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

and six

others broke down in a way highly discreditable to the authorities.

Walker's services to the cause of Reform had, as we have seen, been

conspicuous alike in energy and moderation, and his enemies in the

Church and King Club made great exertions in order to procure a

conviction. The archives of the Home Office throw a sinister light on

their methods. A magistrate of Manchester, the Rev. John Griffith,

informed the Home Secretary that Booth, a man who was imprisoned in June

1793 for seditious practices, made a declaration against Thomas Walker

and McCullum, members of the local Constitutional Society. According to

Booth, McCullum had said: "Petitioning Parliament be d----d. You may as

well petition the devil to reform himself. The only way is for each

Society to send a number of delegates to a certain place, and there

declare themselves the Representatives of the People and support

themselves as such." Thomas Walker had also said that each member must

have a musket, for they would soon want them.[315] But it transpired in

the trial of Walker, McCullum, and others that Griffith had let Booth

see that he wanted to incriminate Walker. He not only offered Booth his

pardon for such evidence, but left him alone with Dunn, a malicious

perjurer, the falsity of whose charges against Walker was convincingly

demonstrated.[316] The case proves how far an unscrupulous magistrate

could succeed in getting charges trumped up against an innocent man who

opposed him in politics. Doubtless in other cases personal spite, or the

desire of a reward, led to the offer of false charges; and the student

who peruses the Home Office archives needs to remember the Greek

caution, +memnêsth' apistein+, as much as if he were perusing French

Memoirs.

 

It is therefore with much doubt that one reads the declaration of a

Sheffield magistrate, in May 1794, that there was in that town "a most

horrid conspiracy against State and Church under the pretence of

Reform." A vast number of pikes and spears had been made and "cats" to

throw in the road to lame the horses. 2nd July was fixed for the

storming of the barracks and town. "It is a mercy the plot is

discovered. I am to be all night in the search." More detailed is the

deposition of a magistrate of Sheffield, James Wilkinson, that a

democrat named Widdison had made several pikes and sold twelve to Gales,

a well-known Jacobinical printer. Further, that a witness, William

Green, swore that a man named Jackson had employed him and others to

make spear-heads; they made twelve dozen or more in two days, and the

heads were sent to the lodgings of Hill and Jackson. Wilkinson wrote for

instructions how to deal with these men; also for a warrant to arrest

Gales. On 20th May Dundas sent down warrants for the arrest of Gales, W.

Carnage, H. Yorke (_alias_ Redhead), W. Broomhead, R. Moody, and T.

Humphreys; he also issued a warrant against Williams, a gun-engraver, of

the Tower, in London.[317]

 

In Birmingham, as we have seen, the two magistrates, Carles and Spencer,

were out and out loyalists; and, as they wrote to Dundas on 23rd May

1794 that there was not enough evidence to warrant a search for arms, we

may infer that the Midland capital caused the authorities less concern

than rebellious Sheffield. But even at Birmingham, with its traditions

of exuberant loyalty, there were grounds for concern. John Brook, the

mayor, informed Dundas that there were many malcontents in the

neighbourhood, especially at Dudley.

 

Turning to the East, we find signs that Norwich seethed with discontent.

From that city had come the first suggestion of a General Convention of

the People. On 5th March 1793 one of the thirty Societies of Norwich

wrote up to the London Corresponding Society advocating that step, which

Hardy and his colleagues approved "so soon as the great body of the

people shall be courageous and virtuous enough to join us in the

attempt." I have found no proof that either at Norwich or in London

these Societies used illegal methods. The seditious placards posted up

at Norwich may have been the work of some fanatic or of an _agent

provocateur_. But it is very doubtful whether the holding of a People's

Convention in the manner proposed was not an act of defiance to

Parliament, and therefore seditious. Individual members certainly came

within the ban of the law. Thus, Dundas received tidings that two

members of Hardy's Society, named Stone and Meakins, were circulating

seditious writings in Essex. When arrested they had with them one or

two military books, copies of the revolutionary song, _Ça ira_, and

similar papers;[318] but this fact does not incriminate the Society at

large. In fact, the reports as to the purchase of arms and secret

drillings are not very convincing. To take a few instances: information

was sent to the Home Office that a man named Kitchen had sixty pikes in

his house in George Street, near York Buildings; also that men were

drilled secretly at the house of Spence, a seller of seditious pamphlets

in the Little Turnstile, Holborn, and at that of Shelmerdine, a small

tradesman of Southwark; the arms in the last case were bought from

Williams, of the Tower, with a sum of £10 contributed by "a desperate

tailor of China Walk, Lambeth."[319] Did patriotism or private spite or

greed of money incite these reports? Drawings of pikes and spear-heads

also diversified the report of the Secret Committee of the Lords

appointed to investigate seditious proceedings, and probably convinced

lovers of realism that plots actually existed.

 

More alarming in reality were the preparations for a General Convention

of the People. The authorities knew that plans were actually on foot for

sending delegates to form such a body. On 27th March 1794 the London

Corresponding Society consulted the sister club on this question; and in

due course delegates from the two Societies passed resolutions in favour

of the scheme. Hardy thereupon sent a printed letter round to similar

bodies, probably early in the month of April 1794. It ran thus:

 

    Notwithstanding the unparalleled audacity of a corrupt and

    overbearing faction which at present tramples on the rights and

    liberties of our people, our meetings cannot, in England, be

    interrupted without the previous adoption of a Convention

    Bill[320]--a measure it is our duty to anticipate.... Let us

    then form another British Convention. We have a central

    situation in our view, which we believe would be most convenient

    for the whole island, but which we forbear to mention ... till

    we have the answers of the Societies with which we are in

    correspondence. Let us have your answer, then, by the 20th at

    farthest, earlier if possible, whether you approve of the

    measure and how many delegates you can send, with the number

    also, if possible, of your Societies.

 

We have appointed a Secret Committee on this. Will you do

    the same?[321]

 

In order to further the scheme, the London Corresponding Society held a

meeting on 14th April at Chalk Farm, when an ardent appeal was read from

Hardy to resist the encroachments on liberty recently made by "apostate

reformers"--a fling at Pitt. "Are they alone," he asked, "to judge of

the fit time for Reform?" The meeting then thanked Earl Stanhope for his

manly and successful opposition to the attempt to bring Hanoverian and

Hessian troops into England; it also condemned the late rapid advances

of despotism and the arming one part of the people against the other.

Finally it declared that in cases of necessity the safety of the people

was the only law. We may here note that a few Hanoverian and Hessian

battalions had been landed in Hampshire, as a temporary measure,

previous to their transference to other ships. This occasioned some

clamour at Westminster, Grey, Fox, Sheridan and others claiming that the

liberties of England were in the direst danger. Pitt refused to accept a

Bill of Indemnity for his action, and the House supported him by a great

majority.[322]

 

The other reference at the Chalk Farm meeting was to the proposal to

sanction the subscriptions to the Volunteer forces now being raised in

various counties.[323] At the outset this noble movement had in view the

defence of the constitution no less than of the land; and this doubtless

accounts for the fact that Coke, Mingay, and other Norfolk Whigs

struggled desperately and successfully to break up a county meeting held

at Norwich for this purpose on 12th April, shouting down even so able a

speaker as Windham. In general, however, these meetings were an immense

success. That at Aylesbury realized £5,851 for a county corps; and one

at Epsom, for Surrey, brought in nearly double as much.[324] Most

noteworthy of all these meetings was one of 19th April 1794 at

Birmingham, where loyal sentiments crystalized in a rhetorical jewel of

rare lustre. The "Loyal True Blues" of Birmingham, in view of the

threats of the French "to insult the chalky cliffs of Albion and to

plant in this island their accursed tree of liberty, more baneful in its

effects than the poisonous tree of Java which desolates the country and

corrupts the winds of heaven," resolved to quit the field of argument

and to take arms as a Military Association. For nothing could be so

effective as "the decided and awful plan of the whole Nation rising in a

mass of Volunteers, determined to dispute every inch of ground with

their daring aggressors and to spill the last drop of their blood in

defence of their religion and their laws." They beg Edward Carver to

command them; they will choose their uniform, will arrange themselves as

grenadiers and light infantry; and, "to preserve the _coup d'oeil_, the

whole corps will be arranged with the strictest attention to the height

of the members."[325] Possibly the Royalists of Birmingham may have

known of the hint conveyed in Hardy's letter, that the National

Convention should assemble in some convenient centre, a phrase which

seemed to point to their town, which, indeed, the Chartists chose for

that purpose in 1839.

 

In view of the fervent loyalty manifested on all sides, Ministers might

surely have trusted to the majority to control the restless minority.

Auckland expressed the general opinion when he said that the country in

the proportion of ten to one was sound and loyal.[326] As the majority

was armed, while the malcontents had but small stores of pikes, there

was little cause for fear, though in the minority were some desperate

men. In particular, Richard Davison, a prominent member of the Sheffield

Constitutional Society, recommended the clubs of London and Norwich to

buy consignments of pikes in order to resist the "newly-armed minions of

the bare-faced aristocracy of the present Administration"; and it

afterwards appeared that he could sell them at twenty pence each.[327]

This letter was sent off on 24th April, 1794, seventeen days after the

holding of a mass meeting on Castle Hill, Sheffield, at which the

chairman, Henry Yorke (_alias_ Redhead), declared that, when the sun of

Reason shone in its fullest meridian, the people would turn out the 558

gentlemen from Westminster. The meeting resolved that, as the people

ought to demand universal suffrage as a right, and not petition for it

as a favour, they would never again petition the House of Commons on

this subject.[328] Contemptuous epithets were now constantly hurled at

Parliament. On 2nd May, that genial toper, Horne Tooke, of Wimbledon,

declared at a dinner of the Constitutional Society in London that

Parliament was a scoundrel sink of corruption, and that the scoundrel

Opposition joined the scoundrel Government in order to destroy the

rights of Englishmen. In order to add weight to his epithets he called

the company to witness to his complete sobriety.[329]

 

Pitt and his colleagues now decided to strike at the leaders who were

planning a British Convention. Of these the most formidable was the

Secretary of the London Corresponding Society. Accordingly, early on

12th May, some Bow Street officers made their way into Hardy's shop, No.

9, Piccadilly, arrested him, seized his papers, ransacking the room

where Mrs. Hardy was in bed. The shock to her nerves was such as to

bring on premature child-birth with fatal results. On the same day a

royal message came to Parliament announcing that the efforts of certain

Societies to summon a Convention in defiance of Parliament had led him

to order the seizure of their books and papers. Those of the

Corresponding and Constitutional Societies were brought, sealed up, to

the House of Commons on the morrow, whereupon Pitt moved for the

appointment of a secret committee to examine them. He himself, Dundas,

and nineteen other members soon drew up the Report. When presented on

16th May, it contained a statement of all the threatening symptoms of

the time, and so far ignored the legal efforts of those Societies as to

form a very alarming diagnosis.[330]

 

The fears of Ministers were further aroused by the contents of a