[95]5 Geo. III. c. 48; see Annual Register, 1765, p. 41; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, 1903, pp. 519, 796.
[96]Act 13 Geo. III. c. 68; see A Short Historical Account of the Silk Manufacture in England, by Samuel Sholl, 1811.
[97]Ibid. p. 4.
[98]Reports on Petitions of Cotton Weavers, 1809 and 1811.
[99]“The period between 1795 and 1815 was characterised by dearths which on several occasions became well-nigh famines” (Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 692).
[100]Minutes of Evidence and Report of the Committee on the Petition of the Journeymen Calico-printers, July 4, 1804, July 17, 1806. See also Sheridan’s speech reported in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, vol. ix. pp. 534-8.
[101]43 Geo. III. c. 136, continued in successive years until the definite repeal, in 1809, of most of the laws regulating the woollen manufacture by 49 Geo. III. c. 109; see Cunningham, 1903, vol. ii. p. 659.
[102]It was reprinted in the 121st Quarterly Report of the Amalgamated Society of Boot and Shoemakers. The proceedings were taken by the Friendly Society of Cordwainers of England, “instituted the 15th of November 1784.” Particulars of the London Bootmakers’ Society, which was in correspondence with seventy or eighty provincial societies, are given in A Digest of the Evidence before the Committee on Artizans and Machinery, by George White, 1824, p. 97.
[103]Professor Foxwell kindly placed at our disposal a unique series of pamphlets relating to these proceedings, which are now in the Goldsmiths Company’s Library at the University of London, including the Memorials of the journeymen and the employers, the Report in the Process by Robert Bell, and the Scale of Prices as settled by the Court. A full account of the proceedings is given in the Scottish Typographical Circular, June 1858.
[104]See, for these proceedings, the two Reports of the Committee on the Petitions of the Cotton Weavers, April 12, 1808, and March 29, 1809; and Richmond’s evidence before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, Second Report, pp. 59-64.