Editing London Corresponding Society (section)

==The Conventions and Pitt's "Reign of Terror"==
{{see also|1794 Treason Trials}}

===The first Edinburgh Convention===
At the end of November 1792 the LCS published an ''Address of the London Corresponding Society to the other Societies of Great Britain, united for obtaining a Reform in Parliament'' expressing confidence in the prospects for obtaining a reformed, democratic franchise through "moral force".<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite web|title = Address of the London Corresponding Society... for obtaining a Reform in Parliament|url = http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/address-of-the-london-corresponding-society-for-obtaining-a-reform-in-parliament|website = The British Library|access-date = 2015-12-12}}</ref> A national convention was called for [[Edinburgh]] in December.

The LCS delegates' host in the Scottish capital, and perhaps the most radical delegate present, [[Thomas Muir of Huntershill|Thomas Muir]] of the [[Society of the Friends of the People]], himself said nothing that was not strictly constitutional. An address which he presented from the United Irishmen (largely drawn up by [[William Drennan]]) was made acceptable to the Convention only by redacting any suggestion of "Treason or Misprison of Treason against the Union [of Scotland] with England".<ref>{{cite book |last1=McBride |first1=Ian |title=Scripture Politics: Ulster Presbyterianism and Irish Radicalism in the late Eighteenth Century |date=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780198206422 |page=123}}</ref> Beginning with the title "Convention", and including an oath to "live free or die", the "imitation of French forms" did cause the authorities some alarm. Minor prosecutions were instituted.<ref name="Cole" />

===The Edinburgh treason trials===
By the time LCS delegates attended their second reform convention in Edinburgh in October 1793, the political climate had changed dramatically. From 1 February 1793 [[the Crown]] was at war with the new [[French First Republic|French Republic]]. Any association with Paris or defence of its policies, foreign or domestic, was now regarded as treasonable. In May 1793 the [[House of Commons]] refused by 282 votes to 41 even to consider petitions asking for reform.<ref name="Cole" />

At a time when reformers were beginning to mobilise a broad swath of opinion in Britain in favour of a reformed Parliament and a strictly constitutional monarchy, they were being forced, by their early embrace of the French revolution, to defend policies in France they did not advocate at home: the execution of the king and of regime opponents, the confiscation of the property of the Church and nobility. Following the institution of the [[Reign of Terror]], the French Republic paid no heed to the entreaties in Paris of Thomas Muir or, from his place in the French National Convention, of Thomas Paine.

After Muir returned to Scotland, he was charged with treason. Although the prosecutorial evidence amounted to little more than a presentation of his political views, in August 1793 a jury of landlords upheld the charge. Muir was sentenced to 14 years transportation. Convicted of sedition, the same fate befell the secretary of a second Edinburgh convention in October, 1793, [[William Skirving]], and the two LCS delegates.<ref>''The Trial of William Skirving, secretary to the British convention, before the high court of justice, on 6th–7th of January, 1794, for sedition, containing a full and circumstantial account of all the proceedings and speeches, as taken down in shorthand by Mr Ramsey, short hand writer from London.'' Edinburgh: printed and sold for Mr Skirving by James Robertson, Edinburgh.</ref>

[[Joseph Gerrald]] and LCS chairman [[Maurice Margarot]] had been elected as delegates to the convention by the LCS's first open-air meeting, attended by some 4,000 persons in a field off the Hackney Road. Gerrald had published earlier in the year ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=rlA2AAAAMAAJ A Convention the Only Means of Saving Us from Ruin].'' With ancient precedents sought in the Anglo-Saxon ''mycelgemot'' (popular assemblies) and ''wittengamot'' (delegated representatives), the pamphlet's laid out a three-stage sequence, from local gatherings to regional delegations to national convention. There was the scarcely disguised suggestion that such a convention would have a representative legitimacy greater than the corrupted, unreformed Parliament.<ref>Parssinen, T. M. (1973). "Association, Convention and Anti-parliament in British Radical Politics, 1771–1848".&nbsp;''The English Historical Review''&nbsp;88.348: 504–533.</ref>

As the son of a wine importer, Margarot (who alone survived to return to England in 1810) had continental connections, including residence in Paris during the first year of the revolution. These allowed the authorities to draw upon him the suspicion of being a French spy.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Johnston|first=Kenneth R.|date=2007|title=The First and Last British Convention|journal=Romanticism|language=en|volume=13|issue=2|pages=99–132|doi=10.3366/rom.2007.13.2.99|issn=1354-991X|doi-access=free}}</ref>

===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>