Editing London Corresponding Society (section)

===The London treason trials===
[[File:High Treason Popgun Plot cover.png|thumb|left|Frontispiece for LeMaitre's 1795 book]]
The weight of repression substantially reduced popular societies in the provinces. In London, Hardy and Margarot's successor as chairman, [[John Baxter (political reformer)|John Baxter]], undaunted, had drawn up addresses to "the friends of peace and parliamentary reform" and to "His Majesty" calling for an end to the war against France.<ref>{{cite book |date=1793 |title=The London Corresponding Society addresses the friends of peace and parliamentary reform |location=London |page= 1}}</ref> [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Prime Minister]], [[William Pitt the Younger|William Pitt]], responded by having the papers of the London societies seized and examined by a secret committee of the House of Commons.<ref name=hampshermonk>Iain Hampsher-Monk. "Civic Humanism and Parliamentary Reform: The Case of the Society of the Friends of the People." (Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 70–89). ''Journal of British Studies'', 1979. {{JSTOR|175513}}</ref>

In May 1794, hard on the committee's "Report on Radical and Reform Societies",<ref>National Archives (UK), [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/struggle_democracy/docs/radical_reform.htm], "Report on Radical and Reform Societies, 1794", Accessed 5 December 2020.</ref> charges of treason were laid against thirty leading radicals including Hardy, Thomas Spence, the dramatist [[Thomas Holcroft]], the poet, public lecturer and journalist [[John Thelwall]], and sometime parliamentary candidate [[John Horne Tooke]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wallace|first=Miriam|date=2007|title=Constructing Treason, Narrating Truth: The 1794 Treason Trial of Thomas Holcroft and the Fate of English Jacobinism|url=https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ron/2007-n45-ron1728/015823ar/|journal=Romanticism on the Net|language=en|issue=45|doi=10.7202/015823ar|s2cid=153759473 |issn=1467-1255}}</ref> Their trials in November misfired. The juries in London were not as ready as those in Edinburgh to accept the mere expression of political opinion as evidence of plots against King and Parliament. When the evidence running to four printed volumes failed to impress in the case of Hardy, the courts were unable to take seriously the charges against his associates: Horne Tooke jeered at the [[Attorney General for England and Wales|Attorney-General]] and clowned in the dock, and the [[Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales|Lord Chief Justice]] slept through the prosecution's summary against Thelwall.<ref name="Cole" />

The process did deliver Hardy a blow: during his trial his wife was attacked in their home by a loyalist "Church and King mob" and subsequently died in childbirth.<ref>{{cite ODNB|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12291?docPos=3|first=Clive|last=Emsley|chapter= Hardy, Thomas (1752–1832)|title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|year=2004|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/12291|access-date= 5 May 2011}}</ref> On his release, Hardy did not return to his position in the Society.

Beginning in the course of these trials further arrests were made. Paul Thomas LeMaitre, John Smith, George Higgins and Dr. Robert Thomas Crossfield, were indicted as accomplices in the so-called "[[Popgun Plot]]", an alleged conspiracy to assassinate [[King George III]] by means of a poison dart fired from an [[airgun]].<ref name="Claeys2010">{{cite book|author=Gregory Claeys|title=Politics of English Jacobinism: Writings of John Thelwall|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cyRMSyqtlEoC&pg=PA501|year= 2010|publisher=Penn State Press|isbn=978-0-271-04446-0|pages=501–}}</ref><ref name=":5">Emsley, Clive (2000). The Pop-Gun Plot, 1794. In: Davis, Michael T. ed. ''Radicalism and Revolution in Britain, 1775–1848: Essays in Honour of Malcolm I. Thomis.'' London: Macmillan, pp. 56–68.</ref> In May 1796, their cases similarly collapsed.<ref name="Thale1983">{{cite book|author=Mary Thale|title=Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JD89AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA220|year= 1983|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-24363-6|pages=220–}}</ref><ref name="Claeys2010" /> 

The reformers were not allowed to celebrate their victory. The LCS bookseller John Smith provocatively renamed his shop ''The Pop Gun'', and sold a pamphlet that explained that the government required three instruments: 1) soldiers ("by profession slaughterers"), 2) clergymen (who "hallow with the sanction of Divinity state robbery"), and 3) lawyers (who "thrive on misery" and are the "tyrants of property"). He was given two years hard labour on bread and water for seditious libel.<ref name="Linebaugh and Rediker"/>

In advance of the treason trials, [[Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1794|habeas Corpus had been suspended]] and six members of the Society detained, including [[Thomas Spence]]. Invoking the presence of "a traitorous and detestable conspiracy ... formed for subverting the existing laws and constitution, and for introducing the system of anarchy and confusion which has so fatally prevailed in France", in May 1794 Parliament had allowed the Privy Council to direct detentions "any law or statute to the contrary notwithstanding"<ref>E. N. Williams, ''The Eighteenth-Century Constitution. 1688–1815'' (Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 424–425.</ref>