1794 Treason Trials

Defunct The historical backdrop to the Treason Trials is complex; it involves not only the British parliamentary reform efforts of the 1770s and 1780s but also the French Revolution.

Christopher Wyvill and William Pitt the Younger argued for additional seats to be added to the House of Commons and the Duke of Richmond and John Cartwright advocated a more radical reform: "the payment of MPs, an end to corruption and patronage in parliamentary elections, annual parliaments (partly to enable the speedy removal of corrupt MPs) and, preeminently and most controversially, universal manhood suffrage".

In this lively pamphlet war, now referred to as the "Revolution Controversy", British political commentators addressed topics ranging from representative government to human rights to the separation of church and state.

[5] The British government, fearing an uprising similar to the French Revolution, took even more drastic steps to quash the radicals.

[6] Additionally, the British Government initiated the Aliens Act 1793 in order to regulate the entrance of immigrants into Great Britain.

Radicals saw this period as "the institution of a system of terror, almost as hideous in its features, almost as gigantic in its stature, and infinitely more pernicious in its tendency, than France ever knew".

Paine's trial was delayed until December and he fled to France in the intervening months, apparently with the government's blessing, which was more interested in getting rid of such a troublesome citizen than trying him in person.

The government, under Pitt's direction, had been lambasting Paine in the papers for months and the trial judge had negotiated the prosecution's arguments with them ahead of time.

The radical Thomas Erskine defended Paine by arguing that his pamphlet was part of an honorable English tradition of political philosophy that included the writings of John Milton, John Locke and David Hume; he also pointed out that Paine was responding to the philosophical work of an MP, Burke.

The Attorney-General argued that the pamphlet was aimed at readers "whose minds cannot be supposed to be conversant with subjects of this sort" and cited its cheap price as evidence of its lack of serious intent.

Erskine defended Frost, arguing that there was no seditious intent to his statement, his client was drunk, he was in a heated argument, and he was in a private space (the tavern).

Thelwall had made a speech that included an anecdote about a tyrannical gamecock named "King Chanticleer" who was beheaded for its despotism and Eaton reprinted it.

Gurney argued that the comment was an indictment of tyranny in general or of Louis XVI, the king of France, and announced his dismay that anyone could think that the author meant George III.

"Gurney went so far as to cheekily suggest that it was the Attorney-General who was guilty of seditious libel; by supplying those innuendos he, not Eaton or Thelwall, had represented George III as a tyrant.

Such harsh sentences shocked the nation and while initially the societies believed that an insurrection might be necessary to resist such an overbearing government, their rhetoric never materialized into an actual armed rebellion.

The government, frightened however, arrested six members of the SCI and 13 members of the LCS on suspicion of "treasonable practices" in conspiring to assume "a pretended general convention of the people, in contempt and defiance of the authority of parliament, and on principles subversive of the existing laws and constitution, and directly tending to the introduction of that system of anarchy and confusion which has fatally prevailed in France".

After the first committee report, the government introduced a bill in the House of Commons to suspend habeas corpus; thus, those arrested on suspicion of treason could be held without bail or charge until February 1795.

In June 1794 the committee issued a second report, asserting that the radical societies had been planning at least to "over-awe" the sovereign and Parliament by the show of "a great Body of the People" if not to overthrow the government and install a French-style republic.

The Attorney-General Sir John Scott, who would prosecute Hardy and Horne Tooke, "decided to base the indictment on the charge that the societies had been engaged in a conspiracy to levy war against the king, that they intended to subvert the constitution, to depose the king, and put him to death; and for that purpose, and 'with Force and Arms', they conspired to excite insurrection and rebellion" (emphasis in original).

[23] Part of Erskine's effective defence was to dismiss the prosecution's case, as it was based on "strains of wit" or "imagination" (a play on words of the statute itself).

[26] The foreman of the jury fainted after delivering his verdict of not guilty, and the crowd enthusiastically carried Hardy through the streets of London.

[27] Erskine was helped in his defence by pamphlets such as William Godwin's Cursory Strictures on the Charge Delivered by Lord Chief Justice Eyre to the Grand Jury, 2 October 1794.

[28] John Horne Tooke's trial followed Hardy's, in which Pitt was forced to testify and admit that he had attended radical meetings himself.

[39] The trials, although they were not government victories, served the purpose for which they were intended—all of these men, except Thelwall, withdrew from active radical politics as did many others fearful of governmental retribution.