[253]See his letter of March 30, 1834, in Lord Melbourne’s Papers, chap. v.
[254]Leeds Mercury, April 26, 1834. Joseph Hume said he had had the “greatest difficulty in prevailing upon the Ministers not to bring in a bill for putting down the Trades Unions” (Poor Man’s Guardian, March 29, 1834).
[255]Letter dated September 3, 1833, in Times, September 9, 1833.
[256]R. v. Bykerdike, 1 Moo. and Rob. 179, Lancaster Assizes, 1832. A letter was written to certain coal-owners, “by order of the Board of Directors for the body of coal-miners,” stating that unless certain men were discharged the miners would strike. Held to be an illegal combination. See Leeds Mercury, May 24, 1834.
[257]Times, August 22, 1835.
[258]Poor Man’s Guardian, September 29, 1832.
[259]Times, February 27, 1834.
[260]R. v. Marks and others, 3 East Rep. 157.
[261]Lengthy accounts appeared in the newspapers for March and April 1834. The indictment is given in full in the House of Commons Return, No. 250, of 1835 (June 1st). The legal report is in 6 C. and P. 596 (R. v. Loveless and others). The Times reported the judge’s charge at some length, March 18, 1834, and the case itself March 20, 1834, giving the rules of the projected union. An able article in the Law Magazine, vol xi. pp. 460-72, discusses the law of the case. The defendants subsequently published two statements for popular circulation, viz. Victims of Whiggery, a statement of the persecution experienced by the Dorchester Labourers, by George Loveless (1837), and A narrative of the sufferings of James Loveless, etc.(1838), which are in the British Museum. See also Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 62-75; Spencer Walpole’s History of England, vol. iii. chap. xiii. pp. 229-31; and Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, vols. xxii. and xxiii.
[262]The student is referred to the admirable account of these proceedings in The Village Labourer, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1912. See, for a contemporary account, Swing Unmasked, or the Cause of Rural Incendiarism, by G. C. Wakefield, M.P., 1831.