But thus much is

known, that so soon as the whole nation Kfted up its

voice for parliamentary reform, spies were sent forth.

These were selected from the most worthless and infamous
of mankind, and dispersed among the multitude of
famished and illiterate labourers. It was their business

if they found no discontent to create it. It was their

business to find victims, no matter whether right or

wrong. It was their business to produce upon the public

an impression, that if any attempt to attain national free-
dom, or to diminish the burthens of debt and taxation
under which we groan, were successful, the starving mul-
titude would rush in, and confound all orders and distinc-
 DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. Ill

tions, and institutions and laws, in common ruin. The

inference with which they were required to arm the
ministers was, that despotic power ought to be eternal.
To produce this salutary impression, they betrayed some
innocent and unsuspecting rustics into a crime whose

penalty is a hideous death. A few hungry and ignorant

manufacturers seduced by the splendid promises of these
remorseless blood- conspirators, collected together in what
is called rebellion against the state. All was prepared,
and the dragoons assembled in readiness, no
eighteen
doubt, conducted their astonished victims to that dungeon
which they left only to be mangled by the executioner's
hand. The cruel instigators of their ruin retired to enjoy
the great revenues which they had earned by a life of
villainy. The public voice was overpowered by the timid
and the selfish, who threw the weight of fear into the
and parliament confided anew to
scale of public opinion^

the executive government those extraordinary powers which

may never be laid down, or which may be laid down in

blood, orwhich the regularly constituted assembly of the
nation must wrest out of their hands. Our alternatives
are a despotism, a revolution, or reform.

X. On the 7th of N'ovember, Brandreth, Turner, and

Ludlam ascended the scaffold. We feel for Brandreth
the less, because it seems he killed a man. But recollect
who instigated him to the proceedings which led to
murder. On the word of a dying man, Brandreth tells
us, that
"
Oliver hrought him to this" that, " hut for —
Oliver, he would not have teen there!' See, too, Ludlam
and Turner, with their sons and brothers, and sisters, how
they kneel together in a dreadful agony of prayer. Hell
is before their eyes, and they shudder and feel sick with
112 AN ADDEESS TO THE PEOPLE ON THE

fear, lest some unrepented or some wilful sin should seal

their doom in everlasting fire. With that dreadful penalty

before their eyes — ^with that tremendous sanction for the
truth of all he spoke, Turner exclaimed loudly and dis-

tinctly, while the executioner was jputting the rope round

his nech, "THIS IS ALL Oliver and the Government."^
What more he might have said we know not, because
the chaplain prevented any further observations. Troops
of horse,with keen and glittering swords, hemmed in the
multitudes collected to witness this abominable exhibition.
"
When the stroke of the axe was heard, there was a
burst of horror from the crowd.^ The instant the
head was exhibited, there was a tremendous shriek

set up, and the multitude ran violently in all

directions, as if under the impulse of sudden frenzy.

Those who resumed their stations, groaned and hooted."

1
No doubt the contemporary Digging three graves. Of coffin shape they
press searched would yield
if
\^^% ^^^^
j,^^ comxAe.,, must enter there
plenty of evidence ot the hatred with unblest rites. The shrouds were of
and contempt with which this that cloth
weaveth in her blackest
government spy was regarded. ^^'^^rath''-^^''
Perhaps one of the most note- The ^dismal tmet oppress'd the eye, that
worthy utterances which he helped dwelt
to inspire was Charles Lamb's Upon it long, Uke darkness to be felt.
^
grim poem TU Three Graves, pub-
rp-L^ ir-L^„^ n^^^.^c r^,,v^ Thc piUows to thcsc balsful bcds wsrc toaos,
^^^^^^ jj^.^,^^ jj^j^^ melancholy loads,
lished in The Poetical Recreattons of Whose softness shock'd. Worms of all m on-
the Champion in the year of Shel- strous size
known ^""^ ^""^ upcoild, which
ley's death, and not as well
'

^^^"^^ever Xs^
as it deserves to be, though given ^ doleful bell, inculcating despair,
in Mr. Charles Kent's excellent Was always ringing in the heavy air.

edition of Lamb's Works (Rout- And all about the detestable pit
^ '' '
' ""
ledge's -Popular Centenary Edi- ^'^^^m.^Sd mt ;

tiou," without a date). I need not Bivers of blood,' from living traitors

apologize for quoting the poem spilt, ^ .

Wp
Jiere. from tne
T aivp it irom
i give the roeticat
Po^firaZ By
^ ^^^,^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^
,
treachery stung from poverty to guilt.
^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^
. .,.

Recreations. were meant?

" " ^^^"^ ^'^'''
^''
Close by the ever-burning brimstone beds, ^\'?pff.inf4' T^^
Where Bedloe, Oates and Judas, hide their ^j^en^tl" dark' nfght comes, and they're
si«^^°?
I
wuv,
saw great Satan like a Sexton stand,
hi« ^^tnipraWp in Land.
^
-Imcaufor rf .TfJ ni.Vn. .^^ t?Hw,.h«
Castles, Ohver, and Edwards.
»
With his intolerable sr^n^A
spade in hand,

r, Sunday, Nov. 9.
These expressions are taken from the Examiner,
2

[Shelley's Note.]
 DEATH OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 113

It is a national calamity, that we endure men

to rule over us, who sanction for whatever ends a con-

spiracy which is to arrive at its purpose through such

a frightful pouring forth of human blood and agony.
But when that purpose is to trample upon our rights and
liberties for ever, to present to us the alternatives of

anarchy and oppression, and triumph when the astonished

nation accepts the latter at their hands, to maintain a
vast standing army, and add, year by year, to a public
debt, which, already, they know, cannot be discharged ;

and which, when the delusion that supports it fails, will

produce as much misery and
confusion through all classes
of society as has continued to produce of famine and
it

degradation to the undefended poor to imprison and ;

calumniate those who may offend them, at will ;

when
this, if not the purpose, is the effect of that conspiracy,
how ought we not to mourn ?

XI. Mourn then People of England. Clothe yourselves

in solemn black. Let the bells be tolled. Think of

mortality and change. Shroud yourselves in solitude and

the gloom of sacred sorrow. Spare no symbol of univer-
sal grief. Weep —mourn— lament. Fill the great City
— fiU the boundless fields, with lamentation and the echo
of groans. A beautiful Princess is dead :
— she who
should have been the Queen of her beloved nation, and
whose posterity should have ruled it for ever. She loved
the domestic affections, and cherished arts which adorn,
and valour which defends. She was amiable and would
have become wise, but she was young, and in the flower of
youth the despoiler came. Liberty is dead. Slave I !

charge thee disturb not the depth and solemnity of our

grief by any meaner sorrow. If One has died who was

PROSE. VOL. IL I
 114 AN ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE, &C.

like her that should have ruled over this land, like

Liberty, young, innocent, and lovely, know that the power

through which that one perished was God, and that it
was a private grief. But man has murdered Liberty, and
whilst the was ebbing from its wound, there descended
life

on the heads and on the hearts of every human thing,

the sympathy of an universal blast and curse. Fetters
heavier than iron weigh upon us, because they bind our
souls. We
move about in a dungeon more pestilential
than damp and narrow walls, because the earth is its
floorand the heavens are its roof. Let us follow the

corpse of British Liberty slowly and reverentially to its

tomb : and some glorious Phantom should appear, and

if

make its throne of broken swords and sceptres and royal

crowns trampled in the dust, let us say that the Spirit of
Liberty has arisen from its grave and left all that was
gross and mortal there, and kneel down and worship it as
our Queen.

FINIS.

The imprint of the Address is as follows :

—

Compton d: Ritchie, Printers, Middle Street, Cloth Fair, London.