SOURCE: Darvall, Frank Ongley. “The State of Public Opinion.” In Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England: Being An Account of the Luddite and Other Disorders in England During the Years 1811-1817 and of the Attitude and Activity of the Authorities, pp. 319-44. London: Oxford University Press, 1934.

[In the following excerpt, Darvall considers why so little attention was given to the Luddite Rebellion and other similar worker uprisings, noting that while those of the middle and lower classes sympathized with the rebels, few upper-class people—Lord Byron being a notable exception—criticized the government's response to the revolt.]

The astonishing thing about all the early Regency disturbances was not that they should have provoked anxiety on the part of the authorities and terror on the part of some manufacturers and members of the public but that this anxiety and terror should have been so restrained.

When one leaves these general questions, as to the amount of attention given to, and the extent of the alarm occasioned by, these disturbances, and proceeds to discuss in detail the attitude of the different classes of society to the disorders and to the measures taken against them, the record is more complicated. The lower classes outside the disturbed districts do not seem to have been much interested in disturbances elsewhere. They probably knew little about them. They shared in similar distress. They would surely, if they had understood them, have sympathized with the Luddites' objects. But there was nothing, no organization on the part of the Luddites, no adequate press publicity, to win for the disorderly in one district the sympathy or help of the distressed in others. Within the disturbed districts virtually the entire working class, whether or no they were themselves engaged in the affected industries, sympathized with the rioters. Many of them were willing to engage personally in disorder, like the Lancashire colliers who helped the Oldham spinners break looms at Middleton in 1812. They all condoned violence, even where they did not take part in it, or believe that it could be successful. They never obstructed or gave evidence against, or showed any signs of opposition to, or disapproval of, the Luddite campaign of violence, though some of them, by their continued reliance upon peaceful methods, proved that they had no confidence in direct action. They all sympathized with the rioters' objects, which, indeed, even the pacific elements amongst the labouring population were continually, before, during, and after the rioting, trying to achieve by non-violent means. They all saw the whole cause of their distress in such obvious factors as the use of new machinery, frauds in the manufacture, reduced wages, &c., the abuses against which the rioters' campaign, like the others' petitions, were directed. They none of them recognized the fundamental causes of their distress. And they, therefore, none of them demanded fundamental remedies such as the ending of the war, the halting of the new industrial advance, the regulation and planning of industry, the only measures which could really and permanently have helped them.

The agitation for peace and parliamentary reform and against the Orders in Council continued to attract much working-class attention even during the height of the disturbances, and much more after their suppression. Similarly negotiations with the employers, trades union activities, and petitions to Parliament, won, even during the period of worst disorder, a great volume of support. The workers were never wholly converted to a policy of attempting to secure redress of grievances by direct violent action. The latter was a method to which some of them resorted in desperation at a period of acute distress, after the break-down of negotiations, and with which most of them at such times were in sympathy. But it was not the only, or even the favourite, method of all, or indeed of a majority of the workers even at such times, and it was definitely the method of a small minority at normal times, or taking this period of the Regency as a whole. It cannot be doubted that far more energy and interest was put by the body of workers, even during, for instance, the years 1811 and 1812, into trades union activities, into petitions to Parliament, and the organization of a body like the ‘Nottingham Union’, than into framebreaking. It is interesting also that no attempt was made to use violence as an instrument in the campaign for these other legitimate, peaceful, political, or industrial objects. Disturbances or the danger of them were never made an argument for repealing the Orders in Council or granting parliamentary reform. They were never made a sanction for the policy of the ‘Nottingham Union’. They were always used merely as a means of intimidating particular employers and merchants and of coercing them into particular limited concessions.

Authorities, witnesses before the House of Commons inquiry into the effect of the Orders in Council, officers like Colonel Clay (commanding at Manchester in 1812), even bodies like the Corporation of Nottingham (in an address to Parliament in April 1812), speak of the ‘exemplary patience of the working classes’,¹ of their praiseworthy moderation in the face of great distress and provocation. It was remarked more than once, as, for instance, by one of the members of Parliament for Nottingham in the House of Commons in February 1812, that the blame for the disturbances lay as much with the masters as with the workmen.² It is clear, therefore, that violence had not become the policy of the majority of the workers even under the distresses of this difficult time.

The majority of the workers did, however, share with the rioters what the Government considered the misguided notion that the use of new labour-saving machinery, or the employment of cheap methods of manufacture, or wage-cutting, or the charging of excessive prices in the markets, were abuses on the part of the masters and merchants which the latter could and should have avoided, and which were responsible for the prevailing distress. It was, in the labourers' opinion, whether they were Luddites or no, not the necessity of the situation, because of the war or the Industrial Revolution, but the tyranny and misjudgment of particular employers and merchants, which was the prime cause of popular suffering.³ The workers almost invariably believed that those abuses could be corrected, and the distress relieved, either by regulations within the trades concerned or by the action of the authorities, of the magistrates or Parliament. It was in default of such action that they resorted to violence.

A great many of the smaller manufacturers, even including some of those who themselves had been forced by the pressure of competition into using the new machinery or making use of the new methods, also looked upon these matters from the point of view of the workers. They also doubted the value of these practices, especially at a time when goods were in any case a glut upon the market. They also thought that these various evils of which the workers complained were largely responsible for the prevailing distress. They, too, would have been glad to have seen these matters regulated by agreement within the trades concerned or by state action.⁴ They, too, if they did not positively condone violent methods, were at any rate disposed to profit by them, and were not sorry to see the ends in which they believed attained by direct action after it had become obvious that there was no possibility of achieving them by peaceful or normal means. They, too, would do nothing to obstruct the rioters or to give them away to the authorities.⁵

Middle-class people with such opinions were accused more than once during these years of giving positive encouragement to the disorderly. The ultra-Tory Nottingham Gazette, for example, in 1814 bitterly criticized those employers who excused the framebreakers, and pleaded with them to spare their frames.⁶ It was necessary, so the Gazette thought, to make it clear to the framebreakers that their actions were wholly reprehensible and misguided. It was from a similar point of view that the Nottingham Review, and its editor, Sutton, and leader-writer, Blackner, were criticized on several occasions. It was said that their reports of the Luddite outrages had been in such a tone as to excuse, and therefore to encourage them.⁷ In 1815 this paper was actually cited for seditious libel and fined for comparing the acts of the military in England against the Luddites and in North America against popular liberty there.⁸

It does not appear to have been fair to have accused Sutton or Blackner or The Review, or any of the manufacturers and other middle-class commentators, of having given any encouragement to actual violence. That they always condemned, though some of them may have felt that the workers had been driven to it, and should not be judged too harshly. It was with the objects and not with the methods of the Luddites that they sympathized. They, and other friends of the workers, men like Cartwright⁹ and Whitbread, were quite certain that no good could come of violence, it was doomed to failure and would only jeopardize other more useful causes, peace, parliamentary reform, trade regulation, &c. Most of the middle class, like some of the workers, and especially the group following Gravener Henson, distrusted violent methods and pinned their hopes, even in the face of continual disappointments, to negotiations and petitions.¹⁰

Not all the middle class, also, by any means, sympathized even with the objects of the rioters. On the one hand, of course, were the merchants and masters against whose practices the rioters were protesting, those who drove up the price of foodstuffs by speculation, who undercut their competitors, who drove down the rate of wages, who used machinery and otherwise economized in production, and who defended their practices on the score of necessity. There were some who realized, though they might not admit, that these practices were harmful to the country, and to the trade at large, but who employed them because they were profitable to them as individuals. There were others who, though they saw hardships thus inflicted upon some workers, felt that these measures were necessary in the existing state of trade. If production were not cheapened in every possible way how could even the small remaining market be kept open?¹¹ There were others again who believed these practices to be positively sound, new machinery, cheaper production, were the means by which industry as a whole, including in the end the employees who thought they were being hurt, would achieve a higher prosperity.¹²

Upon the whole, though a section of the masters agreed with the men's analysis of the situation, the majority attributed to the war and the Orders in Council, and to changes in fashion and demand, evils which the workers attributed to fraudulent work, ‘cut-ups’, and new machinery. The great majority of the masters also, though some might have wished to see the men's objects achieved by pacific means, were content to join in attempts to put down disorder, in so far as they felt it safe to do so.

There was considerable difference of opinion also amongst such people as to the advisability and possibility of regulating such matters. A great many employers believed, like those who appeared before the House of Commons Committee on the Framework Knitters' Petitions, that it would do more harm than good for Parliament to meddle with industrial matters. Wages, they believed, as the new economics taught, should be left to find their own level. Manufacturers should be left free to vary their products and their conditions of work as occasion demanded. Any fixed or parliamentary regulation was, as the majority of the masters thought, and as they successfully persuaded Parliament, sure to be to the ultimate harm of the trade, and therefore of the very workers whom it was hoped to help. The minority of masters which was willing to see some matters, as, for instance, frame rents, subject to regulation, and some trades, such as lace, supervised by Parliament, was overborne by the majority.

The upper and governing classes, including the responsible local officials, were similarly divided in their attitude. Even more universally than the middle class they were opposed to violence and ready to adopt any measures needed to put it down. Mostly they tried to be impartial as between the masters and the men, in whose disputes most of the disorders of the time were recognized to be rooted. They realized that the masters were very often as much to blame as the men.¹³ They were, like General Maitland, on the look out lest their defence measures, the placing of guards in factories and so on, should be made a means of reducing the wages of the workers even below their existing level.¹⁴ They were as quick to subscribe to funds for the relief of distress as to those for the suppression of disturbances.¹⁵ They gave themselves as willingly and energetically to measures for the public relief, like the Charitable Society which was organized in the summer of 1812 and of which the Duke of York was President, as to measures of public order.

They differed, however, in their attitude towards the causes of the trouble, and as to the measures which should be taken to deal with it. Some of them, including, significantly enough, a few of the most energetic local officials, were eager not merely to put disturbances down but to remove their cause. Many magistrates and officials wished that some way could be found to raise wages and reduce prices. The Nottingham magistrates tried to mediate between the framework knitters and the hosiers, only to be rebuffed by the latter.¹⁶ The Stockport magistrates felt very aggrieved when rioting commenced, having, as they thought, done all that they could to meet the just grievances of the workers¹⁷. Colonel Fletcher of the Bolton bench even went so far as to suggest that the justices might revert to their old function and rate wages, as he said had recently been done in Kent. He believed an increase in price of 5 per cent., which would have little effect upon demand, might allow an increase in wages of 15 per cent., which would have a great effect upon distress and discontent.¹⁸

There was similarly a demand in Parliament that something should be done to inquire into the causes of the disturbances, and to remove the chief of them, the unprecedented popular distress. The Earl of Moira during the debate on the Framebreaking Bill in February 1812 said that it ‘undoubtedly became the justice of the House to endeavour to extirpate such a dangerous species of offence, but it no less became their justice to endeavour to prevent those distresses which gave rise to them, and to try to ameliorate the situation of the starving manufacturers’.¹⁹ Mr. Hutchinson in the House of Commons took the same line. ‘What had been the immediate cause of these outrages? Distress perhaps unparalleled. Did not this involve a consideration that bound them to reflect upon the measures that had created that distress?’²⁰

These attempts to help the distressed and disorderly labourers did not, however, get very far.²¹ The laisser-faire philosophy, which was especially powerful in the House of Lords and amongst the intelligentsia, who might otherwise have wished to help the poor labourers, prevented any action being taken. In 1811, when petitions had been presented to Parliament from distressed cotton weavers, the Committee appointed to consider them reported:²²

While the Committee fully acknowledge and most deeply lament the great distress of numbers of persons engaged in the cotton manufacture … they are of opinion that no interference of the legislature with the freedom of trade, or with the perfect liberty of every individual to dispose of his time and of his labour in the way and on the terms which he may judge most conducive to his own interest, can take place without violating general principles of the first importance to the prosperity and happiness of the community, without establishing the most pernicious precedent, or without aggravating, after a very short time, the pressure of the general distress, and imposing obstacles against that distress ever being removed.

In 1812 the Committee appointed to consider petitions from the framework knitters reported:²³

The Committee is confirmed in the belief that the Workmen suffer considerable inconveniences and are liable to deductions in various ways in payment for their work … but they have found it very difficult to suggest measures that can meet or obviate all those abuses, being of opinion that legislative enactment alone will not have that effect; and that trade of every kind should be left as much as possible to find its own level.

In response to this feeling the Committee struck from the Bill the clauses relating to Hosiery, an old-established industry, and only recommended for a limited term, as an experiment, and because of the obvious importance of some relief being given to what otherwise looked like becoming a bankrupt trade, some regulations of Lace.²⁴

The Bill thus amended, which had the backing of some of the lace manufacturers and all of the men, was carried through the House of Commons, in spite of a stern defence of the orthodox laisser-faire position by Hume. It was, however, rather surprisingly, overwhelmingly defeated in the House of Lords, in which the landowners (who were generally throughout the century more favourable to the regulation of industry, and especially to Factory Acts, than the manufacturers, who were more powerful in the Commons) were in control. Lauderdale, Liverpool, Holland, and Sidmouth, usually bitter opponents, were all in agreement in condemning this attempt to meddle with the affairs of industry. Lord Sidmouth ‘trusted in God that it would never again be attempted to introduce a Bill founded on those principles in the House of Lords’.²⁵

There were other reasons why, despite a general sympathy with them, it was felt that little could be done to help the workers. Many people felt with William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne) ‘that it was nothing less than wilfully deluding the country to hold out a hope that greater commercial embarrassments, greater severity of distress, than the country had hitherto felt, were not yet to be endured’.²⁶

Not very many people really believed, what some of the Whigs, especially in the House of Lords, tried to suggest, that the whole cause of the distress was rooted in the policy of the Government which had, as the Earl of Lauderdale remarked, reduced ‘the commerce of the country to a gambling speculation’ in which wages were first higher, then lower, thus driving men to discontent and disorder.²⁷ Most of them believed, either, like Lamb, that distress was part of the inevitable cost of the war; or, like Liverpool, that it was the natural result of ups and downs in trade, and of a depression like that which had followed the speculative boom of 1807 and 1808, and which had produced a collapse in 1810. They did not see what could really be done to relieve it. In any case they felt, with Premier Perceval, ‘whatever the causes of the disorders did any one deny the necessity of putting them down’. It was the most obvious course, despite much genuine sympathy for the distressed and disorderly workers, to restrict government action legislating against offences.

People were the more willing to do this in that, at any rate in Parliament, they generally confused the objects of the rioters, believing Luddism to be directed essentially against new machinery on the grounds that it economized labour.²⁸ Very few upper-class people agreed with Lord Byron, who made a biting, brilliant maiden speech criticizing the Government's policy, and arguing that labour-saving machinery was of little value when the trouble with the country was a surplus, and not a deficiency, of goods and of labour.²⁹ Most people agreed with the Cabinet, which ordered pamphlets to be issued proving how misguided it was to oppose the introduction of machinery. It was as absurd, so such people thought, to oppose the introduction of a steam loom, as it would have been to have opposed the introduction of a spade or a plough, and as vain, since destruction of machinery in one district or country would only ruin it by driving the trade to others. It was, therefore, necessary, as Lord Liverpool suggested, to give legislative protection to machinery in the hosiery and lace trade, as it had previously been found necessary to protect by law the machinery used in every previous manufacture in which it had been introduced to the detriment of manual labour.³⁰

The few measures that were taken for the relief of distress, the proposal to regulate the lace trade and the repeal of the Orders in Council, were in fact not considered in relation to disturbances. It was recognized after the event that the defeat of the former, and the passage of the latter, proposal had had an effect upon the situation in the disturbed districts, the former worrying and unsettling the Nottingham framework knitters, the latter encouraging and setting to work the northern operatives. But the defeat of the Lace Regulation Bill and the Repeal of the Orders in Council were both decided upon by Parliament without thought of any such results.

On the whole, therefore, although the upper and governing classes sympathized with the labourers who were rioting, they felt them to be misguided, and they did not see how they could do anything material to help them. A small minority only asked for an inquiry into distress. An almost negligible minority agreed with Lord Byron in thinking the Luddites' objects to be sound.

A few authorities did, by implication, recognize the truth of Lord Byron's position. Becher, Coldham, Cartwright, Conant, and Felkin all admit that the hosiery and lace trades were overexpanded and would in any case have had to suffer a decline. They admit that the trades were overstocked with hands and frames. They state that there were still more than sufficient frames surviving even after all the destruction. But not even they, and indeed not even Lord Byron, were for this reason willing to defend machine-breaking, even if they doubted whether its actual effect had been as harmful as some critics suggested. Most people, moreover, were wholly convinced that a campaign against machinery was an unqualified disaster from every point of view.

The upper and governing classes were, therefore, forced back upon a policy of mere repression. So far as such matters were concerned they were upon the whole willing to follow the advice of the Government. They gave the administration, as that was usually willing in the end to give the local authorities, the support it requested. There is little evidence of any independent thought upon the matter.

There was sharp opposition to certain aspects of the Government's policy. The Whig party in the House of Lords, for example, which made no attempt to excuse the Luddites, and no serious attempt to press for an inquiry into the causes of disturbance and distress, did put up a strong opposition to the Framebreaking Bill.³¹ They argued, as did Mr. Coldham and other Nottingham authorities, that it was vain to increase the penalty against framebreaking when even the lesser penalty had not yet been put into effect. Surely it was the wiser policy first to apply the existing law, and sentence some framebreakers to transportation, before proceeding to pass a new law making framebreakers liable to capital punishment! They foresaw, what ultimately proved to be the case, that it would become even more difficult than before to secure information, or to get one offender to give away another, when the consequence might be the death of a fellow creature.

The whole of the Tory party in both Houses of Parliament, and many of the Whigs, especially in the House of Commons, took, however, a contrary view. They felt, as Lamb suggested, that the new law making framebreaking punishable with death would operate, by reason of the terror of the penalty, to prevent the offence. It would at least make clear to the public the sense of Parliament as to the enormity of the crime. It would be following precedent, which had applied to other instances of machine-breaking, as they occurred, as it had to other crimes, the death penalty. They did not agree with Lord Holland and Sir Samuel Romilly that this policy had defeated its own ends, that the ‘Statute Book was too thick set with penalties of death to make that a very explicit declaration of the sense of Parliament as to the enormity of the crime’.³² They did not appreciate what a few reformers were beginning to suggest, that it was a wiser policy of criminal law to graduate penalties and to refrain from antagonizing juries, and discouraging the public from co-operating with the police, by having extreme penalties for what the public regarded as moderate crimes.³³

The other aspect of the Government's policy which was criticized was the spy system. Mr. Whitbread in 1812, and other Whigs and Radicals with more vigour and persistence in 1817, attacked the Government for its dependence upon informers, many of whom had clearly become agents and instigators of disorder. Strangely enough, however, considering what a good case the Opposition had in this matter against the Government, the Whig party as a whole was not willing to press this charge strongly. It left the question to a few Radicals. It apparently felt, what was really the case, that spies and informers, distasteful and untrustworthy though such agents and methods might be, were in fact, and in the absence of an effective system of police detectives, the only instrument available to the authorities. Only in that way could they find out ‘what was going on in the country’.

Similarly it was left to the Radicals, and especially to Mr. Whitbread, to criticize the reports of the Secret Committees of Parliament, and the measures that were founded upon them. The bulk of the Whig party was not willing, even in 1817, to make these internal questions a major issue. They mostly, especially at the beginning of our period, accepted the Tory Government's contentions. They did not bother to go behind the Committees' reports. There seems to have been, apart from the natural desire of the Opposition to oppose, and from the presence in the Opposition ranks of a few individuals, Holland, Whitbread, Brougham, Marriott, Romilly, who had a real interest in and knowledge of progressive principles of criminal law, which produced an occasional and half-hearted opposition to a few of the Government's measures and arguments, no sign in the Whig party of any different attitude to these matters from that which was characteristic of the Tories. Leading Whigs, like Grenville and Moira, were apparently as wholly convinced as Tories like Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Sidmouth, that disturbances must be put down in the old way, the only way they then knew of, by the use of greater force, by increased penalties, by enlarged and emergency powers to the Government and local officials.

There was little sign in Parliament of any recognition that this old policy of order was inadequate. In the country, on the part of local officials in every disturbed district, on the part of soldiers like Maitland and Byng, and on the part of the general public, which swamped the Home Office with letters urging the establishment of a system of regular police,³⁴ there was growing realization of the fact that the only effective solvent of disorder was a regular police establishment. There were several requests from responsible local officials, especially in Manchester and Nottingham, for the creation of such a body. There was no reflection of these requests, or of this tendency of public and local opinion, in Parliament. It was not until the next decade, after a long, fruitless attempt to maintain order with the old system, that the reform of the machinery of public order was seriously taken in hand.

It is indeed rather astonishing that Parliament, which contained many members, peers and commoners, who had been personally concerned in the suppression of disturbances, and who knew at first hand the weakness of the existing system, should have been content to neglect this matter and merely to endorse the policy of the Government. It is surprising that there was not any suggestion from any quarter of any but emergency measures, of anything more far-reaching than a slight modernization of the old system of Watch and Ward.

It is similarly surprising that no suggestion should have been made as to the need for recasting the system of local government, and for developing a new policy for the state regulation of industry. Both these things were obviously necessary. The state was going to be forced continuously throughout the century to expand the sphere of its authority, to intervene in industry for the protection of women and children, and finally of men, against the evils that seemed to be inseparable from industrial advance, and to set up a complicated new series of governmental agencies, national and local. The whole programme of nineteenth-century domestic legislation, Reform Bills, Poor Law and Factory Acts, &c., the readjustment of the nation's political and social structure to accord with the needs of the new situation created by the industrial and commercial revolutions, could have been deduced to be necessary and inevitable by any fair student of Regency conditions. And yet there was no sign of recognition that any such far-reaching changes would be necessary. The very Parliament which was dealing with Luddism was casting overboard the last remnants of the Elizabethan system of industrial regulation.

This period was, indeed, an interlude. It was significant that the repeal of the Statute of Artificers and the passage by the House of Commons of the Lace Regulation Bill, should have been so nearly contemporaneous. It was significant that almost at the same moment a local magistrate should have been recommending that the justices should rate wages and that Parliament should have been declaring that any interference with the natural laws of trade would be pernicious. English opinion was at the parting of the ways. The old system was dying, though a few country people still wished to cling to it. The new system had not yet come in, though a few people were already proposing measures similar to those which were to characterize it. The last of the Elizabethan Statutes was being repealed just at the time that the first of the nineteenth-century Acts was being passed. Laisser-faire, which was rapidly becoming the ruling policy, was being proved impossible of complete application even while it was making rapid strides towards supremacy.

It was because of this, because of the confusion which therefore existed, in fact, in conditions in the country, and in thought, in the state of public opinion, that Regency England stumbled so haltingly through this period of disorder and discontent. It was, though few people knew it, a time of preparation for the period of feverish activity which was to follow. Public opinion was being prepared for its nineteenth-century tasks. The workers were being taught that an attempt to put back the clock of industrial advance was doomed to failure, and were being won to a policy of ameliorating the conditions of the new industry by industrial and political action. The middle classes were being taught to recognize the possibilities, and the dangers, of the new industry and of unrestrained competition. The upper classes were learning that a new England existed, an England which was in need of a new suit of government. Disturbances were a symptom of those varied social diseases which were going to force upon each class in the community an attitude of mind, and a policy of action, far different from those in which they had believed, and to which they still clung. But they were not as yet at all generally recognized to be anything so fundamental or significant.

Public opinion was poorly equipped to understand the problems of Regency England. Eighteenth-century minds were dealing with a nineteenth-century country. It was therefore natural that some people, like the magistrates who wished to rate wages, and the workers who wished to prevent the introduction of machinery, should look backwards to the old England; while others, like the workers who formed the ‘Nottingham Union’, and the officials who pressed for a system of police, should look forward to the new one. It was natural that effective action with regard to problems of disturbance and of public order should have been lacking. It was fortunate that no irreparable damage was done while Regency Englishmen were being taught to understand Regency England.

Notes

1. Borough reeve and constables of Manchester to Home Office (H.O.), April 25, 1812, in H.O. 42. 121.

2. Mr. Smith, M.P. for Nottingham, in House of Commons, Feb. 1812 (Parliamentary Debates, xxi. 11. 813-15).

3. See evidence before Parliamentary Committee, June 1812 (Parliamentary Papers, 1812, ii. 204 et seq.).

4. Note in Parl. Papers, 1812, ii. 204, and also in Felkin, op. cit., evidence as to attempts of some of the hosiers to establish regulations for the trade, and as to acceptance by some of them of the workers' petition to Parliament (Parl. Papers, 1812, ii. 264).

5. Many of the victims of attacks must have recognized some of the members of the attacking mobs, which often included their own apprentices and employees, yet they seldom gave evidence against them.

6. Nottingham Gazette, Aug. 12, 1814.

7. Nottingham Review, Jan. 3, 1812. The Review was voted out of the local news room because of the local feeling that it had encouraged the Luddites by the tone of its reports.

8. Nottingham Review, June 1815.

9. See letters in Nottingham papers for Dec. 1811 and Jan. 1812.

10. The history of the framework knitting industry is throughout one of continual and usually fruitless negotiations between hosiers and framework knitters, the latter and many of the former persisting in the face of continual failures, due to the refusal of a minority of the hosiers to come into line, and in spite of occasional outbreaks of Luddism or of strikes and other violent expedients, which sometimes attracted a minority of the men.

11. See evidence of hosiers before Parliamentary Committee, June 1812, especially that of Thomas Nelson and others (Parl. Papers, 1812, ii. 290 et seq.).

12. Ibid.

13. e.g. statement of Smith, M.P. for Nottingham (Parl. Debates, 1812, xxi. 11. 813-15).

14. Maitland to H.O., May 9, 1812, in H.O. 40. 1.

15. See accounts of subscriptions in local and national press for May, June, and July 1812.

16. Conant and Baker's report, in H.O. 42. 119.

17. Letters from Lloyd to H.O., in H.O. 40. 1 (especially for March 1812).

18. Fletcher to H.O., April 11, 1812, in ibid.

19. Parl. Debates, xxi. 11. 1167.

20. Ibid., p. 859.

21. There was no motion for inquiry in the House of Lords and that in the House of Commons was defeated by 40 votes against to 15 for.

22. Parl. Debates, xx. 609.

23. Parl. Papers, 1812, ii. 208 et seq.

24. Ibid.

25. Parl. Debates, xxiii. 1191, 1240-50.

26. Ibid., xxi.

27. Ibid., 11. 603.

28. See Report of House of Lords Secret Committee, June 1812, in Parl. Debates, xxiii.

29. Parl. Debates, xxi. 11. 966-71.

30. Liverpool in Parl. Debates, xxi. 11. 972.

31. See debate in Parl. Debates, 1812, ii. 960 et seq.

32. Ibid.

33. It is significant that those actually experienced in applying such laws, men like the Town Clerk of Nottingham, were often opposed to them.

34. Some unsolved murders in the east end of London at Wapping created great alarm at the beginning of 1812, in some ways greater alarm even than the national disturbances, and for some weeks the Home Office was deluged with letters urging the organization of a more efficient police (see London Press and H.O. 42. 119).