Liberty’s ‘Terror’
Little crime, little punishment: limited radicalism, effective legislation, and popular patriotism
Contextually, it is important to note the threat posed by English radicals in the 1790s. In France, the ancien regime was being dismantled: following the establishment of the National Assembly and the fall of the Bastille in 1789, the authority of the absolutist Bourbon monarchy had diminished rapidly. By January 1793, regicide had been committed and a republic declared. 8 Invigorated by events across the Channel, radicals in England began to call for political change; naturally, the ruling elite was anxious. Many among the ‘middling and lower orders’ desired greater political involvement, with constitutional and corresponding societies garnering much popularity: the Sheffield Constitutional Society alone claimed one tenth of the city as members. 9 At these clubs, representatives professed revolutionary ideas, such as universal male suffrage, 10 and discussed radical tracts, most notably Paine’s Rights of Man . Sir Gilbert Elliot spoke truthfully in 1792 when he apprehensively warned of ‘a number of p eople in the Kingdom . . . desirous of confusion’. 11 Legislatively, the government responded with vigour, unleashing a torrent of new parliamentary acts including, but not limited to, the 1793 Traitorous Correspondence Act, 12 the ‘Two Acts’ of 1795 (comprised of the Treasonable Practices Act and the Seditious Meetings Bill) and the 1797 Seduction from Duty Act. 13 Compounded by the suspension of habeas corpus between May 1794 and June 1795 and from 1798-1801, the capacity for a legal suppression of dissent was considerable. This, perhaps, makes it all the more surprising that comparatively few prosecutions occurred, considering especially that a majority of these transpired under existing legislation. 14 Why, then, was prosecution such an underused aspect of ‘Terror’? In part, this is attributable to a misconceived notion as to the scale of opposition. Support for the ruling class was extensive; the scale of the threat was simply not seen to necessitate thousands of indictments, as during the Jacobite emergencies, nor, indeed, to warrant the hundreds of thousands of arrests seen in Robespierre ’s France. Though there was perhaps a hint of mistaken optimism when one foreign office minister noted in 1792 that there was but ‘one sentiment throughout the country . . . that of loyalty to the king’, he certainly touched on the feelings of the majority. 15 The Archbishop of Canterbury’s more measured observation ‘of increased loyalty and zeal . . . in support of the King and constitution’ was certainly accurate. 16 This popular patriotism was evidenced particularly by the 2000 loyalist associations across the land and the incredible success of patriotic writings. Hannah More’s 8 Jones, 466-7. 9 Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People?: England, 1783-1846 (2006), 65. 10 Derry, Age of Fox, 63. 11 See Sir Gilbert Elliot, Minto: Sir Gilbert Elliot , 2.2, quoted in Robin Reilly, Pitt the Younger, 1759-1806 (1978), 193. 12 Clive Emsley, ‘An Aspect of Pitt’s ‘ Terror ’: Prosecutions for Sedition during the 1790s’, Social History , 6.2 (May, 1981), 155-184: 156. 13 Hilton, 72. 14 Emsley, ‘Repression’, 822. 15 Burges to Auckland, 18 Dec. 1792, Auckland Papers, British Library Additional Manuscripts 34446, fo. 161, quoted in Hilton, 68. 16 See The Journal and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland, ed. Bishop of Baths and Wells, (London, 1861), 2.478, quoted in Austin Mitchell, ‘The Association Movement of 1792 - 3’, The Historical Journal , 4.1 (1961), 56-77: 75.
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