William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (book club reads txt) 📕

Man"; and on 21st

November it appointed a Committee for Foreign Correspondence. A little

later were adopted some of the phrases used in the French Convention,

and St. André, Roland, and Barère were admitted to membership. It does

not appear that either this Society, or Hardy's, corresponded with

France after the declaration of war; for the Parliamentary Committee of

Secrecy, charged in 1794 to report on seditious proceedings would, if it

were possible, have fastened on so compromising an act. Its members

belonged to a higher class than those of Hardy's Society; for they

included Romney the painter, Holcroft the dramatist, Horne Tooke, the

humorous _littérateur_, and Thelwall, the ablest lecturer of the

day.[276] That these men had advanced far beyond the standpoint of the

Whiggish "Friends of the People," appears from a letter from one of the

Norwich Radical Clubs to the London Corresponding Society:

 

    The Friends of the People mean only a partial Reform, because

    they leave out words expressing the Duke of Richmond's plan and

    talk only of a Reform; while the Manchester people seem to

    intimate, by addressing Mr. Paine, as though they were intent

    upon Republican principles only. Now, to come closer to the main

    question, it is only desired to know whether the generality of

    the Societies mean to rest satisfied with the Duke of Richmond's

    plan only, or whether it is their private design to rip up

    monarchy by the roots and place democracy in its stead.[277]

 

These Societies seem to have put forth no definite programme. Their

defenders claimed that they adhered to the Westminster programme of

1780, championed by Fox and the Duke of Richmond. But Fox strongly

disapproved of their aims, and even refused to present their petition

for annual parliaments and universal suffrage.[278] In truth, the

actions of these bodies belied their words. They largely devoted their

funds and their energies to the circulation in a cheap form of the works

of Paine, 200,000 copies being sold in 1793,[279] and still more in the

following year. The Societies also adopted methods of organization

similar to those of the French Jacobins Club, and advocated the assembly

of a representative Convention. Every sixteen members of the London

Corresponding Society could form a division; and the divisions, by the

process of swarming-off, rapidly extended the organization. They also

sent delegates who conferred on matters of importance, either locally or

at headquarters; and the head delegation finally claimed to represent

very large numbers in London and affiliated centres. In the conduct of

details Spartan self-restraint was everywhere manifest. Members were

urged to be brief in their remarks and business-like in their methods.

Officials must give a solemn promise not to skulk, or make off, owing to

persecution; and members were warned that noisy declamation was not a

proof of zeal but might be a cloak for treachery. Above the chairman's

seat was suspended a card with the words--"Beware of Orators." One

would like to have witnessed the proceedings of these dully earnest men.

 

Both in the provinces and in London, reformers of the old type sought to

curb the more dangerous of these developments, especially correspondence

with the Jacobins' Club at Paris. Thus, the Manchester Constitutional

Society having published its address of congratulation to that body,

together with the reply of Carras, a member, George Lloyd, entered a

formal protest in these terms: "We are not a Republican Society; but

from such connection and correspondence we shall involve ourselves in

the imputation of Republicanism." He added that their aim was solely the

Reform of Parliament, and with that foreigners had no concern

whatever.[280] Nevertheless the Society kept up its foreign

correspondence, and received addresses from Jacobin Clubs in France.

 

Another threatening symptom was the attempt to excite discontent among

the soldiery. There being then very few barracks, the men were quartered

on the public houses; and several petitions were sent to Whitehall by

publicans (sometimes even by Corporations), pointing out the many

inconveniences of this custom. Thus in the autumn of 1793 the publicans

of Winchester complained that they had had to lodge as many as 5,000 men

during their passage through that city, besides the Bucks. regiment

stationed there, and they begged that barracks might be built. The

authorities paid the more heed to these petitions because local

malcontents "got at" the soldiery in the taverns, and brought home to

them their grievances, namely, poor pay, insufficient allowance for food

at its enhanced prices, and the severities of discipline exercised by

"effeminate puppies" drawn from aristocratic circles. In particular they

circulated a pamphlet--"The Soldiers' Friend: or Considerations on the

late pretended Augmentation of the Subsistence of the Private

Soldiers"--pointing out the close connection between the officers and

"the ruling faction," which "ever must exist while we suffer ourselves

to be governed by a faction."

 

When the war with France unexpectedly lengthened out, the Ministry

decided to erect new barracks, accommodating 34,000 men, at a total

expense of about £1,400,000. In the debate of 8th April 1796, Fox and

General Smith savagely assailed this proceeding as fatal to English

liberty. "Good God!" exclaimed Smith, "is every town to be made a

citadel and every village converted into a garrison?" Windham had little

difficulty in showing that the old barracks were in general badly

situated, and not adapted for cavalry. Buildings for the use of 5,400

horsemen were now erected; and on the whole question he asserted that

the men would live more cheaply, and would contract less vicious habits

than when lodged in inns. Above all, they would be removed from the

sedition-mongers, who now plied them with doctrines destructive alike of

loyalty and military discipline. Windham then quoted a phrase from

Molière's "Médecin malgré lui": "If I cannot make him dumb, I will make

you deaf."[281] The inference was that the inability of the Cabinet to

silence malcontents involved the expenditure of £1,400,000 partly in

order to stop the ears of the soldiery.

 

Lord Bacon, in his pregnant aphorisms upon sedition, does not venture on

a definition of that indefinable term. Where, indeed, shall one draw the

line between justifiable discontent and the inciting of men to lawless

and violent acts? We shall notice presently the claim of a Scottish

judge that an agitator may have good and upright intentions, and yet, if

his words and acts lead to general discontent, he is guilty of sedition

and perhaps of high treason. At the other extreme of thought stands the

born malcontent. He is generally an idealist, having a keen sense of the

miseries of mankind and very imperfect notions as to the difficulty of

peacefully and permanently ending them. In times of political excitement

the statesman has to deal with large bands of zealots nerved by these

irreconcilable principles. It was the misfortune of Pitt that he sought

to hold together a nation rent asunder by the doctrines of Burke and

Paine. Compromise was out of the question; and yet a British statesman

cannot govern unless the majority of the people is ready for compromise.

His position becomes untenable if, while upholding the throne, he

infuriates all friends of progress; if, when he seeks to remove abuses,

he is dubbed a traitor to King, Church, and Constitution. And yet, to

abandon his post because of these difficulties is not only cowardly, but

also an act of disloyalty alike to King and people.

 

As the political thermometer rose towards fever point through the years

1792-3, Government kept closer watch upon the political Societies; but

for a long time Pitt took no action against them. It seems probable

that, if they had confined themselves to their professed programme (that

of the Westminster Reformers of 1780) he would have remained passive. He

did not prosecute those which in November 1792 congratulated the French

Convention on the triumph of its arms in Belgium and the advent of a

Gallic millennium. What, then, were the developments which met with his

stern opposition?

 

But, firstly, we must ask the question, Why did not Pitt, in view of the

unswerving loyalty of the great majority of Britons, rely on the good

sense and weight of that mass to overbear the Jacobinical minority? It

is much to be regretted that he did not take that more intelligent and

more courageous course. But the events of the French Revolution seemed

to show the need of early taking decided measures against a resolute and

desperate group. At half a dozen crises in the years 1789-92 firm action

would have crushed the anarchic forces in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles;

but, for lack of a strong guiding hand, those forces broke loose, with

results which all genuine friends of liberty have ever since deplored.

It is perfectly certain that, if Mirabeau had had a free hand, he would

have used coercive measures by the side of which those of Pitt's

so-called "Reign of Terror" would have been but as a pop-gun to a

cannon. Besides, to taunt Pitt with falseness to his principles of the

years 1782-5 is to ignore the patent facts that he advocated very

moderate changes in the representation. The Reform movement virtually

collapsed in 1785. That which now borrowed its watchwords was in the

main a Republican and levelling agency. The creed of the Radicals of

1793 was summed up, not in the academic programme of the Friends of the

People, the lineal heir to the earlier Associations, but in Part II of

Paine's "Rights of Man."

 

Here, surely, are the reasons for Pitt's repressive policy. He entered

on it regretfully, but he felt no sense of inconsistency in his change

of attitude towards Reform. The times had wholly changed; and that

movement changed with them. As Macaulay has well pointed out, Pitt never

declared that, under no circumstances, would he favour a moderate Reform

of Parliament. But he did declare that in his view Reform was at present

highly perilous; and he resolutely set himself to the task of coercing

those men and those agencies who advocated it in dangerous forms and by

lawless methods.

 

The first prosecution that need be noticed here was directed against

Paine for the seditious utterances in the "Rights of Man," particularly

in Part II. The Attorney-General made out a formidable indictment,

whereupon Paine, then a member of the French National Convention,

informed him that the prosecution might as well be directed against the

man in the moon, and that the liberties of the people of England were in

reality on their trial. After this impertinence the sentence went

against Paine by default, and that, too, despite a skilful speech by

Erskine (December 1792). The aim of Government of course was to warn

those who were circulating Paine's works that their conduct was

seditious and that they did so at their peril.

 

The Home Office Archives show that in very many cases the warning was

disregarded, and several prosecutions ensued, with varying results.

Still more frequent were the cases of cursing the King, sometimes in

obscene terms. To these we need pay no heed. Frequently the offence was

committed in taverns by democrats in a state of mental exaltation. To

this exciting cause we may probably ascribe the folly of John Frost, the

attorney with whom Pitt had some dealings during the Reform agitation of

He was now charged with exclaiming excitedly: "I am for equality";

and, when challenged as to the meaning of his words, he added: "There

ought to be no Kings." In this connection it should be remembered that

Frost and Barlow had on 28th November 1792 presented to the French

National Convention the most mischievous of all the addresses sent by

Radical Clubs to that body. It ended with the statement that other

nations would soon imitate France (that is by overthrowing the monarchy)

and would "arm themselves for the purpose of claiming the Rights of

Man."[282] This piece of bravado must have told against Frost at the

trial; for it proved that amidst his potations at the tavern he spoke

his real mind. Erskine did his best to defend Frost by quoting Pitt's

letters to him of May 1782, on the subject of Reform.[283] The device

was clever; but obviously Pitt's association with Frost for strictly

constitutional purposes in 1782 could not excuse the seditious language

of the latter under wholly different conditions eleven years later.

Frost was condemned to six months' imprisonment in Newgate and was

struck off the roll of attorneys.[284] Other noteworthy trials ensued,

notably that of the "Morning Chronicle" newspaper, which ended in an

acquittal; but it will be well now to turn to the important developments

taking place north of the Tweed.

 

                  *       *       *       *       *

 

Scotland had now thrown off the trance under which she had lain since

1745; and her chief towns bade fair to outbid London, Leeds, Sheffield,

and Norwich as centres of democratic activity. There was every reason

why she should awake. She had very little influence in Parliament. She

returned 45 members as against Cornwall's 44; while the total number of

persons entitled to vote for the fifteen representatives of the Scottish

burghs was 1,303,[285] a