DARK    SATANIC    MILLS	71
had been reaching the breakfast tables of the well-to-do and
respectable of the sufferings of their human brethren in such
remote places as Bolton and Paisley. The growth of the news-
paper-reading habit and the introduction of the penny post,
was beginning to open the eyes of the middle class to what was
happening in other parts of the country. That year the first
illustrated weekly appeared in London and the pages of its
earliest issues were full of sombre pictures of the distress of the
manufacturing districts.
In the spring Sir Robert Peel's Conservative government,
faced by a serious budget deficit, resorted to its revolutionary
device (for peacetime) of an income tax of sevenpence in the
pound on all incomes of over £150 a year. At Buckingham
Palace that May a Bal Masque was held in the hope of stimulating
trade. The Queen, who was dressed as Queen Philippa, accom-
panied by Prince Albert in the costume of the chivalrous
Edward III., wore a pendant stomacher valued at ^£60,000. Several
nobles, inspired by the Gothic revival, commissioned suits
of full armour for the occasion. Another hired £10,000
worth of jewellery for the night from Storr and Mortimer.
Under the soft glare of five hundred and thirty gas jets the
spectacle continued till long after three in the morning. A few
days later, as the Queen returned down Constitution Hill from
her afternoon drive in Hyde Park, a crazy youth tried to assas-
sinate her with a pocket pistol. As he was seized by the police
he was heard to cry out: "Damn the Queen; why should she
be such an expense to the nation!"^1
Meanwhile the news from the north grew worse. At Burnley
the Guardians, with a quarter of the population destitute, were
forced to appeal to the government for help. Here the weavers
were working for y£d. a day. Idlers with faces haggard with
famine stood in the streets their eyes wearing the fierce and
uneasy expression of despair. A doctor who visited the town in
June found in eighty-three houses, selected at hazard, no furniture
but old boxes, stone boulders (for chairs) and beds of straw and
sacking. The whole population was living on oatmeal, water
and skimmed rm1fc_t
Revolution was in the air. The workers were talking openly
of burning down the mills in order to enforce a nation-wide
strike. In Colne and Bolton hands were clenched, teeth set and
Illustrated London News, /, 67,