Activity

It is sometimes less an argument than an affirmation, an imprecation, a leap of feeling.

The touchstone can be seen during the field labourer’s ‘revolt’ in 1830, when The Times (Cobbett’s ‘BLOODY OLD TIMES’) led the demand for salutary examples to be made of the rioters

when the Manchester movement was beginning to break up in a welter of personal disputes and warring factions

Hence ‘history’ has dealt fairly with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and fulsomely with Francis Place

For despite all the homilies addressed to the Luddites (then and subsequently) as to the beneficial consequences of new machinery or of ‘free’ enterprise