CHAPTER V

THE REIGN OF TERROR

Comparison of the Agitation of 1793-94 with that of 1780. A different social class, but methods the same. The Government case destroyed by the great trials of 1794. Lord Rosebery's justification. The Prosecutions in England and Scotland. The Coercion Bills of 1795. The Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The hard lot of the Reformers. Coleridge's letter on Thelwall. The efforts of the Opposition in Parliament. Attempts to promote agitation in the country. Fox retires in 1797. His speech at the Whig Club on the Sovereignty of the People. His name removed from the Privy Council. Characteristics of his speeches against the Coercion.

T is at first sight a curious irony that the man who struck

It is at first sight a unique eighteenth not merely

the severest blow in the eighteenth century not merely at the spirit of reform, but at all the elementary rights of public discussion, was the statesman who became Prime Minister after taking part in an agitation in which abuse of the Court was unsparing, and the assertion of popular rights was uncompromising and resonant. It is argued that no comparison is possible between the agitation of the nineties, and the agitation which had shaken a new energy into public life during the closing years of the American War. The discussions which Pitt set himself to extinguish by all the means a British Government can employ are regarded as essentially distinct from the earlier discussions from which Pitt himself had drawn his chief support as a politician. It is true that the new movement was a movement along a different stratum of English society, but it is emphatically untrue to say that the earlier campaign affords

no parallel to the language of complaint and the methods of the agitation, which Pitt contrived to stifle in a long series of persecutions and enactments during the last ten years of the century. The case is carefully considered in a pamphlet published in 1796 (The History of the Two Acts) in which the writer recalls the violence of various statements and protests that belong to the earlier campaign; in particular the threat thrown out by Chatham, "It is now necessary to instruct the Throne in the language of truth." "I might," says the writer, "multiply quotations of this kind; it was the common language of Parliament, from whence it descended to books, newspapers, pamphlets, and common conversation; it was the popular creed adopted by the Americans at war, and by the English who were discontented. It is mentioned here neither with approbation nor censure: it may be wrong to appeal too often to the 'extreme medicine of the constitution,' it may be wrong to carry jealousy to an excess, for it is apt to become a blind and hateful passion. But enough appears upon record to show that such doctrines are not new nor the growth of France: are not to be traced to the fields of Islington, nor to the shops of the majestic booksellers of the people " (xxviii).

The truth is, as anyone who reads the accounts of the earlier campaigns can soon discover, that there was as much brimstone and gunpowder in the language of those campaigns, as in the language which Pitt afterwards tried to represent as the spirit of social arson and disorder.1 When Chatham said, "Rather than the nation should surrender its birthright, I hope I shall see the question brought to issue fairly between people and Government," he could scarcely be regarded as confining himself to the conventional asperities of party warfare. It was held to be rank treason in 1793 to question the integrity of Parliament, or its title to speak for the nation through representatives

1 This comparison between the Economy agitation of 1780 and the Reform agitation of 1793 was suggested to me by Mr. D. L. Savory who has a monograph in MS. on the subject of the Societies.

chosen by a few peers and influential commoners, who drew no distinction between their nomination to a borough, and any other form of property they might have to dispose of.1 Yet it was the constant refrain of the reformers in 1780 that Parliament was venal, incompetent, and without credentials to represent the people of Great Britain. It was the chief criticism of the societies during the Revolution that they were attempting to collect, in the form of a Convention, a new means of government in the nation, which would rival the authority of Parliament. The argument was not less pertinent to the Great Convention of 1780, when the several county committees were invited to send delegates to London to confer together on the most effective way of supporting the petitions for economical reform, and it must be remembered that North's supporters urged this very argument against that Convention. Wyvill's letter on the subject is an interesting record of its object. “Each county, city, and town, having first associated separately and apart, the whole body of petitioners in due time may be collected, and firmly consolidated in one great 'National Association'; the obvious consequence of which must be certain and complete success to the constitutional reform proposed by the people." The very idea of association and co-operation was regarded as criminal in the societies that were persecuted by Pitt, but Pitt himself under crossexamination was driven after some ineffectual prevarications to admit that he had attended a meeting in 1782 at which delegates were present from various societies for promoting Parliamentary Reform. Pitt was eloquent about the enormity

1 The chairman of the Wigton Public meeting mentioned in sending a petition against the Two Bills of 1795 that the electors had never seen their member and did not know his address.

2 Sheridan made a very happy use of this argument in 1793, comparing the proposed convention of 1794 with the convention held in 1780. "We make a boast of equal laws. If these men are to be considered as guilty of high treason, let us have some retrospective, and whatever in that case may happen to me, his Majesty will at least derive some benefit since he will thereby get rid of a majority of his present Cabinet."

of appealing to the people against Parliament in 1793, but there are any number of instances in which this idea of appealing to the people as the ultima ratio of flouted discontent found a grim and defiant expression in the earlier agitations.

Three examples may well be quoted. One is the language of Lord Carysfoot in a letter to the Gentlemen ༡ of the Huntingdonshire Committee: "The people must work their own salvation. Every measure of public benefit must spring from them. No Minister however profligate, no Parliament however corrupt can stand in opposition to their collective force. An authentic declaration of the sense of the nation must have decisive weight. In this light I consider the petitions which have been sent up by so many counties and principal towns; and when backed by a national association, maintained by committees of correspondence, I cannot conceive that they can be resisted."-Feb. 1780.

Another is the language of the Duke of Richmond in 1783: "I have no hesitation in saying that from every consideration which I have been able to give to this great question, that for many years has occupied my mind, and from every day's experience to the present hour I am more and more convinced, that the restoring the right of voting universally to every man not incapacitated by nature for want of reason, or by law for the commission of crimes, together with annual elections, is the only reform that can be effectual and permanent. I am further convinced, that it is the only reform that is practicable. The lesser reform (alluding to Mr. Pitt's motion in the House of Commons) has been attempted with every possible advantage in its favour; not only from the zealous support of the advocates for a more equal one, but from the assistance of men of great weight both in and out of power. But with all those temperaments and helps it has failed; not one proselyte has been gained from corruption, nor has the least ray of hope been held out from any quarter, that the House of Commons was inclined to adopt any other mode of reform. The weight of cor

ruption has crushed this more gentle, as it would have defeated any more efficacious plan in the same circumstances. From that quarter, therefore, I have nothing to hope. It is from the people at large that I expect any good, and I am convinced that the only way to make them feel that they are really concerned in the business, is to contend for their full, clear, and indisputable rights of universal representation. But in the more liberal and great plan of universal representation a clear and distinct principle at once appears, that cannot lead us wrong. Not CONVENIENCY but RIGHT. If it is not a maxim of our Constitution, that a British subject is to be governed only by laws to which he has consented by himself or his representative, we should instantly abandon the error; but if it is the essential of Freedom, founded on the eternal principles of justice and wisdom, and our unalienable birthright, we should not hesitate in asserting it. Let us then but determine to act upon this broad principle of giving to every man his own, and we shall immediately get rid of all the perplexities to which the narrow notions of partiality and exclusion must ever be subject."1

The third is the speech of a less celebrated gentleman made at a general meeting of the freeholders of the County of Cambridge in March 25, 1780, published and preserved in a collection of pamphlets. "Many instances may be brought from History of Kings who have been solemnly deposed for not performing the duties of their office, and for infringing the liberties of the people. But the last great revolution of our government is a decisive precedent that subjects may alter their rulers, and that kings must expect allegiance no longer than they deserve it. Besides, when after all the waste of blood and treasure which the present calamitous war has occasioned, we are called upon to risk the last stake we possess for the service of our country, it surely becomes us to inquire whether we have a country. For I do not call

1 From a letter from the Duke of Richmond to Lieut.-Colonel Sharman, Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence at Belfast, dated Aug. 15, 1783.