Passing of the Six Acts

     The Six Acts passed in 1819, were laws that worked to prevent the people from holding large public meetings and from disseminating political literature. They also allowed for government searches of homes without warrants under the facade of looking for firearms. Four of the Six Acts were introduced by the conservative home secretary Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, who, like other conservatives, feared the “rapidly rising Liberalism” present in England after the “war with France” ended. According to J.S. Mill, the liberalism was a result of the war ending. When the war ended, he said, “people had once more a place in their thoughts for home politics, the tide began to set towards reform.” The “national debt and taxation occasioned by so long and costly a war” along with the continued power of “old reigning families” rendered the government unpopular with the common people. “Radicalism,” Mill wrote “had assumed a character and importance which seriously alarmed the Administration.” The social unrest that Mill described gave rise to a demonstration that took place on August 16, 1819 in Manchester. A crowd of around 60,000 people gathered with the hope of obtaining more representation in Parliament as, at the time, a mere two percent of the British people had the right to vote. When the British cavalry was summoned to disperse the crowd, panic ensued. Eleven people were killed. Around Six hundred were injured. The event soon became known as the “Peterloo Massacre,” and it was in direct response to the protest that the Six Acts were passed. They were designed to prevent future agitation by means of suppression as part of what J.S. Mill called a “conspiracy against liberty.” 

Sources

Penguin Edition of Autobiography by J.S. Mill:  Own summary as well as quotes drawn from the text on page 89.

https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/The-Napoleonic-Wars 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/16/the-peterloo-massacre-what-was-it-and-what-did-it-mean 

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100509359 

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Peterloo-Massacre/ 

https://www.utilitarianism.com/millauto/seven.html

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Event date:

1819 to 1819