The years immediately following Waterloo and the close of the great and long-continued wars with Napoleon were lean years in Lancashire in particular, and in England in general, and discontent was rife. The price of bread was high, employment was scarce and threatened by the continual introduction of labour-saving machinery. The outlook of all the wage-earning classes was very grim, and the position was further inflamed by agitators, who very speedily put a political complexion upon the economic crisis. It was the era before Reform, when all political power was frankly held by the classes and the wealthy. The people were not enfranchised, and were taught by mob orators to believe that there lay the secret of the ills and disabilities they suffered. To possess a vote was held up as an ideal which, when reached, would be the solution of all grievances. It was probably not declared in so many words that enfranchisement would bring more work and better paid, nor that the voting-power would enable the working-men to vote away the employment of the labour-saving machinery they dreaded; but so much was implied. Riots, more or less serious, took place sporadically, throughout the country, where the people were almost starving; for, side by side with scarcity of employment, the price of bread was extravagantly high, in consequence of a succession of bad harvests bringing up the price of corn to an unprecedented figure. The Government at length became seriously alarmed at the troubles. There had been destructive riots in 1816, in Spitalfields, when a mob of 30,000 had broken into shops and houses, and burned and pillaged. Nottingham, Preston, Bury, and many other places were scenes of mob rule. In 1818 the Manchester operatives had broken the factory-windows, and had to be dispersed by Dragoons; and in the same year there were riots at Barnsley. The year 1819 opened with the demagogue, “Orator Hunt,” being thrashed by Hussars in the theatre at Manchester, where, it was said, he had hissed the playing of “God Save the King”; and it was declared that the turbulent Reformers of Glasgow proposed marching upon London. At the same time a Reform meeting held at Birmingham was dispersed, a constable being shot by workmen endeavouring to rescue one of the arrested speakers. It must be admitted that the classes were not conciliatory. Their representatives in high places scorned the masses as the “swinish multitude,” and did not propose any political changes. [Sidenote: _MASS MEETING_]