AGITATION IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.
Although government had scarcely so much cause of alarm at the movements of political bodies as it exhibited, yet that there was some cause for fear there can be no reasonable doubt. This is manifest from the state trials which occurred at this period. One of the first of these trials took place at the Lancaster spring assizes. Mr. Thomas Walker, of Manchester, a strenuous advocate for parliamentary reform, at whose house meetings for political purposes were occasionally held, was indicted, with nine other persons, for conspiracy to overturn the constitution by arms, and to assist the French in case of an invasion. The principal evidence adduced was a person of the name of Dunn; but his testimony was so contradictory that the prosecution was abandoned, and Dunn was committed to prison to take his trial for perjury. Soon after this a rumour was raised of a design to assassinate the king, and some persons were arrested and committed for trial; but they were soon after liberated, and the story fell into contempt under the popular designation of the “Pop-gun Plot;” it being averred that the king’s death was to be encompassed by shooting him with an instrument resembling a walking-stick. More important proceedings subsequently took place in the Sessions-House at Clerkenwell. At this time the London Corresponding Society counted more than 30,000 members in its association, and it fully justified its title by entering into correspondence with every seditious club in the kingdom. According to a Jacobinical expression, it soon affiliated itself with the Constitutional Society; their respective secretaries—Thomas Hardy, a shoemaker, and Daniel Adams, an under-clerk—making known to the world the results of their deliberations, signed and sanctioned by their names and authorities. Hardy’s club, that of the London Corresponding Society, however, exercised a species of metropolitan jurisdiction over all. By means of the handbills and pamphlets which this club circulated, and by means of its lecturers and the meetings it concocted, a union of all the clubs was formed; and this union finally arrived at a complete organization, with a central board in London, a division into provinces and districts, and a list of members, approaching to half a million, in correspondence or direct connexion. Government thought it high time now to interfere; and, suspecting the machinations of the ring-leaders, they adopted the usual policy under such circumstances, of employing spies to become members, in order to betray the secrets with which they may be entrusted. The morality of such a practice may be questioned; but policy, and not morality, is too frequently the doctrine of even the best-regulated states. The scheme, however, succeeded. In consequence of the discoveries of these spies, Hardy, Adams, Martin, an attorney, Loveit, a hair-dresser, the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce, preceptor to Lord Mahon, John Thelwall, the political lecturer, John Home Tooke, the philologist, Thomas Holcroft, the dramatist, Steward Kydd, a barrister, with several others, were all arraigned at the Old Bailey. The papers of Hardy and Adams had been seized, and an indictment was made out, which contained no less than nine overt acts of high-treason, all resolving themselves into the general charge, that the prisoners conspired to summon delegates to a national convention, with a view to subvert the government, to levy war against the existing authorities of the country, and to depose the king. The evidence adduced, however, did not bear out this strong indictment. Hardy, Home Tooke, and Thelwall were tried and acquitted; and then the crown lawyers abandoned all the other prosecutions, and those who had been indicted were liberated.
In the mean time some trials had taken place in Scotland which resulted in a different manner to those which had occurred in the Old Bailey. Thomas Muir, a Scotch barrister, and the Rev. Fysche Palmer, a Unitarian preacher at Dundee, had been tried for sedition, convicted, and sentenced to transportation. This excited considerable alarm among their friends and associates in England, and attracted the attention of some members of parliament. Early in the session Mr. Adams moved, in the house of commons, for leave to bring in a bill for making some important alterations in the criminal law of Scotland; and this being refused, he gave notice that he would bring forward a motion for the relief of Muir and Palmer, in another form. In the meantime Sheridan presented a petition from Palmer, representing that he conceived the sentence passed upon him by the high-court of justiciary, from which there was no appeal, to be unjust. Dundas startled those who were about to plead for the prisoners, by intimating that the sentence was already executed, and that the warrant for the transportation of Palmer was both signed and issued. Nevertheless Pitt found himself compelled to allow the reception of the petition. But petitions on the table of the house of commons are not always successful in their prayer. On the 10th of March Mr. Adams moved for a copy of the record to be laid before the house, upon the ground of which he meant to question the legality of the sentence. He undertook to prove that, by the law of Scotland, the crime imputed to them, of “lease-making,” was only subject to fine, imprisonment, or banishment, and not to transportation; and that the acts attributed to Muir and Palmer did not even amount to that crime. Adams supported his legal positions with extensive knowledge, both judicial and historical; endeavouring to establish them by statute, analogy, and precedent, as well as by civil and political reasons. He showed that the acts, cases, and decisions which he brought forward were not detached and isolated, but all resulting from the same spirit and principles, established in the best times and by the highest authorities. He also contended that transportation was not a part of the Scottish law before the union, and that since the union no act had been passed allowing Scotch courts to transport in cases of sedition. Finally, he forcibly stated the evils, moral and political, which must result from a perversion of the law. The Scottish court and its sentence were defended by the lord-advocate, who had officially acted against Muir and Palmer, and by Pitt and Windham, while Fox supported Mr. Adams. The lord-advocate contended that the Scotch laws were better than the English for the punishment of libels and the suppression of seditious practices; and the majority of the house seemed to agree with him, for the motion was negatived by one hundred and seventy-one against thirty-two. Motions made in favour of the two convicts in the upper house, by Earls Lauderdale and Stanhope, were not more successful; and the lord-chancellor afterwards carried a resolution that “there were no grounds for interfering with any of the criminal courts as administered under the constitution, and by which the rights, liberties, and properties of all ranks of subjects were protected.”