William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (e book reader for pc .TXT) 📖

Parliament without any kind of dismay."[302] Braxfield and

his colleagues defended their conduct in an exhaustive treatise on

"leasing-making," which the curious may read in the Home Office

Archives.

 

What was the attitude of Pitt towards these events? Ultimately he was

responsible for these unjust and vindictive sentences; and it is a poor

excuse to urge that he gave Dundas a free hand in Scottish affairs.

Still, it is unquestionable that the initiative lay with the two

Dundases. If any Englishman exerted influence on the sentences it was

the Lord Chancellor, Loughborough.[303] He treated with contempt the

motion of Earl Stanhope on 31st January 1794 for an examination into the

case of Muir, when the Earl found himself in the position which he so

much coveted--a minority of one. On the cases of Muir and Palmer coming

before the Commons (10th March), Pitt upheld the Scottish Court of

Justiciary in what was perhaps the worst speech of his whole career. He

defended even the careful selection of jurymen hostile to Muir on the

curious plea that though they were declared loyalists, yet they might be

impartial as jurymen. He further denied that there had been any

miscarriage of justice, or that the sentence on the "daring delinquents"

needed revision. And these excuses for biassed and vindictive sentences

were urged after Fox had uttered a noble and manly plea for justice, not

for mercy. Grey bitterly declared that Muir was to be sent for fourteen

years to Sydney for the offence of pleading for Reform, which Pitt and

the Duke of Richmond advocated twelve years before. They sat in the

King's Cabinet: Muir was sent to herd with felons. This taunt flew wide

of the mark. Pitt in his motions for Reform had always made it clear

that, while desirous of "a moderate and substantial Reform," he utterly

repudiated universal suffrage. If those were his views in 1782-5, how

could he accept the Radical programme now that it included the absurd

demand for annual Parliaments? None the less Pitt was answerable for the

action of the Home Minister in referring the sentences back to the

judges who inflicted them--a course of conduct at once cowardly and

farcical. Pitt's speech also proves him to have known of the

irregularities that disgraced the trials. But he, a lawyer, condoned

them and applauded the harsh and vindictive sentences. In short, he

acted as an alarmist, not as a dispenser of justice.

 

It is easy for us now to descant on the virtues of moderation. But how

many men would have held on an even course when the guillotine worked

its fell work in France, when the Goddess of Reason was enthroned in

Notre Dame, and when Jacobinism seemed about to sweep over the

Continent? Here, as at so many points, France proved to be the worst foe

to ordered liberty. Robespierre and Hébert were the men who assured the

doom of Muir and Palmer. A trivial incident will suffice to illustrate

the alarm of Englishmen at the assembly of a British Convention. In

December 1793 Drane, the mayor of Reading, reported to his neighbour

Addington (Speaker of the House of Commons) that the "infamous Tom

Paine" and a member of the French Convention had been overheard

conversing in French in a public-house. Their talk turned on a proposed

visit to the British Convention then sitting in Edinburgh. At once

Addington sent for a warrant from the Home Office, while the mayor urged

his informant to hunt the miscreants down. The machinery of the law was

set in motion. A search was instituted; the warrant came down from

Whitehall; and not until the sum of fourteen guineas had gone to the

informant for his patriotic exertions did the authorities discover that

they had been hoaxed.[304]

 

The Edinburgh Convention, consisting of delegates of forty-five Reform

Societies, seems to have pursued dully decorous methods until 6th

November, when citizens Hamilton Rowan and Simon Butler came to

represent Ireland; Joseph Gerrald and Maurice Margarot were the

delegates from the London Corresponding Society; and Sinclair and York

from the Society for Constitutional Information which met at the Crown

and Anchor. A Convention of English Societies assembled at London about

the same time, and deputed the four delegates to join the Edinburgh body

and form a British Convention.[305] Accordingly, on 19th November, it

took the title, "British Convention of Delegates of the People,

associated to obtain Universal Suffrage and Annual Parliaments." The

statement of Margarot, that the London police sought to prevent his

journey to Edinburgh, should have been a warning to members to measure

their words well. Unfortunately, Margarot, a vain hot-headed fellow, at

once began to boast of the importance of the Radical Societies; though

fluctuating in number, they were numerous in London; there were thirty

of them in Norwich; and in the Sheffield district their members numbered

50,000. "If," he added, "we could get a Convention of England and

Scotland called, we might represent six or seven hundred thousand males,

which is a majority of all the adults of the Kingdom; and the Ministry

would not dare to refuse our rights."[306] Butler then declared that

Belfast was in a state of veiled rebellion; Gerrald, the ablest and best

educated of the delegates, also scoffed at the old party system, and

said, "party is ever a bird of prey, and the people their banquet." On

19th November a delegate from Sheffield, M. C. Brown, moved that the

next British Convention should meet near the borders of England and

Scotland. Thereupon Gerrald proposed that York should be chosen, despite

its ecclesiastical surroundings; for (said he), "as the Saviour of the

world was often found in the company of sinners, let us go there for the

same gracious purpose, to convert to repentance."[307]

 

All this was but the prelude to more serious work. On 26th-28th November

the Convention declared it to be the duty of citizens to resist any law,

similar to that lately passed in Dublin, for preventing the assembly of

a Convention in Great Britain; and the delegates resolved to prepare to

summon a Convention if the following emergencies should arise--an

invasion, the landing of Hanoverian troops, the passing of a Convention

Act, or the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. These defiant

resolutions were proposed by Sinclair; and, as he afterwards became a

Government informer, they were probably intended to lure the Convention

away from its proper business into seditious ways. However that may be,

the delegates solemnly assented to these resolutions.

 

Scotsmen will notice alike with pride and indignation that the delegates

of the Societies north of the Tweed adhered to their main purpose,

Parliamentary Reform, until, under the lead of the men of London,

Sheffield, and Dublin, debates became almost Parisian in vehemence. As

reported in the "Edinburgh Gazetteer" of 3rd December, they gave Robert

Dundas the wished-for handle of attack. Then and there he decided to

disperse the Convention, so he informed Henry Dundas in the following

letter of 6th December: "Last Tuesday's '[Edinburgh] Gazetteer,'

containing a further account of the proceedings of the Convention

appeared to the Solicitor and me so strong that we agreed to take notice

of them. The proper warrants were accordingly made, and early yesterday

morning put in execution against Margarot, Gerrald, Callender, Skirving,

and one or two others, and with such effect that we have secured all

their Minutes and papers. Their conduct has excited universal

detestation."[308] The expulsion took place quite peaceably. The Lord

Provost informed the delegates that it was not their meeting, but their

publications, that led him to intervene. The Chairman, Paterson,

thereupon "skulked off"; but Brown, the Sheffield delegate, took the

chair, and declared that he would not quit it save under compulsion. The

Lord Provost and constables then pulled him down; and the meeting was

adjourned. Events ran the same course on the morrow, save that the

chairman, Gerrald, was allowed to wind up the proceedings with prayer

before he was pulled down. Thus ended the first British Convention.

 

The natural sequel was a trial of the leaders, Sinclair, Margarot,

Gerrald, and Skirving. Sinclair turned informer, whereupon his

indictment was allowed to lapse. The others were charged with attending

the meetings of the Convention which, "under the pretence of procuring a

Reform of Parliament, were evidently of a dangerous and destructive

tendency," modelled on those of the French Convention and with the like

aims in view. The charge was held to be proven, and they were severally

sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. The cases aroused keen

interest, in part owing to the novel claims put forward by the

prosecutor and endorsed by the Judges. The Lord Advocate argued that

these men, in claiming to represent a majority of the people, were in

reality planning a revolt; and Lord Justice Clerk finally declared that

the crime of sedition consisted "in endeavouring to create a

dissatisfaction in the country, which nobody can tell where it will end.

It will very naturally end in overt rebellion; if it has that tendency,

though not in the mind of the parties at the time, yet, if they have

been guilty of poisoning the minds of the lieges, I apprehend that that

will constitute the crime of sedition to all intents and purposes."[309]

 

To find a parallel to this monstrous claim, that sedition may be

unintentional and may consist in some action which the Government judges

by its results, one would have to hark back to the days of Judge

Jeffreys, whom indeed McQueen of Braxfield resembled in ferocity,

cunning, and effrontery. The insolence of Margarot at the bar to some

extent excused the chief judge for the exhibition of the same conduct on

the bench. But in the case of Gerrald, an English gentleman of refined

character and faultless demeanour, the brutalities of Braxfield aroused

universal loathing. In one respect Gerrald committed an imprudence. He

appeared in the dock, not in a wig, but displaying a shock of

dishevelled hair, a sign of French and republican sympathies which

seemed a defiance to the Court. Nevertheless, his speech in his own

defence moved to its depths the mind of a young poet who had tramped all

the way from Glasgow in the bleak March weather in order to hear the

trial. At the end of the speech young Campbell turned to his neighbour,

a humble tradesman, and said: "By heavens, Sir, that is a great man"; to

which there came the reply: "Yes, Sir, he is not only a great man

himself, but he makes every other man feel great who listens to him."

 

In truth, the Scottish trials were a moral defeat for Pitt and his

colleagues. Sympathy with the prisoners and detestation of the judges

aroused a general outcry, which became furious when Braxfield declared

that he had no idea that his sentence of transportation involved

servitude and hard labour.[310] The assertion implies an incredible

ignorance in the man who had packed the juries and sought to get his

victims hanged. It may be regarded as a cunning and cowardly attempt to

shift part of the odium on to the Government. Certainly the prestige of

the Cabinet now fell to zero. Ministers were held responsible for

Braxfield's wanton vagaries, and were accused of luring English

democrats into the meshes of the Scottish law. This last charge is

absurd. As we have seen, the London police sought to stop Margarot,

Sinclair, and Gerrald from going to Edinburgh. It was their presence and

that of the Irishmen which gave to the Convention almost a national

character, and placed it in rivalry to Parliament. Their speeches were

by far the most provocative. Finally, as the letter quoted above shows,

the initiative in arresting the delegates was taken by Robert Dundas and

the Scottish Solicitor-General. On 11th December Henry Dundas wrote to

his nephew: "You get great credit here [London] for your attack on the

Convention."[311]

 

Far different was the comment of the London Corresponding Society. On

20th January 1794 that body convened a great meeting which passed

protests against the war, the expulsion of the British Convention, and

the arrest of delegates. It also resolved that the general committee

should sit permanently throughout the ensuing session. Further, that if

the Government attacked the liberties of the people in the ways

described above, the committee should call "a General Convention of the

People for taking such measures under their consideration."[312] Equally

threatening were the resolutions of the Constitutional Society of

London.[313] Pitt resolved to take up the gauntlet flung down by these

two powerful Societies. On 24th February 1794 Eaton, a publisher of

Newgate Street, was tried for publishing in his periodical pamphlet,

"Politics for the People: or Hogs-wash," a little parable with which

that witty lecturer, Thelwall, had delighted a debating society. He told

how a gamecock, resplendent with ermine-spotted breast, and crown or

cockscomb, lorded it greedily over all the fowls of the farmyard.[314]

The parallel to George III was sufficiently close to agitate the

official mind; but the jury gave an open verdict, which implied that the

King was not hinted at.

 

The next prosecution, that of Thomas Walker, of Manchester,