Note 338 — Chapter IV · THE OPPOSITION TO THE PATENTS
Reading edition
Was it generally known in Manchester that an action was pending or were the manufacturers over-confident? So far as newspaper notices were concerned, the activity which preceded the first and the third trials was absent. Two days before the action was tried The Manchester Mercury, which could not be accused of favour to Arkwright, contained the following paragraph: “Rd. Arkwright, Esq., has established a Sunday school at Cromford, in Derbyshire, which already consists of two hundred children. Pleasing it is to the friends of humanity, when power like his is so happily united with the will to do good!” (15th February 1785).