Free Enemies of the State by M. J. Trow Page A

was ‘reckoned’ by William Pitt, as the man most likely to succeed him and ‘most able to cope with Mr Fox’. This is all the more surprising when his maiden speech was little short of a disaster. He became first Solicitor-General, then Attorney-General in Henry Addington’s misnamed Ministry of All the Talents before moving on to the Exchequer and by 1809 he was First Lord of the Treasury – Prime Minister.
    On paper, Perceval was actually a natural target for revolutionaries. ‘An honest little fellow’ he may have been, but he was also deeply reactionary, opposed to Catholic emancipation and any kind of reform. He only agreed to serve under Pitt in 1804 as long as the issue of Catholic emancipation was not raised. When the Luddite unrest broke out across the North, Perceval’simmediate reaction was to send troops to the trouble spots. Parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire were under martial law by the end of May 1812 with arbitrary arrests, threats and even various forms of torture to find the mysterious – and non-existent – organizer of the machine-wrecking, General Ludd. There were bread riots in Leeds, Sheffield, Barnsley, Carlisle and Bristol.
    Sydney Smith summed up the problem admirably – and it applied to all those men who should have been around the table at Lord Harrowby’s in February 1820 just as much:
    I say I fear he [Perceval] will pursue a policy destructive to the true interests of this country; and then you tell me he is faithful to Mrs Perceval and kind to the Master Percevals . . . I should prefer that he whipped his boys and saved the country. 7
    On Monday 11 May, a committee of the Commons was in earnest discussion over Orders in Council relating to trade. Napoleon’s Continental System was still in place, although Portugal and Russia had both refused to accept his decrees for port closures and continued to trade with Britain. Lord Brougham realized that Perceval was not present and sent a servant to find him. It was on his way across the lobby that the assassin struck. Accounts differ as to exactly where John Bellingham was hiding, but it was either behind a door or a pillar. He stepped out and fired his pistol at point-blank range into Perceval’s body. The Prime Minister fell backwards, gasping, ‘I am murdered!’ as astonished MPs looked on, unable to grasp what had just happened. Bellingham simply stood there, his one shot spent, and waited to be arrested.
    â€˜My name is Bellingham,’ he said later that day in response to questioning. ‘It’s a private injury. I know what I have done. It was a denial of justice on the part of the Government.’ 8 In claiming he knew what he had done, Bellingham was signing his own death warrant. As we have seen, it would be nearly another half century before a definition of legal insanity was reached and Bellingham took his place in the dock like any other murderer.
    When news of Perceval’s death reached the provinces, there was general jubilation among the working class. ‘A man came running down the street,’ said a witness in the Potteries, ‘waving his hat round his head and shouting with frantic joy “Perceval is shot, hurrah!”’ 9 In Nottingham, there wereflags and drums and street parties. In London, immediately after the outrage, a crowd quickly gathered and some of them cheered as Bellingham was led away. Polite society was appalled, ignoring the fact that in Lancaster that same month eight people were sentenced to death for rioting and thirteen transported to Botany Bay. At Chester, fifteen faced the rope and eight were transported. This was the England Spencer Perceval had governed. In the eyes of many people, his death was entirely justified.
    â€˜This is but the beginning,’ the poet Coleridge heard someone mutter at Bellingham’s execution. But in fact, ironically, the Prime Minister’s murder had nothing to do with