In England, long after the Tudor period, industrial disturbances took place, and wild communistic fancies welled up from the depths of a suffering world of labour, when society was stirred by political and religious revolution. Under the Commonwealth, communists went up on the hill side, and began to break ground for a poor man's Utopia; and the great movement of the Levellers, which had in it an economical as well as a political element, might have overturned society, if it had not been quelled by the strong hand of Cromwell. But in more recent times, within living memory, within the memory of many here there were labour disturbances in England, compared with which the present industrial war is mild. [Footnote: For the following details, see Martineau's "History of the Peace."] In 1816, there were outbreaks among the suffering peasantry which filled the governing classes with fear. In Suffolk nightly fires of incendiaries blazed in every district, thrashing machines were broken or burnt in open day, mills were attacked. At Brandon large bodies of workmen assembled to prescribe a maximum price of grain and meat, and to pull down the houses of butchers and bakers. They bore flags with the motto, "Bread or Blood". Insurgents from the Fen Country, a special scene of distress, assembled at Littleport, attacked the house of a magistrate in the night, broke open shops, emptied the cellars of public-houses, marched on Ely, and filled the district for two days and nights with drunken rioting and plunder. The soldiery was called in; there was an affray in which blood flowed on both sides, then a special commission and hangings to close the scene. Distressed colliers in Staffordshire and Wales assembled by thousands, stopped works, and were with difficulty diverted from marching to London. In 1812, another stain of blood was added to the sanguinary criminal code of those days by the Act making death the penalty for the destruction of machinery. This was caused by the Luddite outrages, which were carried on in the most systematic manner, and on the largest scale in Nottingham and the adjoining counties. Bodies of desperadoes, armed and disguised, went forth under a leader, styled General Ludd, who divided them into bands, and aligned to each band its work of destruction. Terror reigned around; the inhabitants were commanded to keep in their houses and put out their lights on pain of death. In the silence of night houses and factories were broken open, machines demolished, unfinished work scattered on the highways. The extent and secrecy of the conspiracy baffled the efforts of justice and the death penalty failed to put the system down. Even the attempts made to relieve distress became new sources of discontent and a soup kitchen riot at Glasgow led to a two days conflict between the soldiery and the mob. In 1818, a threatening mass of Manchester spinners, on strike came into bloody collision with the military. Then there were rick burnings,