ONE:But this large infusion of Whiggery did not[439] render the Administration any the more liberal. It was determined to bring the politically accused, now out on bail, to trial. On the 6th of October true bills were found by the grand jury of Middlesex against Thomas Hardy, the secretary of the Corresponding Society, John Horne Tooke, John Augustus Bonney, Stewart Kyd, the Rev. Jeremiah Joyce, Thomas Wardle, Thomas Holcroft, John Richter, Matthew Moore, John Thelwall, Richard Hodgson, and John Baxter, for high treason. Hardy was put upon his trial first at the Old Bailey, October 29th, before Chief Justice Eyre, a judge of noted severity, Chief Baron Macdonald, Baron Hotham, Mr. Justice Buller, and Mr. Justice Grose, with other judges. Sir John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, as Attorney-General, opened the case against him in a speech of nine hours. In this he laboured to represent the Corresponding Society, and Hardy as its secretary, as guilty of a treasonable intercourse with the French revolutionists, and read numbers of documents expressing great admiration of the French institutions. But these were merely the documents which had long and openly been published by the Society, and were well known through insertion in the newspapers. There was nothing clandestine about them, nothing suggestive of a concealed and dangerous conspiracy. Their invariable burthen was the thorough reform of Parliament, and the utter disfranchisement of the rotten boroughs, by which the whole representation of the country was transferred to the aristocracy. Next a strong attempt was made to connect the secretary of the Society with the men lately condemned in Scotland, especially Margarot, with whom, as all undoubtedly engaged in the same object of Reform, Hardy, as secretary, had considerable correspondence. The whole failed to impress an English jury, and Hardy was acquitted after a trial of eight days.
FORE:From the Painting by J. S. Copley, R.A., at the National Gallery.
FORE:The amphibian, as they made out its pontoon understructure, came fairly close alongside. Its speed was almost identical with their own and at first all four occupants of the land crate wondered who was in it, and why.This proposal, which, at an earlier stage of the dispute, might have been listened to, was one at this stage which was sure to be rejected, and was only one of those miserable half measures which commonplace minds so frequently put forth only to demonstrate their inability to grasp the amplitude of the occasion. It was supposed that the measure had been intended to be larger, but that the Bedford party had fallen on it in Council, and reduced it to these pitiable dimensions. Yet when it was introduced into the Commons by Lord North, the Bedford party looked at each other in consternation, and soon the tempest broke loose on the Treasury benches.
