HISTORY OF- EUROPE. 



269 



received them ; and that when the 

 French Jacobin government com- 

 menced the war against Great Bri- 

 tain, these societies had, to the ut- 

 most of their power, acted an 

 hostile part, manifested an adhe- 

 rence to the same cause, assumed 

 their expressions and appellations, 

 and laboured to dissemiuaie their 

 principles. It was chiefly in the 

 manufacturing towns their efforts 

 were greatest, from the number of 

 ignorant and discontented pL-ople 

 with which they abounded. Not- 

 withstanding their endeavours to 

 conceal their intentions at times, 

 they had not been able to disguise 

 them at others. In one of their let- 

 ters, thatto the society at Norwich, 

 they plainly intimated that they 

 looked for no refoiTn but from the 

 convention they had in view, ad- 

 vising, however, a continuance of 

 petitions for reform, as a cover to 

 their designs. They had the auda- 

 city to style the Scottish conven- 

 tion a legal representation of the 

 people ; and to justify those whom 

 the law had sentenced to punish- 

 ment. 1 he condemnation ut those 

 men was the signal at which they 

 had agreed to come finally to an 

 issue upon the point, whether the 

 law should frighten them into com- 

 pliance, or whether they should op- 

 pose it with its own weapons, force 

 aiid power. Wliatwas this, Mr. Pitt 

 said, but declaring, in other words, 

 that the time was come when 

 either tamely to submit to the laws 

 of their country, or resolutely to 

 rise up against them ! This society, 

 however despicable, and consisting 

 ' of the lowest vulgar, had found the 

 means of a most expeditious and 

 extensive increase : it counted thir- 

 ty divisions in London only, some 

 of them amounting to six hundred 



individuals ; and it kept a regular 

 correspondence with many others, 

 systematically distributed through 

 various parts of the kingdom, par- 

 ticularly in the manufacturing 

 towns. It had audaciously assumed 

 the task of watching over the trans- 

 actions of parhament, and of hmit- 

 ing boundaries to its powers, threa- 

 tening destruction if it dared to 

 transgress them. It was no longer 

 than six weeks, he said, since the 

 Corresponding Society had laid be- 

 fore the Constitutional Society, a 

 scheme for calling together a con- 

 vention of thepeople, manifestly for 

 the purpose of dissolving the go- 

 vernment, and lodging the supreme 

 power in their own hands. This 

 was to have been executed in a 

 few weeks. The addresses they 

 had drawn up to this effect were 

 circulated with the utmost care and 

 expedition : they had chosen a 

 central spot, in order to facilitate 

 the assembling of delegates from all 

 parts ; and every society was re- 

 quested to transmit an estimate of 

 its numbers, that the strength of 

 the combined societies might be 

 exactly known. These wretches, 

 said Mr. Pitt, expected, by follow- 

 ing the precedents of the Jacobin 

 principles and practices, to arrive at 

 the lame degree of power. They 

 had, no longer since than the 14?th 

 of April, held aconsultation, where- 

 in the members of every depart- 

 ment of the state had been most 

 scandalously vililied, as uii worthy 

 and incompetent to hold their ofr 

 ficial situations. The report, he also 

 said, mentioned that arms had been 

 actually procured and distributed 

 by those societies. In consequence, 

 therefore, of the informations con- 

 tained in this report, he would 

 move for a suspcBsionof the Habeas 



Corpus 



