r there were seven in jail; Roberts
obtained a _habeas corpus_ and acquittal for all from Judge Wightman. In
Prescott nine coal miners were in jail, accused of creating a disturbance
in St. Helen's, South Lancashire, and awaiting trial; when Roberts
arrived upon the spot, they were released at once. All this took place
in the first half of February. In April, Roberts released a miner from
jail in Derby, four in Wakefield, and four in Leicester. So it went on
for a time until these Dogberries came to have some respect for the
miners. The truck system shared the same fate. One after another
Roberts brought the disreputable mine owners before the courts, and
compelled the reluctant Justices of the Peace to condemn them; such dread
of this "lightning" "Attorney General" who seemed to be everywhere at
once spread among them, that at Belper, for instance, upon Roberts'
arrival, a truck firm published the following notice:

"NOTICE!"

"PENTRICH COAL MINE.

"The Messrs. Haslam think it necessary, in order to prevent all
mistakes, to announce that all persons employed in their colliery will
receive their wages wholly in cash, and may expend them when and as
they choose to do. If they purchase goods in the shops of Messrs.
Haslam they will receive them as heretofore at wholesale prices, but
they are not expected to make their purchases there, and work and
wages will be continued as usual whether purchases are made in these
shops or elsewhere."

This triumph aroused the greatest jubilation throughout the English
working-class, and brought the Union a mass of new members. Meanwhile
the strike in the North was proceeding. Not a hand stirred, and
Newcastle, the chief coal port, was so stripped of its commodity that
coal had to be brought from the Scotch coast, in spite of the proverb. At
first, while the Union's funds held out, all went well, but towards
summer the struggle became much more painful for the miners. The
greatest want prevailed among them; they had no money, for the
contributions of the workers of all branches of industry in England
availed little among the vast number of strikers, who were forced to
borrow from the small shopkeepers at a heavy loss. The whole press, with
the single exception of the few proletarian journals, was against them;
the bourgeois, even the few among them who might have had enough sense of
justice to support the miners, learnt from the corrupt Liber