Note 117 — Chapter II

A Full and Accurate Report of the Proceedings of the Petitioners, etc. By One of the Petitioners (London, January 1800, 19 pp.). A rare pamphlet in the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of London. “It is remarkable,” says Mr. Justice Stephen, “that in the parliamentary history for 1799 and 1800 there is no account of any debate on these Acts, nor are they referred to in the Annual Register for those years” (History of the Criminal Law, vol. iii. p. 208). That the measure excited some interest in the textile districts may be inferred from the publication at Leeds of a pamphlet entitled an Abstract of an Act to prevent Unlawful Combinations among Journeymen to raise Wages, etc.(Leeds, 1799), which is in the Manchester Public Library (P. 1735). Lord Holland’s speeches against it are said to have been reprinted for distribution in Manchester and Liverpool (Lady Holland’s Journal, vol. ii. p. 102).

Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have now traced fairly full accounts of the proceedings, elucidating the scanty references in the Journals of the House of Commons and House of Lords for 1799-1800 by quotations from the Parliamentary Register, the Senator, The Times, London Chronicle, True Briton, and Morning Post. See The Town Labourer, 1917, ch. vii. pp. 111-42; also Cunningham, Growth, etc., 1903, pp. 732-7.