While some of his contemporaries, as well as some historians, believed that Pitt's actions kept England from suffering the violence of the French Revolution, others likened his actions to an English Reign of Terror. At a debating society meeting in 1795, John Gale Jones even spoke of Pitt as the "English Robespierre" (Emsley 802). Many historians see Pitt's actions as a "general assault on free speech, the freedom from arbitrary arrest and the right of association" (804).

Pitt and Parliament passed a number of legislative acts aimed at repressing the Opposition and more radical groups. According to Emsley, these laws were rarely used and even more rarely led to convictions. However, their very existence and the threat of harsh punishments for sedition, libel or organizing a political meeting were enough to seriously quell reform and radical activities. At the same time, the government pursued a variety of extra-legislative methods of fighting radical and reform movements. They participated in an intense propaganda campaign aimed at reducing the effects of "seditious and wicked works" such as The Rights of Man (e-texts to Part 1 and Part 2) on the impressionable populace, and provided financial support to popular loyalist associations. Because the methods most effective in countering the radicals were indirect and aimed at moving public sentiment in the direction of government, it is sometimes difficult to determine to what extent the impetus for loyalism stemmed from the government and to what extent it stemmed from popular opinion.

The Proclamation Against Seditious Writings

On May 21, 1792, King George III issued a proclamation warning his subjects against "divers wicked and seditious writings" (Dozier 1). The government directed this proclamation largely towards Tom Paine's The Rights of Man, the government perhaps having conducted covert operations to learn the content of the more radical Part II before its publication (Emsley 805). Paine is subsequently tried for sedition and sentenced to death in absentia, since he had by this time fled to France. The proclamation also included an injunction for magistrates to send information on seditious activities to the central government (Dozier 1), and it led to a large outpouring of sentiment in support of the current English Constitution in the nature of hundreds of loyal addresses. For the full text of King George's proclamation, click here.

Perceived Crisis and Loyalist Response

Following the outpouring of popular support for the King's proclamation, the government seemed to ignore the growth of radical societies throughout the summer of 1792, but by autumn the government was infiltrating radical societies with secret agents, as well as receiving intelligence from local officials and others. These intelligences indicated several trends alarming to the government: a large number of immigrants were fleeing, relatively undocumented, to England from France; large purchases of arms were being made by known French sympathizers; and suspected French agents seemed to have a relationship with domestic radicals (Dozier 33). Many Britons believed a French threat on home soil was imminent, either in the form of a direct invasion or infiltration and insurrection, and riots caused by sailors demanding higher pay demonstrated the inefficiency of local responses to domestic disturbances.

Government action hinged upon a gathering of intelligence which was dubious at best and outright false at worst. Government agents were paid for producing intelligence, giving them a natural tendency to uncover suspicious information.

How cynically should we interpret the government's actions? Indeed, the climate of fear of invasion or insurrection gave the government the opportunity to crush not only potential revolutionary but also any reform movement, which could be portrayed as a slippery slope to more extreme measures. On the other hand, historians such as Dozier see Pitt's government as acting as best they knew how in response to a very frightening perceived threat. "No member of government ever doubted that the radicals were tools or dupes of French policy," according to Dozier (69).

Because of fears of the large number of undocumented French Revolutionary refugees, Parliament enacted the Aliens Act, requiring all ports to keep an account of immigrants entering the country, and they were not allowed to bring arms or ammunition or travel without passports. The Act allowed for the Secretary of State to remove suspicious aliens and for the containment of foreigners already within the country to certain districts, where they were registered and required to give up their arms.

On December 1, newspapers reported an "insurrection" which appears to have been completely untrue: mail and other vehicles were stopped and searched for "traitors," who were taken to the Tower of London by the thousands, where they escaped. The next rumor to take flight was that the traitors were really an army on their way to London. (Werkmeister 139). Various rumors continued for the next few days, and the government called out the militia and convened a special assemblage of Parliament, both of which contributed to popular fear.

The government lacked sufficient evidence to convict anyone of treason or take other specific, official actions. However, what the government could not officially tell the people, they could certainly suggest through their unofficial propaganda organs: loyalist associations disseminated pamphlets entitled "The Plot Found Out," and newspapers reported rumors of the collusion of domestic radicals and foreign revolutionaries (Dozier 67-68). The most effective countering of the radicals and reformers came not from legislative or legal actions but from the atmosphere of fear produced by the perceived crisis and the encouragement of popular loyalist organizations.

And once again (surprise!), historians disagree on the extent to which the government created the Crown and Anchor Associations, and to what extent they merely took up the opportunity offered by an advantageous situation. As early as mid-November, Lord Grenville, one of Pitt's most important supporters, asked for advice on the formations of counterassociations against the radicals (Dozier 51-52).

Reeves, in correspondence several years later, after he had fallen out of the good graces of the Pitt government, wrote Pitt saying that he had started the Crown and Anchor Association in the interests of serving the government, but independently. Reeves, however, was dependent upon the government for personal financial support, and had little way of paying the exorbitant fees required for advertising the association's creation in the newspapers (Dozier 58). Dozier hypothesizes that Reeves learned of the government's plan to start counterassociations and took initiative on their formation in order to gain preferment with the government, only receiving official assistance later.

Whoever created the Crown and Anchor Associations, the government undoubtedly funded them, and Reeves was amply rewarded for his efforts. Government newspapers advertised the principal subsidizer as Sir Joseph Banks, but he seems to have not contributed anything to them, and neither did anyone else. In addition to funding the activities of the Associations, Daniel Stuart attested that Pitt's government paid Reeves a sum of several thousand pounds per annum for his services (Werkmeister 136).

Sedition Prosecutions

In England, at least 27 people were tried for seditious words and 14 for seditious libel during 1793 (Emsley 806). In these trials, the government did not hesitate to use packed juries in order to obtain convictions. In other cases, prosecutors argued that the case was too complicated to be decided by uneducated men, and thence "special juries" of higher-class citizens were necessary, which contributed significantly to the number of sedition convictions reached. An even more effective tool of intimidation was the issuing of ex officio charges, which allowed the government to eliminate a hearing by a grand jury. (Prochaska, bibliography entry).

Sedition trials continued throughout the decade, with the 1798 trial of Gilbert Wakefield demonstrating many of the characteristics which so discouraged reformers and radicals of the time, especially since it marked the first major trial in which a publisher was tried even though he admitted the author of the offensive publication. Fox went so far as to label it a "death blow to the liberty off the press" (Prochaska 71). Wakefield was tried for seditious libel along with several sellers of his book, Joseph Johnson, Jeremiah Jordan and John Cuthell. All were convicted, and the special jury sentenced Wakefield to two years imprisonment, a security of 500 pounds for good behavior for the term of five years, and two sureties in 250 pounds each.

Meanwhile, under the Scottish system of law, considerably harsher than the English, Lord Braxfield, Chief Justice of Edinburgh, sentenced radicals Muir and Palmer to seven to 14 years transportation to Botany Bay for sedition, despite protests from the LCS. After an Edinburgh convention united Scotch and British radicals, the government began seeing its members as building a movement large enough to potentially threaten government power and it tries its principal organizers, Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerrald of the LCS, Charles Sinclair, and William Skirving of Scotland, for sedition in January 1794. Gerrald, Skirving and Margarot are each sentenced to 14 years transportation, a sentence which only Margarot survived.

The Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act and the Ensuing Treason Trials

On May 17, 1794, Parliament passed the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act, allowing the government to keep reformers and radicals in prison without charging them. Hardy, Adams, Thelwall, Holcroft and Horne Tooke and other members of Corresponding Societies in London, Leeds and Sheffield are arrested and tried for treason throughout summer and autumn. At the October trial of Hardy, Horne Tooke, Thelwall and Holcroft, Lord Justice Eyre argues that the radical's push for parliamentary reform was treasonous because it would lead to revolution and the execution of the King. The government made a poor showing at the treason trials, with nearly all the radicals acquitted, in part because the heavy sentences for treason made juries significantly less likely to report a guilty verdict.

The Two "Gagging" Acts

Known in 1790s shorthand as the "Gagging Acts" or the "Two Acts," the Treasonable and Seditious Practices and the Seditious Meetings Acts, available here on the Napoleon Series, followed government's embarrassing failure to achieve a "guilty" verdict in the trials of LCS members in late 1794 and were pushed through Parliament almost immediately after a mob attacked the king's carriage in October 1795. The Treasonable and Seditious Practices Act, effective until 1848, expanded the definition of treason. This act delineated conspiracies against the Constitution as treasonous, drawing on the anti-Constitutional portrayal of radicals by loyalists such as the Crown and Anchor Associations. It also expanded the definition of treason to include contempt against the King or government and incendiary speaking and writing, even if they did not lead to treasonous actions. The Seditious Meetings Act required any gathering of over 50 people to have the approval of a magistrate, and gave Justices of the Peace the power to disperse any potentially seditious meeting.

(For more information on the Two Acts, see Tom Holmberg's article on their importance, available at the Napoleon Series.)

Newspaper propaganda

While financially supporting loyalist organization that produced pamphlets and other literature, government also took advantage of England's notoriously corrupt and partial newspapers. Newspapers were a quick and effective way of reaching people, for, though while most newspapers had sales of less than 1,000 a day, an average of 30 people read each newspaper (Werkmeister). A good portion of most newspaper's profits came not from sales but from "puffs," or the sale of positive press to individuals or theatres, and "hush money," or payment for the suppression of negative press (20-21).

To be fair, the corruption and partiality of the press was common knowledge, and readers knew that they were reading a Ministerial or Opposition newspaper. While all politicians participated in similar activities, the government in power, with the whole power of the treasure behind them, had vastly more resources with which to procure positive press. At the beginning of 1790s, the Treasury subsidized seven daily newspapers for amounts variety between 100 and 600 pounds, and it also controlled most of the tri- and bi-weekly newspapers and some of the weeklies (Werkmeister). The government also had other resources at its disposal, and it did not hesitate to use them:

[I]t could reward loyalties with places and pensions. It could also provide priority of information, buy up issues of newspapers for free distribution, and frustrate attempts to prosecute for libel. Similarly, it could punish a recalcitrant newspaper by forcing it or its editor into bankruptcy, by blocking its sources of information, by interfering with its distribution through the Post Office, by increasing taxes, or by harassing its printer and editor with prosecutions, heavy fines, and long prison sentences, followed by 'guarantees' of 'good behavior' for another seven years. (Werkmeister 21)

Other Propaganda

The Treasury also paid a staff of at least 14 writers who provided additional pro-government material for newspapers, and other government writers, many of them members of Parliament and other officials, supplied handbills, posters, pamphlets, journals and ballads anonymously (Werkmeister 27). The government even published a journal, the Anti-Jacobin, devoted entirely to the discrediting of the "Jacobin" radicals.

Theatre in the 1790s was just as political a genre as pamphleteering or newspapers. "Most of the plays had political overtones, and.actors, especially comedians, were inclined to insert their own political commentary" (Werkmeister 42). As with newspapers, both the government and the opposition engaged in questionable practices aimed at advancing their political goals, but the government had vastly greater resources at their disposal. They used techniques such as the publication of scandal and, in the case of Drury Lane, the major Opposition theatre, the condemnation of the building (Werkmeister 43).

Acts later in the decade

Though the LCS and similar organizations were largely in decline by the second half of the 1790s, the government passed several acts in the decade's final years that were directed against various forms of domestic insurrection. After naval mutinies in 1797, Pitt's government passed the Seduction from Duty Act, which made the seduction of serviceman from their allegiance to the crown a capital offense, and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus was used extensively against the United Irishmen during the Irish Revolt of 1798. Many leaders of the LCS were imprisoned during this period as well, out of fears that they might unite with the Irish to foment rebellion. King George III signed into law the act banning the Corresponding Societies on the same day as the Combination Act of 1799, which outlawed working-class economic organizations, illustrating the dual threat posed to the government by political and economic societies (Emsley 820). By this time, radical organizations were largely driven underground, effectively drawing to a close this particularly revolutionary moment.