Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/396

380 significant—detailing progress, and one ending with 'We got plenty to eat; the shops are open they give us what we want.' Some disturbances ensued; but nothing so formidable as in Lancashire and in the Potteries, where now the malcontents were gutting and burning dwelling houses. In the midst of their violence, they gave a lame clergymen 'ten minutes' law to walk away, but refused the entreaties of a lady that they would spare the house, leaving her to be thankful for personal safety. Three men were shot dead by the soldiery, at Burslem, and several were wounded. * * * * * In a very short time, the chartist strangers, dropping in from a distance, showed a depth of design and a rapacity which disgusted the Lancashire operatives; and the disorder subsided gradually through the last weeks of August and the beginning of September."

In my paper, of the 20th of August, I made the following remarks:—" We have had another week's almost total cessation of business; but while the insurrection, as it has been called, has been rapidly extending, and in many instances has had the melancholy accompaniments of the loss of life and the destruction of property, here, and in the immediately-surrounding large towns and populous intervening villages, which unitedly contain a population of three quarters of a million, the extraordinary tranquillity remarked upon in our last publication still continues and while, at a distance, Manchester is thought to be in a state of siege, the whole town may be traversed without a single act of violence being witnessed, and the most timid female may go out at all hours of the day, without the slightest chance of receiving an insult. What an honour this to the longsuffering working men of Manchester! What a strange spectacle this, when the fiat of the multitude settles whether this man shall work or that man shall not, and when a quarter of a million of persons, unemployed, might spread havoc and confusion all around,