SOURCE: Darvall, Frank Ongley. “The State of Public Opinion.” In Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England: Being An Account of the Luddite and Other Disorders in England During the Years 1811-1817 and of the Attitude and Activity of the Authorities, pp. 319-44. London: Oxford University Press, 1934.

In the following excerpt, Darvall considers why so little attention was given to the Luddite Rebellion and other similar worker uprisings, noting that while those of the middle and lower classes sympathized with the rebels, few upper-class people—Lord Byron being a notable exception—criticized the government's response to the revolt.

The astonishing thing about all the early Regency disturbances was not that they should have provoked anxiety on the part of the authorities and terror on the part of some manufacturers and members of the public but that this anxiety and terror should have been so restrained.

When one...