The Gazette had been highly critical of the treatment of the Blanketeers in March 1817, to the extent that it was in return criticised for 'highly libellous' statements, but felt itself vindicated when charges against the alleged ringleaders were dropped in September 1817.
[4] In 1819, during the days leading up to the Peterloo massacre, the Gazette compared the authorities' behaviour favourably with that seen in 1817, but did not endorse it: Upon the present occasion, Government have acted with much greater propriety than in 1817 … but a wise policy would endeavour, rather by temperate and conciliatory conduct, to detach the people at large from those who have assumed the station of their leaders, than to maintain a hollow and insecure tranquillity by the exhibition of military force.
[5] Whilst favouring Reform, the Gazette was highly critical of radicals who it said "live by ranting and railing against abuses" and of their use of mass meetings: .. the violent resolutions generally passed there – the intemperate harangues of the travelling speechmakers – the very questionable character of many, if not most of these persons – … all these are things which do infinite mischief – which utterly precludes moderate men from wishing them success – and throw all the timid into the ranks of their opponents.
We trust that before the completion of another twelvemonth, the stain ,which the melancholy catastrophe of that day last year has impressed upon the page of our annals, will be effaced, and that THO' LATE, JUSTICE WILL AT LENGTH OVERTAKE THE AUTHORS OF THE OUTRAGE[7]In 1821, the other members of the first Little Circle, dissatisfied with Cowdroy's politics (which they considered insufficiently radical) helped John Edward Taylor (previously a cotton merchant) set up the Manchester Guardian, which he edited for the rest of his life and for which they all wrote.
In 1824, after circulation had been struggling for a period, Richard Potter and John Shuttleworth assisted the then editor Archibald Prentice to raise the £1,600 required to buy the Gazette from Cowdroy's wife.