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