LXIV. 1811. CHAP. subsistence of themselves and their families. The vast export trade, which had risen to the unprecedented amount of nearly £47,000,000 sterling in the year 1809, in consequence of the withdrawal of the French coastguard from northern Germany, to restore the fortunes of the empire on the Danube, had engendered a spirit of speculation which regarded the exports to continental Europe as unbounded, and terminated in a cruel reverse, from the confiscation of a fleet of above three hundred xxi. 1094, 1 Parl. Deb. merchantmen, having on board goods to an immense amount, in the Baltic, in November 1810, by order of the Emperor of Russia." 1163. 60. fects of the Orders in Council. But, above all, the cause of this distress was to be Ruinous ef- found in the loss of the North American market. The natural irritation of the American government at the unbounded vexations to which they had been exposed by both the belligerent powers from the operation of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, and the Orders in Council, had produced, on the part of the government of the United States, the Non-intercourse Act in February 1811, whereby all commercial connexion both with France and England was terminated, and the vast market of the United States, worth all other foreign markets put together, which took off British manufactures to the amount of above thirteen millions sterling, was entirely lost. To complete the causes of general distress which then pressed upon the nation, the harvests of 1810 and 1811 were so deficient, that in the last of these years the importation amounted to 1,471,000 quarters, to purchase which the enormous sum of £4,271,000, chiefly in specie, 2 Parl. Deb. was sent out of the country.2 These causes, joined to the excessive drain of the precious metals arising from the vast expenditure and boundless necessities of the Rise, &c. of war, both in Germany and the Peninsula, in the year 98. Parl. 1809, produced a very great degree of commercial dis1094, 1163. tress through the whole of 1811;3 and the reality of the defalcation, and the alarming decline in the market for xxi. 178. 3 Porter's Britain, ii. Deb. xxi. LXIV. 1811. our manufacturing industry, appeared in the most deci- CHAP. sive manner from the returns of exports, which sank in that year to twenty-eight millions, being fifteen millions less than in the preceding year, and much lower than they had been since the renewal of the war.* 61. relief afford So general and pressing was the public distress, and so overwhelming, in particular, the embarrassments in Commercial which the commercial classes were involved, that parlia- ed by parlia ment, in spring 1811, with great propriety, following the ment. example of 1793, came forward for their relief. In March of that year, the chancellor of the exchequer brought forward a bill for the purpose of authorising government to issue exchequer bills to the mercantile classes to the extent of six millions sterling, the advances to be repaid by instalments at nine and twelve months after receipt. This resolution was agreed to without a division; and, although not more than half of this large sum was actually required or taken up by the community, yet the fact of government coming forward in this way had a most important effect in upholding commercial credit, and preventing the occurrence of one of those panics, so common in subsequent times, which might have proved extremely dangerous at that political crisis to the empire. The stilling of the panic by this interposition of the credit of the exchequer, to extend the currency and support the mercantile part of the community, affords a valuable commentary on the extreme impolicy of the laws in subsequent times, which, on occasion of a similar crisis, so fearfully augmented the public distress by contracting the currency. Little of the money thus advanced was ultimately lost to the community; but it must always be * Exports (official value) from 1808 to 1812:— Foreign and Colonial. British and Irish. Total. 1808, £24,611,215 £30,387,990 LXIV. 1811. CHAP. considered as an act highly honourable to the British. administration, and a manifestation of the ascendency of right principles of government in the cabinet, that at a period when they were oppressed by a sinking exchequer 1 Parl. Deb. and an increasing war expenditure, they came forward with this splendid advance to sustain the mercantile credit, and assuage the manufacturing distress of the community.1 xix. 327, 350. 62. It may readily be conceived what wide-spread internal Origin and distress and discontent so prodigious a diminution in the the Luddite colonial and manufacturing exports of the kingdom must disturban- have occasioned, especially when coming in the nine progress of ces. teenth year of the war, and to a nation already overburdened with excessive and universal taxation. The unhappy operatives who were thrown out of employment, suffering severe distress, and incapable of extending their vision to the wide and far-distant causes which had concurred to produce these calamitous results, conceived that their distresses were entirely owing to the introduction of machinery into the manufactories, and would be relieved by its destruction. To a certain extent, there can be no doubt their ideas were well founded. Machinery, in the later stages of an opulent community, may be indispensable, to enable its master-manufacturers to compete with the fabrics of states where labour is cheaper, because money is scarcer; but it does so only by throwing a large part of the operatives out of employment. It is seldom that large bodies of men are mistaken in what really presses on their interests. A wide-spread conspiracy was, in consequence, formed for the destruction of the obnoxious frames, which, originating in the weaving districts of Nottinghamshire, soon spread to the adjoining counties of Derby and Leicester, and involved a large part of the manufacturing zone of England in riot and 2 Ann. Reg. alarm. Undisguised violence, and open assemblages of 38. Parl. the disaffected, took place; but these excesses were speedily suppressed by the interposition of the military.2 Upon this the conspirators, who acted in concert, and 1812, 35, Deb. xxi. 807, 820. LXIV. 1811. took the name of Luddites, from that of General Ludd, CHAP. their imaginary leader, adopted the more dangerous system of assembling secretly at night, quickly completing the work of destruction, and immediately dispersing before either their persons could be identified, or assistance from the nearest military station procured. 63. to a height, At length, in the winter of 1811, and the spring of 1812, the evil rose to such a height, especially in the They come great and populous county of York, that it attracted the and are supserious attention of both houses of parliament. Secret pressed. committees were appointed in consequence, who collected a large mass of evidence, and made reports of great value on the subject. From the information obtained, it appeared that, though this illegal confederacy had its ramifications through all the central counties of England where manufactories were established, and was organised in the most efficient manner to effect the objects of the conspirators, yet it was almost entirely confined to persons in the very lowest ranks of life, and was rather directed. to the immediate objects of riot and plunder than to any general or systematic change in the frame of government. A bill, limited, however, in its duration to the 1st of January 1814, was passed into a law, rendering the Feb. 26. breaking of frames a capital offence; and with such energy was this enactment carried into operation, that no less than seventeen men were condemned to death, and executed in the court-yard of the castle of York, at one time, for crimes connected with these disturbances. dreadful but necessary example had the effect of stopping these dangerous riots, which, like other undisguised inroads on life and property, however formidable in the vicinity where they occur, are never dangerous in a national point of view, if not aided by the pusillanimity or infatuation of the middle and higher ranks. And before the end of 38, 132. the year, all disposition even to these excesses died away, 30. Parl. under the cheering influence of the extended market for 807, 840. manufacturing industry,1 which arose from the opening of April 17, This 1812. 1 Reg. 1812, 35, Chron. 17, Deb. xxi. LXIV. 1811. 64. tory of Sir Samuel the Baltic harbours, and the animating events of the Russian campaign. Among the senators in the Opposition ranks who disEarly his tinguished themselves by their resistance to this increase, even for a limited period, of the number of capital offences in English law, and who devoted the energies of a powerful mind and the warmth of a benevolent heart, to the end of his life, to effect the amelioration of its sanguinary enactments, was SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY. This great lawyer, and truly estimable statesman, was of French descent; but his parents had settled in London, where his father carried on business as a jeweller; and he had the merit of raising himself, by his unaided exertions, from the respectable but comparatively humble sphere in which they moved, to the most exalted station in society. He was called to the bar in 1783; and it was impossible that his perseverance and logical precision of argument could have failed of raising him to eminence in that profession, where talent adapted to it seldom fails in the end to overbear all competition. He was highly distinguished, and in great practice in Chancery, before he was heard of beyond the legal circles of the metropolis. His reputation, however, at length procured for him more exalted destinies. In 1806 he was made solicitor-general by Mr Fox, and elevated to the rank of knighthood; and at the same time he took his seat in parliament as one of the members for Queensborough-thus adding another to the long array of illustrious men, on both sides of politics, who have been ushered into public life through the portals of the nomination boroughs, which the Reform Bill has now for ever closed. He took an active part in many of the most important debates which subsequently occurred in parliament, particularly those on the slaveIII. c. 135. trade, the regency, and Catholic emancipation; and he had already attempted, and in part effected, a great moir, i. 29. improvement in the law of bankruptcy,1 by the importation into the English practice of that which had long 1 46 Geo. Romilly's Speeches and Me |