XVI. 1794. CHAP. object of alarm, as if from it some calamity impended over the country; and yet, what was a convention but an assembly? If the people did any thing illegal, they were liable to be imprisoned and punished at the common law. Did it follow that, because improper ideas of government had been taken up by the French, or because liberty had been there abused, similar misfortunes would befall this country? Had that nation been protected by a Habeas Corpus Act-had the government been constrained by standing laws to respect the rights of the community— these tenets would never have found an entrance into that unhappy country. By parity of reason, they were only to be dreaded here if the safeguards of the constitution were removed. Were the freedom of meeting to complain of grievances to be taken away, what would soon become of our boasted constitution? And if it is to be withdrawn till the discontented are rooted out, or the thirst for uncontrolled power assuaged in government, it will never be restored, and the liberties of Englishmen are finally destroyed. 5. Pitt in its support. On the other hand, it was contended by Mr Pitt and And of Mr Lord Loughborough, that the question was, "Whether the dangers threatening the state were not greater than any arising from the suspension proposed, which was only to last for six months, and in the mean time would not affect the rights of any class of society. The truth was, that we were driven to the necessity of imitating French violence, to resist the contagion of French principles. Was lenity to be admitted when the constitution was at stake? Were a Convention upon Jacobin principles once established, who could foresee where it would end? Not to stop the progress of these opinions, were no better than granting a toleration to sedition and anarchy. It is in vain to deny the existence of designs against the government and constitution; and what mode of combating them can be so reasonable as the present suspension, which does not oppose the right of the people to meet together to petition XVI. 1794. for reform, or a redress of abuses, but only aims at prevent- CHAP. "Treasons are never own'd but when descried; Moved by these arguments, the House of Commons passed May 16. Ann. Reg. 268-274. Parl. Deb. xxxi. 274 treason in Various prosecutions took place in Scotland, which ter- 6. minated in the conviction and transportation of the Trials for accused; of whom Hardy, Palmer, Muir, and Gerald were Scotland. the most remarkable. Great was the indignation which this necessary and well-timed severity produced in the democratic party in Great Britain; and their writers, without one exception, for the next half-century, stigmatised the Scotch convictions as an unnecessary and unjustifiable stretch of oppression. But truth is great, and will prevail. The Whig party, in consequence of CHAP. XVI. 1794. the revolution in England of 1832, got possession of power, which they held for the next seventeen years, under different administrations, without intermission,and they then had an opportunity of carrying their principles of government into execution. The result was the Repeal agitation, followed by the rebellion of 1848 in Ireland, and the Chartist conspiracy, which so seriously threatened the monarchy in April 1848, in England. To repress these dangers, the Whig administration were compelled to pass a special statute, authorising the transportation of offenders in serious cases of sedition, as had of old been the common law of Scotland;* and the very same punishment, on conviction under it, was inflicted on Mitchell and Martin in Ireland, which had been stigmatised as so unjust when pronounced on Muir and Palmer in 1793.† In England no less than four Chartists were, in 1848, sentenced to transportation for life at the Old Bailey for sedition. So true it is that initial severity in political offences is often true humanity, and that the opposite temporising system often induces the reality of oppression, to avoid its imputation. *The 8 and 9 Vict., c. 73. + It is often said that these Scottish martyrs, as they were called, were transported for advocating Parliamentary reform, which was afterwards adopted by the legislature in 1832; and, under the influence of this opinion, a monument, during the Reform fervour, was raised to them by the more violent of that party, on the Calton Hill of Edinburgh. This opinion, however, is entirely erroneous. They were not transported for advocating parliamentary reform, but for advocating its support by the illegal and treasonable device of a British convention, which was to supersede Parliament, and corresponding societies, which were to spread its ramifications throughout the realm. Any object, how legitimate soever, as the reduction of taxes, a change in the laws, or an alteration in domestic or foreign policy, becomes equally seditious or treasonable if forwarded by such means, which plainly supersede government, and must lead to civil war. That the Scotch judgments were entirely conformable to Scotch law, has been long ago demonstrated. See Hume's Criminal Law, vol. i., 557, and Alison's Criminal Law of Scotland, i. 585-587. That they were entirely conformable to expedience, and dictated by state necessity, has been proved by the fact, that the English government were driven to the passing of a statute declaring sedition, in aggravated cases, punishable by transportation, and a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act-that is, to the adoption in toto of Mr Pitt's measuresin 1848, under the guidance of a Whig cabinet, of which Lord Campbell, one of the last and ablest of the opponents of Mr Pitt's repressive measures, was a member. XVI. 1794. land, where and Horne acquitted. The result was different in England. The attention CHAP. of the people was deeply excited by the trial of Hardy, Thelwall, and Horne Tooke, for treason, in London. The documents on which the prosecution was founded, And Engleft no doubt that these persons had been deeply Hardy, implicated in designs for the violent change, if not the Thelwall, total subversion, of the government, by means of a conven- Tooke are tion of their own formation, not through the constitutional channel of Parliament. * The prosecutions, therefore, were justifiable and necessary; and yet so readily does good spring out of the conflicting feelings of a really free community—their acquittal, by the independent verdict of a British jury, is to be regarded as an eminently fortunate event at that period. After so signal a triumph of popular principle, the most factious lost the power of alleging that *The combination against which, on this occasion, the powers of government were exercised, was of the most extensive kind, and embraced the whole of Great Britain in its ramifications. The prisoners were charged with high treason, in having conspired to subvert the King, and levy war against his government. The trial, which occupied three weeks, excited the utmost interest in all parts of the country; during its whole continuance, the avenues to the court and the court itself were filled with anxious spectators. The opening speech of Mr Scott, the Attorney-General, (afterwards Lord Eldon,) occupied nine hours; the reply of Mr Erskine and Sir Vicary Gibbs was of the same length. The prisoners were indicted for high treason--the only step in the whole proceeding of which the policy was questionable, as it required a strained, or at least strict, interpretation of the law, to bring the prisoners within the provision of the treason law, on the footing of having been guilty of "Constructive Treason;" whereas the evidence of their being guilty of the minor crime of sedition was not only ample, but overwhelming. Hardy was the secretary of the association, the professed object of which was Parliamentary reform; but the illegality and danger of which consisted in this-that this, a legitimate object if pursued by legitimate means, was proposed to be brought about, not by the lawful means which the constitution recognised, but by intimidation, violence, and, if necessary, insurrection. In the "Rights of Man," by Thomas Paine, a member of the French Convention, which the Association extensively circulated, it was said-" Hereditary succession requires a belief from man to which his reason cannot subscribe: the more ignorant any country is, the better is it fitted for that species of government. A general revolution in the construction of governments is necessary. Usurpation cannot alter the right of things. Sovereignty, as a matter of right, appertains to the nation only, not any individual. The romantic and barbarous classing of men into kings and subjects, though it may suit courtiers, cannot do so to citizens. All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. When the bagatelles of monarchy, regency, and hereditary succession shall be exposed with all their absurdities, a new ray of light will be thrown over the world, and the revolution will derive XVI. 1794. CHAP. the liberties of Great Britain were on the decline: satisfied with this great victory over their supposed oppressors, the people relapsed into their ancient habits of loyalty; while the vehement demagogues, who had made so narrow an escape from the scaffold, hesitated before resorting again to practices of which the peril to themselves, as well as to the country, was now made manifest. The spirit of innovation, deprived of foreign support, and steadily resisted by the government, rapidly withered in the British soil: the passions of men, turned into another channel, soon fixed on different objects; and the prosecution of the war with France became as great a source of interest to the multitude, as it had ever been to remodel the constitution after 2 Ann. Reg. the example of the Constituent Assembly.1 268, 269. own. The continuance of the war again gave rise to animated new strength by being universally understood. It is now the cause of all |