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 capi