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Popular Constitutionalism and the London Corresponding Society1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Benjamin Weinstein
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Extract

In early November 1790, Edmund Burke noted the existence in England of “several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each other.” Burke's observation both informed and amused conservative opinion, but its condescension masked the seriousness of the situation that it described. Throughout Britain men were assembling into societies organized in celebration of French liberty and motivated by the prospect of parliamentary reform at home. While it was true that the leading members of these clubs sometimes indulged in “puffing” and “mutual quotation,” their commitment to reform was nevertheless deeply held. Joseph Priestley, for one, sacrificed his home, his laboratory, and nearly his life in defense of the cause; Maurice Margarot, Joseph Gerrald, and Thomas Muir sacrificed their freedom; sadly, Thomas Hardy sacrificed his wife and unborn child. For their equally obstinate devotion to reform, the Revolution Society, which took its name in commemoration of the Glorious Revolution rather than in envy of the French uprising, and the Society for Constitutional Information, a longtime reform leader reinvigorated after the fall of the ancien régime, became the objects of Burke's ridicule. But in his conviction that “contemptuous neglect” was the best method by which to defeat the “vanity, petulance, and spirit of intrigue” displayed by these societies, Burke exposed an embarrassing improvidence. For if, as he claimed, these associations were “inconsequential” in their own conduct, their agitation would eventually prompt the emergence of a new generation of populous and, therefore, menacing societies. By spring 1794, neither Burke nor Pitt would be able to ignore the reformers any longer. What were once “petty” had become “the mother of all mischief.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Spring 2002 , pp. 37 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 2002

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Steven Pincus, Michelle Molina, and Walter Amstein for their advice and criticisms on earlier drafts of this article.

References

2 Burke, Edmund, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” in The Debate on the French Revolution, 1789–1800, ed. Cobban, Alfred (London, 1963), p. 245Google Scholar

3 According to Francis Place, this was the label assigned to the LCS by Burke “in one of his mad rants in the House of Commons.” Veitch, G. S.The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1913), p. 206Google Scholar.

4 The London Corresponding Society shall hereafter be referred to as either the “LCS” or “the Society”.

5 Binns, John, Recollections of the Life of John Binns (Philadelphia, 1854), p. 41Google Scholar. Where Binns speaks of the “Whig club,” he refers to the aristocratic Friends of the People. Although the Society of the Friends of the People were certainly more influential than the LCS within Parliament, it was not a popular political association.

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9 The Times, 20 October, 1832, p. 3. E. P. Thompson agreed with Thelwall's assessment of Pitt's government, but a number of historians (including Clive Emsley and Jennifer Mori) have denied “Pitt's reign of terror.” See Thompson, , “Hunting the Jacobin Fox,” Past and Present 142 (02, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Emsley, Clive, “An Aspect of Pitt's ‘Terror’: Prosecutions for Sedition During the 1790's,” Social History 6 (05, 1981)Google Scholar and Mori, William Pitt and the French Revolution.

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31 Ibid, fo. 18.

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79 Thelwall, , Poems Written in Close Confinement in the Tower and Newgate (London, 1795), p. 3Google Scholar; Thelwall, The Poetical Recreations of the Champion (London, 1822), pp. 169–70Google Scholar.

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