[2] In 1811 the growing hostility of those employed in the manufacture of stockings to the introduction of knitting frames, culminated in the Luddite Riots, and in Nottingham over six hundred stocking frames were broken. The riot spread rapidly among the artisans in the cotton and woolen industries in Lancashire and Yorkshire, mills were burned, machinery of all kinds destroyed, and it became necessary to call out seven regiments before quiet was restored. The government became alarmed, especially as the mobs had stormed the militia depots and secured arms for themselves, and several repressive measures were hurried through Parliament. The first, passed March 5, 1812, made frame-breaking a capital offense; the second, the Nottingham Watch and Ward Bill, passed the same month, enabled the lord-lieutenant or sheriff to establish watch and ward if further riots occurred; and the third, the Preservation of Public Peace Act, passed July 27, 1812, empowered any magistrate in the disturbed district to search for secreted arms, and to call upon the people to give up their weapons. See _Parliamentary Debates_, xxi, pp. 859, 1166; xxiii, pp. 1099, 1251.--ED.
Upon this occasion, my friend DOCTOR TAYLOR, most humanely, and with his usual zeal and talent, laboured to counteract the works of FLETCHER and his associates. The DOCTOR published a pamphlet on the subject, in 1812, which every Englishman should read. I, as far as I was able, co-operated with him. We went to London, laid the real facts before several members of the two houses of Parliament; and, in some degree, checked the progress of the dealers in blood. I had an interview with Lord Holland, and told him, that, if he would pledge himself to cause the _secret-service money_ to be kept in London, I would pledge myself for the keeping of the peace in Lancashire. In { 265} short, it was necessary, in order to support the tyranny of the seat-sellers, that _terror_ should prevail in the populous districts. _Blood_ was wanted to flow; and _money_ was given to spies to tempt men into what the new law had made crimes.
From this time I resolved _not to leave my children in such a state of things_, unless I should be taken off very suddenly. I saw no hope of obtaining _a Reform of the Parliament_, without which it was clear to me, that the people of England must continue to work solely for the benefit of the great insolent families, whom I hated for their injustice and rapacity, and despised for their meanness and ignorance. I saw, in them, a mass of debauched and worthless beings, having at their command an army to compel the people to surrender to them the fruits of their industry; and in addition, a body existing under the garb of _religion_, almost as despicable in point of character, and still more malignant.