Society of the Friends of the People
The Society in England was aristocratic and exclusive, in contrast to the Friends of the People in Scotland, who increasingly drew on a wider membership.
In England, civic humanism gave rise to the Country Party, which advocated for a less corrupt government that would work for the good of the people and not for the attainment of wealth.
The idea of country-party ideology and civic humanism led to the formation of many reformist movements called for parliamentary reform in order to more accurately reflect the will of the people.
In 1791, Thomas Paine published Rights of Man, which stated that the French Revolution was bringing good change to the political system of France.
Some of the largest cities were completely unrepresented and more than half of the rotten boroughs were so small as to attract widespread vote buying.
Notable members and supporters include Reverend Christopher Wyvill, Sir Philip Francis, and George Tierney.
While the French had found hope in the government and resorted to violence as a means of bringing change, the Society was focused more on moderate reform through intellectual communication.
They found that members of parliament were chosen by a minuscule portion of the population, meaning they were not truly representatives for the entire people of England.
They found that the right to vote was also limited to a small population, property owning men of a certain income who met religious and other requirements.
Charles James Fox was not a member, and it is argued[7] that the society excluded him to separate themselves from the Whig party, with their only goal being the elimination of corrupt election practices.
On 4 June 1792 John Cartwright (a Friends of the People member) made a speech praising Thomas Paine's book, The Rights of Man.
As a result, William Pitt, the British Prime Minister at the time, wanted to destroy reform in England to avoid an uprising like the French revolution.
[11] The rank and file were usually described as "shopkeepers and artisans", and included most prominently weavers as well as tailors, cobblers, brewers, bakers, tanners, butchers and hairdressers.
The government feared such wider support and outbreaks of rioting in many places in the summer and autumn of 1792 were officially attributed to "an almost universal spirit of reform and opposition to the established government and legal administrators which has wonderfully diffused through the manufacturing towns", but most of the riots were due to other grievances such as an unpopular turnpike, the Corn laws and the Enclosures.
The effective leader at the radical faction at this convention was the eloquent Glasgow lawyer Thomas Muir who was subsequently sentenced by Lord Braxfield to fourteen years' transportation to the convict settlement at Botany Bay, Australia.
The convention issued a manifesto demanding universal male suffrage with annual elections and expressing their support for the principles of the French Revolution.
The convention was then broken up by the authorities and a number of men were arrested and tried for sedition, with Gerrald and Margarot being sentenced to fourteen years' transportation along with Muir.
