in a chance conversation in a coffee-house that he thought society could manage very well without kings; he was imprisoned, set in the pillory and struck off the rolls. One favourite expedient was to produce a spy who would swear that he had heard some suspect Radical declare in a coach or a coffee-house, that he would "as soon have the King's head off as he would tear a bit of paper" (evidence against a group of Manchester prisoners), or that he "would cut off the King's head as easily as he would shave himself" (case against Thomas Hardy). The climax of really entertaining absurdity was reached when two debtors imprisoned in the Fleet were tried and sentenced for nailing a seditious libel to its doors. The libel was a notice that "This house is to let," that "infamous bastilles are no longer necessary in Europe," and that "peaceable possession" would be secured "on or before the first day of January, 1793, being the commencement of the first year of liberty in Great Britain."

The farce of this panic became a tragedy when the reformers of Scotland ventured to summon a Convention at Edinburgh to voice the demand for shorter Parliaments and universal male suffrage. It met in October, 1793, and was attended by delegates from the London Corresponding Society as well as from Scottish branches. Nothing was intended beyond the holding of what we should call to-day a conference or congress. But the word "Convention" with its reminiscence of the French revolutionary assembly seems to have caused the Government some particular alarm. The Convention, after some days of orderly debate, was invaded by the magistrates and broken up. Margarot and Sinclair (the English delegates), Skirving, Palmer and Thomas Muir, were tried before that notorious hanging judge, whom Stevenson portrayed as Weir of Hermiston, and sentenced to fourteen years' deportation at Botany Bay.

Of these five, all of them young men of brilliant promise and high courage, only one, Margarot, lived to return to England. Muir, daring, romantic and headstrong, contributed to the history of the movement a page of adventure which might invite the attention of a novelist. He escaped from Botany Bay on a whaler, was wrecked on the coast of South America, contrived to wander to the West Indies, there shipped on a Spanish vessel for Europe, fell in with an English frigate, was wounded in the fight that followed, and had the good fortune to find among the officers who took him prisoner an old friend, who recognised him, and assisted him to conceal his identity. He was landed in Spain, invited to Paris and pensioned by the Convention, but died shortly after his arrival. Less romantic but even finer is Sinclair's story. He obtained bail while his comrades were tried and sentenced. He might have broken his bail, and his friends urged him to do so, but with the certainty that Botany Bay lay before him he none the less returned to Edinburgh, as Horne Tooke puts it "in discharge of his faith as a private man towards his bail, and in discharge of his duty towards an oppressed and insulted public; he has returned not to take a fair trial, but, as he is well persuaded, to a settled conviction and sentence." Joseph Gerrald, another member of the same group gave the same fine example of courage, surrendered to his bail, and was sent for fifteen years to Botany Bay.

The ferment was more than an intellectual stirring. It brought with it a moral elevation and a great courage that did not shrink from venturing life and fortune for a disinterested end. The modern reader is apt to indulge a smile when he reads in the ardent declamation of this time professions of a love of Virtue and praises of Universal Benevolence. We are impatient of abstractions and shy of capital letters. But it was no abstraction which carried a man with honour to the fevers and privations of Botany Bay, when he might have sought safety and fame in Paris. The English reformers were resolved to brave the worst that Pitt could do to them, and challenged the fate of their Scottish comrades. They prepared in their turn to hold a "Convention" for Parliamentary Reform, and showed a doubtful prudence in keeping its details secret while the intention was boldly avowed. The counter-stroke came promptly. Twelve of the leading members of the Corresponding Society, including Hardy, Horne Tooke and Holcroft were arrested and sent, for the most part to the Tower, on a charge of high treason. The records of their preliminary examination before the Privy Council go to show that Pitt and Dundas had allowed themselves to be persuaded by their spies that every species of treason and folly was in preparation, from an armed insurrection down to a plan to murder the King by blowing a poisoned arrow from an air-gun. The Government had said that there was a treasonable conspiracy; it had to produce the traitors.

There was some delay in arresting Holcroft. His conduct is worth recording because it is so typical of the naïve courage, the doctrinaire hardihood of the group. These men whom the reaction accused of subverting morality, were in fact dervishes of principle, who rushed on the bayonets in the name of manhood and truth and sincerity. Godwin when he came in his systematic treatise to describe how a free people would conduct a defensive war, declared that it would scorn to resort to a stratagem or an ambuscade. In the same spirit Holcroft hearing that a warrant was out against him for high treason, walked boldly into the Chief Justice's court, and announced that he came to be put upon his trial "that if I am a guilty man, the whole extent of my guilt may become notorious, and if innocent that the rectitude of my principles and conduct may be no less public." When a messenger did, in fact, go to Holcroft's house about the same hour to arrest him, his daughters, obedient to the same ideal of sincerity, actually invited him to take their father's papers.

One may doubt whether English liberties have ever run a graver danger in modern times than at the trial of the twelve reformers. The Government sought to overwhelm them with a mass of evidence which they lacked the means to sift and confute. But no definite act was charged against them, and the whole case turned on a monstrous attempt to give a wide constructive interpretation to the law of high treason. High treason in English law has the perfectly definite meaning of an attempt on the King's life, or the levying of war against him. Chief Justice Eyre, in his charge to the Grand Jury, sought to stretch it until it assumed a Russian latitude, and would include any effort by agitation to alter the form of government or the constitution of Parliament. The issue, before a jury which probably had not escaped the general panic, seemed very doubtful, and it was the general opinion that the decisive blow for liberty was struck by William Godwin. Long years afterwards Horne Tooke, in a dramatic scene, called Godwin to him in public, and kissed the hand which had saved his life.

Godwin contributed to the Morning Chronicle a long letter, or more properly, a pamphlet, in which he analysed the Chief Justice's charge and brought to the light what really was latent in it, a claim to treat as high treason any effort, however peaceful and orderly, to bring about a fundamental change in our institutions. The letter shows none of Godwin's speculative daring, and his gift of cold and dignified eloquence is severely repressed. He wrote to attain his immediate end, and from that standpoint his pleading was a masterpiece. A certain deadly courtesy, a tone of quiet reasonableness made it possible for the most prejudiced reader to follow it with assent. The