The order of the day for the second reading of this Bill being read,
Lord BYRON rose, and (for the first time) addressed their Lordships
as follows:--
My Lords; the subject now submitted to your Lordships for the first
time, though new to the House, is by no means new to the country. I
believe it had occupied the serious thoughts of all descriptions of
persons, long before its introduction to the notice of that
legislature, whose interference alone could be of real service. As a
person in some degree connected with the suffering county, though a
stranger not only to this House in general, but to almost every
individual whose attention I presume to solicit, I must claim some
portion of your Lordships' indulgence, whilst I offer a few
observations on a question in which I confess myself deeply
interested.
To enter into any detail of the riots would be superfluous: the House
is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed has
been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the Frames obnoxious to
the rioters, and all persons supposed to be connected with them, have
been liable to insult and violence. During the short time I recently
passed in Nottinghamshire, not twelve hours elapsed without some
fresh act of violence; and on the day I left the county I was
informed that forty Frames had been broken the preceding evening, as
usual, without resistance and without detection.
Such was then the state of that county, and such I have reason to
believe it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be
admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that
they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled
distress: the perseverance of these miserable men in their
proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have
driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people,
into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their
families, and the community. At the time to which I allude, the town
and county were burdened with large detachments of the military; the
police was in motion, the magistrates assembled, yet all the
movements, civil and military, had led to--nothing. Not a single
instance had occurred of the apprehension of any real delinquent
actually taken in the fact, against whom there existed legal evidence
sufficient for conviction. But the police, however useless, were by
no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men,
liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital crime
of poverty; men, who had been nefariously guilty of lawfully
begetting several children, whom, thanks to the times! they were
unable to maintain. Considerable injury has been done to the
proprietors of the improved Frames. These machines were to them an
advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a
number of workmen, who were left in consequence to starve. By the
adoption of one species of Frame in particular, one man performed the
work of many, and the superfluous labourers were thrown out of
employment. Yet it is to be observed, that the work thus executed was
inferior in quality; not marketable at home, and merely hurried over
with a view to exportation. It was called, in the cant of the trade,
by the name of "Spider work." The rejected workmen, in the blindness
of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in
arts so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed
to improvements in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts they
imagined, that the maintenance and well doing of the industrious
poor, were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a
few individuals by any improvement, in the implements of trade, which
threw the workmen out of employment, and rendered the labourer
unworthy of his hire. And it must be confessed that although the
adoption of the enlarged machinery in that state of our commerce
which the country once boasted, might have been beneficial to the
master without being detrimental to the servant; yet, in the present
situation of our manufactures, rotting in warehouses, without a
prospect of exportation, with the demand for work and workmen equally
diminished, Frames of this description tend materially to aggravate
the distress and discontent of the disappointed sufferers. But the
real cause of these distresses and consequent disturbances lies
deeper. When we are told that these men are leagued together not only
for the destruction of their own comfort, but of their very means of
subsistence, can we forget that it is the bitter policy, the
destructive warfare of the last eighteen years, which has destroyed
their comfort, your comfort, all men's comfort? That policy, which,
originating with "great statesmen now no more," has survived the dead
to become a curse on the living, unto the third and fourth
generation! These men never destroyed their looms till they were
become useless, worse than useless; till they were become actual
impediments to their exertions in obtaining their daily bread. Can
you, then, wonder that in times like these, when bankruptcy,
convicted fraud, and imputed felony, are found in a station not far
beneath that of your Lordships, the lowest, though once most useful
portion of the people, should forget their duty in their distresses,
and become only less guilty than one of their representatives? But
while the exalted offender can find means to baffle the law, new
capital punishments must be devised, new snares of death must be
spread for the wretched mechanic, who is famished into guilt. These
men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands: they were
not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them: their own
means of subsistence were cut off, all other employments
pre-occupied; and their excesses, however to be deplored and
condemned, can hardly be subject of surprise.
It has been stated that the persons in the temporary possession of
frames connive at their destruction; if this be proved upon enquiry,
it were necessary that such material accessories to the crime should
be principles in the punishment. But I did hope, that any measure
proposed by his Majesty's government, for your Lordships' decision,
would have had conciliation for its basis; or, if that were hopeless,
that some previous enquiry, some deliberation would have been deemed
requisite; not that we should have been called at once without
examination, and without cause, to pass sentences by wholesale, and
sign death-warrants blindfold. But, admitting that these men had no
cause of complaint; that the grievances of them and their employers
were alike groundless; that they deserved the worst; what
inefficiency, what imbecility has been evinced in the method chosen
to reduce them! Why were the military called out to be made a mockery
of, if they were to be called out at all? As far as the difference of
seasons would permit, they have merely parodied the summer campaign
of Major Sturgeon; and, indeed, the whole proceedings, civil and
military, seemed on the model of those of the mayor and corporation
of Garratt.--Such marchings and counter-marchings! from Nottingham to
Bullwell, from Bullwell to Banford, from Banford to Mansfield! and
when at length the detachments arrived at their destination, in all
"the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," they came just
in time to witness the mischief which had been done, and ascertain
the escape of the perpetrators, to collect the "_spolia opima_" in
the fragments of broken frames, and return to their quarters amidst
the derision of old women, and the hootings of children. Now, though,
in a free country, it were to be wished, that our military should
never be too formidable, at least to ourselves, I cannot see the
policy of placing them in situations where they can only be made
ridiculous. As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so
should it be the last. In this instance it has been the first; but
providentially as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will,
indeed, pluck it from the sheath; yet had proper meetings been held
in the earlier stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men
and their masters (for they also had their grievances) been fairly
weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been
devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and
tranquillity to the county. At present the county suffers from the
double infliction of an idle military and a starving population. In
what state of apathy have we been plunged so long, that now for the
first time the house has been officially apprised of these
disturbances? All this has been transacting within 130 miles of
London, and yet we, "good easy men, have deemed full sure our
greatness was a ripening," and have sat down to enjoy our foreign
triumphs in the midst of domestic calamity. But all the cities you
have taken, all the armies which have retreated before your leaders,
are but paltry subjects of self-congratulation, if your land divides
against itself, and your dragoons and your executioners must be let
loose against your fellow-citizens.--You call these men a mob,
desperate, dangerous, and ignorant; and seem to think that the only
way to quiet the "_Bellua multorum capitum_" is to lop off a few of
its superfluous heads. But even a mob may be better reduced to reason
by a mixture of conciliation and firmness, than by additional
irritation and redoubled penalties. Are we aware of our obligations
to a mob? It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your
houses,--that man your navy, and recruit your army,--that have
enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when neglect
and calamity have driven them to despair! You may call the people a
mob; but do not forget, that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of
the people. And here I must remark, with what alacrity you are
accustomed to fly to the succour of your distressed allies, leaving
the distressed of your own country to the care of Providence or--the
parish. When the Portuguese suffered under the retreat of the French,
every arm was stretched out, every hand was opened, from the rich
man's largess to the widow's mite, all was bestowed, to enable them
to rebuild their villages and replenish their granaries. And at this
moment, when thousands of misguided but most unfortunate
fellow-countrymen are struggling with the extremes of hardships and
hunger, as your charity began abroad it should end at home. A much
less sum, a tithe of the bounty bestowed on Portugal, even if those
men (which I cannot admit without enquiry) could not have been
restored to their employments, would have rendered unnecessary the
tender mercies of the bayonet and the gibbet. But doubtless our
friends have too many foreign claims to admit a prospect of domestic
relief; though never did such objects demand it. I have traversed the
seat of war in the Peninsula, I have been in some of the most
oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of
infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have
seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country. And
what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of
action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand
specific, the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians, from the
days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse and
shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of
warm water and bleeding, the warm water of your mawkish police, and
the lancets of your military, these convulsions must terminate in
death, the sure consummation of the prescriptions of all political
Sangrados. Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain
inefficiency of the bill, are there not capital punishments
sufficient in your statutes? Is there not blood enough upon your
penal code, that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and
testify against you? How will you carry the bill into effect? Can you
commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet
in every field, and hang up men like scarecrows? or will you proceed
(as you must to bring this measure into effect) by decimation? place
the county under martial law? depopulate and lay waste all around
you? and restore Sherwood Forest as an acceptable gift to the crown,
in its former condition of a royal chase and an asylum for outlaws?
Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will
the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets be appalled by your
gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief it appears that
you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will
that which could not be effected by your grenadiers, be accomplished
by your executioners? If you proceed by the forms of law, where is
your evidence? Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices,
when transportation only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted
to witness against them when death is the penalty. With all due
deference to the noble lords opposite, I think a little
investigation, some previous enquiry would induce even them to change
their purpose. That most favourite state measure, so marvellously
efficacious in many and recent instances, temporising, would not be
without its advantages in this. When a proposal is made to emancipate
or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years, you temporise and
tamper with the minds of men; but a death-bill must be passed off
hand, without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am, from what I
have heard, and from what I have seen, that to pass the hill under
all the existing circumstances, without enquiry, without
deliberation, would only be to add injustice to irritation, and
barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a bill must be content to
inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said
to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it past; suppose
one of these men, as I have seen them,--meagre with famine, sullen
with despair, careless of a life which your Lordships are perhaps
about to value at something less than the price of a
stocking-frame;--suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom
he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about
to be torn for ever from a family which he lately supported in
peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault that he can no
longer so support;--suppose this man, and there are ten thousand such
from whom you may select your victims, dragged into court, to be
tried for this new offence, by this new law; still, there are two
things wanting to convict and condemn him; and these are, in my
opinion,--twelve butchers for a jury, and a Jefferies for a judge!
DEBATE ON THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE'S MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE ON THE
ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS, APRIL 21. 1812.