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in his nature.
    And the recurring dripfeed of the Register was how glorious it was in the good old days and how appalling things were now. This nostalgia is nonsense, but it is an all-pervading part of the human condition. For men, women and children, squatting in damp, freezing cellars, moving to the jar and grind of inhuman machines, to be told that their fathers and grandfathers had lived an idyllic, rural existence with roses twining around the door was hardly likely to instil a sense of contentment.
    The loss of jobs, the change in taxation, the arrival of the Corn Laws, the overcrowding of an increasingly desperate people into foul-smelling tenements and dangerous workshops and mills – this was the reality in a nation that had just emerged victorious from a quarter of a century of war.That there was economic distress and a discontented workforce in Lord Liverpool’s England cannot be doubted. But was it this alone that led James Ings to get his swords sharpened and George Edwards to put the fuses in the grenades?
    For that, there had to be something more.

Chapter 4
    Desperate Men and Desperate Measures
    The mood of the nation was ugly as the century turned. The Dissenting millennialists, who had expected some great sign from God, were to be disappointed. The popular general predicted by Robespierre shortly before his execution was Napoleon Bonaparte and he had indeed brought the Revolution to an end, as Robespierre had prophesied, but he had done it with bayonets at his back and few people were in doubt that the Consulate was no more than a trio of military dictators who eventually became one. The unstoppable Corsican was winning battle after battle, smashing yet another alliance against him at Marengo in 1800.
    The Act of Union with Ireland was designed by Pitt’s government to pacify the provinces, but it failed and determined Irishmen spent the next century trying to repeal it. The Dublin parliament ceased to exist and Ireland became liable for its share of the national debt, cripplingly high as it was of course by now. No Irishman had forgotten the vicious putting down of Wolfe Tone’s rising of 1798 and the ex-pats who drifted to London and other cities in search of work brought their sense of grievance with them. At home, famine claimed their families and friends. All over the country there were protests against the malt tax and the window tax. Men denied the right to form trade unions by the Anti-Combinations Acts of 1799 and 1800 met after dark behind closed doors. They were probably still discussing hours, working conditions and wages, but since they were secret, Pitt’s government now had no accurate idea what they were talking about. By driving these groups underground, the Establishment had created a potential monster it would be difficult to control.
    And there was always an uneasy tension, a sense that some bizarre, brutal act was about to happen. It did, on the night of 15 May 1800, when the king was attending a performance of The Marriage of Figaro at Drury Lane Theatre. James Hadfield stepped out to the orchestra pit and fired a pistol atGeorge, the ball crunching into a pillar to one side of the royal box. Perhaps gambling on the fact that the assassin did not have a second gun and would be grabbed before he could reload, George calmly stood up and inspected the bullet hole. The show’s star, Michael Kelly, was impressed – ‘Never shall I forget his majesty’s coolness’ – while the rest of the audience was, of course, hysterical.
    Ever one to capitalize on a situation, the poet, playwright and Whig MP Richard Sheridan, who happened to be in that audience, rattled off a new verse of ‘God Save the King’ –
    From every latent foe,
From the assassin’s blow
God save the king!
O’er him thine arm extend,
For Britain’s sake defend,
Our father, prince and friend,
God save the king!
    Kelly ended the evening with a rousing version of