10th December 1813: The Frame-Breaking Bill reaches the House of Lords

On Friday 10th December 1813, the Frame-Breaking Bill reached the House of Lords:

The House resolved itself into a committee, on the Frame-breaking Bill.

Lord Holland: observed upon the absurdity of the wording of the Bill, which stated. "that whereas it is expedient to amend and render perpetual the said Act (the former Act), be it therefore enacted, that all the provisions of the said Act shall cease and determine."

Lord Redesdale: proposed amendments to obviate this incongruity, by inserting words to the effect, that the former Act should be repealed, and other provisions substituted in lieu thereof.

These amendments having been agreed to,

Lord Holland: expressed his satisfaction at the repeal of the former Act, and that ministers had found it effectual in putting down the evil. That it had been so effectual, however, was owing, to the activity, the intelligence, and zeal, of the corporation of the town of Nottingham, He mentioned this, because it would be recollected, that some time since a Bill passed the three branches of the legislature, for depriving that corporation, to a considerable extent (unjustly, as he contended), of their corporate 276 rights; and if that subject should again come under the consideration of the legislature; he trusted the observations he had now made would be borne in the memory of their lordships.

The Bill passed through the committee, with the amendments.

The 1812 Act was now repealed, being replaced by the new Act, which achieved Royal Assent on Monday 20th December 1812, before Parliament was adjourned on the same day.

1st June 1813: Lord Byron introduces Major Cartwright's petition in the House of Lords

On Tuesday 1st June 1813, Lord Byron made another appearance in the House of Lords, this time on the subject of the way the authorities had treated the radical reformer, Major Cartwright, in particular in Huddersfield the preceding January:

My Lords, — The petition which I now hold for the purpose of presenting to the House, is one which I humbly conceive requires the particular attention of your Lordships, inasmuch as, though signed but by a single individual, it contains statements which (if not disproved) demand most serious investigation. The grievance of which the petitioner complains is neither selfish nor imaginary. It is not his own only, for it has been, and is still felt by numbers. No one without these walls, nor indeed within, but may to-morrow be made liable to the same insult and obstruction, in the discharge of an imperious duty for the restoration of the true constitution of these realms, by petitioning for reform in parliament. The petitioner, my Lords, is a man whose long life has been spent in one unceasing struggle for the liberty of the subject, against that undue influence which has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished; and whatever difference of opinion may exist as to his political tenets, few will be found to question the integrity of his intentions. Even now oppressed with years, and not exempt from the infirmities attendant on his age, but still unimpaired in talent, and unshaken in spirit — "frangas non flectes"  — he has received many a wound in the combat against corruption; and the new grievance, the fresh insult of which he complains, may inflict another scar, but no dishonour. The petition is signed by John Cartwright, and it was in behalf of the people and parliament, in the lawful pursuit of that reform in the representation, which is the best service to be rendered both to parliament and people, that he encountered the wanton outrage which forms the subject-matter of his petition to your Lordships. It is couched in firm, yet respectful language — in the language of a man, not regardless of what is due to himself, but at the same time, I trust, equally mindful of the deference to be paid to this House. The petitioner states, amongst other matter of equal, if not greater importance, to all who are British in their feelings, as well as blood and birth, that on the 21st January, 1813, at Huddersfield, himself and six other persons, who, on hearing of his arrival, had waited on him merely as a testimony of respect, were seized by a military and civil force, and kept in close custody for several hours, subjected to gross and abusive insinuation from the commanding officer, relative to the character of the petitioner; that he (the petitioner) was finally carried before a magistrate, and not released till an examination of his papers proved that there was not only no just, but not even statutable charge against him; and that, notwithstanding the promise and order from the presiding magistrates of a copy of the warrant against your petitioner, it was afterwards withheld on divers pretexts, and has never until this hour been granted. The names and condition of the parties will be found in the petition. To the other topics touched upon in the petition, I shall not now advert, from a wish not to encroach upon the time of the House; but I do most sincerely call the attention of your Lordships to its general contents - it is in the cause of the parliament and people that the rights of this venerable freeman have been violated, and it is, in my opinion, the highest mark of respect that could be paid to the House, that to your justice, rather than by appeal to any inferior court, he now commits, himself. Whatever may be the fate of his remonstrance, it is some satisfaction to me, though mixed with regret for the occasion, that I have this opportunity of publicly stating the obstruction to which the subject is liable, in the prosecution of the most lawful and imperious of his duties, the obtaining by petition reform in parliament. I have shortly stated his complaint; the petitioner has more fully expressed it. Your Lordships will, I hope, adopt some measure fully to protect and redress him, and not him alone, but the whole body of the people, insulted and aggrieved in his person, by the interposition of an abused civil, and unlawful military force between them and their right of petition to their own representatives.

His Lordship then presented the petition from Major Cartwright, which was read, complaining of the circumstances at Huddersfield, and of interruptions given to the right of petitioning in several places in the northern parts of the kingdom, and which his Lordship moved should be laid on the table.

Several lords having spoken on the question,

Lord Byron replied, that he had, from motives of duty, presented this petition to their lordships' consideration. The noble Earl had contended, that it was not a petition, but a speech; and that, as it contained no prayer, it should not be received. What was the necessity of a prayer? If that word were to be used in its proper sense, their Lordships could not expect that any man should pray to others. He had only to say, that the petition, though in some parts expressed strongly perhaps, did not contain any improper mode of address, but was couched in respectful language towards their Lordships; he should therefore trust their Lordships would allow the petition to be received.

27th July 1812: The Peace Preservation Bill becomes Law

On Monday 27th July 1812, the Peace Preservation Bill was read for the third time in the House of Lords. The Bill, the contents of which had been publicly advertised in the Northern Counties some days before (almost certainly at the behest of General Maitland), would become law 2 days later when Parliament was prorogued. Amongst other provisions, it gave magistrates wide powers to confiscate arms, prohibited drilling and made acting as a delegate between workers organisations in different areas a felony.

The legislation was, however, a temporary measure, and it expired on the 25th March 1813.

24th July 1812: The Framework-knitters Bill is rejected by the House of Lords

 On Friday 24th July 1812, after more than 5 months of extensive lobbying by Gravenor Henson and the United Committee of Framework-knitters, the Framework-knitters Bill was roundly rejected by the House of Lords in one afternoon:

The Earl of Lauderdale, in adverting to this Bill, contended that it was founded upon most mischievous principles of legislation. A part of the Bill went to interfere in the bargains made between the master manufacturer and his workmen, upon a principle which could not fail to produce the most mischievous consequences; and he could not help observing, with relation to this point, that the idea of some persons, that a minimum of wages would be beneficial to the workmen employed, was the most mistaken notion that had ever been conceived, for the inevitable consequence of the minimum must be, that in the case of the slackness of work, the masters would discharge their workmen altogether, rather than employ them at the minimum wages. The other part of the Bill was equally mischievous; it went to prohibit an article of manufacture, on the alleged ground of it not being a good article, although that article was in great demand, not only in the interior, but also for exportation. He could not conceive a more monstrous principle of legislation. What would the people of Nottingham say, if an act were to be passed to prohibit the manufacture of worsted and thread stockings, upon the supposition that all persons would wear silk stockings; and yet this was precisely the principle on which the present Bill proceeded: an article of low price was to be prohibited, in order to give place to an article of high price, instead of allowing the only just and proper principle to operate, namely, for the demand to regulate the supply. He trusted that no similar legislative measure would again be attempted to be introduced, and that this Bill would be unanimously rejected. His lordship concluded by moving, that the Bill be read a second time that day three months.

The Earl of Liverpool entirely concurred with the noble lord, although he was satisfied of the goodness of the motives which actuated the very respectable individual who introduced this Bill in the other House, and the well-intentioned, though certainly most mistaken views of those whose instance it was introduced. He, however, thought there could not be a more mischievous principle of legislation than that on which this Bill rested. It had been well said in a foreign country, when it was asked what should be done to make manufactures and commerce prosper? the answer was, laisser faire; and it was undoubtably true, that the less commerce and manufactures were meddled with by legislation the more they were likely to prosper. Were they once to entangle themselves in the principle which this Bill sought to establish, he knew not where they were to stop until the commerce and manufactures of the country were utterly ruined. It was to machinery that we owed our superiority in commerce and manufactures amongst the nations of the world.

Lord Holland entirely agreed in the sentiments uttered by the noble earl and his noble friend, and also in doing justice to the excellence of the motives of those by whom this Bill had been introduced and promoted. The principle, however, of the Bill was a most mistaken and mischievous one. Accident had carried him to countries where machinery had once been used, and manufactures prosperously carried on, but which had been wholly destroyed by the meddling policy of legislation, those employed in them reduced to the utmost distress, and the country devastated. These circumstances, he trusted, would be a warning to the legislature of this country, against introducing so dangerous a principle of legislation as that upon which the present Bill was founded.

Viscount Sidmouth also entirely concurred in these sentiments. The Bill had been introduced in the other House from the purest motives, but he felt himself compelled, by his public duty, to give his direct negative to the principle which it sought to establish, which he conceived to be most mischievous in its tendency and consequences; and he trusted in God, that no such principle would be again attempted to be introduced in any Bill brought up to that House.

The consideration the Bill was accordingly deferred for three months.

23rd July 1812: An ill-omen for the Framework-knitters Bill in the House of Lords

On Thursday 23rd July 1812, the Framework-knitters Bill was brought up in the House of Lords:

The Earl of Lauderdale called the attention of the House to this Bill, which he thought a most obnoxious measure; the object of it being to prohibit certain articles of manufacture, because they were not so well made as other articles of higher price. If once they were to legislate in this manner, instead of leaving to the consumer to find out what were good articles and what were bad, he knew not where they were to stop, and they would introduce a principle of the most dangerous consequence. To pass this Bill would be immediately to destroy a valuable branch of export trade, to throw a great number of persons out of employment, and to produce considerable distress in the manufacture to which it applied.

Viscount Sidmouth said he had not read the Bill, but would read it before the meeting of the House to-morrow, and form his opinion from the contents of it.

29th June 1812: The House of Lords debates the Prince Regent's message about the disturbances

Following the reading of the Prince Regent's message in the House of Lords 2 days before, on Monday 29th June 1812, the House of Lords debated the government proposals:

Viscount Sidmouth, in rising to move an Address to his Royal Highness, trusted there would be an unanimous concurrence on the part of the lordships in expressing their gratitude for the communication, and in declaring their determination to take into consideration the documents presented to them, and to adopt such measures as the information communicated might appear to require for the safety and security of his Majesty's loyal and peaceable subjects, and the restoration of tranquillity. He should afterwards propose to refer the papers to the committee of secrecy, and it was not for him at the present moment to anticipate what measures might by that committee be deemed necessary. It was with great pain that his Majesty servants had found themselves compelled to resort to this step, but the necessity that existed, rendered it a duty imperative upon them, to advise his royal highness the Prince Regent to make the present communication to parliament. It could not of course be expected that he should now enter into any detail of those circumstances which had rendered necessary this communication. It was, however, matter of notoriety that acts of the greatest violence and outrage had been committed in some districts of the country; and although the conduct of the rioters might be, in some degree, traced to the high price of provisions and the reduction of work, still there was no doubt that these outrages were fomented by persons who had views and objects in thus fomenting disturbances, which it was the duty of government to counteract. The repeal of the Orders in Council might tend, by increasing employment, to withdraw many from this system of riot and outrage, but government would have incurred a heavy responsibility, if, with the knowledge of the documents now communicated to the House, and aware that the hopes of increased employment might be disappointed, or that it might please Providence to inflict the calamity of another deficient harvest, they are not advised is royal highness the Prince Regent to make this communication to parliament. Every measure had been adopted on the part of the government: the military had been called in to assist the civil power, and had conducted themselves with the utmost zeal and moderation; special commissions had been issued for the trial of several persons for acts of riot and outrage, some of whom had paid the forfeit of their lives; others had since been taken into custody, and been ordered for trial. But under the circumstances of the present state of the disturbed districts, is Majesty’s servants had considered this a communication absolutely necessary, in order that measures might be adopted to the security of the lives, and the safety of the property of his Majesty's peaceable and loyal subjects. It would of course rest with the committee to whom the documents were to be referred, to consider what measures were necessary: he did not, however, mean to say, that his Majesty's government had not formed an opinion as to what measures would be requisite. His lordship concluded by moving an Address to the Prince Regent, returning thanks to his Royal Highness for the communication, stating that the House would take into their serious consideration the documents referred to, and expressing their determination to concur in such measures, as, from the information communicated, might appear to be necessary, with a view to the security of the lives and property of his Majesty's peaceable and loyal subjects.

Earl Stanhope observed, that there was not a word in the proposed Address which was not very proper; but at the same time it was much to be wished, that some farther explanation of what was intended should be given; for as to the adoption of proper measures, this might mean anything or nothing: it was no explanation at all. He could not help also observing, that the noble viscount himself, by his Bill of last year, had been a great cause of discontent and disturbance; and he might thank the prudence of opposition, and of ministers—of bishops and layman—that he had not been the cause of much more disturbance. He regretted any such step as this should be necessary to restore tranquillity; but had they tried every other proper measure? Let them look at the situation of the peasantry of Ireland; of the poor of Wales; and of the non-conformists, who formed the greater part of the population of the empire. Let them endeavour to preserve tranquillity, by conciliating the people, and leaving no just cause of complaint. This would be the course of a wise government. But still these unlawful riots must be suppressed, and he had no objection to the words of the Address. He thought it right, however, to propose to add the following words,—“not violating the principles of the constitution.” This addition was necessary, considering the vague and ambiguous state in which the noble viscount had left the question.

The Earl of Liverpool did not think that their lordships would pledge themselves to do any thing tending to violate the principles of the constitution, by agreeing to the Address without the words proposed. The noble earl called for further explanation; but what farther explanation could his noble friend have given under the circumstances of the case? His noble friend had stated, that there were serious disturbances in the country, which the measures hitherto adopted had not been sufficient to suppress; and he had laid on the table a sealed bag, containing the proof of what he stated. Under such circumstances the motion to refer the information to a Secret Committee, without anticipating what might be the proper measures to be adopted in consequence, was conformable to the ordinary practice of parliament on such occasions. It would have been in the highest degree indecorous to hint at the steps which ought to be taken, before the examination of the papers. The proper measures would be the result of the investigation, founded on the information given to the committee. The ministers ought not to commit themselves to any particular measures at present. All they could regularly say at present was, that, in their opinion, some farther measures were necessary. What we should be remained for future consideration. When the noble earl talked of violating the constitution, he probably meant more than met the ear. If the noble earl meant, that it was a violation of the principles of the constitution to depart, on extraordinary occasions, from the ordinary practice of the law, he completely differed from him on that point. Parliament had the power to adopt extraordinary measures to meet extraordinary cases; and when such cases occurred, it was perfect constitutional to exercise that power. If parliament had not exercised that power on particularly emergencies, their liberties would not now have existed to such an extent as they did. This, however, was not the time for such discussions. The subject would come more regularly under consideration when the committee had made its report.

Lord Holland concurred with the noble viscount who proposed the Address, in the opinion, that it would be improper in the present stage of the proceedings, to anticipate what measures it might be proper to adopt. He also agreed with the noble earl who spoke last, that it would be much more decorous to defer discussion till the committee had made its report. But, at the same time, he saw no objection to the words proposed to be introduced in the Address by his noble friend; on the contrary, he thought, that something like this edition was requisite. They talked of not trusting to speculation, but recommended the adoption of such measures as would be calculated to meet the worst that could happen. All this was very properly urged; but, at the same time, he was an old enough member of parliament to know, that sealed green bags and secret committees threatened the generating of such monsters as the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and similar abominations. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act he should always oppose; and under all the circumstances in the present case, he thought it was candid and right to express at the outset, an anxiety to preserve the principles of the constitution inviolate.

Earl Stanhope agreed with his excellent and constitutional friend so far, that in no case would he consent to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act; but more especially he would not consent to place such a power as this would furnish, in the hands of such a minister as the noble earl opposite, (Liverpool,) a Minister who had no fixed principle at all, and was more versatile than a weather-cock, turning about with every change of wind. That minister had declared, that he would adhere to the Orders in Council, and had soon after relinquished them. He declared, that he would oppose his (lord Stanhope’s) Gold Coin Bill. At five o'clock he intended to vote against it; at six o'clock he was resolved to oppose it; at seven o'clock he was still hostile to it; but in five minutes after, he suddenly held a cabinet council, and became one of its warmest supporters. Was it to such a weathercock of a prime minister that such powers should be entrusted? He had great hopes, from the opposition of the noble earl, that he would ultimately support him.

The Lord Chancellor then put the question on earl Stanhope's amendment, which was negatived; earl Stanhope declaring, that he would not divide the House upon it, as the subject would come again under consideration.

The Address was then agreed to without farther opposition.

Viscount Sidmouth next proposed that a Secret Committee should be appointed, to consider the information adverted to in the Prince Regent’s Message; that the Committee should consist of eleven lords, to be chosen by ballot; and that the House should proceed to such ballot at four o'clock to-morrow.—This was agreed to.

27th June 1812: The Prince Regent sends a message to the Houses of Parliament about the disturbances in the North & Midlands

On  Saturday 27th June 1812, a message from the Prince Regent was read to member of both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The message, which is below, is followed by the debate in the House of Commons:

GEORGE P.R.

His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, in the name and on the behalf of his Majesty, has given orders that there be laid before the House of Commons, Copies of the Information which has been received relative to certain violent and dangerous proceedings, which in defiance of the laws of taken place, and continue to be carried on, in several counties of England.

His Royal Highness confidently relies on the wisdom of Parliament, for the adoption of such measures as will be best calculated to afford security to the lives and property of his Majesty's peaceable and loyal subjects in the disturbed districts, and for the restoration of order tranquillity.

G.P.R.

Lord Castlereagh then moved that the Message be taken into consideration on Monday.

Mr. Brougham expressed his concern, that after those disturbances had so long existed, the notice of them should have been put off till so late a period of the session. Still greater was his astonishment, that the call of the House should have been discharged when any measure was to be adopted for the alteration of our laws, which was always, if possible, avoided by our ancestors, even in worse and more dangerous times in the present.

Mr. Giles wished to know if the noble lord intended to found any motion on this Message on Monday next?

Lord Castlereagh said he should propose an Address to his Royal Highness, in answer to his most gracious Message, and also propose that a Select Committee be appointed to enquire into this subject.

Mr. Horner wished to know if the noble lord intended to name the Select Committee on Monday?

Lord Castlereagh said, that the Select Committee would be named on some future day.

24th March 1812: Massive petitions against the Orders in Council are sent to London from the Leeds area

On Tuesday evening the 24th March, three massive petitions left Leeds for London. Each of them was signed by 16,000 to 17,000 people and they were addressed to the Prince Regent and the Houses of Commons and Lords. The petitions called for the rescinding of the Orders in Council.

The day before, Earl Fitzwilliam had spoken on the subject in the House of Lords, as recorded by Hansard:

He [Fitzwilliam] said he should have several petitions to present from manufacturers and other commercial persons, complaining of the injurious and destructive consequences resulting to their interests from the Orders in Council: and that, when these petitions should be before the House, he should feel it incumbent on him, to come forward with a motion for the repeal of so injurious a system.

5th March 1812: Third & final reading of Frame-breaking Bill in the House of Lords

On Thursday 5th March, the Frame-breaking Bill was read for the third and final time in the House of Lords.

On the motion for the third reading of this Bill,

The Earl of Carlisle: without again entering into his objections to the Bill, could not but observe, that there was another Bill before the House (the Nottingham Watch and Ward Bill), which ought to have preceded the Frame Bill. They ought first to have tried the operation of the other Bill; and, possibly, its effect might have been such, as to preclude the necessity of passing the Frame Bill at all. He should, therefore, still recommend, that the third reading of this Bill should be postponed for some time, till they found what would be the effect of the other. He did not mean to accuse the ministers of cruelty and inhumanity, in hurrying forward a measure of this kind: possibly they might be in possession of information which justified them in proposing it; but then, why not communicate that information to the House, in order to justify their lordships in passing this law? He would ask whether it was decent,—whether it was dignified, to pass so serious a penal law on such grounds as they had at present to stand upon? The usual attention and humanity of the noble and learned lord on the woolsack must have been forgotten on this occasion; and he was surprised that it should have been attempted to carry through so serious a law without furnishing their lordships With better information.

The Earl of Liverpool: after the countenance which their lordships had already given to the Bill, did not think it necessary to say any thing now on the subject, except in answer to what had been stated with respect to another Bill before the House. The principle of that Bill was old, and required no great time to settle its application in this instance; but a good deal of difficulty had been experienced in arranging the details, and much time consumed in the necessary communications with the magistrates. This was the reason that the Bill had not preceded the Frame Bill. The present Bill was more simple in its details, whether right or wrong; and with respect to that he would only remark, that it did nothing more than give the same protection to this manufacture which was already enjoyed by other manufactures of a similar kind, carried on by machinery: and it ought also to be remembered that the measure was only temporary.

The Earl of Moira: expressed his conviction, that one of the greatest mischiefs attending the present proceeding, was its tendency to mislead the House into an idea that they had corrected the evils in question, when in reality the case would be found widely different; that it would only augment and exasperate the disorder; it was like applying a piece of hot plaister to a cancer, and expecting from such a remedy, the extirpation of the corroding and fatal disorder. In order to eradicate the great and increasing evil, the whole system of the government of the country must be completely and radically altered. It undoubtedly became the justice of the House, to endeavour to extirpate such a dangerous species of offence, but it no less became their justice to endeavour to prevent those distresses which gave rise to them; and to try to ameliorate the situation of the starving manufacturers. They should think and seriously consider what the effect of such a measure must be on the desperation of an individual, divested of the means of supporting his family, because all application of his manual industry was denied to him. That miserable system of corruption which for some years past had usurped and abused the name of government, must be corrected, if they meant to bring home the minds of men and Britons to that loyalty and affection for their constitution and government, upon which alone rested the stability of its institutions and the safety of the country; if they meant to unite every British heart, as they ought to be united, in support and in defence of the empire; in order to effectuate this work they must torn their minds to many different objects. There could be no safety to the state, no permanent or general system of prosperity or amelioration expected, but from a total change in the system upon which the government of the country was administered.

The Bill was then read a third time and passed.

The Bill now became the Frame-breaking Act. When royal assent was obtained on 20th March 1812, breaking machinery would be a capital offence.

2nd March 1812: More discussion of the Frame-breaking Bill in the House of Lords

On Monday 2nd March, the Frame-breaking Bill was again discussed in the House of Lords:

On the order of the day for the committal of this Bill,

Earl Grosvenor: rose to move, that the order be discharged. After what had already passed; after the eyes of the noble Secretary of State had been a little opened, he had expected him to have himself moved the discharge of the order. The Bill proposed to punish with death those who entered a house, whether with force or not, and damaged a piece of lace, or stocking frame. The measure, however, was said to be necessary; but their lordships might depend upon it that this law would only make the artful more artful, the cunning more cunning, the mysterious more mysterious. The proper way to conciliate the people, and to prevent these outrages, was to reform abuses; and on this account he regretted the introduction into the Prince Regent's cabinet of a noble lord, who, whatever might be his merits in other respects, was no friend to such a reformation. He would have been in despair, had it not been for the decision of the House of Commons in the case of an office granted by ministers after having been condemned by a committee of that House. No decision had ever given him so much pleasure. The noble earl particularly censured the severity of the measure, which went to inflict the sanguinary penalty of death, upon what might be only an entry into a house. He trusted their lordships would not suffer themselves to be persuaded by ministers into a concurrence in an act, which would be a disgrace to the statute-book, to the character of the country, and which, instead of removing the evil, would increase it, by more widely diffusing the mischief, and driving the unhappy depredators to acts of desperation. He concluded by moving, That the order be discharged.

The Marquis of Douglas: stated the question to be, whether the punishment of death was really necessary in this case? and when it was admitted that the milder punishment had never been tried, the argument appeared to be decisive against the severer penalty. The evil here to be remedied did not consist in the defect of the punishment, but in the security of the criminal. Had the former act been put into execution? If it had not, how could they state that the punishment was ineffectual? Nothing could be more unwise than enacting the extremity of punishment in cases of minor offences. When there was no variety in punishment, people would be led to think that there was no gradation in crime. The evil was not to be remedied by laws like this; it extended much farther than Nottingham: a whole population was driven to these pernicious courses by the distresses arising from the unwise policy of government. They asked for existence: give it them (said his lordship) by abandoning that policy, and do not visit them with extermination as a cure for their miseries. In Yorkshire and Lancashire there had been considerable meetings of people suffering under the same distresses as the manufacturers of Nottingham; In his own country, too, (Scotland) there had been meetings of the same description. In Glasgow an application for relief had been made to the magistrates by 30,000 people; but any serious disturbance had been prevented by the wisdom and activity of the magistrates, and especially the provost. The evil likewise extended through Ayrshire. They must go to the root of the evil, and alter their policy. This was the only efficient method. They must return to the old system under which this country had so long flourished, and not destroy the gifts of nature by their unwise measures. The present Bill was the last resort of a rash, feeble, and wretched government,—fearful of their own enactments, because doubtful of their own ability.

The Earl of Harrowby: had imagined, that after the discussion which had already taken place, there would have been no farther opposition to the Bill. Nothing new had been advanced. Even if he should concede all that had been advanced as to the unwise policy of government, still there was a necessity for this law. An altered policy must take some time to operate: and, in the mean time, an immediate remedy must be applied to the existing evil. The crime was of the most heinous nature and most dangerous tendency, and must be repressed. As to the assertion that this was the last resort of a weak and wretched government, it ought to be recollected that similar laws in similar cases had been passed under the most powerful and humane governments; and he referred as evidence of this to the several Laws passed since the 12th of Geo. I, relative to the woollen and silk manufactures. They need not be ashamed to be as weak and bloody as Sir Robert Walpole, lord Hardwicke, and the marquis of Rockingham. It ought not to be said that they were harsh or violent in following the system that had all along been pursued and found effectual. Without entering on general principles, he referred to the authority of Mr. Justice Blackstone; and contended that nothing could be found in the book of that eminent judge, adverse to a capital punishment in a case of this nature. The punishment of death had often been enacted against offences where it would be really inflicted only in particular and highly aggravated cases. Our law was mildly administered. The complaint generally was, that the guilty escaped, not that too much severity had been used. In the execution of the present law, the same principle of mildness would, no doubt, be attended to: but there might be cases in which the offence would deserve death; and the capital punishment was necessary in order to strike terror into the offenders.

The Earl of Carlisle: said, that the proposition to enact a law subjecting a fellow creature to the punishment of death, was one from which humanity shrunk, and on which reason ought to pause. Nothing but necessity clearly proved could justify its adoption: but where was the proof here? What papers—what documents had been laid before them? None; they had merely the assertion of the ministers that there was a necessity for this measure, and that assertion only; unless the accounts in the newspapers of disturbances were to be considered as proper grounds for that House to proceed upon. Allowing these to be true,—how did they know that the magistrates of Nottingham the meant no disrespect to them) had done their duty? How did they know that the proper means of detection had been used? This Bill was, besides, perfectly inefficient for its own object, and, indeed, in some measure subversive of it. How could they expect that those who were averse to subject these men to the punishment of transportation, would be willing to subject them to the penalty of death? There was a great deal of feeling and humanity in the generality of the people of this country on these occasions." If the law," said they, "subjects a man only to such a punishment as his offence deserves, we will inform; but if his life is to be affected, you will get no information from us." On every ground the noble earl said he thought the measure highly objectionable.

The Earl of Westmoreland: supported the Bill, and vindicated the conduct of government in acting with every practicable vigilance and exertion to restore tranquillity and order, ere they recurred to parliament for the present measure. His lordship followed the line of argument adopted by his noble friend who spoke last but one, as to the general principle upon which the measure proceeded; and he was convinced the law under the Bill would be administered with a discriminating lenity, and fully acted upon only when the necessity of the case required it. The measure, therefore, had his cordial assent.

Lord Grenville: thought the evil of a deeper nature than noble lords were inclined to admit. The great cause was the bad policy which had plunged our manufacturers into distress. The distress and the cause were spreading together. It was now that the effect of the paper issue was making itself felt through the community; and it was impossible in any case to conceive, why the same evils which had extended on an excessive issue of paper, should not be attended with the same evils here as in all other countries. This was a more prominent cause than even the Orders in Council. His noble friend (the earl of Lauderdale) had imputed the distress to the sudden rise and fall of wages by the sudden demands for manufactures; but even where the wages did not fall, the excessive issue of paper lowered their real value. The same money could not purchase the same quantity of provisions; and unless there was a maximum on the price of the necessaries of life, the working people must be more and more impoverished, even in the nominal receipt of undiminished wages. The great manufacturers worked for foreign markets; the rise of the prices abroad did not keep pace with the rise of the nominal value of the currency at home; and in consequence, they were obliged to tell their workmen that they could not make the prime cost on their materials. The workmen said, and with not less truth, that they could not live by their work; and thus distress; came rapidly upon the most useful and industrious classes of the community. The present system had the direct tendency of exhausting the resources of the industrious part of the public; this was no new thing to their lordships; it had been pointed out from the beginning: every step of its progress had been regularly detailed, and it was now making its way with accelerated evil. Was this a thing within penal laws to correct? Were men to be cured of this by the gibbet and the gallows? The Bill might irritate and punish, and inflict miseries dreadful to feeling and humanity; but it would not stop an evil which resulted from the wretchedness into which a dangerous and headlong system had driven the working people. His noble friend, (the earl of Harrowby) in quoting a passage from judge Blackstone, seemed to doubt whether that great judge looked on the punishment of death as a means of prevention, or as the penalty for enormous crime. But, putting the first point out of question, was the guilt of this crime of that enormous nature which required death? The noble earl obviously combined the individual act with the crime of conspiracy: but the Bill omitted all the intention of conspiracy, and alluded only to the act of the individual. It would be answered, that the intention of the Bill was chiefly against the conspiracy: but where was the object of a Bill to be found but in its leading clauses, or preamble? He was sorry to hear an attempt to justify the introduction of penal statutes by great names. If there was any case in which we should not look to precedents, or give up any thing to great names, it was a case like the present. To justify the infliction of death, there must be no authority but strong necessity. The statute book was stained with sanguinary laws; it was a stigma on the character of the country; foreigners looked upon it as such, and appealed to its existence as the standard of our national character. His noble friend spoke of the mildness with which those laws were administered. A philosopher once said, that among the Athenians, to praise the Athenians was extremely easy: but where were we to find the great evidence of a mild and legislative spirit,—the prevention? If the question was of the purity of the administration of justice, he most agreed. The great cause was the bad policy which had plunged our manufacturers into distress. The distress and the cause were spreading together. It was now that the effect of the paper issue was making itself felt through the community; and it was impossible in any case to conceive, why the same evils which had extended on an excessive issue of paper, should not be attended with the same evils here as in all other countries. This was a more prominent cause than even the Orders in Council. His noble friend (the earl of Lauderdale) had imputed the distress to the sudden rise and fall of wages by the sudden demands for manufactures; but even where the wages did not fall, the excessive issue of paper lowered their real value. The same money could not purchase the same quantity of provisions; and unless there was a maximum on the price of the necessaries of life, the working people must be more and more impoverished, even in the nominal receipt of undiminished wages. The great manufacturers worked for foreign markets; the rise of the prices abroad did not keep pace with the rise of the nominal value of the currency at home; and in consequence, they were obliged to tell their workmen that they could not make the prime cost on their materials. The workmen said, and with not less truth, that they could not live by their work; and thus distress; came rapidly upon the most useful and industrious classes of the community. The present system had the direct tendency of exhausting the resources of the industrious part of the public; this was no new thing to their lordships; it had been pointed out from the beginning: every step of its progress had been regularly detailed, and it was now making its way with accelerated evil. Was this a thing within penal laws to correct? Were men to be cured of this by the gibbet and the gallows? The Bill might irritate and punish, and inflict miseries dreadful to feeling and humanity; but it would not stop an evil which resulted from the wretchedness into which a dangerous and headlong system had driven the working people. His noble friend, (the earl of Harrowby) in quoting a passage from judge Blackstone, seemed to doubt whether that great judge looked on the punishment of death as a means of prevention, or as the penalty for enormous crime. But, putting the first point out of question, was the guilt of this crime of that enormous nature which required death? The noble earl obviously combined the individual act with the crime of conspiracy: but the Bill omitted all the intention of conspiracy, and alluded only to the act of the individual. It would be answered, that the intention of the Bill was chiefly against the conspiracy: but where was the object of a Bill to be found but in its leading clauses, or preamble? He was sorry to hear an attempt to justify the introduction of penal statutes by great names. If there was any case in which we should not look to precedents, or give up any thing to great names, it was a case like the present. To justify the infliction of death, there must be no authority but strong necessity. The statute book was stained with sanguinary laws; it was a stigma on the character of the country; foreigners looked upon it as such, and appealed to its existence as the standard of our national character. His noble friend spoke of the mildness with which those laws were administered. A philosopher once said, that among the Athenians, to praise the Athenians was extremely easy: but where were we to find the great evidence of a mild and legislative spirit,—the prevention? If the question was of the purity of the administration of justice, he most agree that here we were unrivalled,—that there was no country in the world,—that there never was a country, where the innocent man was so secure of acquittal as here. But as to punishment, he knew of no country in Europe,—perhaps be ought to speak of it as before the late dreadful revolution—where so many suffered by sanguinary punishments. Were we about to write in blood the new code for the new situation to which we were gradually advancing? In this instance, we could not punish without frequently committing the most shocking offences against humanity. Crimes of the most different nature were mingled under one punishment; and death was to be equally inflicted for conspiracy and for acts for which a school-boy's whipping would be too severe. Men were to be hanged for 'damaging' frames. What a word! and how capable of perversion. What was 'damaging' a frame? The slightest injury to the slightest part of a complicated machinery was to bring a man in peril of his life. This was enough to throw the body of the manufacturing people into despair. Tell them, that if from folly or malice a man break any part of a machine, he forfeits his life, as much as if he had conspired to destroy the whole machinery of the establishment,—as much as if he had murdered the man at the machine, and the consequence must be horrid. The wisdom of legislators was employed in pointing out the gradations of crime, and making the return always more easy than the progress; but here," Returning were as tedious as go o'er," and the moment the workman had touched upon his crime, he had incurred the punishment of its consummation.

The Earl of Liverpool: said he had not heard any noble lord on his side of the House deny that there was distress among the manufacturers, but they had distinctly denied that the distress arose from the Orders in Council; and it was evident that those Orders were blameless, as it had actually happened that the trade had never been more flourishing than since their operation. It had happened that at a late period there had been a sudden excitement of trade; that it had been followed by a glut of the market; and that glut, by distress among the workmen. Nothing was more in the course of things: the same events had been continually occurring, sometimes in war, sometimes in peace. So long as the spirit of speculation existed among traders, and so long as, in this free country, no restraint was put upon any man's use of his money, so long those circumstances must occur from time to time. But the present interposition of parliament was called for, not by the distresses of the workmen, but from a conspiracy against the machinery, which had regularly exhibited itself at all times when machinery had been employed to the disuse of manual labour. They had found penal statutes necessary for the protection of every successive kind of machinery. His lordship read a passage from archdeacon Paley, implying that the intensity of punishment was to be adapted, not to the enormity of the crime, but to the difficulty of preventing it in society. It was on this principle that a man was hung for stealing a sheep or a horse; though, in the bare enunciation of the thing, it would seem horrible to hang a man for stealing a sheep. There were but two ways of determining punishments,—either by leaving them under a general description to the discretion of the judge, or by stating the shades of crime, and affixing the separate punishment. The latter would be scarcely found possible. But where was the evil of the former? It was the working principle of the English law; and there was at least the evidence, that however sanguinary its language might be, its discretionary practice was mild. The mode of detection was attended to in a clause of the Bill. But even if the detection had been hitherto difficult, was it to be said that this Bill would produce no effect? Did it not argue an ignorance of human nature to say that while detection was never absolutely impossible, men would not be more afraid of being detected when the punishment was to be more exemplary, and that thus the terror which the Bill held before them would not be a restraint. Even the smallness of the means of detection made it more important to use those restraints which we had in our power, and those were to be found in terror.

The Earl of Rosslyn: argued, that it was not because some discretion must necessarily be left to to a judge, that therefore they were to legislate, leaving all to his discretion. It ought still to be a question as to how much discretion was to be left to the judge.

The question was put for discharging the Order, and negatived. The House then resolved itself into a committee.

The Earl of Liverpool: stated his intention of proposing amendments, to leave out the word' damage, and to insert in different parts of the Bill respecting cutting and destroying frames, utensils, work, &c.' with intent to destroy or render useless,' in order more clearly to define the offence.

Lord Grenville: moved to insert words, for the purpose of confining the punishment to offences done in conspiracy and combination.

The Lord Chancellor: contended, that in order to reach combinations, they must aim at the acts of individuals, and argued that in legislating for the punishment of crimes, much must, of necessity, be left to the discretion of the judge, and that this was proved by constant experience.

Lord Grenville: replied, that the language he had employed flowed from the feeling by which his mind was impressed. If that feeling was strong, it was excited by the indiscreet measure now brought forward, and the noble lords on the other side were the only persons to be blamed for exciting it, or for its consequences.

Lord Holland: supported the amendment on the ground that a discretion would be left in the hands of the judge, painful to him, and perhaps injurious to the prisoner in the exercise.

The question having been put, it was negatived.

Earl Grosvenor: moved an amendment, making the attempt to destroy frames only a misdemeanor instead of a felony without benefit of clergy, which was agreed to.

Lord Grenville: suggested, that it should not be imperative upon the person injured to proceed immediately before a magistrate to prosecute, provided he could shew reasonable cause for his delay.

The amendment was acceded to. The other clauses of the Bill were then gone through without observation.

The following Protest was entered on their Lordships' Journals:

PROTEST against going into a Committee on the Bill, intitled, "An Act for the more exemplary punishment of persons destroying or injuring any stocking or lace frames, or other machines or engines used in the knitting manufactory."

Because, We feel ourselves in duty bound to record our disapprobation of all further proceedings on a Bill, characterized by those who supported it, as indiscriminately inflicting the punishment of death on all crimes described by words copied out of an act of parliament, which had, in no instance, the forfeiture of life in contemplation.

"It was with a mixed feeling of surprize and indignation we learnt from the discussion that has already taken place, that this Bill, in its nature the most interesting, grave, and important that can be submitted to the consideration of the legislature, had been framed without sufficient deliberation to enable the friends of the measure to give any distinct explanation of the precise crimes to which, under the legal import of the words, thus thoughtlessly and precipitately adopted, it is proposed to extend the punishment of death.

"We cannot therefore, under such circumstances, consent to go into a Committee; for even the amendments which might be there proposed and adopted, would, in our opinion, disgrace the two Houses of Parliament, by recording that they are capable of rashly agreeing to the principle of a Bill thus indiscriminately and by wholesale applying capital punishment to a variety of offences, differing in their motive, their character and their guilt; for the purpose of considering what exceptions might subsequently be suggested by prudence and humanity, which ought exclusively to guide the judgment of the legislature in every stage of their deliberations, on all acts of criminal legislation.

"We agree in the opinion so generally expressed in this House, that the conduct of the manufacturers, in destroying frames, and other machinery used in our manufactures, must proceed from mistaken views of their own interests; as they, more than any other class of his Majesty's subjects, are deeply interested in the preservation of machinery, to the improvement of which we owe our existence as a manufacturing country.

"But we think it our duty, strongly and in distinct terms to reprobate the unprecedented folly of attempting to enlighten the minds of men, in regard to what is beneficial for themselves, by encreased severity of punishment; whilst every sound principle of criminal legislation makes us regard such an addition to the long list of offences, already subjected to capital punishment by the laws of this country, with astonishment and disgust: and every feeling of humanity leads us to express the utmost horror at the wanton cruelty of punishing our fellow-creatures with death, for those culpable acts, more injurious to themselves than to any other part of the community, to which, through mistaken views of policy, the encreasing distress of the times has reduced them to resort.

LAUDERDALE.
ROSSLYN."

27th February 1812: Lord Byron's maiden speech to the House of Lords

On Thursday 27th February, Lord Byron made a dramatic maiden speech to the House of Lords which criticised not just the the Frame-breaking Bill, but also the response of the Government and Army to the outbreak of machine-breaking in Nottinghamshire:

My Lords; the subject now submitted to your lordships for the first time, though new to the House, is by no means new to the country. I believe it had occupied the serious thoughts of all descriptions of persons, long before its introduction to the notice of that legislature, whose interference alone could be of real service. As a person in some degree connected with the suffering county, though a stranger not only to this House in general, but to almost every individual whose attention I presume to solicit, I must claim some portion of your lordships' indulgence, whilst I offer a few observations on a question in which I confess myself deeply interested.

To enter into any detail of the Riots would be superfluous: the House is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed, has been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the Frames obnoxious to the rioters, and all persons supposed to be connected with them, have been liable to insult and violence. During the short time I recently passed in Nottinghamshire, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on the day I left the county I was informed that forty frames had been broken the preceding evening, as usual, without resistance and without detection.

Such was then the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress: The perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families and the community. At the time, to which I allude, the town and county were burthened with large detachments of the military; the police was in motion, the magistrates assembled, yet all the movements civil and military had led to—nothing. Not a single instance had occurred of the apprehension of any real delinquent actually taken in the fact, against whom there existed legal evidence sufficient for conviction. But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men, liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital 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 18 years, which has destroyed their comfort, your comfort, all mens' 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 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 surprize.

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 principals in the punishment. But I did hope, that any measure proposed by his Majesty's government, for your lordships' decision, would have bad 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 Bulwell, from Bulwell to Basford, from Basford 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 escape of the perpetrators, to collect the "spolia opima" in the fragments of broken frames, and return to their quarters amidst the derision of old women, and the hootings of children. Now, though in a free country, it were to be wished, that our military should never be too formidable, at least to ourselves, I cannot see the policy of placing them in situations where they can only be made ridiculous. As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so should it be the last. In this instance it has been the first; but providentially as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will, indeed, pluck it from the sheath; yet had proper meetings been held in the earlier stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men and their masters (for they also had their grievances) been fairly weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and tranquillity to the county. At present the county suffers from the double infliction of an idle military and a starving population. In what state of apathy have we been plunged so long, that now for the first time the House has been officially apprized of these disturbances? All this has been transacting within 130 miles of London, and yet we, "good easy men, have deemed full sure our greatness was a ripening," and have sat down to enjoy our foreign triumphs in the midst of domestic calamity. But all the cities you have taken, all the armies which have retreated before your leaders are but paltry subjects of self congratulation, if your land divides against itself, and your dragoons and your executioners must be let loose against your fellow citizens.—You call these men a mob, desperate, dangerous, and ignorant; and seem to think that the only way to quiet the "Bellua multorum capitum" [the many-headed monster, i.e. the mob] is to lop off a few of its superfluous heads,—But even a mob may be better reduced to reason by a mixture of conciliation and firmness, than by additional irritation and redoubled penalties. Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses, that man your navy, and recruit your army, that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob, but do not forget, that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people. And here I must remark with what alacrity you are accustomed to fly to the succour of your distrest allies, leaving the distressed of your own country to the care of Providence or—the Parish. When the Portuguese suffered under the retreat of the French every arm was stretched out, every band was opened, from the rich man's largess, to the widow's mite, all was bestowed to enable them to rebuild their villages and replenish their granaries. And at this moment, when thousands of misguided but most unfortunate fellow-countrymen are struggling with the extremes of hardships and hunger, as your charity began abroad it should end at home. A much less sum, a tithe of the bounty bestowed on Portugal, even if those men (which I cannot admit without enquiry) could not have been restored to their employments, would have rendered unnecessary the tender mercies of the bayonet and the gibbet. But doubtless our friends have too many foreign claims to admit a prospect of domestic relief; though never did such objects demand it. I have traversed the seat of war in the peninsula, I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, the never failing nostrum of all state physicians, from the days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse and shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water and bleeding, the warm water of your maukish police, and the lancets of your military, these convulsions must terminate in death, the sure consummation of the prescriptions of all political Sangrados [bleeding]. Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the Bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes? Is there not blood enough upon your penal code that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you? How will you carry the Bill into effect? Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang up men like scarecrows? or will you proceed (as you must to bring this measure into effect) by decimation? place the county under martial law? depopulate and lay waste all around you? and restore Sherwood forest as an acceptable gift to the crown, in its former condition of a royal chase and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets, be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief it appears that you will afford him; will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will that which could not be effected by your grenadiers, be accomplished by your executioners? If you proceed by the forms of law where is your evidence? Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices, when transportation only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted to witness against them when death is the penalty. With all due deference to the noble lords opposite, I think a little investigation, some previous enquiry would induce even them to change their purpose. That most favourite state measure, so marvellously efficacious in many and recent instances, temporizing, would not be without its advantages in this. When a proposal is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years, you temporise and tamper with the minds of men; but a death-bill must be passed offhand, without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am from what I have heard, and from what I have seen, that to pass the Bill under all the existing circumstances, without enquiry, without deliberation, would only be to add injustice to irritation, and barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a Bill must be content to inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said to be written not in ink but in blood [Draco - i.e. 'draconian']. But suppose it past; suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,—meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame—suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn for ever from a family which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault that he can no longer so support, suppose this man, and there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your Victims, dragged into court, to be tried for this new offence, by this new law; still, there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him; and these are, in my opinion,—Twelve Butchers for a Jury, and a Jefferies for a Judge!

27th February 1812: Second reading of the Frame-breaking Bill in the House of Lords

On Thursday 27th February, the Frame-breaking Bill was read for the second time in the House of Lords.

The order of the day for the second reading of this Bill being read,

The Earl of Liverpool: observed, that as the present Bill contained some enactments of a novel nature, it was necessary he should state to the House some of those grounds upon which he thought that it ought to pass into a law. The transactions which had taken place, and were still going on in the county of Nottingham, were pretty well known to most of their lordships, and he rose to state that no exertions were wanting on the part of government to remedy the evil and ensure the return of tranquillity and order under the existing laws'; and this he believed was the conviction of those most conversant on the subject, and who had opportunities of local information. It had at length, however, become necessary to recur to, and express the determination of parliament on the subject. The Bill in question was divided into two parts; which most undoubtedly in some respects proceeded on, different grounds. The second part was introduced with a view to the detection of the offenders, which was the principal object. It went to compel individuals in whose houses frames should be broken, to give information thereof to the magistrates, and the provisions of this part of the Bill were calculated as much as possible to insure detection; and it was deemed necessary to render the offences provided against by the Bill capital. He was aware there existed more difference of opinion on this than on any other point: he knew it would be urged, that such an enactment would only tend to render detection more difficult, and the chance of conviction more uncertain. To this, however, he thought it could be rationally objected, that the terror of the law would in many cases operate, where the apprehension of lesser punishments would be found ineffectual. He, for his own part, could see no well-founded objection to try the effects of the measure which was proposed. The chief difficulty in the present case, he repeated, was the difficulty of detection under the existing applicable law; and he believed at the same time, that the operating dread of the severer punishment would, in the present case, be attended with beneficial effects. In addition to this, he observed, that the act was proposed but as a temporary one, and therefore the legislature would have a future opportunity of revising it, on a consideration of its effects. If it should prove ineffectual, they would have an opportunity of considering how far it would be wise or expedient to continue it. But considering ail the circumstances of the case, he was firmly of opinion, that the measures proposed in the Bill were the most proper for the adoption of the legislature; and that the other House of Parliament were well grounded in sending it up for the concurrence of their lordships. He would therefore move, that this Bill be now read a second time.

Lord Byron: rose, and (for the first time) addressed their lordships as follows:

My Lords; the subject now submitted to your lordships for the first time, though new to the House, is by no means new to the country. I believe it had occupied the serious thoughts of all descriptions of persons, long before its introduction to the notice of that legislature, whose interference alone could be of real service. As a person in some degree connected with the suffering county, though a stranger not only to this House in general, but to almost every individual whose attention I presume to solicit, I must claim some portion of your lordships' indulgence, whilst I offer a few observations on a question in which I confess myself deeply interested.

To enter into any detail of the Riots would be superfluous: the House is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed, has been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the Frames obnoxious to the rioters, and all persons supposed to be connected with them, have been liable to insult and violence. During the short time I recently passed in Nottinghamshire, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on the day I left the county I was informed that forty frames had been broken the preceding evening, as usual, without resistance and without detection.

Such was then the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress: The perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious, body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families and the community. At the time, to which I allude, the town and county were bur thened with large detachments of the military; the police was in motion, the magistrates assembled, yet all the movements civil and military had led to—nothing. Not a single instance had occurred of the apprehension of any real delinquent actually taken in the fact, against whom there existed legal evidence sufficient for conviction. But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men, liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital 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 18 years, which has destroyed their comfort, your comfort, all mens' 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 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 surprize.

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 principals in the punishment. But I did hope, that any measure proposed by his Majesty's government, for your lordships' decision, would have bad 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 Bulwell, from Bulwell to Basford, from Basford 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 escape of the perpetrators, to collect the "spolia opima" in the fragments of broken frames, and return to their quarters amidst the derision of old women, and the hootings of children. Now, though in a free country, it were to be wished, that our military should never be too formidable, at least to ourselves, I cannot see the policy of placing them in situations where they can only be made ridiculous. As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so should it be the last. In this instance it has been the first; but providentially as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will, indeed, pluck it from the sheath; yet had proper meetings been held in the earlier stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men and their masters (for they also had their grievances) been fairly weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and tranquillity to the county. At present the county suffers from the double infliction of an idle military and a starving population. In what state of apathy have we been plunged so long, that now for the first time the House has been officially apprized of these disturbances? All this has been transacting within 130 miles of London, and yet we, "good easy men, have deemed full sure our greatness was a ripening," and have sat down to enjoy our foreign triumphs in the midst of domestic calamity. But all the cities you have taken, all the armies which have retreated before your leaders are but paltry subjects of self congratulation, if your land divides against itself, and your dragoons and your executioners must be let loose against your fellow citizens.—You call these men a mob, desperate, dangerous, and ignorant; and seem to think that the only way to quiet the "Bellua multorum capitum" is to lop off a few of 970 its superfluous heads,—But even a mob may be better reduced to reason by a mixture of conciliation and firmness, than by additional irritation and redoubled penalties. Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses, that man your navy, and recruit your army, that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob, but do not forget, that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people. And here I must remark with what alacrity you are accustomed to fly to the succour of your distrest allies, leaving the distressed of your own country to the care of Providence or—the Parish. When the Portuguese suffered under the retreat of the French every arm was stretched out, every band was opened, from the rich man's largess, to the widow's mite, all was bestowed to enable them to rebuild their villages and replenish their granaries. And at this moment, when thousands of misguided but most unfortunate fellow-countrymen are struggling with the extremes of hardships and hunger, as your charity began abroad it should end at home. A much less sum, a tithe of the bounty bestowed on Portugal, even if those men (which I cannot admit without enquiry) could not have been restored to their employments, would have rendered unnecessary the tender mercies of the bayonet and the gibbet. But doubtless our friends have too many foreign claims to admit a prospect of domestic relief; though never did such objects demand it. I have traversed the seat of war in the peninsula, I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, the never failing nostrum of all state physicians, from the days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse and shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water and bleeding, the warm water of your maukish police, and the lancets of your military, these convulsions must terminate in death, the sure consummation of the prescriptions of all political Sangrados. Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the Bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes? Is there not blood enough upon your penal code that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you? How will you carry the Bill into effect? Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang up men like scarecrows? or will you proceed (as you must to bring this measure into effect) by decimation? place the county under martial law? depopulate and lay waste all around you? and restore Sherwood forest as an acceptable gift to the crown, in its former condition of a royal chase and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets, be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief it appears that you will afford him; will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will that which could not be effected by your grenadiers, be accomplished by your executioners? If you proceed by the forms of law where is your evidence? Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices, when transportation only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted to witness against them when death is the penalty. With all due deference to the noble lords opposite, I think a little investigation, some previous enquiry would induce even them to change their purpose. That most favourite state measure, so marvellously efficacious in many and recent instances, temporizing, would not be without its advantages in this. When a proposal is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years, you temporise and tamper with the minds of men; but a death-bill must be passed offhand, without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am from what I have heard, and from what I have seen, that to pass the Bill under all the existing circumstances, without enquiry, without deliberation, would only be to add injustice to irritation, and barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a Bill must be content to inherit the honours of that Athenian lawgiver whose edicts were said to be written not in ink but in blood. But suppose it past; suppose one of these men, as I have seen them,—meagre with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking-frame—suppose this man surrounded by the children for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn for ever from a family which he lately supported in peaceful industry, and which it is not his fault that he can no longer so support, suppose this man, and there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your Victims, dragged into court, to be tried for this new offence, by this new law; still, there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him; and these are, in my opinion,—Twelve Butchers for a Jury, and a Jefferies for a Judge!

Lord Holland: complimented his noble friend who spoke last oh the ability which he had displayed in this his first speech in that House, and expressed his astonishment that ministers had not thought proper to reply to it. The rejection of a Bill brought forward under such circumstances, he admitted to be an evil; but then, the present one was so extremely objectionable, that he felt it his duty to oppose it. He was not much surprised at this measure, for he never was surprised at seeing any thing foolish coming from the present ministers; but the fact was, that the apprehension of such a law had already rendered the chances of detection less probable. This he had from the best authority. But he supposed, when he adverted to the general principle that the severity of the punishment increased the difficulty of detection and conviction, he should be told, that this was speculation and theory. They were for proceeding from day to day, without rudder or compass, as the winds and Waves carried them. But what was the real state of this case? Here was a fact, that the apprehension of such a law had rendered detection more difficult; and yet, in the face of this fact, they proposed to pass the law, as if there had been no other mode of getting at the opinion of parliament. Indeed, such a law was but a very bad way of sending out a strong expression of the opinion of the legislature against this Offence. Our penal code was too thick set with these penalties of death, to render that a very explicit declaration of the sense of parliament as to the enormity of the crime. The people would recollect, that the legislature had declared, that stealing to the value of 40s. from a canal, deserved death; and with this in their minds, they could not easily be persuaded that parliament was deeply impressed with the magnitude of the offence merely because it punished it with death. He was far, however, from thinking lightly of this crime; for few crimes, could he more ruinous to the power, wealth, and prosperity of any country; but it did not follow, that the conclusion drawn by the noble Secretary of State was correct, The noble Secretary admitted that the general principle, that the severity of the punishment increased the difficulty of detection might in some cases be applicable, but here he thought the terror of death necessary to prevent the commission of the crime. Yet of all cases this was one in which this terror could have the least effect; since the offence was carried on by a combination of persons bound together by a mistaken principle of honour. But leaving the general principle, he came to the Bill itself; and observed, that the only difficulty was in the detection. If the offenders could be detected, the law was already severe enough. If the ground on, which the Bill rested was stripped of the legal jargon in which acts of parliament were necessarily involved, and reduced to a plain logical proposition, the absurdity would be too glaring to be for a moment entertained. The amount of it was this: "Whereas it has been found difficult to detect these offenders, we will render that detection still more difficult." This law might irritate and exasperate; but it would do nothing more. So much as to the first part of the Bill; but even the second part, intended to facilitate detection, was not founded on wise principles. He should have thought a civil process much more desirable, by which the person having a frame belonging to another broken in his house, should be liable for damages to the owner, unless he proved that he had used every reasonable exertion to protect it. He agreed with his noble friend in disapproving the manner in which the military had been employed, and urged the propriety of an inquiry to open the eyes of the deluded multitude. Something might be done to break the combination, by offering rewards to persons making discoveries without dragging them to a court of justice to give evidence. If the punishment of death was improper for such an offence it was no excuse to say that the law was only temporary. Hanging our fellow-subjects was not a proper way of making experiments. It might appear, on enquiry, that the cause of this evil was the fluctuation of the market—the tampering with our trade, which was regulated only by the caprice of ministers. A change of policy would then be found to be the proper remedy. The present course was fraught with danger, and he must discharge his duty by opposing the second reading of the Bill without a previous enquiry. He concluded by moving, that the second reading be postponed till that day three weeks.

The Lord Chancellor: observed, that the two parts of the Bill ought to be taken together, and the object of both united was the prevention of the offence. The outrages at Nottingham originated in a mistaken notion of those concerned in them, that their interests were injured by the introduction of certain improvements in machinery, when the fact was, that all these improvements contributed to their advantage, and that by the conduct they were now persisting in, they were deeply injuring their own interests, and destroying their own comforts. From, however, the plan and system adopted by them, the difficulty of detection had become very great, and the object of the second part of the Bill was to increase the means of detection, whilst the first part of it, by enacting the penalty of death, there was every reason to believe would operate, by the terror of that punishment, to prevent the offence. The prevention of offences was the legitimate object of enacting the punishment of death; and there was every reason to suppose that this object would be attained in the present instance, by combining the terror of this punishment with the increased facility of detection.

The Earl of Lauderdale: agreed with the noble and learned lord, that the outrages at Nottingham originated in a mistaken notion of those concerned in them of their own interests, for nothing could be more certain than that every improvement of machinery contributed to improve the condition of persons employed in the manufactures in which such improvements were made, there being in a very short time after such improvements were introduced, a greater demand for labour than there was before. Much, however, of the present distressed state of the manufacturers arose from the system of policy pursued by ministers; and he was satisfied, that before being called upon to pass a measure like the present, an enquiry ought to be instituted, and that that enquiry ought to embrace the effect of the Orders in Council, the state of the commerce of the country, and also of its circulation. The noble earl, after ridiculing the vigour of the ministers in sending down two justices and two Bow street runners to Nottingham, adverted to the fact, that it had been found necessary, by the advice of the judges, and upon the reports of the revenue boards, to do away the capital punishments in cases' of smuggling, because it was impossible to find juries to convict: and yet in a case depending on the same principle, they enacted the punishment of death, when it was notorious that the great evil was the difficulty of detection. The measure evinced an utter ignorance of the principles of law, and of the real state of the country.

The Earl of Harrowby: contended, that enquiry could answer no useful purpose. If enquiry were to embrace the Orders in Council, the state of the commerce and circulation of the country, the investigation must be indefinite, the outrages at Nottingham must in the mean time go on, and all attempt to suppress them must be postponed ad Grœcas Calendas. An inquiry more limited with respect to the outrages themselves, could have no good effect; the offence was, as was admitted by every one, most injurious to the interests of the community, and every means ought to be adopted to prevent its repetition. The object of the Bill was to increase the means of detection, whilst it inflicted the punishment of death; and surely it was to be expected that the terror of the punishment of death, when the means of detection were increased, would operate to prevent the commission of the offence.

Earl Grosvenor: was hostile to extending the penal code by the infliction of the punishment of death for this offence, and contended that information ought first to be laid before the House, to prove that all other means had been ineffectual. Much of these outrages were, he thought, to be attributed to the system of policy pursued by ministers, and he lamented that the Prince Regent should have been advised not to make a change in his councils, convinced as the noble earl was, that the result of a change would have been an improved system of finance, an economical expenditure, and a general amelioration of the situation of the country.

Lord Grenville: found it impossible to allow this question to pass, without expressing in the strongest terms which his powers of language could supply, his indignant detestation of the principles on which the Bill was founded, as well as of the arguments by which it was supported. There was now no time for inquiry, they said; but he hoped their lordships were familiar with the wise maxim of a great authority 'de vitâ hominis nulla est cunctatio longa.' When the question was about the life of man, he should have expected that ministers, and especially the noble and learned lord on the woolsack, would have willingly acceded to the delay, if there was the smallest doubt in the mind of any noble lord, whether it was necessary to add to the horrible and sanguinary catalogue of our capital punishments. It had been said, indeed, that no one doubted the fitness of the punishment to the crime. If that was true, he knew not to what purpose his noble friends about him had been speaking. These laws were, unfortunately, not the result of enlarged views, of general principles, but they sprung up one by one upon some momentary necessity; and a noble secretary had astonished him by stating, that there was no general principle to rest upon. But unless all that he had ever thought, all that he had ever heard, all that he had ever read upon the subject, was utterly erroneous, there was no case in which general principles were more necessary to be attended to, and more capable of application than in enacting penal Jaws, especially when capital punishments came under consideration. To these he trusted their lordships would attend, and not suffer themselves to be drawn aside by these temporary outrages. But if a delay of three weeks could not be allowed in a case where 10,000 of their fellow subjects might be rendered liable to the pains of death, why had there been a delay of two months? The enquiry might by this time have been complete. For six months during which these proceedings had been carried on, no one effectual step had been taken; and yet ministers had the confidence to come now and say, 'Do not ask for delay—trust to us—shut your own eyes and ears, and sign the bloody warrant here presented to you? No, he would not trust ministers before he signed that warrant: he must be satisfied that the offence was commensurate with the pains to be applied. He had no hesitation in saying, that such a punishment ought never to be applied to such an offence; and if their lordships had read one page of that excellent writer Judge Black-atone, they must be aware that he had distinctly said, that the mere frequency of an offence and difficulty of detection was not a ground for a capital punishment. His noble friend had stated, that there were laws in our statute book enacting death in similar cases. He knew it, and deeply regretted it, and wished they could be at once erased from the statute book, if it were for nothing else than to prevent their being resorted to as examples, when the indolence, the ignorance, or the weakness of government led them to enact such laws as this. Here, again, the enlightened Blackstone lent his great authority, for he said that these laws originated in the ignorance of the legislature and the weakness of government. He should have thought inquiry necessary as to this point It had been assumed that the existing law was ineffectual; but before ministers assumed that fact, they ought to prove that every thing had been done to carry it into execution. On that head there was no information whatever, except the boasted exploit of having sent down two Westminster justices and two Bow-street runners; who, though very conversant in the business of detecting thieves and footpads, were not therefore the roost proper to deal with the Nottingham manufacturers. That was their vigour! But something else had been done worse even than that foolish expedient. There never was a maxim of greater wisdom than that uttered by the noble lord (Byron), who had so ably addressed their lordships that night for the first time, that the military ought never to be employed except in extreme cases, and then they should be effectual, if possible, rather by the terror of their appearance, than their power of execution. But here they had been employed in a way the most ruinous to their own discipline, and the least efficient for the purpose of checking these outrages. They had been dispersed in small bodies, and made to perform the duties of civil officers. He might be mistaken as to the force of the law as it stood, but why then not inquire? The truth was, that it had been 20 years on the statute book, and never put in execution in one instance. How could ministers say that a law was inefficient which had never been tried? and yet they were not ashamed to come down, and propose to resort to this last dreadful extremity. No; the fault was not in the weakness of the punishment of the present law, but in the want of execution. Let their lordships compare the punishment of transportation for 14 years with the crime of breaking a stocking-frame. Was not the punishment commensurate to the crime? Aye, more than commensurate. His lordship then read some passages from the Bill, front which it appeared, that the intent to commit the crime of breaking a lace-thread, or damaging a web, rendered the offender liable to the pains of death. To this there could be only one answer,—that the punishment would never be inflicted. But as long as he lived, in a country governed by law he never would consent to put it in the power of the crown to put a fellow subject to death for damaging a piece of cotton or lace.

The Lord Chancellor: was about to put the question, when

Earl Grey: observed, that it was of importance to know what the object of noble lords on the other side was in proposing this Bill. Was it to inflict the penalty of death for the offence stated by his noble friend, as it appeared by the words of the Bill?

The Earl of Liverpool: stated, that the wording of the Bill was a matter for discussion in the committee, but the Bill was framed from other bills of a similar nature with reference to machinery.

Lord Holland: observed, that it was of importance to know the intent of ministers in proposing a clause in the Bill, inflicting the penalty of death upon the intent to commit the offence described by his noble friend.

The Earl of Lauderdale: thought that the House ought not to go on in the conisderation of the Bill, until they had some information of what the precise object of ministers was in proposing this Bill; and with that view he moved that the debate be adjourned till Monday.

The Earl of Liverpool: stated, that the principle of the Bill was to punish a certain offence with death; the mode of carrying that principle into effect, was matter for discussion in the committee.

Earl Grey: observed, that allowing the principle of the Bill to be to punish a certain offence with death, the nature of that offence was a part of the principle of the Bill, and before they could vote for the second reading they ought to be informed what offence it was intended to punish.

The Earl of Liverpool: stated, that un-doubtedly it was the intention of government to inflict the punishment of death instead of transportation, and the clauses describing the offence were copied from the Bill, which rendered it a transportable offence.

Lord Grenville: said, that what had been stated by the noble lord, was indeed a still stronger reason for adjourning the debate till Monday. Here was a minister, who came down to parliament to inflict the punishment of death upon his fellow-citizens, but for what offence that minister knew not. It was in truth for the credit of ministers themselves that this debate should be adjourned, in order that they might be enabled to explain what offence they intended to punish with death. But whatever they might think, he could not give his vote that the House should be involved in the infamy of going to the second reading of a Bill for inflicting the punishment of death upon their fellow-citizens, without knowing what the nature of the offence was that it was intended to punish.

The House divided on the question that the debate be adjourned till Monday. Contents 17: Not-Contents 32. Majority 15. The-Bill was then read a second time, and committed for Monday. On the motion of the earl of Lauderdale, their lordships were ordered to be summoned for Monday. The noble earl also moved, that the Judges be ordered to attend on Monday, which was negatived.