He was the
first that had offered any resistance to the progress of the "Luddites,"
who had become by this time so numerous as almost to assume the character
of an insurrectionary army. Mr. Cartwright's conduct was so much admired
by the neighbouring mill-owners that they entered into a subscription for
his benefit which amounted in the end to 3,000_l_.
Not much more than a fortnight after this attack on Rawfolds, another
manufacturer who employed the obnoxious machinery was shot down in broad
daylight, as he was passing over Crossland Moor, which was skirted by a
small plantation in which the murderers lay hidden. The readers of
"Shirley" will recognise these circumstances, which were related to Miss
Bronte years after they occurred, but on the very spots where they took
place, and by persons who remembered full well those terrible times of
insecurity to life and property on the one hand, and of bitter starvation
and blind ignorant despair on the other.
Mr. Bronte himself had been living amongst these very people in 1812, as
he was then clergyman at Hartshead, not three miles from Rawfolds; and,
as I have mentioned, it was in these perilous times that he began his
custom of carrying a loaded pistol continually about with him. For not
only his Tory politics, but his love and regard for the authority of the
law, made him despise the cowardice of the surrounding magistrates, who,
in their dread of the Luddites, refused to interfere so as to prevent the
destruction of property.
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