The farmers and labourers in Wales were unprosperous
and poor, and in the season of their adversity they found turnpikes
and tolls multiplying on their public roads. They resented what
appeared a cruel imposition with wrathful impatience, and ere long
gave expression to their anger in wild deeds. A text of Scripture
suggested to them a fantastic form of riot. They found that it was
said of old to Rebecca, "Let thy seed possess the gate of those which
hate them," and ere long "Rebecca and her children," men masking in
women's clothes, made fierce war by night on the "gates" they
detested, destroying the turnpikes and driving out their keepers.
These raids were not always bloodless. The Government succeeded in
repressing the rioting, and then, finding that a real grievance had
caused it, did away with the oppressive tolls, and dealt not too
hardly with the captured offenders; leniency which soon restored
Wales to tranquillity.
[Illustration: Richard Cobden.]
[Illustration: John Bright.]
A peaceful, strictly constitutional, and finally successful agitation
ran its steady course in England for several years contemporaneously
with those we have already enumerated.
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