Editing London Corresponding Society (section)

==Radicalisation and dissolution==
===The final rally===
[[File:Copenhagen house' (John Gale Jones; Joseph Priestley; William Hodgson; John Thelwell; Charles James Fox) by James Gillray.jpg|thumb|right|LCS speakers address the crowds at Copenhagen Fields, 1795. John Gale Jones on hustings to the left.]]

In the summer of 1795, weariness with the war combined with failed harvests to trigger renewed protest—including an attack on the Prime Minister's residence in [[Downing Street]].<ref name="Cole" /> The Society was growing again: from 17 divisions in March to 79 in October. General Meetings were attended by tens of thousands.<ref>Thale, ''Selections'', xxiv; 298. Report from spy Powell: LCS General Committee, 3 September 1795, in Selections, 301; Proceedings of a General Meeting of the London Corresponding Society, Held on Monday 26 October 1795, in ''Selections'', 314.</ref>

The LCS called a "monster meeting" for 26 October 1795 at Copenhagen Fields, [[Islington]]. Veteran reformers [[Joseph Priestley]], [[John Thelwall]] and [[Charles James Fox]], joined Hardy's successor as LCS secretary John Ashley (another shoemaker); chairman [[John Binns (journalist)|John Binns]] (a plumber's labourer), [[John Gale Jones]] (surgeon), and [[William Duane (journalist)|William Duane]] (Irish-American editor of ''The Telegraph'') in addressing crowds estimated at upwards of 200,000.<ref name="Little2">{{cite book |last1=Little |first1=Nigel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hucvCgAAQBAJ |title=Transoceanic Radical: William Duane |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781317314585 |location=New York |access-date=23 May 2021}}</ref> 

For the Society, Binns and Ashley declared that should the British nation, in the face of "the continuation of the present detestable War, the horrors of an approaching Famine, and above all, the increased Corruption, and Inquisitorial measures, demand strong and decisive measures", the London Corresponding Society would be "the powerful organ" ushering in "joyful tidings of peace ... universal suffrage and annual parliaments".<ref>Thale, ''Selections'', "Proceedings of a General Meeting of the London Corresponding Society, Held on Monday October the 26th, 1795, in a field adjacent to Copenhagen-House, in the County of Middlesex"</ref> Three days later, [[George III]], in procession to the state [[Opening of Parliament]], had the windows of his carriage smashed by crowd shouting "No King, No [[William Pitt the Younger|Pitt]], No war".<ref>{{Cite web |last=British Library |title=Truth and treason! or a narrative of the royal procession to the House of Peers, October the 29th, 1795 |url=https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/truth-and-treason-or-a-narrative-of-the-royal-procession-to-the-house-of-peers-october-the-29th-1795 |access-date=2022-12-30 |website=www.bl.uk}}</ref> 

===The "Gagging Acts"===
Seizing upon this incident, and in response to their earlier humiliation in the courts, the government introduced the so-called "Gagging Acts" of 1795.<ref name="Emsely2">{{cite journal |last1=Emsley |first1=Clive |date=1985 |title=Repression, 'terror', and the rule of law in England during the decade of the French Revolution |journal=English Historical Review |volume=100 |issue=31 |pages=801–825 |doi=10.1093/ehr/C.CCCXCVII.801}}</ref><ref name="Cole2">{{cite book |last1=Cole |first1=G. D. H. |title=The Common People, 1746–1938 |last2=Postgate |first2=Raymond |date=1945 |publisher=Methuen & Co. Ltd. |edition=Second |location=London |pages=157–158}}</ref> The [[Seditious Meetings Act 1795]] and the [[Treason Act 1795]] made writing and speaking as much treason as overt acts, and made inciting hatred of the government a "high misdemeanour". They also required licences for public meetings, lectures and reading rooms.<ref name="Emsely2"/> These restrictions, with the encouragement given to magistrates to use public order powers to close taverns and bookshops regarded as centres of radical activity, wound down the Society's extensive publishing programme—some eighty separate pamphlets and broadsides and two periodicals <ref name="Davis 2002" />—and, in general, "hamstrung" its propaganda activity.<ref name="Cole" />

The rally in LCS membership and activity in the summer of 1795 was brief. The problem was not alone Pitt's "reign of terror".

===The fall of Paine===
As an immediate leader of popular opinion there had been no rival to Paine. But following the purge and mass execution of the [[Girondins]] in June 1793, in France Paine found himself a prisoner of the revolution he had defended. In prison, and prior to an obscure American exile, he had produced his second great work, published in 1796 and 1797. ''The Age of Reason'' submitted the Christian bible and churches to the same type of deconstructive logical analysis that ''The Rights of Man'' had applied to the monarchy and aristocracy. The social historian [[G. D. H. Cole]] noted that only "the broadest-minded Unitarian could tolerate it, and the dissenters [the [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|Non-Conformists]]] who till then had been consistent if timid recruits to the reform movement, were henceforth as horrified as the bishops themselves".<ref name="Cole" />

Already in 1795 disgruntled Methodists had withdrawn from the LCS to form the Friends of Religious and Civil Liberty.<ref name="Davis 2008" /> Prominent among them was Richard Lee, a bookseller reputedly expelled from the LCS for refusing to stock Paine's newest work and yet subsequently prosecuted for publishing the regicidal handbill ''King Killing'', and Edward Iliff's ''A summary of the duties of citizenship, written expressly for the members of the London Corresponding Society''.<ref name="Davis 2">{{cite ODNB |last1=Davis |first1=Michael |title=London Corresponding Society |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/42297 |year=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/42297 |access-date=26 February 2021}}</ref>

===United Britons===
The government's closure of peaceful avenues for reform agitation, and the prospect of French assistance, encouraged a radical rump to consider the threat implicit in the Copenhagen Fields address: to achieve universal male suffrage and annual parliaments by physical force. In this, they were supported by the United Irishmen.<ref name=":7" /> In the summer of 1797, following the [[Spithead and Nore mutinies]], in which the government had been quick to see the hand of radical societies, the Irish priest [[James Coigly]] arrived from Manchester. In Manchester Goigly and a cotton spinner from Belfast, James Dixon, had helped convert the town's Corresponding Society into the republican, United Englishmen. Bound by a test that promised to "Remove the diadem and take off the crown ... [and to] exalt him that is low and abuse him that is high".<ref name="Davis United Englishmen">{{cite ODNB |last1=Davis |first1=Michael |title=United Englishmen |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-95956 |year=2008 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/95956 |isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 |access-date=10 November 2020}}</ref> the United men went on to organise in [[Stockport]], [[Bolton]], [[Warrington]] and [[Birmingham]].<ref name="Keogh 1998">{{cite journal |last1=Keogh |first1=Daire |title=An Unfortunate Man |journal=18th – 19th Century History |date=Summer 1998 |volume=5 |issue=2 |url=https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/an-unfortunate-man/ |access-date=21 November 2020}}</ref> Like the [[United Scotsmen]],.<ref name="Davis United Scotsmen2">{{cite ODNB|last1=Davis|first1=Michael|title=United Scotsmen|url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/95551|year=2008|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/95551|access-date=10 November 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=McFarland |first=E. W. |title=Ireland and Scotland in the Age of Revolution: Planting the Green Bough |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |year=1994 |isbn=978-0748605392 |location=Edinburgh}}</ref> in their constitutions the new societies were "direct copies of the United Irishmen".<ref>Williams (1968), 0. 107.</ref> 

Presenting himself as an emissary of the United Irish executive in Dublin, Coigly met with leading members of the LCS, among them the Irishmen [[Edward Despard]], the brothers Benjamin and [[John Binns (journalist)|John Binns]], William Henry Hamilton,<ref>{{Cite web|last=Quinn|first=James|date=2009|title=Hamilton, William Henry {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography|url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/hamilton-william-henry-a3767|access-date=2022-02-12|website=www.dib.ie}}</ref> and Alexander Galloway who had succeeded as the Society's chairman when, in protest against the violent turn in rhetoric, [[Francis Place]] resigned. Meetings were held at Furnival's Inn, [[Holborn]], where United delegates from London, Scotland and the regions were reported to have committed themselves "to overthrow the present Government, and to join the French as soon as they made a landing in England"<ref name="Keogh 1998"/> (in December 1796 only weather had prevented a major [[French expedition to Ireland (1796)|French landing in Ireland]]).

In March 1798 Coigly was arrested in a party with O'Connor, Benjamin Binns, and [[John Allen (Irish nationalist)|John Allen]] at [[Margate]] just as they were to embark for France. Found on his person was an address (composed by Dr. Crossfield)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Whelan |first=Ferus |title=Dissent into Treason: Unitarian, King-killers and the Society of United Irishmen |year=2010 |isbn=9780863224102 |location=Dingle, Ireland |pages=211}}</ref> to the [[French Directory]] from the "United Britons". While its suggestion of a mass movement primed for insurrection had been scarcely credible, it was sufficient proof of the intent to invite and encourage a French invasion. Coigly was hanged in June.<ref name="Keogh 1998" />

===Turn against United conspiracy, and final suppression===
On 30 January 1798, the LCS had issued an Address to the United Irishmen, declaring that "If to Unite in the Cause of Reform upon the Broadest Basis be Treason .... We, with you, are Traitors".<ref name="Hansard">{{cite book |last1=Hansard |first1=T.C. |title=The Parliamentary History of England. Vol. XXXI |date=1818 |publisher=Longmans |location=London |pages=642–645}}</ref> Yet the disillusionment with France was widespread and by the time of Coigly's arrest the majority view was that the entire business of coordinating with the Directory and the United Irish was a destructive diversion. The Central Committee of Delegates suspected that the government exaggerated the threat of a French invasion, but agreed that in the event members would join their local, government-approved, militias.<ref name="Vandehey">{{cite book |last1=Vandehey |first1=Reed Joseph |title=Parliament and the London Corresponding Society |date=1975 |publisher=Portland State University, Dissertations and Theses. Paper 2542 |location=Portland OR |pages=100–101 |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/37774413.pdf |access-date=27 February 2021}}</ref>

On 19 April 1798, just as this was being resolved in a pub in [[Drury Lane]], the committee was raided by the police. Together with parallel raids on corresponding societies in Birmingham and Manchester, a total of 28 persons were arrested, among them [[Thomas Evans (conspirator)|Thomas Evans]], Edward Despard, John Bone, Benjamin Binns, Paul Le Maitre, Richard Hodgson and Alexander Galloway. The next day, Pitt renewed the suspension of habeas corpus absolving the government of the need to present evidence of complicity in Coigly's mission. The prisoners were held without charge until hostilities with France were (temporarily) halted with the [[Treaty of Amiens]] in 1801.

According to [[Francis Place]] (who, for the good name of the LCS and the reform movement as a whole, had threatened to inform on United conspirators)<ref>{{Cite book|last=Wallas|first=Graham|title=The Life of Francis Place|publisher=Allen and Unwin|year=1918|location=London|pages=27}}</ref> this stroke extinguished the society. Members made no attempt to meet again, not even in any division and abandoned their delegates.<ref name=":3" /> A final act of Parliament, the [[Unlawful Societies Act 1799]] ([[39 Geo. 3]]. c. 79), "for the more effectual suppression of societies established for seditious and treasonable Purposes; and for better preventing treasonable and seditious practices", referenced and banned the LCS by name, along with the United Englishmen, the United Scotsmen, the United Britons, and the United Irishmen.<ref>{{Cite book|title = An act for the more effectual suppression of societies established for seditious and treasonable purposes, and for better preventing treasonable and seditious practices: 12th July 1799|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=YQo1ywAACAAJ|publisher = G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode|date = 1847}}</ref>

Despard, who had protested a betrayal of the United Britons as "dishonourable",<ref name="Jay">{{cite book|last1=Jay|first1=Mike|title=The Unfortunate Colonel Despard|date=2004|publisher=Bantam Press|isbn=0593051955|location=London|pages=152–153}}</ref> was executed for treasonable association with their remnants—the so-called [[Despard Plot]]—in 1803.