tal 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advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a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