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 eighteen years, which has
destroyed their comfort, your comfort, all men's 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.
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