[133] Hansard, I. xli. 434 (1819).
[134] Speeches, 24th May, 1802.
[135] Annual Register, 1782. There is an admirable account of these different societies in Mr. G. S. Veitch's Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (1913).
[136] Annual Register, 1792. The Association soon got into difficulties. Its president, Mr. John Reeves, published a pamphlet so violently Tory in tone that the House of Commons ordered him to be prosecuted for sedition involved in contempt of itself. He was acquitted.
[137] Government spies were sometimes involved in their own net. Two of them took part in treasonable proceedings at Edinburgh, and were hanged, drawn, and quartered (Annual Register, 1793, Chronicle, 53, 58).
[138] These cases are taken from the Chronicle in the Annual Register, 1792.
[139] State Trials, xxiii.; Annual Register, 1794, 32.
[140] State Trials, xxiii.
[141] Report of Secret Committee of Commons; Parl. Hist., xxxi. 727.
[142] Reports of Secret Committees of 1795 and 1799 in the Parl. Hist., xxxi. 475, 574, 688; xxxiv. 579, 1000, and the consequent debates. Dr. J. Holland Rose and Mr. G. S. Veitch come to the same conclusion as that reached in the text.