form, there would hardly be found one to vote for it. Gentlemen, this I conceive to be very important for you to consider; because, as it strikes me, it distinctly proves that reform in the House of Commons, by the existing legislature, was not the object of the conspirators. But it was therefore determined, that universal suffrage and annual parliaments should be adopted as a principle never to be departed from; and the people were to be taught to insist upon that, at the least; and they were likewise to be taught that if that was granted, all would follow. Gentlemen, I have no doubt of the consequence. I can have no sort of hesitation in my mind that every consequence of anarchy and confusion must arise from such a measure.

Gentlemen, knowing that such a proposition would never be acceded to by parliament itself, the insisting upon it as a principle never to be departed from, necessarily raised a perpetual bar against reform by parliament; because if they were determined to accept only that which they knew all parties in parliament would reject, it was impossible that they should seriously have in their view an intention of obtaining a reform by parliament. The consequence also necessarily was, that those in whom they had raised discontents, in whom they had raised a persuasion that universal suffrage was their unalienable right, that they ought to insist upon it, never to depart from it, that they were to urge it, as you will find by the papers that will be laid before you, at the hazard of their lives; the people to whom this was taught were necessarily also taught, that what they wished to obtain, they were to obtain by their own force. For there were only two ways by which it could be obtained, by an act of the constituted legislature, or by force; and if they were once taught that the constituted legislature never would accede to their proposition, the only alternative was clear; they were to effect their purpose by their own force.

But, gentlemen, these conspirators went still farther, for they taught the people that parliament could not reform itself; that a reform of any part of the constitution of the government could only be made by the people assembled in what was called a constituting assembly. And if you look through the works of Mr. Paine, particularly, you will find this doctrine clearly, distinctly, and repeatedly laid down; that parliament could not reform itself; that it was contrary to the nature and constitution of parliament; and particularly alluding to a bill brought into the House of Commons for that purpose by Mr Pitt, it was asserted by Mr. Paine, that that bill proceeded upon a totally wrong principle; for that it was impossible for the parliament to reform itself. Gentlemen, if it was impossible for the parliament to reform itself, and if the parliament needed reform, the reasoning was clear, decisive, and conclusive; that a reform was only to be effected by the people acting VOL. XXV.

for themselves. And it must also appear to you that the people cannot act for themselves but upon the dissolution of the existing government, and of that legislature which, according to the constitution of the existing government, ought to act for the people.

The terms," universal suffrage and annual parliaments," were capable of being applied not only to the House of Commons, but to both Houses of parliament, or to all the branches of the legislature. They are general terms, capable of that extended application; and you will find, in the course of the evidence which will be laid before you, that the terms are never distinctly applied to the House of Commons alone; and, on the con trary, that the terms are frequently so used, that you can have no doubt that they were meant to be applied to both Houses of the legislature; and that in truth they were, indirectly at least, applied to all the three branches of the legislature.

These terms are particularly so applied, in some of the papers which will be submitted to you, and in a manner upon which it is impossible to form a doubt. Because when principles are first laid down totally incompatible with the existence of any hereditary body, and when the term, "universal suffrage," is applied to a parliament constituted upon those principles, the result is necessarily clear and plain. You will find it asserted, that the civil rights of every individual are equality of voice in making of laws, and in the choice of persons by whom those laws are to be administered. Then you will find it asserted, that a total departure from this principle of equality in the election of the legislative body, commonly called the House of Commons, is the chief cause why the people of Great Britain now are deprived of the benefit of the foregoing principles, and of universal suffrage; and you will find accordingly, in papers which will be produced to you, that when a parliament is spoken of, it is spoken of in the aggregate, as the people's parliament, and wholly elective.

When the minds of men were led to this point; when they were led to conceive that universal suffrage was their indefeasible right

even independent of the principle, to which I can give no epithet but the mischievous principle of equal active citizenship, especially when applied both to the formation of the legislature, and to the administration of the laws, because it necessarily includes a completely elective government,-but independent of that principle, the moment it was established that universal suffrage, even applied to the House of Commons only, was the unalienable right of all men; when it was known that the existing legislature would not concede that point; and when it was likewise taught to the people, that the legislature could not reform itself, even if so disposed, the minds of the people were brought to, and perfectly ripe for, the overthrow of the British

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constitution. And if the dissemination of these principles had proceeded to such an extent as to work their way amongst a very large body of the people, you must be sensible, gentlemen, that nothing but extreme confusion could follow.

Gentlemen, there are many men who are not likely to be greatly moved by mere speculative opinions; therefore the Rights of Man, the rights of equal active citizenship, the right of universal suffrage, were not likely alone to work upon the minds of a great number of people; those, therefore, were to be worked upon by other means, and every subject was seized which could be used in order to enflame: tythes, for instance; the inclosure of commons; the public debt; the public expenditure; the expense of a monarchy compared with the cheapness of a republic; every article of this sort you will find made use of for the purpose, and avowedly for the purpose, of working upon the minds of those men who were too stupid, as it was said, to be worked upon by more liberal means, by applying their reason to the principles of government. The poor were taught that they were oppressed by a combination of the rich; and to the rich, in which description seem to be included all that had any property, was given the name of aristocracy. By these means it was endeavoured to set the poor against the rich; and it was endeavoured to excite those who had nothing, to aim at taking that which other men possessed, because (it was alleged) the means by which they had become possessed of their property were not lawful means. Gentlemen, you must all see that if we are to advert to the origin of the title of every man to the property which he has, and if that is to be scrutinized to the utmost, it will be difficult to say what property is safe, or upon what principles it shall be said that such a man has a just title to his property, and such a man has not. The rule that has generally been hitherto considered as a safe rule in every country has been, that every man has a just title to that property which the laws of his country support him in the enjoyment of; and if we are to go beyond that, into any speculative investigations of the subject, it is impossible to say where they will end. And if, gentlemen, you advert to what has happened in France, you will see the necessity of adhering strictly to the principle which I have stated, namely, that a man has a right to that property which the laws of his country say he shall be protected in the enjoyment of; for in France persons have been stripped of property under pretence of titles which, if ever they existed, could not have existed for centu

ries.

If, however, the minds of men could by any means be inflamed—those minds which were capable of being acted upon by speculative discussions of the Rights of Man-the principles of government--or those grosser minds which were to be worked upon by attention

to their own interest, or by a representation to them of the particular oppressions which it was conceived they might feel, or might fancy they felt, without considering whether those oppressions might not be the necessary consequence of all government, or simply faults in the administration of government-you will easily see, gentlemen, that when the minds of men were inflamed by any of these means, the consequence would be precisely the same; if people were irritated against the existing government of the country, they might be easily led to overthrow that go

vernment.

All these arts were used to obtain what, you will find, formed the great end, the grand plan, the common cause of England and of France, universal emancipation; a language to catch a great number of people who might not reflect, with any great correctness, upon the terms used, or the consequences which were to follow from them.

It is

Gentlemen, I have stated to you what I conceive to be the extent of the conspiracy; but if it was in the view of the prisoner to prevail on the people to change any thing in the constitution of the government by their own authority, and he acted in pursuance of that view, I conceive he is equally guilty of the crime with which he is charged. He had that in view which he could not expect to control. The people, when excited, would act, not upon what he wished, but upon what they chose to wish; and perhaps the security of himself, and the security of others, who might be engaged with him; perhaps the security of others, totally disregarding him, might require their going to lengths which might not immediately be in his contemplation. therefore, gentlemen, that, by the law of England, when men form plans, the consequence of which may lead to the destruction of the government in any of its parts, the consequences of which (if the government is so destroyed in any of its parts) necessarily lead to the deposition of the king; at least to that extent the persons so engaged are conceived to have formed the design of compassing the death of the king, and therefore to be guilty of high treason, whatever their leaders may have originally intended; for they are engaged in that of which they cannot command the consequences, and in respect of which they therefore must be answerable for whatever, in the ordinary course and nature or things, may be the probable consequences; and this will be found to be absolutely necessary for the security of every state.

The means by which the persons, who were engaged in this conspiracy, were to accomplish their ends, were principally to be effected by that association which has effected the same thing in France; that association which we are now to hope may possibly be put an end to in that country, as it has been found that the existence of any government is totally incompatible with the existence of

such associated clubs and societies has have | been formed in France, consisting of what is commonly called the Jacobin Club, and of the several associated and affiliated societies, to the amount, I think, of upwards of 40,000, which were dispersed all over that country. You will see that it was clearly and distinctly in the view of the prisoner, and those engaged with him, to establish the same sort of association of clubs, united in the strictest manner, and by the closest correspondence, throughout all the country; to disseminate those clubs from town to town, from village to village, as I think the expression is in some of the letters that will be produced to you, until the whole body of the people-that is, the whole body of those who should choose to enter into these clubs-should be so united, that they should move forward all at once; and this you will necessarily perceive, if not counteracted, must lead to the destruction of the government of any country. For, if in such a capital as this, a body of men is formed acting in concert and combination with other bodies of men dispersed through the whole country, whose number, whose names, are, in a great degree, unknown; their force can never be calculated, but they are a united body, acting in perfect order, acting as a corporation, as a state within the state itself, and having all the force and compactness of a state, and subject to no control whatever.

Gentlemen, I have stated to you that this was done in imitation of the Jacobin Club at Paris, and of its several associated societies. Perhaps in so stating I do injustice; for I know not whether, in fact, the French did not copy from this country. However, which ever was the original, you will find one set of societies hailing the other as brothers and fellow labourers in the same cause.

Gentlemen, the principal societies thus acting in this country were two; one called the Society for Constitutional Information, of which the prisoner at the bar has been long a member; the other called the London Corresponding Society, which was instituted early in the year 1792, and, as I think you will be convinced by the evidence, directly under the patronage of the prisoner at the bar. The principles of these societies you will find to be universally (as I think you will be con. vinced by the evidence) republican; their constitution was, in a great degree, not so. On the contrary, you will find that the constitution of these societies led to what may be termed the most aristocratic government that ever existed in any country. I will instance the London Corresponding Society. That society was divided into a number of what were called divisions; I think to the amount of about thirty; though these divisions were never complete, so that perhaps sixteen or eighteen were all the divisions that really ever assembled at one time. Each of these divisions was to choose a delegate; the delegate from each of these divisions, meet

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ing the other delegates, formed what was termed the committee of delegates; the committee of delegates had another committee, to which sometimes the name of the committee of correspondence, and at another time the name of the secret committee, you will find, was attributed; the true name was that of the committee of correspondence. But you will find that, from the nature of the committee itself, it soon got the name of the secret committee, and that, in the end, it was so secret a committee, that it was not known to the rest of the society who were the members of it.

Gentlemen, you will see, therefore, that in truth this London Corresponding Society, which is represented as consisting, sometimes, I think, of 6,000 members, was governed by eighteen or twenty delegates, who were governed by a small committee of five or six; the consequence was, that in truth the five or six were the active men, and the others were merely to be used as the five or six chose to use them.

The Society for Constitutional Information had been formed many years ago, and therefore had been formed upon very different principles; upon the same principles on which common clubs and associations of the same kind are usually formed. It was a meeting in which gentlemen who entered into the club were upon an equality; but the respectable names of which it had been originally formed, by degrees fell of; and you will find that in the latter years, particularly in thre course of the three last years, the prisoner at the bar, and a few other persons, have been the only constantly attending members. Gentlemen, you will find that this society likewise, in the end, framed a committee of correspondence, which tended to give their constitution something of the same nature as the constitution of the London Corresponding Society. But the society being small in number, and principally composed of persons of a different rank in life, the whole constitution of the London Corresponding Society was not compatible with the nature of the Society for Constitutional Information.

Gentlemen, these societies corresponded with a number of other societies throughout the kingdom; and you will have, in evidence before you, their correspondence with a society in Southwark, with a society at Manchester, with a society at Sheffield, with a society at Norwich, and, I believe, with some other societies; and when you advert to the correspondence between these several societies, and to the declarations of the several other societies, adopted as they were by the Society for Constitutional Information, to which they all looked up-and particularly they looked up to the prisoner at the bar, as the leader of that society-you will find that their principles led to the establishment of what was called Mr. Paine's Rights of Man, and consequently to the total destruction of

at the bar is a member, and the Society of the Friends of the People, the Society of the Friends of the People found themselves compelled to decline, so early, I think, as May, 1792, all intercourse with this Society for Constitutional Information, because they conceived its members were going lengths far beyond the purpose to which the Society of the Friends of the People meant to confine themselves.

Gentlemen, this is not material, unquestionably, with respect to the view in which the Society of the Friends of the People saw the conduct of the other society. You are not to charge a man with a criminal act because other people have conceived him guilty of it but it is extremely important in this point of view-that when a body of the description of the Society of the Friends of the People entertained and avowed this jealousy of the Society for Constitutional Information, it became a man of the description of the prisoner at the bar, a man of considerable natural talents, and great acquirements, and who must therefore have seen the whole force of the answer sent by the Friends of the People to his society-it became the society completely to disavow that they had it in their remotest contemplation to do any thing which should injure the constituted government of the country, and to declare that their object was as limited and as confined as that of the Friends of the People, though perhaps they might differ with them as to the extent of the remedy to be applied. But, gentlemen, you will find that nothing of that sort was done. On the contrary, in the course of other correspondence with other societies, you will find the Constitutional Society afterwards endeavouring to persuade the Country Societies, that the Friends of the People were not honest-that they did not mean to do any thing --and that the object of that society was mere contrivance, to protect that which they pretended they meant to reform.

and most unqualified approbation-in terms applying clearly to those parts of his works which go most directly to the destruction of the British constitution, but supporting Mr. Paine in a prosecution instituted against him for publishing the second part of the Rights of Man, sustaining him throughout that prosecution, and consequently adopting, in the clearest and most explicit manner, those passages in the second part of the Rights of Man which were the objects of that prosecution, which were conceived to be so extremely offensive, and to lead to such dangerous consequences-avowedly adopting the principles of that work as principles which were to be supported, and explicitly declaring that the man who laid down those principles was an honour to the society to which he belonged (for he was an honorary member of this Constitutional Society) and a faithful servant of his country.

Gentlemen, you will find them likewise, as various seditious publications by Mr. Paine made their appearance, adopting those publications; and particularly his letter to the people of France after he was chosen a member of the National Convention, which, you will recollect, was after the utter destruction of monarchy in France by the deposition of the king in August, 1792.-You will find them explicitly adopting that letter, and ordering the printing of others of his publications, at their own expense, to an extent, in point of number, which strikes one when mentioned. I think of Mr. Paine's letter to Mr. Dundas, they ordered 12,000 copies to be printed for the purpose of dispersion.

Gentlemen, you will find them in like manner adopting a letter of Mr. Joel Barlow to the people of France, with respect to the alterations which he conceived ought to be made in their constitution of 1791.-And I think, when you read the letter which Mr. Barlow sent to the society with the printed copy of that letter, and when you read the answer to his letter to the society, and see the nature of his address to the people of France, you will be astonished that any persons should hope to be esteemed friendly to the govern ment of this country, who could approve, in such terms, such a letter as that of Mr. Barlow to the people of France. In his letter to the society, he expressly states, that he conceives his address to the people of France, to be important to the objects of the society: the object of the letter of Mr. Barlow to the peo

You will also find them, during the course of the year 1792, not only repeatedly adopting Mr. Paine's works in terms of the strongest

they had of monarchy in their old constitution of 1791, was totally wrong, was founded upon wrong principles; and that the destruction of monarchy itself was essential to the true constitution of every government.

This letter he states to the society to be, as he conceived, a letter important to the object which they had in view.-It is impossible to conceive in what manner it could be important to the object which they had in view,