sented by the workers of Yorkshire,
Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire, should make their voice heard in a
terrible slogan, since their true and pitiful complaints could find no
hearing in parliament. We forget, now-a-days, so rapid have been the
changes for the better, how cruel was the condition of numbers of
labourers at the close of the great Peninsular war. The half-ludicrous
nature of some of their grievances has lingered on in tradition; the real
intensity of their sufferings has become forgotten. They were maddened
and desperate; and the country, in the opinion of many, seemed to be on
the verge of a precipice, from which it was only saved by the prompt and
resolute decision of a few in authority. Miss W--- spoke of those times;
of the mysterious nightly drillings; of thousands on lonely moors; of the
muttered threats of individuals too closely pressed upon by necessity to
be prudent; of the overt acts, in which the burning of Cartwright's mill
took a prominent place; and these things sank deep into the mind of one,
at least, among her hearers.

Mr. Cartwright was the owner of a factory called Rawfolds, in Liversedge,
not beyond the distance of a walk from Roe Head. He had dared to employ
machinery for the dressing of woollen cloth, which was an unpopular
measure in 1812, when many other circumstances conspired to make the
condition of the mill-hands unbearable from the pressure of starvation
and misery. Mr. Cartwright was a very remarkable man, having, as I have
been told, some foreign blood in him, the traces of which were very
apparent in his tall figure, dark eyes and complexion, and singular,
though gentlemanly bearing. At any rate he had been much abroad, and
spoke French well, of itself a suspicious circumstance to the bigoted
nationality of those days. Altogether he was an unpopular man, even
before he took the last step of employing shears, instead of hands, to
dress his wool. He was quite aware of his unpopularity, and of the
probable consequences. He had his mill prepared for an assault. He took
up his lodgings in it; and the doors were strongly barricaded at night.
On every step of the stairs there was placed a roller, spiked with barbed
points all round, so as to impede the ascent of the rioters, if they
succeeded in forcing the doors.

On the night of Saturday the 11th of April, 1812, the assault was made.
Some hundreds of starving cloth-dressers assembled in the very field near
Kirklees t