Orangemen advertised their existence with public processions from an early point in the movement's history. Indeed, the tendency to march so became an expression of power – a sense of authority exercised over ground contested by groups split along ethnic lines, Protestant and Catholic. As such, there was a price to pay, for no sooner was that marching tradition consolidated than it developed an association with violence that would always mar it. Events such as those at Cleator Moor in 1884 enforced the sense of danger which people came to associate with Orangeism; at the same time, they pandered to the elite's dark fears about the malevolent potential of the lower-class crowd. Such emotions also help to explain why, at many points in the nineteenth century, local and national administrations sought to thwart the outward expressions of partisan feeling. Various acts were passed to empower magistrates against oathmaking, illegal associations and party processions. Not until 1872 did the Order have a clear run at the streets and open spaces of the worlds it inhabited. Even in troubled times, and despite the considerable hostility often evoked, many members regarded the march as a highly desirable element of the Order's ritual.