Excerpt from Trial of Charles Pinney, Esq.: In the Court of King's Bench, on an Information, Filed by His Majesty's Attorney-General, Charging Him With Neglect of Duty, in His Office as Mayor of Bristol, During the Riots

In the view we took last March of the causes of the Bristol Riots, we were quite certain that our statements could not be set aside. The radical press of the devoted city did indeed send forth, with virulent malignity, their anathemas against the light of truth which was pouring into the dens of conspiracy; but venom and anathema were innocuous to our arguments, and the facts we brought forward remained undisputed. We have the satisfaction to believe, our efforts were not lost upon the better-dis osed, though deluded citizens. The mists have gradual y dispersed from their eyes, and the fan tastic images they had assumed to their heated imagina tions, vanished. The experience of every subsequent day has proved to them that they have not been enriched, nor enjoyed more peace and security, nor more exercise of the dearer charities of social life, from the ruinous distraction which the political fanaticism of revolution ary demagogues has fatally effected. They have thus from suffering been taught to reflect and examine, - to take less upon the trust of those who have every thing to gain in a general scramble and confusion, and to place more confidence in those, to whom, in safer and happier times, they had been wont to look up with de served respect. And what is the consequence They loathe, to detestation, the arts which they now discover were too successfully practised against them.

We repeat, we were quite sure that our statements were true. They have received the confirmation of a Court of Law; the unimpeachable testimony on oath of numerous and most respectable witnesses - and the de cision of a jury, given too with unusual emphasis and energy - establish our whole view. The Causes of the Bristol Riots will be henceforth conspicuously manifest for the future historian of the disastrous Reign of Terror, the first days of England's peril.

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