Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/37

 12 S. I. JAN. 8, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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satisfactory, and control by patronage was increasing. The lack of homogeneous leader- ship threatened the effective force of Parlia- ment in the chaos of ministries, whilst George III. allowed no opportunity of re-

faining control for the Crown to escape him. t was natural, then, that advanced poli- ticians, recalling the advantages gained by the great Whig revolution of 1688, should organize to debate methods of frustrating the growing power of the Crown.

The Bill of Rights Society undertook to raise funds to pay Wilkes's debts, and when Home applied for assistance on behalf of a printer named Bingley, who was in prison on account of his connexion with reprinting The North Briton, the maj ority of the members declined to accede to any request until Wilkes's obligations were fully met. At a meeting held April 9, 1771, Home said that " the society had become nothing more than -a scene of personal quarrel ; the public interests were absorbed in the petty faction of one individual ; that regularity, decency, order, and concord were banished together." He therefore moved : " That the society should be dissolved." As this motion was not carried the minority adjourned to an- other room, where they formed a new body known as the " Constitutional Society." This society gained notoriety during the American War. On June 7, 1775, some of the members passed a resolution which was published in the newspapers, and which resulted in Home being fined 200Z. with im- prisonment for one year, and in the printers of the newspapers being fined for libel. It directed that a subscription should be raised on behalf of " our beloved American fellow- subjects " who had " preferred death to slavery," and " were for that reason only inhumanly murdered by the king's troops " at the Lexington skirmish, April 19, 1775.

This society evidently expired with the incarceration of its leader, but the Society for Constitutional Information was formed to take its place in 1780. Its objects were the instruction of the people in their political rights and the advocacy of parliamentary reform. The Duke of Richmond, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Capell Lofft were among its -early members. They, however, soon de- tached themselves, but Horne-Tooke, Major Cartwright, Mr. Wyvill, and others con- tinued to support it in its demand for universal suffrage. It held an annual dinner on Dec. 16, that being the date when the Bill of Rights passed into law. It continued for about fifteen years, and took an active part in corresponding with the

Jacobin societies in France during the Revolution. Together with the Revolution Society (1788-91), it was attacked by Burke in his ' Reflections on the Revolution in France.' Many of the most active mem- bers of one" society were also attached to the other, notably Samuel Fa veil, who joined the Society for Constitutional Information soon after Sir William Jones became a member of it, and was one of the most active supporters of the Revolution Society during the whole of its existence. Another and more violent society, the Corresponding Society, was formed to link up these societies with similar societies in the provinces and with the revolutionary societies in France. There is much information on the activities of these societies in The Annual Register for the years 1792-4, whilst the activities of the provincial Constitutional Societies are fully discussed in John Waddington's ' Congre- gational History, 1700-1800,' London, 1876.

THOMAS WM. HUCK. 38, King's Road, Willesden Green, N.W.

MR. HORACE BLEACKLEY can obtain, the facts concerning this society and the Radical activities of the time in :

G. S. Veitch, ' The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform.' An excellent record of the events of the period.

H. N. Brailsfprd, ' Shelley, Godwin, and their Circle.' A spirited monograph in " The Home University Library."

C. B. R. Kent, * The English Radicals.' A general survey which touches the activities of these men.

Walter Phelps Hall, ' British Radicalism,' 1791- 1797. A Columbia University thesis which gives a synthesis of the Radical thought of the time.

W. T. Laprade, ' England and the French Revolution.' A thesis from Johns Hopkins University.

' Trial of John Home Tooke.' To be found in Howell's ' State Trials ' and in several contem- porary shorthand accounts published in book-form. Records of the chairmen and members present at the meeting were brought into court. Also other trials, of Hardy, Thelwall, Sinclair, Margaret, &c.

Blackwood's Magazine for July and August, 1833, gives an original and unpleasant inter- pretation of Tooke 's connexion with the Society.

In addition there is some slight evidence in the ' Narrative of Facts relating to the Late Trials,' by Thomas Holcroft (1795); in the ' Memoirs of Thomas Hardy,' written by himself (1833); in a very valuable collection of MSS. in the British Museum relating to the London Corresponding Society (Add. 2781 ff.); and in the records in the Office of the Privy Council for 1794, particularly May and June (33 Geo. III., 77 ff.).

ELBRIDGE COLBY.

11 Torrington Square, W.C.