CHAPTER VIII. 



HOME-WEAVING, HARVESTING, SOLDIERING, AND 

 SCENERY. 



JOHN DUNCAN remained in Aberdeen for nearly eight 

 years, six of them in a house of his own. Nothing of very 

 great public importance had occurred during that period, 

 except the growing agitations to improve the social and 

 political condition of the masses. Like the class to which 

 he belonged, John was a keen politician, keeping himself 

 fully abreast of all these questions, perusing the newspapers 

 of the time with the greatest zest, as he did to the end of 

 his life, many of the copies he then possessed still existing 

 as protections to his botanical specimens. 



In 1816, when he arrived, there took place the immense 

 popular November meetings in the Spa Fields in London, 

 where some 30,000 persons assembled to vote an address 

 from the distressed manufacturers ; the riots that occurred 

 a few weeks afterwards causing great injury to property, 

 Watson, the leader, escaping to America, and one of his 

 friends being subsequently hanged. In 1817, there rose 

 the scare of sedition, set on fire by the notorious Green Bag 

 and its dangerous contents laid before Parliament, with the 

 consequent suspension of Habeas Corpus and prohibition 

 of all popular gatherings, from the fear of treasonable inten- 



