Editing London Corresponding Society (section)

== Early influences and foundation of the society ==
In the last decades of the 18th century the percolation of [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment thinking]] and the dramas of [[American Revolution|American independence]] and the [[French Revolution]] stimulated in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, new clubs and societies committed to principles of popular sovereignty and constitutional government. In the north of England the [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|Non-Conformist]], principally [[Unitarianism|Unitarian]], currents in the new disenfranchised mill towns and manufacturing centres, supported the [[Society for Constitutional Information]] (SCI). This had been founded by, among others, Major [[John Cartwright (political reformer)|John Cartwright]], author of ''Take Your Choice'' (1776) which called for manhood suffrage, the secret ballot, annual elections and equal electoral districts.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cartwright (Major)|first=John|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KaIQMwEACAAJ|title=Take Your Choice! Representation and Respect; Imposition and Contempt. Annual Parliaments and Liberty, Long Parliaments and Slavery |date=1776|publisher=London|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite ODNB|id=4817|title=Cartwright, John|first=Rory T.|last=Cornish}}</ref>

In 1788, prominent Unitarian members of the CIS, [[Richard Price]] and [[Joseph Priestley]] among them, formed the [[Revolution Society]]. Ostensibly convened to commemorate the [[centennial]] of the [[Glorious Revolution]] of 1688, the society called for the repeal of the [[Corporation Act 1661]] and [[Test Act 1673]] on the grounds that "the right of private judgement, liberty of conscience, trial by jury, freedom of the press and freedom of election ought ever to be held sacred and inviolable".<ref>{{Cite book|last=O'Broin|first=Seoirse|url=http://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/2457/1/AIB.SOB.2.17.1986.pdf|title=United Irishmen, the London Connection|publisher=Irish in Britain History Group|year=1986|pages=1}}</ref> After 1792 the radical momentum shifted from the Revolution Society back to the SCI and, more decidedly, to a new London society.<ref>{{Cite book|last=White|first=Daniel E.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_hN0MAEACAAJ|title=Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent|date=2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-511-29393-1|language=en}}</ref>

During the [[American Revolutionary War]], [[Thomas Hardy (political reformer)|Thomas Hardy]], a Scottish shoemaker in London, was convinced of the American cause by the pamphlets of Dr. [[Richard Price]], a Unitarian minister and prominent reformer. A gift of the pamphlet library of the SCI, including a reprint of a proposal from a "Correspondence Committee" of the [[Irish Volunteers (18th century)|Irish Volunteer]] movement to restore "the purity and vigour" of the Irish constitution through parliamentary reform,<ref>{{cite book |title=A Letter from His Grace the Duke of Richmond to Lieutenant Colonel Sharman, Chairman of the Committee of Correspondence appointed by the Delegates of 45 Corps of Volunteers, assembled at Lisburn in Ireland; with Notes by A Member of the Society for Constitutional Information. |date=1792 |publisher=J Johnson. |location=London |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=keBbAAAAQAAJ&q=A+Letter+from+His+Grace+the+Duke+of+Richmond+to+Lieutenant+Colonel+Sharman |access-date=30 November 2020}}</ref> persuaded him of the need for a workingman's reform club.<ref name="Davis 2002">{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Michael T. |title=London Corresponding Society, 1792–1799. Vol. 2 |date=2002 |publisher=Pickering and Chatto |location=London |isbn=9781851967346 |pages=11–28}}</ref><ref>{{cite thesis |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/37774413.pdf |title=Parliament and the London Corresponding Society |date=1975-02-28 |page=8|type=doctoral |publisher=[[Portland State University]] |first=Reed Joseph |last=Vandehey}}</ref>

At the first meeting of his "Correspondence Society" on 25 January 1792, Hardy led seven friends in a discussion that determined that "gross ignorance and prejudice in the bulk of the nation was the greatest obstacle to obtaining redress" from the "defects and abuses that have crept into the administration of our Government"; and that to remove that obstacle it should be the aim of those subscribing:<blockquote>to instil into [the public] in a legal and constitutional way by means of the press, a sense of their rights as freemen, and of their duty to themselves and their posterity, as good citizens, and hereditary guardians of the liberties transmitted to them by their forefathers.<ref>Thomas Hardy, ''An Introductory Letter to a Friend (written in 1799 and read to the company present at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, 5 November 1824 on the anniversary of Hardy's acquittal in the Treason Trials of 1794''. Cited in Robert Birley (1924), ''The English Jacobins from 1789 to 1802'', London, Oxford University Press. Appendix</ref></blockquote>

Hardy is said to have been distinguished in radical company by never speaking "but to the purpose at hand" and by his "high organising ability".<ref name="Cole">{{cite book |last1=Cole |first1=G. D. H. |last2=Postgate |first2=Raymond |title=The Common People, 1746–1938 |date=1945 |publisher=Methuen & Co. Ltd. |location=London |pages=149–150, 156–160 |edition=Second}}</ref>

In promoting the new society, Hardy and his friends rode a wave of popular political engagement lifted by the two-part publication (March 1791, February 1792) of [[Thomas Paine]]'s ''[[Rights of Man]]''. Selling as many as a million copies, Paine's reply to [[Reflections on the Revolution in France|Edmund Burke]] in defence of the French Revolution (and of Dr. Richard Price) was "eagerly read by reformers, [[English Dissenters|Protestant dissenters]], democrats, London craftsman, and the skilled factory-hands of the new industrial north".<ref>George Rudé, ''Revolutionary Europe: 1783–1815'' (1964) p. 183</ref>