It is when we come to details that Pitt is open to the charge of acting with undue severity. Considering the proved loyalty of the great mass of the people, what need was there to inaugurate a system of arbitrary arrests? After all, England was not France. Here no systematic assault had been made on the institutions in Church and State. The constitution had suffered dilapidation, but it was storm-proof, and the garrison was strongly entrenched. Moreover, the democrats for the most part urged their case without any of the appeals to violence which wrought havoc in France. There the mob delighted to hurry a suspect to _la lanterne_ and to parade heads on pikes. Here the mass meeting at Chalk Farm, or on Castle Hill, Sheffield, ended with loss neither of life nor of property. So far as I have found, not one life was taken by the people in the course of this agitation--a fact which speaks volumes for their religious sense, their self-restraint even amidst deep poverty, and, in general, their obedience to law even when they deemed it oppressive. The hero of the year 1794 is not William Pitt, but the British nation.
[274] See "The Complaints of the Poor People of England," by G. Dyer, B.A. (late of Emmanuel College, Camb., 1793).
[275] "H. O.," Geo. III (Domestic), 27, 28.
[276] E. Smith, "The English Jacobins," 111-3; C. Cestre, "John Thelwall," ch. ii.
[277] "Report of the Committee of Secrecy," May 1794. The Duke of Richmond's plan was the Westminster programme of 1780, which became the "six points" of the Charter of 1838.
[278] See Fox's letter of 2nd May 1793 to Hardy in "State Trials," xxiv, 791.
[279] M. Conway, "Life of T. Paine," i, 346.
[280] In the Place MSS. (Brit. Mus.), vol. entitled "Libel, Sedition, Treason, Persecution"--a valuable collection.
[282] "Collection of Addresses ... to the National Convention of France" (Debrett, 1793), 14.
[289] I differ here from Lord Cockburn, "Examination of the Trials for Sedition in Scotland," i, 147.
[290] _Ibid._, i, 162-5; "State Trials," xxiii, 146-8, 160.
[291] P. Mackenzie, "Life of Muir," does not state the reason for Muir's visit to Paris.
[292] "H. O.," Scotland, 8. Dunlop, Lord Provost of Glasgow, sent it to Robert Dundas on 12th March 1793. For this William Christie, who translated the French Constitution of 1791 into English, see Alger, "Englishmen in the French Revolution," 78, 98.