EMPIRE
ON
THE
SEVEN
SEAS
life,
innumerable
workmen
had
to sink
into
drunken idleness
while
they
watched
their
cheaper-paid
wives
and children
wear
out their
lives
in mills
or
mines.
What
the latter meant
was
shown
by
a
Report
almost
a
generation
later in
which
it was testified
that chil-
dren
of
five
were
forced
to
work alone
all
day
in
the
dark
under-
ground,
while
even
pregnant
women
had
to
pull
coal cars
on
their
hands
and
knees
by
a
chain
round their
waist.
If
the
upper
classes
did not realize
the
problems they
were
fac-
ing,
the
exploited
ones
did not know what
to
strive
for,
except
that
to
a
considerable
extent
they
did
come
to
understand that the
one
thing
without
which
nothing
else
could be
done was
the
reform
of
Parliamentary
representation.
Until
they
could have
a voice
in
the
making
of
laws
their
grievances
were
not
likely
to
be
driven
home
to the
consciousness
of
those in
power.
In
spite
of the
welter
of
human
misery
which marked
particu-
larly
the
decade
following
the
peace,
there
was
surprisingly
little
violence,
and
much
of
what
there
was
was
deliberately
provoked
by
the fears
and
stupid
measures
of the
government,
which em-
ployed spies
and
even
agents
$rovocateurs
to
discover
non-existent
plots.
The
sporadic
riots in
1 8 1
6
and
1817
were
put
down without
difficulty,
and in
the
latter
year
workmen
began
to
organize
some
secret
societies.
The
government,
fearing
another French Revo-
lution,
which
had
been
the
nightmare
of
the
upper
classes,
sus-
pended
the Habeas
Corpus
Act,
for the
last
time
in
British
history,
and the
following year
it
was
allowed to come into force
again.
Meanwhile,
a
large
body
of
suffering
workmen in Manchester had
started
to
march
on London for
the
simple
and sole
purpose
of
presenting
a
petition
to
the
Prince
Regent,
old
King George
III
having
long
been
incapacitated by
his now
incurable
insanity.
Un-
armed
and each
man
carrying
a
blanket,
which
gave
them
the
name of
the
"Blanketeers,"
they
travelled
on
foot,
gathering
re-
cruits
as
they
went.
The
government
broke
up
the
march
easily
with
troops
and
Yeomanry,
sending
many
of
the
workers
to
jail
for
months,
though
they
had been
guilty
of no crime.
In the
gen-
eral
distress there
had
been
a
revival of
the
doctrines
of
Spence,
mentioned
in our
first
chapter,
and
a
Spencean Society
had
been
78